Stitch 'n Dish

Tag: small business

  • Unique yarn shop names

    Unique yarn shop names

    After paging through a book at a library, while waiting on my grandchildren to meet me for other business, I looked up where to buy Rowan yarns in my area. As I searched the Rowan site for these shops, I realized that some of my fellow fiber artists have a great sense of humor along…

  • Unintended consequences

    Unintended consequences

    If ALL of us do a little, (supporting our local fabric and yarn shops) is not a hard task. It just takes each of us remembering to think of our local fabric and yarn shops, and give them some of our time, attention and (of course), money!

  • A birthday day out

    A birthday day out

    This week was my birthday, and I decided to take the day off and just do things I wanted to do with no time pressure or deadlines. I started the day out to breakfast with my parents, which is always nice. It was a rainy day around here so a day spent traveling to stores…

  • Remembering Joann (and feeling nostalgic)

    Remembering Joann (and feeling nostalgic)

    Last week I found myself wandering aimlessly in a local Michaels store. It is the store in my area that has a pretty decent fabric inventory and sewing support, but I found myself uninspired, unmotivated, and frankly – unhappy. A couple days later I was feeling some sort of “inspiration” (urge?) to craft-shop and thought…

  • The end goals

    The end goals

    Over the last couple of days I have been pondering things related to the sustainability of crafting as we know it today. This came about as I was processing the loss of 3 more yarn shops in my local area, and my realization of the depth at which Private Equity (PE) has infiltrated the crocheting,…

  • A loss of community

    A loss of community

    Crafters are creative and can transform simple things into works of art. As we continue to process the stages of “grief” around the loss of community that once resided in our neighborhood Joann stores, we can move on into new ways of being in community, finding and/or creating activities and small groups that promise a…

  • With apologies to my favorite small businesses

    With apologies to my favorite small businesses

    We don’t have to look far to read or hear bad news about the U.S. economy right now. It’s as close as the cost of increasingly smaller bags of groceries, or the mail box where the credit card companies have been sending out notices about increased interest rates since mid-Summer. Consider the data on a…

  • A new era for local shops

    A new era for local shops

    I wrote the blog post below after visiting New Orleans for business almost 2 years ago and posted it on my previous blog site. Today, as the news in the fiber arts community is overflowing with store closures, retail bankruptcies, and economic scares, I am thinking of how the larger crocheting and knitting communities as…

  • It’s all in the timing

    It’s all in the timing

    The last few blog posts I have written highlight my personal goals for 2025 of shopping less and getting into the habit of using what I have on hand, specifically as it relates to yarn and craft supplies. I have worried about my tenacity in sticking to this, and how best to balance those times…

  • The Amazon Economy

    The Amazon Economy

    My sister and I have been wanting to do a small, local craft show event “for old times sake“, and we finally did it this past weekend. Mostly we had sewn items that included reusable holiday gift bags, wine bags, reusable coffee cup sleeves (think Starbucks without the cardboard) and tissue holders. I also had…