Inside Conversational Threads Fiber Arts Studio in Emmaus

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An avid crocheter, disappointed by the variety of natural fiber yarns available in stores and online, Cindy Fitzpatrick set out to open shop, specializing in her own, hand-picked quality threads.

Cindy Fitzpatrick

Owner

Tell us about what prompted you to open a shop specializing in yarn and fiber!

I have always been involved in some creative endeavor or another in the fiber arts, having learned to knit, crochet and sew as a little girl, but nearly 16 years ago, my father passed away and my mother was determined to stay living alone in her own home. My sisters and I felt she needed something to keep her busy and mentally active and, since she had been a knitter and a crocheter all her life, I got her involved in knitting scarves. This was during the big knitted-scarf craze of the early 2000s, in the days of fun fur and all the other novelty yarns. After a year or two of novelty knitting, she was ready to move on to more traditional yarns.

I began looking for natural fiber yarns, and at that time, the hand-dyed yarn movement was taking off, but I was unable to find the yarns for which I was looking—especially the hand-dyed ones—in the Lehigh Valley. I began looking for hand-dyed yarns on the internet, but that proved to be a disappointing experience because of the nature of hand-dyed yarn, each skein being slightly different. When you add in the consideration of the involvement of cameras and monitors in posting, and seeing those yarns via the computer, the picture of the yarn you see on the computer may not be anything like what eventually turns up in your mailbox. Since at that time I was an empty nester with time on my hands and a need for more social contact, opening a yarn shop was the obvious way for me to supply and be supplied with the yarns I was having such a hard time obtaining, while every day having the opportunity to talk with others who would share my love of fiber arts. So, with the actual and financial support of my husband, Conversational Threads Fiber Arts Studio was born in 2009, supplying me and the local fiber art community with conversation and threads!

The quality, exclusivity and wide variety of the products you sell are what set Conversational Threads apart. How do you go about acquiring hard-to-find yarns, fibers, needles, etc.?

We have always been a strictly natural-fiber shop, with a focus on eco-friendly, humane and fair trade yarns and rovings for spinning into yarn. With the huge growth of the large independent dyer/hand-dyeing segment of the market, it has become a constant search for the newest up-and-coming indie dyer that will wholesale to a brick-and-mortar shop, all while maintaining an up-to-date supply of commercially dyed, quality yarn in all weights. While most of the commercial yarn companies have representatives that bring their offerings to me for selecting our commercial yarns, I search Instagram posts for new indie dyers constantly, look for new offerings at fiber festivals—such as the huge New York Sheep and Wool Festival—and travel to Europe yearly to find the relatively unknown hand-dyed yarn and accessories that are hard to get in the U.S.

Is there an item or brand that continues to fly off the shelves?

For the last several years, hand-dyed yarn has far outsold commercially dyed yarn, but currently, we are seeing somewhat of a move away from the knitting of accessories, which has been huge for years, towards a return to knitting of sweaters and a corresponding increase in the selling of some of the commercial yarns that would be more appropriate for certain [kinds] of those sweaters (think cabled sweaters where the cables wouldn’t show up well in a multicolored yarn). The other thing we have a hard time keeping in stock is knitting needles. We have many hundreds of needles in stock at any one time, but nowadays, knitting needles come in so many materials—wood, metal, acrylic, graphite—and shapes, sizes and colors that I am placing large orders every month to keep our stock well-filled. As a result, we are known to have the most complete supply of knitting needles and crochet hooks around and have become the go-to shop for needles.

Share a little bit about Kiva and how the shop supports its mission.

Kiva’s mission as a nonprofit microfinance organization is “to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty,” and it is the charity we choose to support as a shop. Kiva allows us to lend money to low-income, underserved entrepreneurs in 86 countries.

As often as possible, we choose people who are in some sort of fiber-related business to receive our loans. More recently, we have also been funding fresh-water equipment in tiny African villages. We raise this money by holding events, such as our yearly shop fashion show to benefit the organization, and by donating any money collected from customers who offer it, be it in response to help received on their projects or just in general.

What types of classes and events do you host at Conversational Threads?

As far as classes go, we have weekly class sessions for knitting and crocheting in which a customer can learn anything, from the very basics of beginning to knit or crochet to helping with a specific pattern or technique or fixing a mistake on a project. Beyond the weekly classes, we also have specialty classes held periodically to learn how to do a specific technique or project. For instance, we are lucky enough to have a fairly well-known knitwear designer on staff, Lavanya Patricella, whose specialty is brioche knitting, and her classes are often requested. We also have an excellent weaving teacher with a degree in textiles whose classes fill practically the minute they are posted. And we do occasionally get guest teachers to run specialty classes as we did recently for Icelandic lopapeysa sweaters with Ragga Eiriksdottir from Iceland.

As for events, along with the previously mentioned annual fashion show, we run bus trips to the New York Sheep and Wool Festival and to the Vogue Knitting Live! event held in New York City each January—the latter at which we as a shop are a vendor. Other events are often added to the calendar as the mood strikes us, or as the requests become numerous. We are always up for some fun!

Any advice to someone interested in taking up knitting, weaving or crocheting?

Go for it! We were all beginners at some point, and anyone helping you at Conversational Threads would make sure you never leave the shop feeling inadequate to the task. And while it would be a little more expensive to work with our supplies rather than those from the big-box stores, the enjoyment of your project will definitely be greater for using quality supplies. When you consider the cost versus hours of entertainment received, it really is a very inexpensive form of entertainment. That being said, though, we will give you a hand with your project should you need one, no matter where—or how long ago—you purchased your supplies.

Tell us about ravelry.com and the community you helped cultivate!

As far as I am concerned, ravelry.com is the best thing ever invented for knitters, or any kind of fiber artist for that matter. Ravelry.com is a free online social networking site where approximately 8 million members share projects, ideas, discussions and keep track of their yarn, tools and patterns. There is a pattern database of over 800,000 patterns—most available for sale, some for free and some just informational. It is the place to find the perfect pattern, see how it turned out for others who have made it and keep track of your notes for your own project. Beyond that, there is a generous sharing of information of all kinds on the discussion forums, and on those forums the information shared by other yarn shop owners certainly helped me to avoid many pitfalls when I was planning to open the shop. I don’t know that I could say I helped to cultivate a community for ravelry.com, but I most certainly heartily recommend using it!

What’s on the horizon for Conversational Threads as we enter 2019?

My goal for every year is to have an appropriate amount of yarn for the size of the shop, but I am an overzealous buyer and so we have yarn everywhere! But seriously, there are exciting things on the horizon for the shop. Just to name a few things: At the end of January we will be in New York City, vending at the prestigious Vogue Knitting Live! annual event. In February, we have a world-famous knitting pattern designer, Stephen West, coming to the shop to teach a couple of classes and do a special exclusive event with Lavanya, and we are very excited for that. During the rest of the year, we will be doing a number of trunk shows with some excellent indie dyers, and we will be adding more and more hand-dyed yarn beauties to our regular stock as I discover them. I also have a number of other new, really fun, social knitting events in mind that are still in the planning stages, and we are always adding to our interesting class offerings. We are never standing still at Conversational Threads!

6 S. 4th St., Emmaus | 610.421.8889 | conversationalthreads.com