Friends Don't Let Friends Knit with Mystery Wool

The Rhinebeck Sweater. It’s a rite of passage and a labor of love for all knitters and crocheters. This year at Rabbit Row Yarns and Haberdashery, I’m adding a deeper layer of purpose to these prized handknit treasures. Rabbit Row has officially joined the Hudson Valley Textile Project’s Rhinebeck Sweaters for Good campaign—a movement that shifts the focus from just making your Rhinebeck sweater to thoughtfully sourcing your Rhinebeck sweater yarn. Sweaters for Good is a commitment to the farm-to-closet connection ensuring that the sweaters we wear are a direct investment in local shepherds, mills, and makers who are the heartbeat of our Northeast US regional fiber community.

For many local yarn shops, pivoting to offer regional fibers might feel like a major overhaul, but for Rabbit Row, it simply feels like opening the doors on a Monday morning. From the very first day, my mission has been woven from the same local wool Sweaters for Good is celebrating. I didn’t start Rabbit Row to be just another shop for traditional wholesale yarn; it has always been curated with sustainable (no synthetics or superwash), traceable yarn and fiber– with a highlight on locally-sourced. Through my time building relationships with regional mills and local farms, Sweaters for Good isn't a new trend I’m chasing—it’s the core of my business model. Read on to see how I’m incorporating the campaign into my shop.

Shelf tags showing information about local yarns. — Shelf tags

Prioritizing NY/PA-grown Fiber

Rabbit Row has made an intentional commitment to source fiber directly from sheep, rabbit, goat, and alpaca farms throughout New York and Pennsylvania. By partnering with smaller heritage farms, we can offer a unique selection of yarn and spinning fibers. While we can’t stock 500 skeins of a single local line, we take pride in offering "sweater quantities" from nearly two dozen distinct breeds. This variety is a major draw for both our dedicated local makers and the many visitors passing through Corning. Sourcing regionally allows us to build relationships with our farmers, understand their practices, and learn the specific nuances of their fiber. This ensures we can guide every customer toward the perfect yarn, spinning, or felting fiber for their specific projects. We already use the Livestock Conservancy logo on our NY/PA shelf signage and will be rebranding to include the Sweaters for Good emblem so that it will be easily identifiable to customers. (Reach out if you have local yarn/fiber you’d like to offer at Rabbit Row!)

Making Connections

To bring you closer to the source, we display posters above our shelves that feature flock photographs and the personal stories of farms, mills, or dyers. These posters, that carry the Sweaters for Good logo, illustrate the sustainability of our local fibers and offer a personal connection to the materials you bring home. While feel and color are usually the determining factors with each sale, connecting someone with the fiber they are purchasing will seal the deal. In fact, many customers take photos of these stories to keep with their projects or to include with a gift. Sharing this regional connection, we hope, will make consumers always want to know where their yarn/fiber (and other products) come from.

Economic Advantages and Environmental Benefits

Sweaters for Good can have the same effect in our industry as the popular Shop Small tagline does to promote small businesses. By bypassing global industrial supply chains, we help maintain the financial viability of small-scale heritage farms, preserving rare livestock breeds while making Corning a premier destination for "slow fiber" tourists who value traceability. Environmentally, sourcing regionally can reduce supply chain emissions by nearly 28% simply by shortening the "yarn miles" from the pasture to our shelves. (Many locals drop off supplies to my shop or at my husband’s office in nearby, Ithaca). Unlike mass-produced synthetic yarns, our regional natural fibers are renewable and ultimately biodegradable, keeping your creative legacy as clean and sustainable as the land that grew it.

Other Ways Rabbit Row Will Promote Sweaters for Good

Incorporate the Sweaters for Good campaign into social media that highlights our local farms
Awaiting a Corning-grown yarn line from a friend’s small flock – scoured at Clean Fleece and spun at Battenkill Fiber Mill

photo of Barb and Kris Sayre on shearing day — Photo of Barb and Kris Sayre on shearing day

Our classes use local wool for class materials, letting participants learn how to add local fiber into their making

Continue to curate needle felting kits with local roving

Host a NY yarn knit-a-long in the fall – leading up to our annual shop bus trip to Rhinebeck

Continue our farm field trips with customers to educate them about the local supply chain
Participate in the NY Fiber Trail and encourage our customers to visit not just yarn shops but also the farms and mills on the trail
Yarn Tales – our shop book club selects non-fiction titles like Vanishing Fleece, illustrating the farm-to-shop supply chain

Written by Barbara Vassallo, owner/operator of Rabbit Row Yarns & Haberdashery, 24 E Market St, Corning, NY www.rabbitrowyarns.com