Knitting Up Her Future
Role Model Melanie Smith Leaves Enviromental Engineering to Start an Independent Yarn Shop
By PAULA ALLEN
Photography JANET ROGERS

In 2003, Melanie Smith was browsing at a crafts superstore and picked up a book titled I Can’t Believe I’m Knitting. If someone had told her that in just a few years, she would be opening her own yarn shop, she says, “I wouldn’t have believed that either.”

Smith was 29 when she opened Yarnivore, what’s known to needleworkers as an LYS, short for “local yarn shop.” It took a lot of knitting, a major career switch and a supportive husband to get her where she is today — proprietor of a small business and center of a growing community of crafters.

On a weekend afternoon in the northwest San Antonio shop, Smith perches on a comfortable couch near the back of the store, showing a dark-haired young man how to fix a mistake in a cream-colored piece of knitting. He’s going back to college soon, he says, so he wants to get it right while he still has someone to ask.

Smith gives him advice on finding an LYS or some knitting groups via the Internet when he gets back to school. “Keep knitting,” she urges, as he thanks her and leaves. Next comes a self-assured middle-aged woman wearing glasses; from an overstuffed tote, she pulls a tiny baby sweater in striking blue-and-green stripes.

“This is made from that sock yarn you showed me,” she says proudly, as Smith exclaims over the tricky, onepiece pattern. The customer moves off to show her young granddaughter around the shop, a small space filled with colorful displays of yarn — from delicate wisps to robust twists, suave cord to exuberant fluff — and gadgets with which to turn it into fabric.

Those are the basics, but knitting is “more than two sticks and some string,” says Smith, who works on a finely cabled gray sock as she talks. Since opening the store, she has found that needlecrafters like to gather, for help with their handiwork, to share what’s going on their lives or to contribute to charity projects. While many of her customers are women in their middle years, she says, “There is no such thing as the average knitter.” Yarnivore shoppers span an age range from schoolchildren through veteran crafters, and Smith recently taught a retired male college professor in his 60s how to knit.

There are also some twentysomething women, following the knitting trend of recent years, but that boom wasn’t what brought Smith to the craft.

“When I started, I had no idea that knitting was cool,” she says. As an environmental engineer climbing the corporate ladder, she enjoyed relaxing with needlework. “I’ve never been the kind of person who sits still and does nothing,” she says. “Even as a girl, I didn’t have time to just sit, watching TV. I thought crafts and TV went together. It’s a productive thing to do with time otherwise spent doing nothing.”

Smith had sewed some of her own clothing for years, did cross-stitch (a type of embroidery) in college, and her grandmother on her mother’s side had taught her the basics of crochet.

“When I go to a crafts fair, if I see something I like, I ask myself, ‘How could I make that?’” she says. “If you make something yourself, even if it doesn’t turn out perfect, at least it won’t look like anything you could find in a store. It’s entirely your own.” She decided to add knitting to her fiber skills because she wanted to make sweaters, “and crochet is not as good for some sweater features, like cables.”

While Smith was learning to knit, she was having serious concerns about her professional life. The practice of environmental engineering had a political side that didn’t match the idealistic vision that had led her to the field. Having completed college and graduate school swiftly, she also was advancing quickly at work for a private consulting firm, where she was younger than anyone else at her level. As her career progressed, Smith says, “It was a lot more management, less engineering. I could do it, but I didn’t enjoy it.”

Knitting, on the other hand, “came naturally,” she says. “It’s a great way to relieve stress, and it satisfies the need to express yourself.” Like many passionate crafters, she dreamed of opening her own yarn shop. A transplant from Columbus, Ohio, who came to San Antonio when her husband, Josh, was transferred here, she had been surprised to discover that the nation’s seventh- largest city had only one local yarn shop — the long-established Yarn Barn — and none outside Loop 410.

There are plenty of craft superstores around, but independent specialty shops can offer a greater variety of fibers. Though it’s possible to order yarn from Internet sites, she says, “Knitting is a whole sensory experience — the texture, colors, even the smells of different fibers like wool or silk. When you buy yarn online, you may not be looking at the true colors, and you can’t feel it.”

