Thursday, October 16, 2008

Oh no!

My very local LNS - the one that's three minutes walk away - is closing down. The owner is citing the current financial climate and competition from TV and internet sales for this, and I think after 24 years, she's probably wanting to retire too.

The amount of needlework stuff has declined dramatically over the last five years I've lived close by, and the stock is currently mainly just some basic fabrics, DMC, a few kits and some very tired looking charts, but she does also stock beads, ribbons and loads and loads of papercraft stuff so it's always useful for popping in for finishing stuff and the inevitable skein of DMC I've run out of but yet don't have a spare for ... and I've been buying most of my bits of fabric for exchanges there rather than online.

I will be sorry to see it go, as no store in the city centre stocks DMC and none in the city at all stock evenweave fabric - I'll probably have to travel to the next town for anything (which will cost £3.50 in bus fare) or buy online. Neither of the craft shops near the centre carry any needlecraft stuff at all, and Hobbycraft is very poor unless you stitch from kits on aida...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Doesn't H'craft stock DMC? Ours stocks DMC/Anchor and the DMC variegateds (although not the full range of the new ones) and is good (but not always great) for finishing materials. I hear you on the kits though - miles of them!

Sorry to hear about your LNS anyway, that's a real pain. Although we have a H'craft, there's nowhere near here (within an hour's drive anyway) that sells anything even remotely specialist, so I have to resort to online 99% of the time too.

Olga said...

It is so sad to see needlework stores go out of business. The nearest cross stitch store is about 60 miles away from my home. Now I am buying most of my stash from on-line stores and E-Bay.

Nicola said...

I agree about Hobbycraft, it's fine for the beginner but not for the more experienced stitcher. I do have an LNS that stocks DMC and is fairly good for finishing items, but for specialist threads I need to order from good old Sew and So, which is a bit inconvenient at times as I won't pay the postage if I only need the odd thread. I have to wait until I have a bigger order, which these days just doesn't happen.