Heindselman’s

Wednesday we checked our son John into the Mormon Church’s Mission Training Center in Provo, Utah, the point of our trip. In three weeks, he will be off from there to the Jackson, Mississippi mission, including parts of Louisiana–ya’ll take good care of him for me if you see him riding by on his bike for me, willya; thanks. He’s such a good kid, and his mother is going to miss him fiercely.

Then later that afternoon we went to Heindselman’s, a Provo store that has spinning, weaving, and knitting and crocheting supplies. I was delighted to see Alpaca With A Twist’s baby alpaca roving, my favorite.

Heindselman’s, it turns out, is the oldest continuously-operating yarn store in the United States; it began in 1904. The current owner (this is Ted, with Elizabeth in the background) created a biomedical invention that I’ll let him talk about, if he’d like to, that did very well, and then, since he could now go do anything he wanted, he chose to take on the old family business.

We got to meet Father Christmas http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695235971,00.html when he happened to come into the store.

There were dolls just to the left of Ted in the picture that he explained are Heindselmans: it is not only the family name, but also the word for the characters in the old fairy tale about the poor shoemaker who could not possibly finish the fine shoes in time that had been ordered to be done by Christmas. They are the little elves that came out at night and worked on them for him, unbeknownst to him.

You know, I can’t think of a more apropos concept for those of the yarny persuasions this time of year. There’s a certain knitter in Toronto with a Schedule who could really use some of those dolls right now, but I didn’t think to ask if any of them were for sale. Sorry, Stephanie!