Newsletter April 23rd 2020

    If we’ve learned anything over the past five weeks, it’s that yarn in its many colours and textures holds us together. It also helps us hold it together.

    Retailers have been thrown into dark territory over stay-at-home orders. We've had to adapt within days to selling our products while keeping our shop doors closed. Our customers can’t browse the shelves, they can’t look at store displays for inspiration, they can’t chit chat with us about what’s happening in our neighbourhoods and towns. 

    Most Canadians are in their homes, unable to go to work, to do the things that define them and bring meaning and shape to their days.  They're spending more time than they're used to with some family members and struggling with not being able to see  others. And they're worrying. There is no end to the worrying.

    Hand-crafters pick up balls of yarn and their tools and go to work. Skeins get wound into cakes, patterns are consulted, the measuring tape comes out. Some days the stitches come fast and furious, other days nothing seems to sit well. Projects that were put aside because they were too difficult, or too boring or not the 'right thing' get picked up again. New skills are learned and old ones get polished.

    It may take a few more weeks, but we could come to realize there are worse things. For yarn store owners and their customers, at least, the internet can help us find all the yarn we need and any pattern we could want. We can text a friend for advice. Yarn shops, ours included, have put together virtual knit groups - oh, the power of Zoom, Face Time and Skype!  Knitters can also just pick up the phone and call their local yarn shop.

    And so you have.  Here at Riverside Yarns we have settled into a busy routine of responding to email and Facebook enquiries, filling online orders and helping customers over the phone. In the chaos of mid-March we had no idea how this would evolve. But there were some things we wanted to stand by. We didn’t want to close the store completely. We didn't want to let down all you fibre artists who need your craft to help you through these uncertain times. We knew that crafting is therapy for many, and it can give meaning and shape to the long days that we're facing.
   
     We've come to learn another important thing in the past month or so. By helping us keep the store open, you have given meaning and shape to our days, too. You, our friends and customers, are helping us hold it together. We can't thank you enough.

Here's to knitting, crocheting and weaving together through these murky times.