The local yarn shop is coming home

Payday yarn

When I was a little girl, payday meant one thing to me: the yarn shop.

Once my mother got paid, we walked to the local yarn shop in Pretoria North and bought yarn for whatever was going onto our hooks or needles next. Not yarn for one day. Yarn for the next project.

My mother never had a stash. We bought yarn, we made something, and the following month we took the unused balls back and exchanged them. That was simply how it worked. It was a relationship, not just a purchase.

Looking back, those walks taught me something I only understood much later. The yarn shop was never only a place to buy yarn.

Coffee, laughter and projects

Years later I had my own yarn shop, Yarn in a Barn. And the part I looked forward to most was not the till. It was the social meetings in the shop.

Laughing together. Good coffee. Chatting about what everyone was working on, what went wrong, what came out beautifully. Crafters who might never have met anywhere else sat side by side with their projects on their laps.

That is what a local yarn shop gives us. A place to belong, with yarn as the excuse to walk through the door.

Then the world moved online

Then online shopping arrived. I had an online shop too, and I won’t pretend it doesn’t have its place. We all want variety, and no single shop can stock every yarn, every colourway and every fibre we dream about.

The indie dyers opened their own online shops as well, and many of them prefer to sell directly rather than supply other shops.

Bit by bit, the local yarn shop grew quieter. People still loved their LYS. They just didn’t visit as often as they used to.

When social media stopped being social

For a while, social media filled the gap. I started using Facebook back in 2007, and the knitting and crochet groups were busy. We shared projects, asked for help and cheered each other on.

That has changed. When I scroll now, I mostly see content made to earn money. My friends hardly post, and many of the groups I belong to have gone quiet.

It isn’t just a feeling. During its 2025 court case in the United States, Meta’s own figures showed that the share of time people spend on content posted by friends on Facebook dropped from 22% to 17% in two years (Social Media Today). A University of Michigan study found people are moving to private chats and small groups to get away from the ads, the influencers and the arguing (University of Michigan).

Social media is no longer a nice place to be. And I think many of us have noticed what we lost.

My prediction

Here it is: the local yarn shop is going to become our first choice again.

Not exactly as it was. Online shops are here to stay, and that’s fine, because we will always want variety. So I don’t think we’re going full circle. It’s more of a spiral. We come back to the same place, but we arrive changed.

The yarn shop of the future doesn’t have to stock everything. Its real value is the one thing no website can post to you: people.

We need human interaction. We need time away from our jobs and our families, just to sit and chat with like-minded crafters.

And it’s already happening. Around the world, younger knitters and crocheters are using their craft to rebuild what’s called a third place, somewhere that is neither home nor work (The Conversationalist). Yarn shops are hosting knit nights as a break from screens and the noise of social media (The LA Local).

A yarn shop with a kettle, a few comfortable chairs and an open door might just become the most important shop in town.

Over to you

I have some questions for you.

When last did you visit your local yarn shop? Not to rush in and buy, but to sit and stitch?

Do you have a place where you can craft with people who understand you?

If your LYS has a knit night, go. If it doesn’t, ask them to start one. Take your project, buy a ball of yarn, and stay for the coffee. You might just find what social media stopped giving you.