Augustans—and other crocheting enthusiasts in the CSRA, for that matter—have a new place downtown to get their fabric fix.
With the help of the Augusta Metro Chamber, Three Crows Fiber held its grand opening off Broad Street, Thursday afternoon, complete with a yarn (rather than ribbon) cutting.
The new crafts shop is the brainchild of owners Karen Heid, Rebecca Talley and Jeff Pulliam, a trio of knitting enthusiasts weary of shopping online for material and sought out to address Augusta’s “yarn desert.”
The new store’s offerings aren’t the usual fare found at Hobby Lobby, or the craft section at Walmart, or even Jo Anne’s fabrics. Most of them are natural fabrics, ranging from wool, cotton and linen to yak, mohair and Australian possum.
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These materials tend to be more comfortable and less scratchy than synthetic fabrics, explains Talley.
“You want something that feels really nice on your hands,” Talley said. “You want to love the look of it as it flows across the needles and evolves into a garment… see the colors change and what happens to it. And yarn is kind of a living thing. It comes from a living animal, and as you work it and wash it and spread it out, it changes.”
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Talley, a family doctor who regularly volunteered at Davidson Fine Arts School, where her daughter attended, began giving Pulliam crocheting lessons after he retired from his role as the school’s librarian three years ago. Heid, an art teacher at Davidson, would later join the group, and the three launched their own knit club.
This entailed excursions to find the perfect fabric that often took them as far as Savannah, Atlanta or Athens. The last spark of inspiration was the discovery of what would become the shop’s sister store, Isadora Popper in Clayton, Ga., whose proprietor would introduce them to the wider range of natural fabrics and how to find the companies that sell them.
The store’s moniker came after a “deep dive” of discussions before the three realized they all had some affinity for the black bird of their namesake.
“They collect things, and they’re very smart birds,” said Pulliam. “All of us, liked crows. We all had a piece of artwork in our house with a crow in it. And so we just thought, ‘okay, there are three of us. What do we want as a symbol?’”
The three have observed that there’s a hidden community of knitters in Augusta as eager as they were for what the shop has to offer. The ceremony kicked off just two days after a soft opening, in which just placing a sign outside brought in a host of curious walk-in customers, without much in the way of marketing or social media promotion.
“The coolest thing that has happened, I’d say, in the last 10 years, are all these new pattern designers and knitters, they’re young and vivacious,” said Heid. “They have tattoos all over themselves. They’re crocheting, they’re knitting, they’re making patterns, and they’re putting things online, and it is the coolest thing. So it’s not your grandmother’s hobby anymore.”
Three Crows Fiber is located at 223 James Brown Blvd.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
