Donna's Yarn and Craft Centre

Today I thought I would blog about Donna's Yarn and Craft Centre which is located on North Shore in Kamloops.  Of all the stores that sell our work, they have the largest selection including everything from our handcrafted buttons and shawl pins to our beads and jewelry making supplies.  And now Donna's has a nice selection of our scarf jewelry along with our art beads and ear wires for the interchangeable earring system.

This is Donna (on the right) and her mom, Elsie, who is her partner and main helper.  Between the two of them, they know or can figure out any type of knitting or crochet pattern and if you are ever stuck, they are always willing to help you out.

Donna is a very talented lady and besides knitting she does sewing and alterations as well as jewelry making.   One of the reasons we love working with Donna is how we are always bouncing ideas off each other and as a result we have collaborated on several projects.

For instance these toggle type fasteners were inspired from a knitting pattern she had come across and asked if I could make some for her to sell.  They are a sort of buckle / button combination used to fasten a sweater  or shrug.  I made the larger section in a variety of colors, shapes and textures.  They are all in a solid color so that most of our buttons can be combined with them for the fastening part.

I mentioned that Donna does sewing and alterations.  She was altering a coat for a customer and requested I cover a belt buckle for the back to match our buttons she added on the front.  This was a fun project and it was the perfect finishing touch.  That is what I enjoy the most about working with polymer clay is that you can cover almost anything.  The texture I used here is one of my favorites by Helen Breil, called the Conga Line.

And remember the icebox cookie buttons we made a few months ago?  You can read the original blog post here.

They were for a project that Elsie (Donna's mom) was working on.  Here is the finished project which is a quilted casserole cover done in a cookie pattern fabric.

We also do a lot of custom made to order items for Donna's customers such as shawl pins or buttons in colors to match the yarn they are purchasing.  I blogged a while back about one of Donna's special customers, Diane.  (You can read it here.)

Diane is an avid knitter and always has several projects at a time she is working on.  Now she is learning to crochet so Donna asked if I could cover a few crochet hooks in clay for Diane and if I could somehow mark them in braille.

 -- By the way, --- Did I mention that Diane is blind?

I hadn't done anything like that before and was fun to see if my experiment worked.  Diane's face totally lit up when she discovered the numbers done in braille (on the side at the end) and could actually figure them out.

Photo bottom left shows the numbers in braille.

Donna's is one of the many fascinating stores that make my work a lot more fun and enjoyable.