Colorful, tightly wound balls of wool yarn roll across a few scattered newspapers; knitting needles glint as they flash through the air.
The afternoon sun strikes the rough-hewn wood table, warming the long planks. Laughing conversation flies fast as one elderly woman says, “Maybe it finally got through her head that I’m not going to steal her husband.”
Stacked from floor to ceiling with skeins of wool in every color of the rainbow, employee Sophie Walker said The Yarn Store at Nob Hill is both a business and community knitting circle.
“A lot of this is casual and improvised,” Walker said. “If you come in and there’s a group in the front room, we didn’t tell them to be there. They just came in to sit and talk.”
Walker said the conversations range from idle gossip to spirited exchanges about politics and philosophy.
“It becomes a place where you can question your attitudes, question your opinions,” Walker said. “There are other people to educate you — lots of perspectives you’ve never encountered before.”
The Yarn Store is only one year old, but Walker said it quickly became one of the most popular handwork stores in Albuquerque.
The store’s walls are lined with knitting needles, handmade bags, spindles and supplies for making Colcha, a type of embroidery.
Yarn prices range from $7 to $40 per hank, and many are spun and dyed locally.
“It seems like everywhere in the world people are making yarn,” Walker said. “Knitting and crocheting and fiber arts is somewhere within the culture, but you don’t always know about it. It’s like an international art, so these are our New Mexican yarns.”
Knitters of all levels come through the store to shop or chat, and she said beginners advance quickly because everyone helps each other.
“An intermediate knitter might be really good at cabling because they like putting cables in their clothing, but they may have never knit a pair of socks, and they don’t know how to do a heel turn,” Walker said. “You move from beginner to intermediate really pretty quickly.”
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Walker said she loves knitting because she has complete control over the final product of a garment she wants to wear, but for employee Fred Whiteman, a UNM biology TA, it’s more about the process.
“I find it so soothing and meditative,” Whiteman said. “I come home from a crazy day of work, and I just put something on Hulu and knit the whole evening, I just totally decompress. It’s great.”
Yarn store regular Janet Shepherd said she knits there two to three times a week, and she loves the diverse groups of people and conversations.
“It’s a pretty good inter-generational group, which I just love,” Shephard said. “This is a cool area for that. A lot of kids come over from the university; there are a few kids who have been coming from one of the high schools. It’s a lot of fun, we even get some knitting done.”
No matter what type of craft the customers enjoy, Walker said the community is tight-knit. The knitters also stitch others into their community. The store started a program, “Hats for the Hood,” which collects donated, patron-made hats. It started with a couple of hats, but the group contributed so many hats that the original basket overflowed. Walker said the caps will be distributed to people along Central Avenue this winter.
“It’s a supportive community,” she said. “No one is obligated to take care of each other, but for some reason, you get that sort of thing with people who knit. They like taking care of each other.”
The Yarn Store at Nob Hill
120 Amherst Drive NE
TheYarnStoreatNobHill.com
