Nan’s Needleworks

As yarn shops go, the atmosphere is sterile and not very inviting. I went there for the Oct 2015 yarn crawl. There was tension because the receipt take wouldn’t feed into the register and a mature (older) woman was exuding a lot of stress and talking in a demeaning tone to an employee. The collection of yarn was decent. Would go back but only during another yarn crawl.

This yarn store is a nice surprise that’s on the second floor of a weird office building built on the shores of a lovely lake. The first time I visited I walked in the door and thought maybe I’d come for my dentist appointment instead.
This is probably the most unusual location for a yarn store I’ve ever seen. But these ladies are so charming and really know and love their craft.
The first contact I ever had with them was calling them in a panic from Fredericksburg. They were closing in an hour and we were more than an hour’s drive away. I would’ve totally understood if they had been cranky at me and said they wanted to close shop and go home. But they stayed open for us! And were very nice about the whole thing. That sort of kindness earns me as a customer for life.
So inside the odd lobby and up to the second floor. Down a very closed in hallway is a nice five-​room shop called Nan’s. They seem to specialize in the really good Elsebeth Lavold and Debbie Bliss yarns and patterns. To the seasoned knitter this means lovely simple yarns knit into very simple but pretty designs. Close your eyes and think of a rosy cheeked English baby in a simple artichoke-​colored seed stitch sweater. That’s classic Debbie Bliss.
They have a good amount of novelty-​type yarns too. Some interesting specialty yarn from Noro. And a new trend in yarns where you can pretty much hand-​crochet a scarf in ten minutes. I was fascinated by this yarn.
One particular bright spot is a local dyer (possible co-​owner of the shop?) who dyes Stotts Ranch mohair yarn from Kraemer using natural pigments. Stotts is a mohair ranch from Texas that’s had their wool milled in Pennsylvania and distributed by a great US based company. This artist uses natural sources of pigment such as rosewood, madder, brazilwood, cochineal (a beetle that is the original natural source of the color purple!!), marigold, etc. The artist is really fun to listen to and the colors are a rich semi-​solid color.
These ladies are so nice. I look forward to seeing them during Yarn Crawl ’12.