Wool & Co. to close for 2 months, reopen in another St. Charles location

ST. CHARLES – Joyce Escalante plopped down several skeins of cranberry red yarn on the counter at Wool & Co. in St. Charles and said she would knit her husband a vest.

“I’m going to miss her,” Escalante, of St. Charles, said of store owner Lesley Edmondson. “I love the shop.”

Edmondson said she is closing the store at 107 W. Main St. in St. Charles in August and September, then reopening in another location with a more limited physical presence.

Edmondson sent an email announcement to her customers with the news.

“We will certainly continue online sales and will most probably add some classes and opening hours – but all that is yet to be decided,” Edmondson’s announcement stated.

Edmondson, who is originally from England, said she had worked for Arthur Andersen before she opened Wool & Co. 16 years ago. The store was first on Third Street in St. Charles and then on Third Street in Geneva, before the last six years on State Street at its current location.

As its name implies, Wool & Co. sells all types of yarn and items used in knitting and crocheting, as well as objets d’art and gifts. It also hosts classes. The racks are full of imported yarns and include every fiber imaginable – including wool, cotton, silk, alpaca, cashmere, angora, bamboo, camel, mohair and llama.

“I cater to people who want to make a not-very-expensive baby afghan all the way up to quiviut, which comes from the underbelly of a musk ox and costs $150 a skein,” Edmondson said.

Her decision to close and reopen in a less demanding format comes from “a whole combination of things.”

“I’m wanting to spend more time with my family,” Edmondson said. “The yarn store business has kind of changed over the last five years. The internet plays a huge factor – people buy online a lot more. And a lot of our vendors sell direct now. The magazines now have kits you can order. That never used to happen. It used to be you bought your yarn here or one of the big-box stores. Or maybe you went to one [fiber arts] show. But now there’s a [fiber arts] show somewhere pretty much every month.”

Her goal is to have the store completely empty by the end of July, so toward the end most yarns are 40 percent off, Edmondson said.

“I loved this space, so I hope somebody wonderful picks it up,” Edmondson said.

She said she’s looking for another, less expensive, space in St. Charles for reopening sometime in September.

“I’m not sure yet,” Edmondson said.

Another customer, Tina Zucker of St. Charles, bought some pale pink mohair yarn to make herself a wrap for next winter.

“I just bought a new coat at the end of winter last year,” Zucker said. “And it’s gray, and this would be so beautiful with it.”

Like Escalante, Zucker said she was sad to see the store close.

“I took my first knitting class from her,” Zucker said of Edmondson. “I took a beginning knitters class 15 years ago. … I just fell in love with it.”

More information is available at www.woolandcompany.com or by calling the store at 630-444-0480.