MENU

My First Local Yarn Store: The Needlecraft Center

This last weekend Mr. Turtle and I drove the long five hours to Davidson College, our alma mater.  It was his class reunion (last year was mine, but since the weekend was the same one as TNNA… I chose to forgo it).  Davidson College is a small liberal arts college just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina.  You might have heard of Davidson College in a few different contexts: our free laundry services, when we went to the Elite 8 in 2008, because we’re Stephen Curry’s Alma Mater, or (if your’e in the stitching world) the fact that we’re the alma mater of Ann Shane of ’85 – also known as one half of Mason-Dixon Knitting.

Mr. Turtle and I have been back to Davidson a few times since we moved away five years ago – the most notable instance being at Mr. Turtle’s brother’s graduation.  So the changes to the campus weren’t quite such a shock to us as they were to others.  Still, it’s interesting to see how the campus has grown and changed.

There are few places that have been as formative to my life as Davidson.  There’s Camp, of course, and my family.  But Davidson is where I learned a lot of life skills in a very short amount of time: how to write well, create an ordered argument, set-up an excel sheet like a pro, weld and hammer.  It’s where I met Mr. Turtle.  It’s also where I met my first LYS: The Needlecraft Center.

The Needlecraft Center, Davidson NC

The Needlecraft Center, Davidson NC

So while Mr. Turtle spent his time socializing with old friends, I took a quick hour to stop by the store, say hello to the staff, and just revisit a place that got me through many college crisis.  And then, on Sunday before we left, I took some time to spend with the owner, Elaine McArn, who has run the store for 43 years – since 1971.

It was lovely to visit with Elaine.  When I was in college I was a little intimidated by her: she was so very knowledgeable and experienced.  She was the one who caught that I was knitting twisted stitches, who gave a word to the knitting style I preferred.  She was the one who educated me on why it was worth it to save your pennies and use good yarn.  She started me on my first terrible socks.  I didn’t always welcome her advice: after all, I was young and didn’t always appreciate being told what I was doing was wrong, or not the best way to go about things.  But I respected her – especially when I realized she was almost always right.

The year after I graduated my perception of her changed.  I was working for the college, living in a house, and beginning to figure out the “adult thing.”  I began to really respect the fact that Elaine had a long-time respected business, especially in the crafting world.  I got to know her better through knitting nights at the store, and by hanging out more as she talked about the difficulties of owning a store: dealing with “missing merchandise,” how to market yarns and tools, and making tough choices about where her business was going to go.  We bonded over gardening: growing peas and tomatoes, zucchini and squash.

young hatchlings in a nest cozied in a potted fern

Young Hatchlings in Elaine’s Fern

We’ve kept in touch on and off since then.  Elaine was one of the first people I contacted when I knew I was going to TNNA.  We met over breakfast the morning before the show floor opened, and she gave me advice about how to conduct myself.  It made me relax when I was SO nervous!

So on Sunday it was more than nice to visit with Elaine, to talk about families and business, gardening and textiles.  To talk about having to make tough decisions when you run a business: are you going to buy a new printer, or do workarounds so you can have the cash in reserve?  Which yarns do you carry, what things are fads and which are not?  We bonded over the young birds hatching in one of her ferns, and the way rosemary smells just after it rains.  As we were talking I had a moment where  my younger self looked through my eyes – not quite believing we were discussing tatting and crochet in heirloom textiles.

Have you had people in your life whose relationship has changed and grown?  I’d love to hear about some of them!

Carrying Davidson With Me

I’ve been talking a bit the last few days about Davidson College (my alma mater), which has been on my mind since Michael and I are currently driving our way from Washington, DC to Davidson, NC.  As previously mentioned, we’re going for Michael’s brother’s graduation.

I’ve been talking about how Davidson College played heavily into the designing I do today.  From resources like The Needlecraft Center to the art program at Davidson, this town and college started the transformation from a casual stitcher to fiber-arts professional.  There is, however, one other major thing I’ve taken with me away from Davidson that has been instrumental in leading me where I am today.

My husband.  Michael.

Back then, of course, he was my boyfriend, whom I had been dating for three years.  As a freshly minted graduate, I had an English Degree in hand, a job working for my alma mater (which I was very happy about, as the job market had just plummeted), and a plan to live with Michael and two other friends in a house off campus.  Michael and my friends were all seniors, and a year younger than I.

Early design project that has been revised,
and will be published later in the year.

I found myself with a profusion of free time.  Having no course load and a job that lasted from 9-5, I had evenings free for the first time in my life.  It was amazing. I was doing more spinning than I had ever been able to do, and was knitting and crocheting up a storm.  I quickly tired of other people’s patterns, and began to work patterns of my own.

There was one such time, working on a pair of socks, that I began to write things down, so I could remember what I did for the second sock.  And it was about that time that Michael began to say, “You could make money from that.”

At first, I scoffed at the idea.  There aren’t many entrepreneurs in my immediate family, nor did I run into many people where I lived who ran their own business.  In contrast, Michael’s father has run a successful small business most of Michael’s life.  What seemed inconceivable to me seemed obvious to him.