Smith lived in northwest San Antonio and thought the area could support a store like the one she envisioned. “I moved here, I saw a market,” she says, “but I never thought it would happen.” She took cautious steps toward exchanging her secure, salaried position for the life of a small-business owner. One night, she visited the Web site of the Texas Secretary of State and found she could register the name of her shop-to-be online; a few clicks and a credit-card charge of $300 later, Smith was doing business as Yarnivore — a playful name for the consumer who’s seriously hooked on fiber.

With her husband, Josh, Smith assessed their personal situation: Married then for two years, they didn’t yet have children. Without her salary, she says, “We could still feed ourselves and pay the mortgage.” At the same time, the city was growing on the northwest side. “I lived in that area and knew there would be a good customer base,” says Smith. The timing was good, the couple agreed, so she ordered yarn from suppliers who would sell to her before she had a shop address. For months, she looked at retail spaces until she found one she liked in a busy center on Northwest Military Highway.

Meanwhile, she went part-time at her engineering job, reducing her paid hours to 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. as she spent her afternoons getting the shop in shape for a grand opening. She had some reservations about leaving her old job. “I had spent my whole life preparing for this career,” she says. “I had all this education (for environmental engineering), and I wasn’t going to be using it. What I was doing was setting an example for young girls, showing that women could be good at math and science.”

Surprisingly, her colleagues were “a lot more supportive than I expected,” she says. “I thought people would think I was crazy. But they understood that it was a calculated risk. I talked to a lot of people (about business start-ups), I did my homework.”

By the time Yarnivore opened in October 2006, Smith says, “I was 95 percent sure it was going to be successful.” The store was stocked generously with “stuff I find pretty and some things I don’t personally care for but suits a group of people.” While she did get walk-in customers, who had been curious about her “Yarnivore — Coming Soon!” banner, Smith says, “I knew I would have to create a market.”

She hired staff from among her ablest customers and with them, started teaching classes in a variety of fiber skills. She has taught knitting not only at the shop but at San Antonio Christian Schools and is planning to teach in a school district’s community-education program. “I love learning things,” she says, “and starting a new career has been like going back to school.”

In fact, since opening the shop, she has found time to take a course in weaving at Southwest School of Art and Craft and has learned to spin her own yarn using a hand-held drop spindle.

Smith also has had to develop different people skills. “It’s not my natural tendency to be friendly and outgoing,” she says. “Part of my work here is developing relationships with customers, making them feel comfortable and finding out what they’re interested in.” Besides the classes, Yarnivore hosts a knitting club every first and third Friday of the month.

There’s no formal agenda, Smith says, “we just sit and knit and talk, even if it’s only three people.” A few times, men have come in with old pattern books or needlework tools that belonged to their late wives or mothers. “They can’t use them, but they don’t want to throw them away,” says Smith, who uses the items in not-forsale displays.

From the shop’s beginnings, Smith has counted on her community of needleworkers to contribute to charity projects. There is a strong relationship between needlework and charity, she says. “It’s been my experience that those who knit or crochet get more enjoyment out of making a project for someone else,” she says. “I have several customers who have never knitted a thing for themselves. Everything they make is either for a friend, a relative or for charity.”

Yarnivore has invited customers to make helmet liners for soldiers serving in the Middle East and sponsored a Charity Knit-a-thon to make baby clothes and blankets for the city’s Child Protective Services, collecting and delivering the donated items. Last fall, Yarnivore raised funds through its Web site for the Muscular Dystrophy Association; currently, Smith is planning to ask customers to knit squares that will be sewn together into an afghan to be raffled off to benefit a local organization that supports low income housing.

“You put so much of your heart into something that is hand-made,” she says, “that when you give it away to someone who appreciates the work you did, their response fills your heart back up twofold. I think that’s why so many knitters and crocheters like knitting for charity: They know their work is going for a good cause and is very much appreciated.”

While Smith realizes her husband’s career may take them away from San Antonio someday, she hopes to continue with the shop as long as possible. If they have to move, she says, “I’ve had this experience. I know I can do something different if I want to work hard enough for it.”