I'm still sad

 (Some of this is a repost from stuff I said on Demon Trolls over at Ravelry)

 I'm frankly surprised at how the loss of JoAnn Fabrics' has affected me. Yes, I know: it was a big box store, it was run by greedy corporate overlords, it was full of cheaply made stuff from overseas that may not have been made under the most humane conditions for those making it.

 And yet. I could walk in those doors and relax a bit. There were nice and fun things to look at and to consider buying.

There isn't/wasn't a lot here for me that I specifically like, that feels aimed at me and my demographic. For me, losing JoAnn’s is mainly losing a place to GO. There’s not a lot locally for “me.” Where I live, the biggest activities seem to be hunting/fishing/casino going, none of which I enjoy. Or it's doing stuff with/for kids or grandkids, and I don't have that. So every 4-6 week’s I’d take a jaunt to JoAnn’s to just look at supplies. Yes, I bought stuff. Yes, I have stuff I may never use. But it was nice to go and look.

It was just......it was like my Tiffany's, to make a movie reference. To me, it felt like  a place I could go where nothing very bad would happen to me. Sometimes the grocery store even is bad - I've been in stores when a couple was having a giant fight, or a parent was abusing their kid (and I found out for sure that got called in). Once, I was checking out at the Kroger and was told that I should take my stuff and get to my car as quickly as reasonable because there was someone who was suspected of carrying a gun walking around over by the meat case (and yes, they said their security was on the way, but still). More and more the world feels unsafe to me, JoAnn's at least still felt somewhat safe*

 

(*If even, like everywhere else, that "safety" is an illusion)

It had stuff I can't get anywhere else now**. Michael's doesn't have fabrics. The quilt shops generally don't have fabric OTHER than calicos. There are some notions and supplies that I can't get without mail ordering now. I sometimes made stuffed toys and it was a place to get the fur and other fabrics I needed. I guess if i want that I mail order now. I have a Michael’s but it’s a VERY small one (currently no fabric, and not that much yarn). So it’s a big thing lost. Fortunately I do have a LYS but they are also small and mostly focus on the fingering weight yarns, so if I want to make, for example, amigurumi out of worsted weight acrylic, I have to go to Michael’s or wait on mail order if they don’t have the right color.

 

(** there IS a Hobby Lobby but both for political reasons, and for the fact that the last time I was in there some years ago all they had was their own cheapie brand of yarn - no Paton's, no Lion Brand, no Bernat - I won't shop there.)

JoAnn’s was where I was usually able to find Simply Knitting (The UK version) and for a few short months they had a glorious book section. I did notice a decline beginning a while back - maybe around 2018. When the “Adult Coloring Book” fad hit - I walked in one day and almost their entire book section was coloring books! At the time I thought “huh, so are they just admitting that we’re all so exhausted we don’t have the energy to actually craft, and we color instead now? Or is it that these books have a higher profit margin because they don’t need technical editing and they get “used up”?"

And yeah, they did seem to carry more and more home decor stuff (though I did buy some of that - several of the seasonal doormats I use came from there, and some of the little garden flags I have). And they carried toys and other tchotckes. I figured, maybe that brought in more money and helped subsidize  the craft supplies. 

I didn’t buy a lot of fabric there recently. I don't sew clothing any more, really.  I did use them as a source for cheap quilt backings (when they had good sales or were clearancing “weird” fabric) and for the solid-color Kona I use for sashing. I can still get that but it may take waiting on mail order or getting to a (more distant to me than Jo Ann’s) specialty quilt shop.

And also notions: I have a wal mart and they carry some but it’s spotty what they have and a lot of them are not the same quality as even what JoAnn’s used. And buttons! They were my go-to for buttons. I guess when I knit cardigans now I will need to mail-order.

I also suspect we don’t ever again see another craft chain start up - it will be larger, wealthier, more-populous areas having the specialty store; those of us in the boonies or less-prosperous locations will have to mail order or make do with what wal mart carries. 

 It's hard not to feel that "once again the middle is being hollowed out; the very wealthy will get whatever they want, but the rest of us, even people who could afford stuff, will get the bare minimum of wal-marts and dollar stores." New sumptuary laws, perhaps - only instead of being forbidden certain things, they're just not made available to the "non aristocracy"

it just makes me sad. It makes me sad in a deeply sad making time for me (I won’t get political, but: entirely possible the whole “industry” I am in (higher ed) closes down and I may be forced into an early retirement, at a time when finding a new job will be even harder). It feels like another loss in and around dozens of others - we lost one of the big specialty quilt shops in the next city over because their landlord tripled the rent on them. And yeah, I still feel sad about Quilt Asylum closing. The owner said "it's time to retire given they did this to us" - the landlord tripled their rent. And okay, I admit a tiny bit of bitter, salty joy when I go down to Denison and see that building with a "For Rent" sign on it still. Didn't find so very many golden eggs when you cut that goose open, did you, hey, landlord?

But I do wonder what's in the future. Will there be anything new, anything good? The only shops that have opened in my town are thrift stores recently and while I know some folks love the hunt, and other folks love getting inexpensive clothes for their growing kids, I also look at it and the phrase "economic indicator" flashes in my brain - that will, shortly, we have to be handing around the same pair of falling-apart jeans because there are none that are affordable or available any more? And are hobbies other than staring at screens just going to die? It's hard for me not to feel kind of "it's 2020 all over again" - where I wondered  if there was going to be anything left to come out to.

And yes, I know people talk about "remaking" the world, but the remaking I've seen thus far in 2025 seems to have made most things worse for many people.  

Anyway. I have Saturday free enough (I still have to bake a cake or something for a potluck on Sunday) and I think I'm going to go to the yarn shop (though I don't *need* any yarn) to be there and to maybe buy something WHILE I STILL CAN (because I now assume every good thing that I personally value is now doomed) and I will go to the Michael's and REALLY HOPE my framing job is both completed and still there (they have never called me, I hope they didn't lose my painting) and to the Ulta - because I need some stuff. Yes, Ulta is in the same strip mall as JoAnn's and they may still be doing the clearance sale, but I won't go in - I prefer to remember it as it was before the vultures of private equity descended. 

Maybe there will be "new dreams, maybe better dreams, and plenty" but more and more I am wondering instead if ..... this is all there is. If the good things for my life are over now and it's just going to be a continued tide of losses big and small. I wish I didn't feel that way, but...it seems there's too much evidence for me to be convinced other wise.