h. duxbury creations

I learned how to crochet properly in 2009, with the help of a friend who had been doing so for most of her life. Back then, we were obsessed with punchy brights and neons, everything as colourful and over the top as possible. The only options I found for those colours tended to be acrylic (which was also the only yarn in my university self’s budget). However, the following year, a different friend gifted me a small pile of brilliantly bright Bernat Handicrafter cotton yarn. I asked, awestruck, where she had found such a thing. “Oh, I just got it at Spinrite”.

I knew the name. She had worked there briefly, and her mom had worked there for years, since we were kids. She and I took a trip there and I discovered the most magical thing: the Spinrite Outlet Store, and specifically, their bulk section.

If you never had the pleasure of visiting Spinrite, especially as a newly minted yarn lover, just imagine: multiple table sized bins of unlabeled yarn in every colour, fibre and weight imaginable, all sold by weight. You would load up your basket and go to the scale and one of the lovely staff would carefully weigh it all and bag it up. The yarn was a fraction of what you would pay in regular stores, and was often unique: sometimes the dye lot was messed up and you got a shade you would never find again, sometimes it was a lot end and the ball was a little small or a little large. Sometimes it was a discontinued colour or yarn.

It was magic and I was obsessed. Those giant tables of mismatched yarns felt like the definition of potential. I visited many times and would leave with bags full of yarn.

As my crafting evolved, the yarns I use and the things I make have changed, and I have visited Spinrite less. (I admittedly have a large collection of yarn still left from previous Spinrite visits).

This year, Spinrite announced they are closing in September. It is the end of an era, both for the thousands of crafters who flocked there and for the people who have worked there for years. Although I haven’t visited in a few years, I have a bit of grief for the loss of those tables of limitless potential, and for the fledgling crafters who will never experience the joy of the treasure hunt in those tables, for the staff who were always helpful and friendly and knew the products so well.

It is also has given me pause to reflect on how quickly these things can vanish if we aren’t careful. The online world has given us a lot, but has taken, too. Those amazing, unique, quirky spaces of inspiration and opportunity are vulnerable: the local bookshops, the independent cafes, the overstuffed art stores, the local yarn stores and charity shops. The weird little niche places full of beads and books and paper and ink. So many are being lost to generic big box stores and online retailers, and what is really being lost is a sense of place, of community. We are losing the conversations with similar minded people, meet ups with strangers, the suggestions and support of small business owners who become familiar with our preferences.

I am guilty of leaning on the convenience of online retail, but maybe as we enter a new season, and Spinrite’s season finally ends, it is an opportunity to be more present in the small local spaces before they vanish for good.