When one (shop) door closes, another one opens – or so it is in Nundle.
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In a village where every business coming and going is felt, the imminent closure of one of its celebrated stores, Volcania Art Glass, has saddened many.
But another shop is growing, even though times may be tough with spending down due to the drought.
Mount Misery Gold Mine Café & Guest House owner Megan Carberry says: “In business, you do things with the best of hopes and intentions, and that’s certainly what we’ve done.”
“We live on site and we’ve got our lives invested here … we’re here for the long haul.”
An avid knitter since childhood, she is expanding her offering to the creative community: what she calls her wool shop, previously relegated to a corner of the café.
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The former function room will now be packed with even more wool, knitting pattern kits, needles and crochet hooks, craft accessories and more.
The venue will also host its first knitting retreat on November 2 – and, in a show of support for fellow creatives, will carry some Volcania items for sale, too.
Ms Carberry said there was a “pretty healthy” community of knitters, spinners, weavers and crafters in and around Nundle.
“We’ve outgrown the corner of the café we started in … and have expanded and increased,” she said.
And the response had “certainly been very encouraging” from people for whom, like for her, “knitting is like oxygen”.
Ms Carberry’s mother taught her how to knit when she was about five years old, and it became “an obsession”.
“When you start something like this … you find an awful lot of people doing the same thing who love craft just as much,” she said.
“The people that I’ve met, in the short time since we’ve had the wool shop open late last year, have come from everywhere – which is the attraction of Nundle to begin with.”
