Looking for some brightness to lift you out of this powerful and never-ending winter - something a lot cheaper than a trip to Aruba or even a local flower show?
Stop in at Knight's Quilt Shop, out on Route 1 North!
We're embarrassed to say that we'd not been there before we popped in on impulse one recent Monday, and there we found so many light colors, such a variety of brilliance in fabric patterns and so many imaginatively-conceived displays that we were instantly cheered.
The place is actually a whole "house," a Cape-Codder tucked into woods 250 feet in from the highway, which was planned from its inception to be entirely committed, top to bottom, to use as a quilt shop. With light flooding in through multiple windows, and Tim Janis music playing in the background, the place feels, in many ways, like a warm and welcoming home.
Quilters, we learned as we moseyed about, can get every conceivable sort of quilting supply there, from any one of some 4,000 bolts of fabric to patterns, stencils, batting, books (over 500 of them, all on quilting) and the latest in cutting and measuring gadgetry. Quilters (and quilting wannabes) can also take classes in quilting there, and can get help and advice at any time from any of the Knight's Shop five staff, each of whom is an experienced quilter.
And visitors can even get a cup of coffee, served in a room with windows overlooking a quiet wooded spot out back frequented by deer, birds and wild turkeys.
Non-quilters can go there to get - well, quilts! Staffers make them all the time, we were told, and those that are for sale are arranged on a railing surrounding the second-floor stairwell.
Knight's Quilt Shop, we could see, also makes a super place to get gifts for quilters. All of this is the nine-year-old creation of founder and owner Michelle Knight, for whom it represents the fulfillment of a dream.
Michelle happened to be out on an errand when we arrived, so we fell into conversation first with an obliging and cheerful Cheryl Laplante, who was staffing the front-door desk.
Cheryl eventually gave us a tour of the place - and Michelle soon appeared - but not before we asked Cheryl, as we often do wherever we are, a bit about herself and her own background.
Hence, first, a digression here about Cheryl.
She learned quilting herself, she said, in England, from a landlord's daughter who lived next door and was a member of a quilting group.
England?
Cheryl told us that she was a York native who'd graduated from York High School with the class of 1978 and married a man pursuing a career in the Air Force. They met on a blind date when he, who was originally from Manchester, N.H., was stationed at Pease Air Base, while she was working at Bradley's in the Newington Mall.
"Never marry anyone in the military," she reported her mother as advising at the time.
But Cheryl and her husband, Roger Laplante, who now works as an electrician at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, just observed their 26th wedding anniversary on Jan. 16 - and Cheryl says that the travel involved in his Air Force career turned out to be "the best thing for me." It cured a shyness in her, and happily pushed her out to, as she expressed it, "experience the world."
The Laplantes' residence in England, at Lakenheath, about an hour north of London, came when he was sent there following a two-year assignment in Fort Worth, Texas. It would be followed by three years at Loring Air Base in Limestone, Maine ("great, because, though it was six hours from York, it was closer to home") - during which Roger was gone for seven months in the Gulf War - then by six years at Eglin Air Base in Florida.
Their assignment in England was so attractive, Cheryl said, that they opted to stay for three years beyond the first three required. "It was in a little village, very much like New England," she explained, "and we loved it."
Along the way came three children: Roger, III, now 25 and working for a company in Hampton, N.H. called Brazonics, after graduating from the University of Maine with a degree in mechanical engineering; Jonathan, 23, just married in September to Brandi DuPont, of York, and working as a cook at the Lobster Cove Restaurant ("He loves it," said Cheryl, "and doesn't ever want to get done") while working on a degree in digital media at York County Community College, and daughter Elizabeth, who turns 16 this month and is a sophomore at York High School involved in outdoor and indoor track and cross-country.
Did Cheryl keep up the quilting she'd learned in England, we asked?
"Oh, yes!" came the quick and decisive answer, followed by, "Once it gets into your system, you never quit! I love teaching it, I love sharing it."
Cheryl was a Knight's Shop customer when Michelle offered her a job as a staffer and she began in January. Prior to that, she'd worked for seven-and-one-half years as a special education technician in the York Schools, at Coastal Ridge first, then, and for four years, at York Middle School.
"I loved working with the kids, and I still miss them, and the teachers were a great group to work with, but I was getting burned out," she said.
Now, she reports, at Knight's she "does everything:" helps customers pick out patterns and fabric, cuts material, answers any quilting questions, assists Michelle with ordering, checks on supplies.
"Whatever needs to be done, we do it," she said.
And, she volunteered, "Michelle's the best boss you could ever want to have. She's the greatest."
Next time: more on Michelle and this extraordinary spot.
