Yarn Crawl: Visit Heritage Spinning and Weaving, a Michigan Fiber Lover’s Dream

Joan Sheridan is a designer, yarn shop owner, and world traveler with plenty of fascinating stories to tell. Joan opened Heritage Spinning and Weaving, located in the heart of historic downtown Lake Orion, Michigan, because she couldn’t find spinning and weaving supplies locally, then quickly added knitting and crochet supplies. This year, she celebrates her 25^th year in business!

We sat down with Joan to learn more about Heritage Spinning and Weaving, and what makes it such a special destination.

Farm & Fiber Knits: You're coming up on your 25^th year in business. Congratulations! How has your shop grown and changed over these years? What makes it special to you and your community?

Thank you, it has been a good 25 years! In the beginning, I rented a room from my employer. Three businesses shared the space—the printing shop that I worked for, a small HVAC company and my fiber shop. I have customers who remember coming in when I wasn’t there, shopping and leaving a check in the cash box. We’ve gotten more sophisticated over the years, but I still smile at how naïve I was in the beginning!

About three years in, I was the only business left in the building so I did the only logical thing: I assumed the lease and quit my job. Thankfully, that was about the time knitting and felting was a huge craze, as were fluffy scarves. Those two things kept us alive until we gradually found our own niche on the fiber spectrum.

A wall of Norwegian yarn at Heritage Spinning and Weaving.

Physically, the store has changed a lot. Over the years we have wielded saws-alls to open up non-structural walls until only one short wall remains. The shop is very homey with exposed brick, old-fashioned linoleum and vintage wooden chairs. It is a workspace. We make all our own kits at “the Sock Room” table, which is the table I grew up eating family dinners around.

Head and shoulders above anything else, the people are who make this business so special. During Covid we began hosting Sunday night Social Stranded Knitting on Zoom. We had people join us from coast to coast. One strong contingent comes from the DC area. We have visited back and forth in real life, too. The lifeline during Covid has forged a strong group of diverse, opinionated knitters that truly enjoy solving problems—knitting or otherwise!

Lifelong friendships have been formed that are diverse and inspiring. Diverse in faith, in socio-economic background, sex, color, age; it all seems to work perfectly inside the walls of this colorful, wool-lined shop. We have many groups that have built communities inside the shop—spinners, weavers, the hookers, and the knitters. Each group is unique and caring—and they laugh. There is no better sound to my ears than hearing laughter coming from around a knitting table!

Knitters enjoying Fair Isle Day.

FFK: What's the most popular yarn in your shop? What do your customers love about it?

The most impressive wall in the shop is the Shetland wall (above). We carry all the colors of jumper weight wool from Jamieson’s of Shetland and Jamieson & Smith. That’s well over 300 different colors of yarn! Customers love seeing it all in one place and we usually have enough backstock to make just about any Fair Isle sweater. They also like having color cards available to facilitate planning. I often work with knitters to fine-tune color selection, whether they are in the store or ordering from the webstore. Watching colors come alive on needles is mesmerizing, plus, there’s something extra special about knitting an heirloom.

But, not everyone is at the stage of enjoying color knitting Shetland-style. In our family yarn area, Berroco Vintage is definitely the favorite. A bit of wool, a bit of acrylic and the ability to machine wash and dry without ruining hours’ worth of knitting is important. Many sweaters, large and small, have been made from Vintage.

FFK: What knitting techniques are your customers most interested in learning?

The explosion in Fair Isle knitting really happened about ten years ago, when we did a knit-along using the kep (cap) pattern from the museum on Fair Isle. It was the tipping point. The interest in traditional Fair Isle knitting remains strong and we have regular classes for those interested in learning it.

We work hard to give our customers a solid foundation so they can feel confident tackling ever-more challenging projects. We have classes about fibers, gauge, fit, and techniques.

Heritage Spinning and Weaving has a vibrant class calendar for many different fiber arts techniques.

FFK: Do your customers engage in other fiber hobbies (spinning, weaving, felting, embroidery, etc.)? Do you sell product to support those crafts?

We have a lot of cross-pollination. In addition to extremely knowledgeable knitters, we have tools, supplies and classes for weavers, crocheters, rug hookers, and spinners. It is never dull at Heritage! This year we will again have rock wrapping classes and one of our instructors is putting together a Dorset button class. Creativity and curiosity are contagious.

