Thursday, October 20, 2005

LYS

Here's my take on Local Yarn Stores (LYSs).

A few days ago, Bron posted about her take on LYSs. That prompted me to post about my opinions. (It just took me a few days to get around to actually writing the post.)

There is this whole movement to "support your LYS". I partially agree with this, but have a somewhat different interpretation than most people. Mostly my interpretation of "local" is quite a bit different. In my local area, I can shop at Yarns, Etc., Knit-A-Bit, Michaels, AC Moore, and Walmart. Roses has a bit of acrylic, but not enough to count. Non-locally, I order a bunch of stuff on the internet, from places like Elann, KnitPicks, TheKnitter.com, Ram Wools, Simply Socks Yarn Company, and others. (I don't have a car, and the prices and selection are great.)

Now, of the above, most people would consider Yarns, Etc., and Knit-A-Bit to be my LYSs.

If you merely went by distance, my LYSs would be Yarns, Etc., Knit-A-Bit, Michaels, AC Moore and Walmart.

I consider all of the above, excluding Michaels, AC Moore, and Walmart to be my LYSs. I use "size" rather than distance to determine what is a LYS. After all, consider Yarns, Etc. It's located close to me, but also has a web store. Is the physical store worthy of support, but it's webpage not? No.

Yarns, Etc. and Knit-A-Bit are both close to me. Do I patronize them equally? No. (Knit-A-Bit is run by a crabby lady. I prefer no service over crabby service.)

Is a small, family-run web business less worthy of support than the local Walmart? Hell no!

Given that the yarn is usually from somewhere else, is there really that big a deal if it's next-to-last stop is close to me? No. In fact, if I were driving, the amount of polution produced by me driving to my LYS would probably be more than any additional pollution produced by mailing the yarn directly to me. (I reuse and/or recycle virtually all the packaging, as people receiving packages from me can attest to.)

So, that's my opinion. I don't feel guilty from ordering off the internet. After all... I don't order yarn from big chains. ;)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree on the no service is better than crabby service. What ought to be my LYS--the only independent one in town--is very crabby. So I consider my LYS to be the next closest, which is about 45 minutes away. It's also smaller than the one in town, and has very little selection. But the owner is so nice that it is worth the trip. If she doesn't have something, then it's all about the internet.

pfirsch said...

I have been to Knit-a-Bit. That woman was ridicuolously crabby and even more so when I didn't want to knit!

There is one here in Providence, but after the one told me, "You should really learn to knit," I decided to keep my distance. She's not the first person to ever say that to me in a yarn store.

I don't want to knit. Why does that make me a less desirable customer?

Oh, and Bron, when I was at UNM, we (my roommate and I) bought yarn at Wal-Mart. I don't think we even knew there were any LYS. It's probably better that we didn't know--college kids are always broke. ;)

noricum said...

Given the rate I go through yarn when I crochet (between speed, and slightly higher yarn use), you'd think they'd want to convert all the knitters to crochet! ;)

noricum said...

Oh... and Walmart yarn definitely has it's place. ;)