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And then there was the older woman who walked in carrying a plastic grocery bag. She was searching for advice and no other shop had been able to help, she said, pulling from the bag a circular, infinity-style scarf made from a particularly thin yarn. It was a gift from a friend, and she wanted to make something like it, but she didn’t know how to replicate a key twist in the knitting. Pressley and Hainz photographed the scarf and promised to investigate.
Fiddlesticks Knits is a yarn shop located at 1976 Atwood Ave. in Madison, between Green Owl Café and Alchemy.
These are just the sorts of encounters that Hainz was hoping for when she began planning the shop last November. A Baraboo native, she’d learned to crochet from her grandmother and made hats and sweaters for her Havanese dog throughout high school. In 2017, she moved to Madison, where Wisconsin Craft Market at Westgate Mall became her go-to place for supplies. But when it closed in March 2020, Hainz was unsatisfied with the alternatives.
Sometimes, she’d trek from her downtown home to The Sow’s Ear in Verona, but when she only needed one more skein of yarn to finish a project, the long trip felt excessive. She tried ordering online but found it hard to choose yarn without touching it or seeing it in person, once spending $200 loading up on yarn only to find the color wasn’t what she thought. In the COVID era, there were no returns.
Erica Hainz, owner of Fiddlesticks Knits, knits behind the counter at her new shop.
“I was like, ‘I cannot be the only person having this problem,’” Hainz said. Why, she wondered, were all the yarn stores on Madison’s west side or in the suburbs? And how did crafters without cars get what they needed?
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