Fiber Fool

A couple months ago one of the three yarn shops here in Fort Collins closed its doors. However, another has opened, but in a little bedroom community North of Fort Collins called Wellington. The new shop is Nanytutu’s (I’m guessing the site is still under construction, but the address, phone number and hours are available there) and is housed in an old building on the main street in town that used to serve as a bar and restaurant. Nancy, the proprietor, was filling in another customer on the history of the building while Knitter Sans-a-blog and I were browsing. I believe she said the building was built in 1906. It has a fun ambiance with the stained glass detailing in the windows and the gorgeous bar.

When you first walk into Nanytutu’s you see the bar. However, if you turn to your right, there is a little fiber corner that contains a lot of locally produced fiber. There is tons of gorgeous llama and llama blends from a nearby ranch as well as some beautiful and colorful fiber blends of Alpine Meadows Fibers. There was also a nice selection of the engineered fibers, including natural and carbon bamboo, silk latte (milk), and soy silk. They were all packaged in 1 oz lots which I find wonderful for sampling or if you were going to do a low percentage blend with wool, but if I would decide I wanted to do a project that required more I’d be a bit put off to have to buy them in 1 oz lots - that’s a lot of sandwich baggies and labels that are unnecessary. I hope in the future there are also 4 oz packages available or even the ability to call ahead and order a larger lot would do. I did do some sample buying though which I’ll share with you tomorrow. There were not too many spinning supplies aside from the fiber at this point, but it was a fantastic start for a shop that was less than a week old! There was also a bit of weaving stuff available.

Nancy did a good job in researching what was available in the area and like Woolen Treasures in Loveland did not double up on many yarn lines that are already available. I *love* it when shops are smart like that. It gives me local access to many more yarns that I would likely otherwise purchase on the Internet. There was a fair emphasis on more luxury fibers - lots of alpaca and alpaca blends were there, as well as silk and silk blends. But the basic wool yarn selection was great too, with Cascade and Galway. There is a small room that is marked as baby, but don’t skip it. Much of the yarn in there is soft enough and/or easy care for baby, but it isn’t strictly “baby yarn” in color or fiber composition.

Overall, I was very impressed with the shop. It is quite small and there isn’t too much more room for adding new merchandise, but the products are presented nicely. I am excited to watch this store evolve. There was an awful large selection of singles yarn. I understand, lots of singles yarns are highly attractive due to the clearer color and such you get from not plying, but I don’t care much for knitting with it these days unless I’m going to be felting. But there was a nice sock yarn selection (though only a few color selections from each line), some really nice luxury yarns, and good selection of basic yarns as well.

If you are in the area, it is definitely worth the drive to Wellington to check it out. It will be a great addition to the Northern Colorado yarn crawl.

ETA: Got a note from Nancy and she added this, “Just so you know, we have available larger quantities of the rovings, just haven’t had them out yet. Also, we have Louet, Ashford and Schacht, so can special order what ever.”