Ewe Can Knit brings the yarn people into Verona

Craig Bakay | Aug 07, 2019

Ewe Can Knit in Verona was a busy place Saturday as Heather Woodward and her mom, Darlene Slack, host All Dyed Up and the Purlin’ J’s Roving Yarn Van for a “Mini Fibre Festival.”

It was the fourth year they’ve done this and it was the busiest yet.

“A lot of yarn shops in Kingston have closed,” Woodward said. “But a lot of people who used to go to them are coming out here now because they know we have good product.”

They do have a lot of things you won’t find anywhere else. For starters, there are literally thousands of colours of yarn, and it’s not just sheep’s wool either.

“People come to see what we have and discover new products as well,” she said. “We have cotton, acrylic, wool, alpaca, cashmere . . . we even have tree wool.

“About the only things we don’t have are are camel or yak.”

She said they cater primarily to knitters and crotchetiers but they have a number of rug hookers as customers as well.

“And it’s people from all walks of life,” she said. “There are even some guys.”

One aspect of having a fibre festival she also likes is that it brings people into the community.

“A lot of people have never been here before and we like to point out the other shops in town like Nicole’s Gifts and Local Family Farms,” she said.

For Woodward, the knitting has many attractions, but for her, it’s generally the finished product that gets her most excited.

“It’s nice that you’ve done something,” she said. “You’ve made it.

“And it’s so nice to give somebody a hand-knitted something.”

But she’s also attracted to the colours, and that’s something guest Master Knitter Deb White can attest to.

In fact, White is enjoying a recent bout of success with one of her own creations — the Ma, Ma, Ma, Verona hat (like a skater-boy toque), both in pattern sales and finished products. By the way, the name is easier to understand if you sing it to My Sharona.

“There are over 100 of these patterns out there,” White said. “It’s very popular on the yarn crawl.

“The thing is, no two ever turn out the same, regardless of the colours you use.”