2025 Recap

Hello, everybody! 

Welcome to the first edition of From the Crow’s Beak, a monthly(ish) recap of all the happy happenings at The Rainbow Nook alongside musings from the tiny TRN team regarding crafting, community, and the crafting community! 

As a bouncing brand new baby of merely 6(ish) months, TRN has done a truly remarkable amount of work towards sustainable crafting and community creation. As JP’s premier fiber arts thrift store, we’ve had the abject pleasure of teaching 140 separate classes as well as rescuing over 460 skeins of yarn from landfills. 

While we are constantly blown away by the support of all of our fellow crafters and community members, I specifically wanted to highlight those undertaking the impossibly humbling task of learning a new skill. Intro to Machine Sewing is our most in demand class (⅓ of all class sign ups overall), and, as a reflection of our current world of ever cycling microtrends and fast-fashion flops, renewed interest in sewing is as unsurprising as it is unbelievably encouraging! 

Out-sourcing a vast majority of our garments is a remarkably new phenomenon. Until recently, clothing creation was a task that happened most often within the home. Material was carefully selected with specific intention towards overall form and function of the garment, and would often be reused over and over again due to the labor costs of producing fabric. While having access to cheaper and more varied sources of fabric has been nothing but a boon for the very important task of clothing humanity, we have found ourselves in a society that divorces us from the centuries of knowledge that goes into garment creation. In its rabid attempt to create value through dependence, capitalism has locked this integral connection to our past behind a type of learned-helpnessness. We now live in an era that sees clothing as disposable. 

Learning the art of machine sewing directly fights back against this hyperconsumerist mindset. With each and every press of the pedal, we are reclaiming the agency of defining value on our own terms. 

Like all forms of creation, machine sewing isn’t just a skill, or a means to an end – it’s tradition. 

We are so humbled our community has chosen to put their faith in our expertise as a starting point for their own journey into machine sewing and garment creation. It is more important than ever that we continue to share these skills to reclaim our agency from corporate greed. We hope you will continue to allow us to assist and support you in your sewing journey! 

From the bottom of our hearts, we would like to thank you for allowing us the space to thrive as we settle into the pulse of Centre Street. We are so very excited for the year ahead, and hope to continue serving JP as a home for fiber artists and appreciators of self-sufficient sustainability. 

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

We have big plans for 2026, and can’t wait to dive into the new year with all of you!! 

Sincerely, 

The Rainbow Nook Team