What? My LYS is CLOSED?
…and I don’t mean that they are closed for the holiday or for vacation or something like that. After reading the new Knitty (hooray! It’s out!), I was inspired to look at the website of my local LYS, Glenmarle Woolworks. It’s the closest one to me, even closer than going to an arts & crafts store like Michaels. And so, on the website, it said that they have closed their doors.
WHAT????
They seemed to be a fairly thriving store, but who knows? They’ve been there for a long time, as far as I know. They claim they are moving online, but that doesn’t help me. I suppose I could go to Pins & Needles in town now, or trek out to Pennington. I know my friend Sandy, who’s a quilter, said that the knitting store next to the quilting store in Pennington is nice, and that sometime we’d have to go over together and check it out, so I might have to take her up on that when I’m ready to supplement my stash.
but MAN! That’s a shocker. Had I known, I would have seen about cleaning her out of her leftover Debbie Bliss stock, and some other stuff she carried too.
Methinks that I will have to drive by on my way to work and TKD class tomorrow and check this out for myself….
Posted on January 30th, 2007 by Dani
Filed under: Projects
that sucks! have you been able to find out any more information?
Not yet– the week’s been so busy that I haven’t been able to stop by the store yet. I know the owner was an older woman, so maybe she just doesn’t want to be bothered and wants to retire and concentrate on the web? I don’t know. There are other LYSes around, but that one was closeby, and they still had some good stuff. Oh well.
Man, if I found out a LYS was closing, I’d find out if they wanted someone to take over and see if I could secure a small business loan. I’m already struggling with the same urge at a used bookstore I found out in the Valley whose owner is ready to retire. But then, depending on where I end up, I think I’d rather have a punkrustic store for all things crafty.
That’s a good point, and a good idea. If I can ever find the time these days(!), I should go over there, see if it’s still open, and find out why it’s closing, and if it’s a “failed” venture (which I don’t think it is…I think it’s that too many old ladies go there and it’s not “hip” enough), and it could possibly be for sale (provided the rent at the shopping center it’s at isn’t atrocious), it would be worth looking into. I passed the idea to JC, and he said if the business was actually for sale, he’d be willing to look into buying it.
zomg right now i wish i was there. I would so love to be your partner in crime in such a venture. what with the burgeoning number of knitting groups meeting in coffee shops, I kinda think it would be cool to do part knittery part coffeeshop, although i don’t know that cashmere and beverages are a good potential mix. if i wind up moving to Codename Hogwarts, it will be very interesting to see what sort of fiber potential is there–I’ve already tracked down two fiber artists there, but I don’t know what that means in terms of distribution channels.
I did get over to one of the better LYSes here today for the first time in eons, and D came along in spite of his badly sprained ankle. You should have seen him chatting up the good folks there about our prospects of buying a musk ox or an alpaca if we wind up with land in western va. or rural tennessee.
That would be cool to be business partners in something like that. I could see that totally working. I was watching Knitty Gritty on HGTV the other morning, and they were doing sculptural hats, and the guy doing the demo owned or ran the Knit Cafe’ in NYC. He said that it’s both a cafe and knitting store, and people would end up coming in just for coffee, and regulars eventually got into the knitting part. I could so totally do that. As I always say these days, it doesn’t hurt to dream. You never know. Each time JC proposes the idea about maybe buying a business from someone else, I always find myself gravitating to something relating to the arts. One place (which we don’t know if it’s still for sale or not) was one of those paint your own pottery places, and I thought that was cool. A yarn store or cafe would work too. I’ll post in a minute what I saw at IKEA today.