Round Rock Yarn & Fiber Studio patron Sandy Winer said she likes the camaraderie and the knowledgeable customers she meets at the store located in downtown Round Rock. Winer said she goes to the store three times a week to sit, chat and knit.

Owner Dawn Lakamsani said that is exactly the atmosphere she wanted to create when she opened the shop in 2012. She said Round Rock Yarn & Fiber Studio is a store that sells yarns customers cannot get anywhere else as well as a place to learn and have fun while knitting and crocheting.

“I like the community that having a yarn shop provides,” Lakamsani said. “Knitting and crocheting and those types of fiber arts are very social activities.”

The shop has three rooms with yarns and fibers for sale as well as a lounge where customers can sit during store hours, work on their projects and talk.

Lakamsani offers free classes for up to eight people. Customers can also take private lessons.

“Personal service is very important to me,” she said. “Knitting is a very niche sort of hobby. People typically don’t just wander in here wondering what’s going on here. This is really a destination.”

Lakamsani said the yarns at her store are not sold at big-box retailers. She wants to support smaller, independent yarn distributors and suppliers both locally and throughout the world.

The shop’s product range includes hand-spun yak yarn from a cooperative in Mongolia, cashmere and angora from France, silk from Thailand, wool from Texas alpacas, Turkish chenille  and sheep wool from the oldest continuously existing sheep ranch in the United States. 

Round Rock Yarn & Fiber has a sister store called The Sheep Shop in Cambridge, England. Lakamsani said she found the store while accompanying her husband on a business trip to the country. She and the English shop owner found out that each would like products from the other country that are hard to get. Lakamsani said she plans to exchange materials with the Sheep Shop once a year. Lakamsani said either her husband, Rama, or herself would deliver the materials.

December’s yarn of the month

Round Rock Yarn & Fiber Studio’s yarn of the month for December is Celtic Karma Dyework’s “Silk Road.”

The yarn is 58 percent super wash merino wool and 42 percent mulberry silk.

“You can make anything with it: sweaters, hats, fingerless mittens,” said Dawn Lakamsani,  Round Rock Yarn & Fiber Studio owner. “It’s got a lot of yardage on it, so it only takes one skein to make something.”

208 W. Bagdad Ave., Ste. 7, Round Rock 512-218-9555 www.roundrockyarnandfiber.net Hours: Tue.-Wed. 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Thu. noon-4 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 10 a.m.-4 p.m.