I haven't been back since, which is a shame, there are not too many independent yarn stores in Baltimore.

I had a recent bad experience. I purchased fat quarters that were 3″+ off and emailed that night after I saw how short they were (I had a busy day the next day and wanted to make sure I was prompt about letting the owner know) and asked if I could bring them in for an exchange after explaining what happened. I was told “no refund” or exchanges. After she found my blog and read it (where I did not mention the name of the shop) she recanted and said maybe we could do something, although rather rudely. Because of how it was handled I do not patronize that store anymore nor do I recommend it to anyone. It's not like I was asking for my money back, just an exchange.

I do have to say that the employee who cut the fabric wrong did contact me separately later and offer to make it right. I did not take them up on it as I was already burned by the whole experience. My feeling is that is how it should have been handled in the first place. Customer service is a HUGE deal to me. Bad service = no business from me.

I don't want to recount it all here but will note that mocking a customer in an attempt to get them to spend twice as much as they were planning is a good way to lose a sale!

But my story has a happy ending because I went somewhere else and now I have a newing sewing machine — whoo hooo!!

I had been into the store on several occasions and got the condescending treatment often but they had unique crafty googahs and a wall of afghan acrylic sorted by color that kept me coming in regardless. So I signed up online for a knitting class there to learn to do two socks on two circular needles. I walked in for the first day and met the very friendly teacher and shortly after the other student in the class breezed in. Turns out the other student (I’ll call her R) is a store employee. We get the full run down on R’s sewing status, brief knitting status and her status as a mother as if all of this is a badge of honor of sorts. All the while I’m getting the up and down looks as I was at least ten years younger than R and childless to boot. Good grief. I explain that I’m been got some experience knitting and we pull out yarn and needles. Now the store we were at had a very small section of Regia sock yarn, mostly in garish colors, so I bought yarn elsewhere without thinking about it. R takes one look at my yarn and rips me one side and down the other about the fiber content as if it’s small Donegal content were the devil. I was so aghast I couldn’t respond and the teacher had to save me by switching the topic. The rest of the class went a lot better from there on but it was still uncomfortable. How I managed to drag my butt back to class for three weeks after I’ll never know. Needless to say I will never set foot in the store again.

-At almost every fabric store I visit–with the very notable exception of Bolt in Portland–my husband is treated like an accessory, despite that he is a sewer too. The worst is at a large fabric store here in Portland, where the fabric cutters will actually wave the women in line behind him ahead of him, because they figure he's just holding my place in line, rather than having fabric cut for himself. Traditional “quilt shops” are often guilty of this–and I personally find the whole “husband waiting area” extremely offensive and won't patronize anywhere where there's a sign that says something like “husband parking.” It offends me deeply–imagine if a strip club had “wife parking” in a waiting room!

-Many traditional quilt shops are, frankly, not welcoming to me as a young looking person. It's even worse if you happen to mention that you're a garment sewer–at least that's my personal experience. It feels like if you're not making a quilt (and hence spending a huge sum of money), you're not really worth their time. I think perhaps it's because many quilters see making a quilt as the be-all and end-all of sewing. I have a friend who has practically made a catalog of her poor treatment in these kinds of shops (she's a very skilled garment sewer). I think my favorite was when I asked them to wind a skein of yarn and they simply said, “No.” and walked off. Huh?

-There's a larger, popular yarn store in Portland that is downright rude and unhelpful; I assume that since I'm not a regular, I'm not worth their time. When I've asked for help, I've actually been met with an eye roll. Obviously, I don't shop there anymore.

But, with that said, there are lots of independent shops that treat their customers wonderfully, whether your a regular or just popping in. In Portland, here are some shops where I always get great service: Bolt, Collage, Twisted, Paper Zone (not sure if they're independent, actually). They're always warm and helpful, and I see them treat everyone that way.

had many problems with art supply stores tho :/

I never go there anymore. Besides the dirty looks and unfriendly nature I had three distinct bad experiences that got me to that point.

1. This was the very first YS I ever went to when I decided to start knitting. I was intimidated and lost as to what I needed. I had one knitting book and it told me to find my LYS… as they would be my haven. They were unhelpful and unfriendly. I bought one pair of plastic needles but couldn't get any direction on yarn or other perhaps better materials so I ended up leaving to buy yarn at a chain store.

2. I chocked that first experience up to my own ignorance and bravely went back for my second project. I “knew how to knit now” (with no help from my LYS btw) and knew what I wanted to make. I bought a really expensive yarn on the recommendation of the person behind the counter… assured that it was only take 2 very expensive skeins to make the scarf displayed. At the end of skein two I was no where near finished even though it was the exact size of the scarf in the store (I checked). I went back to buy skein 3 and they casually commented that they didn't have that color upstairs and would have to go downstairs to check the stock… like that was the end of the situation and I should pick something else. Needless to say I waited while skein 3 was found. When it came to needing skein 4.. yup 4, less than a week later… they actually didn't have the yarn anymore and I needed to work in a non matching (from another shop) to finish.

3. Still a relatively knew knitter the site of a moth flying out of a shelf of yarn didn't scare the socks off me. I bought yarn that day and soon learned what it meant to throw a stash out.

I've never gone back.

Also, the folks at our LYS would rather cough up yarn balls than help anyone locate a particular fiber or assist someone with understanding a pattern or project. I invited a coworker to visit the LYS during our lunch break. My coworker brought a pattern she had printed from the internet. We spent 15 minutes admiring yarn before my coworker asked the YS employee, standing idle at the register, if she could recommend yarn for her pattern. The employee examined the printed pattern and replied in a monotone: “This pattern is from Hobby Lobby. It requires synthetic yarn. WE don't sell synthetic yarn.” She then turned her back and went off to admire the work of some snarling person slouching in an armchair.

As a solitary crafter by choice, I don't understand the tendency to create crafting cliques. Didn't we have enough of that in high school?