Hey fiber community!As we are traveling about enjoying the WNC Yarn Crawl, I want to encourage folks to find some space and time to talk about the impact of AI on our crafting community. Knitwear designer and fiber business owner Kate Davies just wrote a strong piece on this issue.

Kay Gardiner of Modern Daily Knitting came out with a thoughtful response.

What do you think? Personally I think we all need to get more proactive about what we consume and support with our money, our time, our eyeballs. As a creative community, we should not pretend AI involvement is inevitable or welcome. Though we all use all kinds of different tools and fibers to make things, we do it with our hands; ours is an inevitably slow, tactile, intimate, and community-centered human craft. Can we keep it that way? Image of some emotional support chickens from the store to give you some comfort as you consider this topic.

Most of our yarn bowls are fun and snarky, but for Yarn Crawl, we wanted to get some pretty Spring Fling designs. Come see us this week for all kinds of special things in store.

Every year we create a limited run of mini-skein kits as a special holiday treat. We deliver them before the end of November, and you can open the 24 little packets individually, day by day (or all at once, you do you!).

This year’s box includes daily clues to solve the murder, themed project bag and stitch markers, magnifying glass, and more! We just opened orders today and seven of the 24 boxes are already spoken for. We’d make more, but there’s a massive amount of labor involved in the planning, dyeing, and especially packing. So it’s a bit of an exclusive club (but we try not to make it too expensive to join). The price goes up in June, so don’t wait.

Oh, just one more thing–this year’s box comes with a pattern to knit or crochet your own Murder Board scarf, wrap, or throw. Inspired by the classic detective bulletin board covered with clues connected by red yarn, this project might be the key that helps you unlock the solution to the mystery! Suggestions for other mini-skein projects will be included if that’s not your cup of poisoned tea.

We have prizes! We have goodies! We have products you will love! We can’t wait to see you, starting tomorrow and running to Sunday. Whether you visit one shop or all thirteen, you are sure to have a good time. Spring Fling is almost here!

We’re closed all day Friday as an economic protest against (gesticulates wildly at everything). We’ll meet up between 3 and 3:30 in the Purl’s parking lot to carpool to the latest No Kings demonstration downtown. Join us if you can. It’s good to be together and show that we can build something better.

For us, every day is Local Yarn Store day. Because the WNC Yarn Crawl comes up so soon, we don’t have the bandwidth to do anything special today. But every day that we’re open, we strive to provide you with great yarns, great service, help, classes, inspiration, and community. We like to think that every day at Purl’s is something special. So join us today, for the Crawl, or any other “normal” day! We’d love to see you.

The knitting is done, but I still need to trace out the constellations by embroidering with silver thread. I’m working on correcting and coordinating all the charts and collecting materials for the kits. Still trying to think of a good name for it. Let me know if you have ideas.

Come up to A-B Tech from 10 to 3 and craft with us, check out other great groups like RemixItAVL, Repair Cafe, Makerspace, Society for Creative Anacronism, Glitch 2.0, and lots more! Fun for all ages.

We got to meet Erik Iverson at the RemixitAVL pre-opening, and he was telling us about one of his projects. We’re hoping to get one installed next to Purl’s. It’s so wonderful to see people who dream up a wonderful idea and then birth it into existence.

It must be a yarn dyeing day.