Thread!

F ran out of thread on her machine last week, and I ran out today.  The store where we had bought our giant spindles has recently relocated to the dreaded south end of town with its eternal traffic horror;  so before we set out on this misery of a trip we called the store to be sure they had the thread we needed.  We discovered they no longer carry large spools of upholstery thread.  It was actually something of a relief to have to go on-line and see if we could order some.  To our great surprise we found a place called The Thread Exchange, Inc, which we had never heard of, and they are about ten minutes up the main road from F's house.  So we drove over there to see if we could find some thread, and we found the absolute mother lode.  This is primarily a mail-order business located in a large warehouse where they will sell as little as a single spool of thread to drop-in customers!

The Thread Exchange has literally millions of spools of thread, every kind and every color imaginable.  (Local bookbinders:  they carry waxed linen and other bookbinding threads, the kind we can hardly find around here!)  The prices are wonderful.  They de-spool their enormous spools into smaller spools.  The very kind woman who helped us showed us a large bin of partial spools--actually the leftovers from de-spooling-- and invited us to fill a cardboard box with the colors we wanted in the weight of thread we needed.  She sold us the boxful for a single digit price.  Above are our spools!  We also ordered a few complete medium-sized spools that we can pick up tomorrow.  You can find out about about this great business at www.thethreadexchange.com and order on line.  Asheville people call 800-915-2320 for business hours and location!