Mary came in one day to make a blanket on a deadline. She didn’t know how to knit, weave, or crochet, so we decided to teach her to weave—a great way to finish a large project quickly! Friends gathered to help waulk the blanket, and now Mary is known as Mary-the-Weaver!

FFK: How have your textile travels influenced you as a fiber artist?

I have been fortunate to have been able to travel—Norway, Iceland, New Zealand, and of course around the US. There is something to learn everywhere. In Norway I visited a bunad shop and saw a roomful of women making the regional costume of Telemark. I was gobsmacked! They were setting sleeves, making buttonholes and attaching trim by hand! Sample cards on the table showed color variations of the tablet woven bands used in the costume. It was fun to show them the Telemark-style tablet woven band I made using sewing thread. They couldn’t believe it was handwoven, and I couldn’t believe the work they were doing. It was a mutual admiration moment.

When I travel, I look for color combinations and motifs. I am knitting a hat now based on a window grill in Washington, DC. I have a notebook of images I have taken on my travels and use it to inform and guide my work. Sometimes those images inspire further research, as in a coverlet I saw that used a krokbragd variation called danskbragd. I didn’t know what it was when I took the photo, but I ended up studying the technique at the Vesterheim Folk Art School in Decorah, Iowa (which is, after all, much closer to Michigan than Norway).

On my trip to Shetland this year I spent time learning more about taatit rugs—a rya-like version of a bed cover. I was able to see several of these gems up close. In a talk I attended by Carol Christiansen, I learned about the folk lore associated with these family treasures. Stories of trows (a troll-like creature) and mara (witch) and the taatit covers have sent me on a Shetland folklore reading binge. I am currently working on making a pillow-sized version of a taatit rug, complete with the old symbols to keep the trows and mara away.

Most of my designs are for stranded and Fair Isle hats. Ideas come from the Fair Isle tradition, my travels, and sometimes my photographs. Each year I design a themed hat for the Michigan Fiber Festival—these have been fun. Last year was the year of the BFL so I created a double-knit hat of this majestic sheep.

One of Joan’s designs, a Bluefaced Leicester hat for last year’s Michigan Fiber Festival.

FFK: I've heard that you also have lots of interesting skills and hobbies outside textiles! Can you tell us a little bit about them?

I must admit to being infinitely curious and a bit of a rebel! In high school I wanted to do what the boys did and girls weren’t allowed to do. I took shop classes and even spent a year building a house in a building trades class. That knowledge has served me well over the years.

In college, I took a job at WMUK, a local NPR station. I was a reporter and news reader (you can hear some of my stories on my blog), which also led to a volunteer gig at another NPR station reading to the blind.

Probably my favorite segue was the 10 years that I volunteered one day a week at the Henry Ford Museum in the textile conservation department. I repaired everything from a printing press belt, to coverlets, to an 18th century man’s silk suit. I had mentors that generously shared their skills and knowledge with me. In fact, I now do conservation work on the side and enjoy it immensely. There’s something about sitting quietly with a needle and thread that is soothing and I often find my mind wandering to “back when” and I feel connected to the maker of days gone by.

Joan working to restore a late-nineteenth-century, American-made platform rocker. From the collection of The Henry Ford. Photo by Erin Murray

FFK: Do you have any special events planned for your 25^th anniversary celebration?

We are planning a special gathering this fall. I am so hoping customers and staff from over the years will come and it will be a real homecoming. It is too early to share details, but I can say the date is set for September 27^th and we have ordered good weather!

Heritage Spinning and Weaving is celebrating 25 years in business.

FFK: Can customers shop online? Where's the best place to find you on social media?

You can find us on Facebook and on Instagram. We work hard to mix up our posts so that you not only learn about shop news, but you also learn new stuff. We are also on You-Tube where there are videos for knitters and weavers @Joan Sheridan. I blog at joansheridan.com—not nearly as often as I wish, but there are some interesting posts there.

The shop has a full-service webstore at heritagespinning.com. We were gifted with several grants during Covid that helped bring it to the place it is today. I really appreciate how it has widened our world and our reach is growing. Every package we send in the cooler months includes pure Michigan chocolates—fibery goodness and chocolates are perfect ambassadors for us!

Learn More from Joan

Want to weave with Joan but can't make it to Michigan this week? Check out her course, Weave Turned Krokgragd on an Inkle Loom.