Michael kept at it, though, asking thoughtful questions and encouraging me to learn enough about the industry to make an informed decision.  It was there
where I began to seriously think about what it would take to be a designer.  I wasn’t ready yet to take the leap, and I had a lot of learning to do, but it was at Davidson that the seeds were planted.

Reminiscing about Davidson

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m heading to Davidson College (my alma mater) over the weekend for my husband’s graduation.  It’s got me thinking about how my experiences at Davidson have lead me to where I am now, designing knit and crochet.

Yesterday I told you about the Neelecraft Center, my very first LYS.  Today I want to tell you about the second of three things that heavily influenced where I am now.  The first was the Neelecraft Center, and the second would be Davidson’s Arts program.  You see I was an english major and my senior year I had fulfilled most of my general requirements.  That meant I was taking classes mostly toward my major.  As things happened, my first semester Senior year I found myself taking three reading-heavy English classes.  There were weeks where I was reading nearly three books a week, plus associated articles with the text we were studying.

It was right about that time that Lauren Cunningham, one of my close friends and an art major, told me I should take a sculpture class.  (She said this, actually, as we were sharpening pencils for one of her really cool sculptures.)  I was dubious, but a few weeks later we were working on another one of her sculptures and it was so much fun I decided ‘what the heck?’

Sculpture was amazing.  I’ve always liked to create things with my hands, and here I was being given the tools to be able to do that.  I learned how to work with wood, weld with metal, and cast in lost wax.  I got to play with plaster, and best of all, I was constantly incorporating crochet and knitting into my work.

Some of my sculptures were pretty weird.  I made a hand that’s dressed up like a clown – it was made in a rush on an impulse, inspired my the “hand anteaters” my father used to make when I was a child.

I also made a piece titled “Rebellion against the Sampler.”  The piece was inspired partly by the then incipient Crochet Coral Reef Project, partly by scrumbling, and partly by a desire to see just how far I could push crochet.  It inspired some rather visceral reactions from my peer reviewers, including one student who claimed it looked like something out of “Dr. Seuss trying to eat my foot.”  At my professor’s encouragement  I entered it into the student art exhibition, and won second place – beating people who were art majors!  It was the first time it occurred to me that I might actually be good at the sculpture and art thing, instead of just enjoying the heck out if it.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about the third things at Davidson that brought me to where I am now.  Stay tuned!

Going back to where it all started…

Davidson Mascot, the Wildcat

This weekend Michael and I are returning Davidson, NC, the home of our alma mater, Davidson College.  Michael’s brother is graduating, ending an eight-year run of family members attending the school. (His poor parents) Davidson is a small school that nobody really knows about.  If you’ve heard of Davidson you’ve probably heard of either Stephen Curry or free laundry.  In the fiberarts world Davidson is the alma mater of Ann Shayne ’85, better known as one of the co-author’s of Mason-Dixon Knitting, and the blog by the same name.  While I don’t know her personally – she graduated far before I went to Davidson – I’d like to think that some of her coolness rubs off onto me.

I’ve got mixed feelings about going back.  I’ve been told things have changed quite a bit since I was there last (in July 2010) – and I’m nervous to see what has changed, and what has remained as I remember it.  I’m excited though, because Davidson was a major influence on where I am now.

Davidson introduced me to my very first LYS (local yarn store), in the form of The Needlecraft Center, right across the street from the campus.  God bless them.  I was a poor college student who could barely afford the yarn out of their “Discount Drawer.”  Still, the staff took me under their wing, listening to me cry about classes or homesickness, teaching me to push myself to become a better stitcher, and occasionally helping me fix my mistakes.

Elaine McArn is the owner of the Needlecraft Center.  She’s one of the first people who taught me there are different ways of knitting.  She’s also the woman who pointed out I was knitting with entirely twisted stitches – and that just might be the reason that my sweater had a mind of it’s own.

Then there were the knit-nights at The Needlecraft Center.  Happening every other week, I loved to hang out with the group of women there.  I made some really good friends, like Garret Freymann-Weyr, who later helped me get my nanny job working with Sweetness and Light.  I liked seeing what the women in the store were making, what was happening with jobs and relationships and family.

There’s more to the story about the Needlecraft Center, and how it intersected with Davidson, but I’ll have to share that tomorrow, in another post. Stay tuned for part 2!

Stash Sunday – Blue Ridge Yarns Kaleidoscope Superwash Sock

My first LYS was The Needlecraft Center, located in Davidson, NC.  It was right across the street from the college.  An 8 minute walk, if I was meandering, from my dorm room to their door.  It’s a surprise that I managed to EVER restrain myself from going there.

The Needlecraft Center introduced me to hand-painted yarns, which continues to be one of my favorite types of yarns.  Blue Ridge Yarns was one of the yarns I learned to love.

This yarn is currently engaged in a long-term project I’m working on, a sock yarn blanket.  Seems like everyone has to do one at least once in their life.

The Deets:

Yarn weight

Fingering / 4 ply (14 wpi)
Amount stashed

1 skein = 400.0 yards (365.8 m)
Dye lot

324
Colorway

Berry 005
Color family

Tags

    1 project