Mean People Suck

One of my knitting buddies had a bad experience with a LYS owner recently. It's the shop with the dogs -- if you live around here, you know the place. They're very nice, lovely dogs, and I am a dog person. Just the same, I understand the many complaints about the dogs, because I also don't want my yarn to have dog hair in it. I find myself inspecting skeins in that shop very closely to be sure they're clean.

So I'm not a huge fan of this place to begin with, and my friend's recent experience made me decide never to shop there again.

My friend B makes the cutest little dolls and toys. She took them with her when she was yarn shopping recently, and the dog-yarn shop owner gushed and enthused and begged her to teach a class at her shop on how to make them. (It's an open secret that the dog-yarn lady is not much of a knitter herself. To put it gently. All of her shop classes must needs be taught by outsiders.)

So B thought it over, and agreed to teach the class, and went on ravelry to the dog-yarn shop forum and posted pictures of the finished projects. Sort of like teasers for the class, right?

And the dog-yarn lady immediately fired off an angry ravelmail demanding that B remove the pictures because the toys had not been made with yarn from her shop.

shaking head

Now, okay, I'll give you that some shops treat outside yarn like contraband. And I can understand their reasons for doing so. But really. This is too much. B was just trying to spark a little interest in a class that the dog-yarn lady is too incompetent to teach herself. That's my opinion, not B's. B's feelings were hurt by the nasty tone of the ravelmail, but I don't think she thinks of herself as a victim of the dog-yarn lady's incompetence. I'm the one who sees it that way.

I've had other bizarre experiences in that shop, such as the time the dog-yarn lady asked me, a perfect stranger, to explain to one of her other patrons how to fix a botched piece of knitting. She kept insisting, "No! No! She must pull it apart and start over from the beginning!" -- but I was willing to look for another solution. There was, and the problem stemmed from a technique error, but every time I tried to explain that, dog-yarn lady would interrupt me to insist that the whole thing should be frogged. I was so annoyed that I finally agreed with her just to end the conversation. (Can you tell I carry some guilt about that? The poor knitter is probably still making the same technique error, ripping and knitting the same yarn over and over, all because I got sick of trying to fight through the dog-yarn lady's mouthiness.)

I didn't buy anything that day, but I rarely buy there -- I rarely go there, and even when I do, I'm usually disappointed in her selection. That's a personal issue and one I'd be willing to overlook, but for the repeated instances of problems with the owner.

So that's it. I'm done with that shop. Never going back again. You can be rude to me, and you can stock trendy beginnerish yarns, but when you're mean to my friend B, that's where I draw the line.

Thank the good lord above for Nana's. Trish and Cory might be a couple of mouthy broads, but only in the best way. Love those ladies. Love them even more when I compare them to the other area shop owners. And would love them even if they didn't have a shop, because they're knitters through and through.

And that's all I have to say about that.