How we came about

If you've lived in the San Francisco bay area in the past 30 years, you too may be mourning the demise of Straw Into Gold, another institution gone down to real estate speculation as has been all too common lately. Straw was a place where anyone, no matter how unskilled or poor, could go and get solid information and good quality materials, all in a friendly atmosphere and most of all at an affordable price. When you got more confident, it was an ideal place to go and maintain a solid fiber habit, there was a huge depth of stock and the most esoteric items could be obtained without breaking the bank. We've been positively horrified trying to shop for yarns since they closed - should a person really spend half a month's rent on a sweater??

Straw Into Gold's corner
Sniff...

Fortunately, Straw is not entirely gone. Its backbone, Crystal Palace yarns, is still operating on a wholesale basis, bringing beautiful and high-quality yarns in from small mills all over the world. These yarns are the same quality as the rest of what's in the expensive stores, for instance the very same cotton chenille (manufactured at the same time by the same mill) retails generally in the US for exactly twice the price of Crystal Palace's. Yet for some unfathomable reason it's hard to find Crystal Palace yarns in live stores, or on the net for that matter. And yet the closing of the retail arm has allowed the owners to concentrate on bringing new and even more exciting yarns to the line. So, well, we want them, we figured you might too...

So who are we? A couple of semi-employed geeks, willing to live in a very small apartment, but not to give up on all our habits, especially in one of the rare periods when we actually have time to indulge in them fully. The developer really did learn to knit at Straw way back when as a poor student, the sysad was taught all those useful skills by her mama. We were, needless to say, regular long-term customers. Recently we've also been spinning up a storm (introduced to the concept at Straw of course, and an Ashford Traveler from the 40s was the first wheel), and learning to weave.

There has been some curiosity expressed about how our name came about. A broken foot early in 2002 led to a lot of lying on the couch, eating chocolate ("the endorphins are good for healing", argued the guy at the corner store), and too much tv watching. Which in part led to a complete retrospective of Bond movies, including Goldfinger with its sublime Pussy (aka Honor Blackman) and her Flying Circus. Which in turn revived memories of the Tsunami swimming club benefit where the piece de resistance was a fabulous performance of the Goldfinger theme song by Saphonda Gold. We also have a Fuzzy/Pussy very much Galore of our own, but that's another story.

Cat Scan of large hairy belly
The Underbelly of Fuzzy Galore.