White River Junction
Owner Karen Caple said she wound down the business to prepare for a move to Florida with her husband, Boho Cafe and Coventry Catering owner Lynn Caple, to take care of her aging parents. Caple’s shop, besides selling yarn and other knitting materials, was beloved among knitters for the welcoming embrace and mutual support among the (mostly) women who gathered there on Tuesday and Thursday nights to discuss anything from the proper sequence for a garter stitch to, as Caple put it, “life.”
“A yarn store closing isn’t that important — you can buy yarn on the internet,” Karen Cable said, explaining that what knitters will miss is not so much the chance to buy yarn as much as the opportunity the store provided for women who gathered for mutual support, love and knitting.
“The store was a community of women who came together and shared life together, Caple said of the dozen to two dozen women from their 20s to their 70s who showed up twice a week. “I love it. It’s almost been my mission.”
When she and her husband relocate to Florida, Caple said, she plans to get a mobile van and operate a “knitting truck” — similar to a food truck, only stocked with yarn and knitting supplies instead of tacos or chimichangas.
She foresees driving the truck among towns near Lakeland, Fla., in the center of the state between Tampa and Orlando, where she and her husband will be moving, with knitting wares to bring women together, “like a Tupperware party.”
Meanwhile, the former White River Yarns space in the Hotel Coolidge building is being taken over, at least temporarily, by a “pop up” gallery organized by Dave Celone, owner of Long River Gallery and Gifts, in Lyme, with the help of innkeeper David Briggs.
Celone said the gallery will feature works of local artists and have a social mission component to it. Hours, he said, “will be by chance or appointment.”
