I added in a new company to the store.  The Yarn Place is based here in Phoenix.  It is owned by Lynn Lam.  I asked Lynn how she got started in the yarn business-

Lynn learned to knit when she was about 7 years old in Beijing, China.  The whole community knitted.  Lynn was just handed a pair a needles and told to go knit, so she did.  Everyone in her family knits.  There were no patterns, they just would look at the yarn and start knitting.  I find that incredible. 

Lynn moved to the United States many years ago.  She was living in Sunnyvale, California.  Her kids were in school, she had no job, but something sparked her interest.  Lynn found out about recycled silk. Silk fabric that is left over from Sari production in India was being sent to Nepal.  The women in Nepal needed an industry for those that were single moms or out of work.  They are spinners.  They take the Sari silk and spin it into yarn.

Lynn was so intrigued by this that she went through trouble of finding out how to purchase from the co-op in Nepal.  She received the shipment just in time to set up at the very first Stitches West.  She sold out in 2 days!

She was hooked, but she needed more variety of product.  She went home to her neighborhood in Beijing.  There is a small yarn making factory there that her friends work in.  She arranged with them what she thought she wanted to sell and the rest, as they say, is history.  She opened a knitting store in Sunnyvale, but in the last few years she closed it down and moved to Phoenix.

Yarn Place is a small scale company.  The only employee is Lynn.  She supports her community in Beijing with the sale of the yarns from the factory.  No bleach is used in the production of any of her yarns.  All of the Merino used in Yarn Place yarns is Australian Merino.