Yarn Shop Owner's Illness Rallies Customers to run Store

This is not so much a story about business, but about how customers volunteered to help a business owner overcome adversity and keep a store open in Emmaus.

Cindy Fitzpatrick is the owner of Conversational Threads, a fiber arts studio at 8 South 4th Street, which has been open since June 2009. For much of that time -- before and after the opening -- she has been ill with breast cancer and leukemia.

The only way her business has survived, she said in a recent interview, was her customers coming in to run the business -- at no charge.

They are part of a “knit along” group that meets every week in the store to work on their projects and enjoy conversations.

“I always wanted to own a shop of some kind,” Fitzpatrick said. “I spent most of my time raising my kids, but once they were gone, the time was right.

“In 2007 and 2008 I was diagnosed and treated for breast cancer. So after that, I thought if I was going to do it, do it now. I started looking for shops and opened two years ago.

“Last April, I was diagnosed with leukemia caused by the chemotherapy from breast cancer. So I was out of the shop for seven months, but I had wonderful volunteers who kept it going for me. One of them was Rachael Howard. I wouldn’t have a shop if it wasn’t for the volunteers.’’

Fitzpatrick was unsure other volunteers wanted their full names to be publicized, so she just listed them as Sue, Barb and Cindi.

Fitzpatrick, who lives in South Whitehall Township,  comes from a typical background for a store owner. Her husband, Sean Fitzpatrick, has owned the Gordon H. Dickinson and Co. stock brokerage for about 25 years.

“So I saw how hard it is to run a business,“ she said.

Out of Moravian College, she worked five years for a health insurance company before marrying and having two boys, Justin, now a math professor at Vanderbilt University and Neal, attending medical school at Drexel University.

Take away the illnesses, it sounds like a dream life.

“I love my doctors,” she said. “I'm very blessed to have the team over at St. Lukes Hospital in Bethlehem.

“Getting leukemia from chemotherapy is very rare. The treatment for the kind of leukemia I have is a month in the hospital, with a week of chemotherapy and three weeks to recover from that. Then you have four more rounds of week-long chemotherapy. I was diagnosed at the end of April last year and I was finished with everything by the end of this April. There was a break during the summer because I developed a brain infection. While in the hospital, I worked from a bed with my computer.

“But I’m here now.”

The walls around her were filled with different kinds of yarn.

The store offers products such as Alpaca yarn and Vermont Organic yarn. 

In addition to yarn, Conversational Threads sells knitting and crocheting patterns, knitting bags and other related accessories.

“It’s just a typical yarn shop,” she said. “I’ve shopped in yarn shops for long time.

“I told people from the beginning there was open knitting any time. People wanted to know when other people would be here so they could socialize. That’s why we designate Monday afternoon and evening as knit night and we come in and knit.

“On a Monday night we have eight to 15 people. I’ve figured a way to squeeze 30 in here, but not everybody could talk to everybody else.’’

It created friends who helped in times of trouble.