Get out your pens and planners and draw a big heart around April 26th because Local Yarn Store Day is one of the most special days of the year, you won’t want to miss this!
LYS Day 2025 is a-comin’! We hope you are as excited as we are, and look forward to seeing your smiling faces on Saturday the 26th!
Check back here for more details as the day gets closer, but here’s a little preview of the headliner, which we have been bursting at the seams to share with you all:
The exclusive Sow’s Ear anniversary colorway dyed for us by our friends at Ewetopia, just down the road in Viroqua! (Featuring their beautiful new lino-cut sheep logo!) This is a very special, very limited edition colorway just for LYS Day. Drumroll please….
If you like her in greyscale, you’ll love her in living color! We’re holding back on the full reveal for the folks who come visit us on LYS Day, but keeping this under wraps has been a s-t-r-u-g-g-l-e, it is so gorgeous, so rich, and so us!
We’ll have the colorway on Helix Fine (a bouncy, soft 2 ply fingering weight, fractal spun, self-striping yarn), Helix DK (same, but DK weight), and, most special of all, on One Of A Kind base that is 240 yards/skein to knit up at a DK/sport gauge.
This color is called Crowded Table, and it is jam-packed with meaning. You can click over here to read Yarn Manager Sara’s thoughts on the concept behind this special yarn, which pays homage to the gorgeous song of the same name by The Highwomen, as well as to our bustling cafe and to the many folks who crowd around our tables to enjoy a good meal and a great cup of coffee, to learn a new technique, to get help with a tricky project, and of course to all those who pick up a set of needles for the first time.
In keeping with our focus on supporting our local community and economy, $1 from every skein will be donated to an organization that is making a profound difference right here in our back yard: Badger Prairie Needs Network.
We absolutely love the folks at Ewetopia Fiber Mill and are so happy for this chance to collaborate with them. Given that April is the month that plays host to LYS Day, it seems like the ideal time to talk about local fiber and local artisans! More on that will be forthcoming here on the blog and in our newsletter, but for now check out Ewetopia’s Fiber Mill Open House on April 19th, a great opportunity to see a working fiber mill in action!
LYS Day is bigger than us!
In case you thought this was just a Sow’s Ear event, we want to open your eyes to the fact that it’s so much more! You can use the store locater from the official LYS Day Website to see the list of all LYS’s that are officially participating! There are events in almost every state, in Canada, in Australia – even in Prague!
And, perhaps the most exciting news to us local fiber lovers, Blackberry Ridge Woolen Mill is participating in LYS Day this year, and they will be open for visitors and shoppers from 10-4! If you missed it, here’s the post where they announced their new ownership. Congratulations, Blackberry Ridge!!
Local Yarn Store Day is a day that – you guessed it – invites you to celebrate and support Local Yarn Stores! Pretty straightforward on the surface, but here at the Ear we like to take this chance to dig a little deeper and talk about the fact that in an age of instant gratification, of pandemics and big box stores – all of which can and have spelled doom for small, locally-owned businesses – we still have a thriving local craft scene right here in Dane County.
When it’s so easy to shop online or to learn from video tutorials, the fact that you continue to choose to keep your dollars in your community by shopping local and also to LEARN in community is truly a big deal! A brick-and-mortar LYS offers more than just yarn and needles; the staff at the Sow’s Ear collectively have dozens (if not hundreds!) of years of experience with our crafts and a passion for passing our knowledge along. (Browse our class offerings here!)
And that knowledge bank doesn’t begin and end with us: YOU ALL have your own unique experience and expertise that you bring to our Sow’s Ear community. Have you ever asked for or offered help or said, “Let me show you how I do it,” to a friend or a stranger while sitting and knitting in the cafe? You are a part of this amazing collective of knowledge and wisdom of our local crafting family. We think of it as CSC: Community Supported Crafting.
Whenever you shop at the Sow’s Ear, whether in the cafe and the yarn shop, it has a ripple effect of supporting not just the staff who are working their dream job but dozens of other local artists, artisans, and makers of all stripes.
Celebrating 25 Years of the Ear
No conversation about the Sow’s Ear would be complete without a nod to the women who opened our doors 25 years ago! Melissa Brown (left) and Amy Armstrong (right) met by chance when they spotted each other knitting at a coffee shop in Madison and recognized the need for crafters to have a place of their own to gather and learn from and enjoy each other’s company. That the Sow’s Ear is going stronger than ever 25 years later is a testament to their vision and our ongoing commitment to crafting a welcoming, inclusive, and above all a JOYFUL space for crafters of all stripes.
The Sow’s Ear’s birthday is in October, and you can bet your favorite skein of yarn that we’ll be throwing a big party to celebrate. So keep an eye on our social media and subscribe to our newsletter to get all those details.
Thank you for being here, and thank you for being YOU!
