Saturday, March 26, 2011

Is Nice Threads a Yarn Shop?

The short answer is yes and no.
Yes
Our name gives you a clue. We are a Gallery/Studio. We showcase the work (and play) of Fiber Artists, mainly from Western North Carolina, and we sell the fibers and tools our crafts require. Yarn plays a big part for most of those artists. Nice yarn.

Part of our mission is education and furthering the Fiber Arts and we have classes, demonstrations and open studio time so everyone can get into the act. The fibers and tools we sell are used in our classes.
The wealth of knowledge in our small Studio is huge: felting, weaving, spinning, dying, knitting, crochet, embroidery, lacemaking, tatting, papermaking, book arts, couture sewing, wild and out-of-the-box designing, fiber prep... I could go on.

One of my rules for good design and happy process outcome is  to have a lot of stuff to work with. And having the materials I want to work with, in the quantities that I need and the colors I choose.


Somehow, fiber consumers have been led to believe they need to buy yarn in quantities they don't need, in colors chosen for them by someone else. At Nice Threads, yarns and fleece are purchased by the ounce or pound, and we can order almost any yarn in it's natural color and teach you how to dye to get exactly the color you want for any project you can dream up.

We also have local handspun yarns and are getting fleeces in from our local farms as the shearing season is beginning. It's exciting to see our shepherdess' coming into the studio with big bags. We open and ooh and ahh and smell and feel and touch and our minds and hands and hearts are  full of fabrics to come.

I invite you to come visit us at Nice Threads,see, feel, touch and discover the interweaving of your inner and outer fiber creativity.

The No? Yarn isn't the only thing we have. Nice threads is a lot more than a yarn shop..

Come on by and we can talk about it with a chai and a freshly shorn bag of wool.
Robyn

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Fiber Salon- Riches from Rags

Thursday at Nice Threads Ellen came in and said she had  something to make us laugh. Several years ago she had knitted and machine-fulled a bag, hated the finished product and threw it in the closet.

Leslie  looked at the bag - misshapen and poorly assembled - and complimented the colors and hand of the fabric and started pulling and forming it into interesting shapes and the ideas started to flow. A few hours later Ellen had created a lovely clutch bag with decorative hand blanket stitching to hold her most-used and often- misplaced purse items. All that was needed was a closure and we'll work on that soon.

This is my vision for Thursday afternoons. A Fiber Salon, if you will, where we can bring in what we are working on, even if it's only in our minds and watch as the magic of many creative hands, eyes and hearts do their work. It's amazing how someone else can pick up where I am completely stuck and make perfect sense out of what has me in a creative tangle. Part of the creative process is feeling free to ask for help.

I'm sure to need your help soon enough, so please come on by and ask for mine. The resources - studio space, material and tools of Nice Threads might also be what you need to move you to the next step, and hard to do at home alone.

Come on out of that closet along with those projects!

See you soon at Nice Threads- Fiber Salon Thursday 1-4.

Robyn

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