Babes in the Wool: Our Story
Celebrating 40 years in yarn
As we celebrate our small business’s 40th birthday, I thought it would be nice to look back over the last 4 decades and share with you the story behind Babes in the Wool. Through difficult times and crafting crazes, our wool shop has survived it all, and it has been quite a journey. Back in 1982, my dad bought the business and ran the shop at 211 Newland Avenue. After all these years, we’re still on Newland Ave, and it’s still our favourite part of Hull. This area has always been a hub of independent businesses, and we’re proud to have been part of the local community for so long.
While the shop became established, my dad also operated a market stall in Beverley Market until around 1996. Babes in the Wool moved to a bigger shop in 1993, but knitting began to go out of favour in the 90s, so we moved again to the smaller shop at 187 (pictured above). We were in this shop for about 13 years, and this is probably the location that many of our customers remember the most. Despite it being a smaller shop, we really enjoyed our time there; I spent a lot of time in this shop when I was growing up, and have lots of lovely memories of it. When I set out to write this article, I asked my parents to look for any photos they have from over the years and, of course, the only one they could find was an embarrassing picture of me… so enjoy.
3 generations of our family have worked at our yarn shop. My grandma, Milly, would spend a lot of time helping out during those early years, from the very beginning until around the early 2000s. She had a real knack for building friendships and being a helping hand to crafters in need. She is still remembered fondly by so many makers in our community and we often have locals asking about her today. Although she passed away last October, we know that her legacy lives on at Babes in the Wool.
During the 2000s, knitting and crochet began taking off again, and these crafts became popular hobbies that no longer had an ‘only for grannies’ image. Ponchos became fashionable makes (I remember having a couple of hand knitted ones at this age), and eyelash yarns were sought after as you could knit up a scarf really quickly. As this crafting craze began, we started up a knitting and crochet group at local cafe, Relax (also on Newland Avenue). Our craft group began in October of 2006 and, barring the many month of lockdown and pandemic restrictions, it’s been going every month since. Our craft group has definitely been one of the highlights of Babes in the Wool; anyone can turn up with whatever craft they’re working on, and join in the fun atmosphere. It’s lovely to socialise with other makers, and we’ve always tried to make it an enjoyable evening that we can all look forward to throughout the month.
Our craft group runs on the third Tuesday of every month 6pm-8pm. Entry is £2 which includes a raffle ticket for the end of the night where we give out several prizes from our shop. Usually we have around 20 makers at the group, but in the past there have been sessions with over 30 people! Over the years, there have been many who have joined us for a period of time in their lives: locals who have moved in and out of the area, university students who are based just around the corner from us, and even lecturers have joined in while teaching for a term or two. If you’re in the Hull area, we’d love for you to come to our group and be a part of our crafty community! I have many memories of the Relax craft group, including the year I dressed up as Santa and handed out little presents, and the deluxe hot chocolate I would order every time.
In late 2012, we moved into our current shop at 113 Newland Avenue. This has been a fantastic location for us as it’s right at the centre of the avenue, and closer to many other small businesses. It was during this time that we were asked if we offered any learn to crochet courses, so we decided to put one together and started our first course in January of 2013. These courses became insanely popular and we ended up needing to run 3 courses as the waiting list was so long! Since then, we’ve had a new learn to crochet course starting nearly every month. Some of the original learner groups are still here, not because they’re learning to crochet but because they have become social groups and truly great friends. When the pandemic hit, our groups had to take a hiatus, and we really missed having a shop full of makers. Our groups take place in the back area of our shop, and there’s always lots of laughter and enjoyment around the table.
As our groups became a permanent staple of Babes in the Wool, over the years we have been able to organise many projects and craft activities. We have yarnbombed our local avenue quite a few times, on occasion getting up at 5am and climbing ladders in the dark to decorate the trees!
One of our favourite yarnbombing projects was one we did for our local council. There was a fruit and veg theme as the message was to teach people about waste and using the correct recycling bins (in our area, a small green bin was introduced for food waste). Check out some photos of this yarnbomb below!
Another crafty project we did was in collaboration with The Deep. This is Hull’s aquarium, and is one of the city’s biggest tourist attractions. We had a group working together to cover a model of a sawfish with crochet motifs that went on display in The Deep to raise awareness of endangered species in the ocean. We named her Lola!
Babes in the Wool has provided us with so many creative opportunities, and the friendships that have formed over the years are invaluable. The shop has always been a part of my life, and I spent lots of my childhood there. I’ve always had an on/off relationship with crafting, but it has really solidified over the last few years and my lifetime of knowledge from the shop has definitely increased my passion for it. When I reached my teens and I was thinking of looking for a Saturday job, my dad suggested I come and work with them and help out over the weekends. I learned so much about crafting, what goes into different projects and how to advise others makers on their creative decisions. I stopped working in the shop when I moved to Newcastle for university, but this wasn’t the end of my Babes in the Wool journey.
Flash forward a few years to the beginning of 2020, we had no idea of the turmoil that was to come and how it would affect our small business. I had recently got engaged and my partner, AJ, had experience with building websites. I had long been planning to create social media accounts for our wool shop, so we decided to pool our skills together, join the team, and start Babes in the Wool’s online adventure. It wasn’t long after we started building a website and social media that the UK experienced it’s first national lockdown. With all non-essential businesses having to close, our wool shop was included in this, and we were unable to trade for many weeks. We spent that time doubling down and working really hard to make sure our website was up to scratch and that it would be able to handle it in the future if it became our only way to trade - which, inevitably, it did.
As well as going through the pandemic and lockdowns, we also had a unique set of challenges in our situation, the biggest one being that AJ and I were not in the UK. AJ is American and in February 2020 I had gone to visit him for a few months, but when it was time for me to return home the borders had closed and my flights were cancelled. Ultimately, we ended up getting married and we are both still based in the US today. This is something we’ve kept fairly quiet as the online presence we were trying to build for the business was still in the UK. Being on the other side of the world from our shop has definitely been difficult; it can be hard to create online content when we don’t have access to any of our products or people. Luckily, the four of us work really well as a team, and my parents run the shop in Hull while we manage our online activities from the States. So, if you’ve ever wondered why we haven’t replied to a message that you sent early morning, it’s because I’m 5 hours behind!
Since Babes in the Wool went online, our small business has really hit its stride and we have connected with crafters all across the UK. In December of 2020, we won Highly Commended in MP Diana Johnson’s Small Business Saturday Awards in the category of Favourite Retail Business. It was the first time our shop had been nominated, despite being a part of the community for so long. So in 2021, AJ and I were determined to rally our local voters and get my parents’ hard work the recognition it deserved. In December of 2021, we were announced the winners of ‘Favourite Retail Business’ in Hull North, with Diana Johnson’s assistant telling us we had received an avalanche of votes. This was such a heartwarming moment, especially as we were entering our 40th year of operation.
That brings us to today. This weekend we’ve celebrated 40 years in yarn and we’re so grateful to everyone who came down to the shop to support us. It still feels surreal that we have hit this milestone, and we hope that there are many more to come for Babes in the Wool.
What a lovely story. Here’s to many more happy years . The only place to go when you want/ need wool and craft things. Can’t resist going in when I’m on the Avenue, hence I’ve got boxes of wool to work my way through xx