Fiber Voyeur: Knitting Off Broadway

I just got back from a quick jaunt to Michigan to celebrate the holidays early with my aunt and uncle before they leave for Arizona. By celebrate, I mean I spent the weekend in their kitchen near their wood stove working on my laptop. Oh, finals, how I will be thrilled for you to be done.

When I drove home yesterday, I realized most of the local yarn stores on my route would be closed - Sundays tend to be a bad day to run out of yarn - but remembered I had visited the lovely Knitting Off Broadway on my way home from Thanksgiving a few weeks ago. This deceptively small shop is located in Indiana's second-largest city, Fort Wayne, and features a lovely selection of yarn, both artisan and pragmatic. I say deceptively small because the space itself is tiny but Jan Bell and her daughter Natalie cram an insane amount of yarn into the space, filling openings and shelves with worsteds, chunkies, and sock yarns galore. (Special emphasis on the sock yarns - it's like a sock yarn mecca!)


This is a store that is meant to be enjoyed. The space is light and airy, filled with wonderful fibers but not overwhelming. Perhaps the most enjoyable element of the store is the staff. When I happened to stop in, both Jan and Natalie were in the store and were both absolutely lovely. Knitting Off Broadway is one of those stores I would feel comfortable walking into, cozying into a chair, and knitting for the rest of the afternoon, not something that can be said for every LYS out there. Sadly, I had just shopped at my own LYS in Bloomington before leaving for the holiday so my yarn needs were few. That didn't stop me, however, from walking out with a ball of chunky Rowan in the most interesting shade of blue - somewhere between a seafoam and sky blue. Felt amazing and made a great cable hat for holiday giving. (They have a great basket of last skeins at cut prices - perfect for small projects!)


Knitting Off Broadway is a nice surprise: helpful staff, dedicated owners, and a really great selection of yarn. When talking to Jan about her yarn selection, she replied that Natalie only ordered yarn she truly loved and that was so apparent: the feel and colors of the yarn was lush and deliberate. Every yarn had been chosen for a particular reason, placed in a particular spot. This is a yarn store where they truly care about the craft of knitting, fostering community amongst knitters, and providing high quality yarns to knitters.