Color reigns at yarn and fiberworks
Color reigns at yarn and fiberworks
Store owner weaves place for self at yarn store
MOSES LAKE — Ask Judy Rice what her favorite color is, and she lets out an "Oh" while she's thinking.
"My new favorite color is chartreuse green," she said, before noting that her all-time favorite color is blue, because she believes it to be God's favorite color.
"The world is mostly blue, and even what's green is made of blue and yellow," she said with a chuckle. "I don't know, I just think blue is beautiful. Our night sky here is so navy blue. Have you ever noticed that? Sometimes night skies are gray or black, but our skies here are just navy blue. They start out light blue and they get darker. It's just gorgeous here."
Although she always liked to shop up and down Third Avenue whenever she visited from Connell, Rice said she never dreamt that one day she would have her own location in downtown Moses Lake.
"I thought that was the funnest place to go shopping, all those little crafty gift stores and they always had unique little gifts," she remembered. "That was just a real treat for us to come over here. Never would I have thought I would actually get to live here, and open my own cute little store."
But that's exactly what happened earlier this year, when Rice's husband of 40 years, Stephen, was transferred to be minister of a Methodist Church in the area in July, and Judy opened Amanda's Yarns and Fiberworks the first weekend in August, at 205 Ash St.
It's Rice's first time owning a retail business. She had worked at Amanda's Yarns and Fiberworks in Poulsbo, and when her employer, the owner of that store, heard she was moving, she suggested that Rice open a store in Moses Lake.
"That's where the Amanda comes from," Rice said.
The best part of making the move to the area is the sunshine, Rice said, adding with a chuckle that she calls friends on the other side of the state to give them weather reports.
Rice's grandmother taught her how to crochet.
"When we weren't breaking beans, we were crocheting on the porch," Rice recalled. "And I sat under a loom and played. My cousin was a weaver, and so I just sort of came by it as I grew up."
While attending Georgia State University, Kentucky native Rice took some arts and textile courses, and said she has been a weaver pretty much all of her life, also weaving baskets.
So far, the business has drawn an enthusiastic response from customers.
"Actually, the knitters are coming out of the woodwork," Rice observed with a laugh. At first, she didn't think there would be very many, but she noted that she also has several brand-new knitters just learning, so she has been teaching classes. "It's just adorable to watch them turn some sticks and string into a pocketbook, a scarf or some other item that they wanted."
Rice is her business' lone employee. She also offers felting, knitting and hooking classes. Her goal is sharing the enthusiasm for fiber arts, and for "taking even a mundane object, like a pot holder, into something beautiful, that you want to pick up and use, that feels good," she said. "Everybody needs a hat, but it's nice to have a hat that's colorful and makes you happy when you wear it."
In her own creations, Rice's favorite part is the color and texture involved.
"I like to take inspiration from the landscape and architecture and put it into my rugs and my knitting projects," she said.
Rice believes needle art is becoming popular again because people need the calming reassurance that they can do something with their hands to show love.
"It's one thing to go buy a gift, but it's a whole different thing to make something especially for someone that you love," she said. "We're living in a very stressful society right now, and to be able to create and just relax into knitting especially is, I think, helpful for our mental and emotional well-being."
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