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Retail Supplier to Textile Artists 1971-2001 - 30 Years
now Wholesale Only in Richmond, California

Click to Go to: The Straw Into Gold Menu Page

Straw into Gold was begun in 1971 by Susan Druding and Sambra Neet (Sam left for Oregon in 1973). Andy MacEwan joined Susan as a partner in the late 1970's. Straw survived and grew and added a wholesale branch (Crystal Palace Yarns) which supplies yarns, fibers, Ashford spinning and weaving products and spinning supplies to shops and coned yarns to designers.

In Spring of 2001, after 30 years as a retail store, Straw closed and moved to Richmond, California as Wholesale-only supplier to shops and designers.

Over the years Straw was always been known for its wonderful fiber & yarn oriented staff who did much to make Straw Into Gold a nationally (and internationally) known supplier of yarns, books, fibers, and Ashford Spinning Wheels. We always enjoyed helping customers and students find out about all the aspects of the textile arts. Our Web pages here are now the way to share Straw's textile expertise and knowledge. We want to thank publicly the many, many employees we have come to know during our 30 years in business. If any of you are on the Internet we'd love to hear from you.

Straw Into Gold, Inc./Crystal Palace Yarns wholesales yarns and knitting needles which are shown on the Crystal Palace section of this website. Free Knitting Patterns for  CPY yarns are here.

Straw in Berkeley is Closed
 Photos of Straw Into Gold as it was 12/2000 - HERE

Straw's move to Richmond 2001-2003 - now Crystal Palace Yarns Wholesale
See the moving photos

If you wish to buy our Crystal Palace Yarns and knitting needles,  check the SHOP LIST link at the top of this page.
Straw Into Gold no longer does retail sales.

A list of all our yarns is here.

We have published some of our past articles, handouts, dye recipes, dye history and knitting patterns on the Web. We hope you will find the information useful. During the late 70's and early 80's Susan Druding published the "Textile Artists' Newsletter" (TAN) and some of those out-of-print issues will be scanned for these pages. A series of  TAN Articles on fiber reactive dyes is now here. Use the SEARCH link at the top of the page to search for specific terms on this site.

Click to Go to: The Straw Into Gold Menu Page

You will see Straw Into Gold referred to on these pages by its "nicknames", Straw and SIG.

Here's a photo of the last retail store (taken Dec 2000) showing our "Sale Moving" sign in the window. The sign later changed to "CLOSED"  when we were unable to find a large space to move our retail store. We finished emptying the building on May 12, 2001. 
For more photos click HERE.

straw into gold - Ashby at San Pablo, Berkeley - dec 2000