A new yarn store has arrived in Town. Located just above TD Bank on the third floor of 57 Spring St., Gather yarn studio is co-owned by alums Geraldine Shen ’01 and Ashley Weeks Cart ’05 and aims to provide a space for locals to shop, make connections, and knit a few rows. “We want to be a third space,” Shen said in an interview with the Record. “We want students to feel like they have this place to come hang out.”
The studio, which opened on March 18, can be accessed through the building’s side entrance on Bank Street. Gather contains two main spaces, a retail store area and a living room which hosts frequent community events. The main store sells materials for fiber crafts like knitting, crochet, embroidery, and needle-felting. They also sell patterns and craft kits, many of them designed by friends and local artists.
Shen said that Gather tries to represent local makers’ products on its shelves, from yarn to custom patterns. “We’re really lucky that we know these amazingly talented artists, and we really want to emphasize work with local folks in every way possible,” she said.
Shen’s path back to Town was long and winding. After graduating from the College in 2001, Shen worked in consulting before getting her Master’s in international comparative education. Her education and work have taken her all over the world, but of all the places she’s lived, Shen said Williamstown was her favorite. “I’ve lived here the longest of my life, which is kind of incredible,” she said. “Williamstown is a special place, and we’re very happy here.”
Both Weeks Cart and Shen returned to the Berkshires with their husbands in 2010. “We both happened to be married to classmates,” Shen said. Independently, both families had decided on the Purple Valley as a place to settle down. “We had the whole world to choose from … but Williamstown kept cropping up in our conversations as a good place to have a family,” Shen said. After moving back to Town, Shen worked for the College as a senior development officer for five years. Weeks Cart worked in the Alumni Relations office for 12 years while simultaneously operating her own event photography studio, which she still runs.
The idea for Gather came to Weeks Cart and Shen in October 2025. Out of Shen’s kitchen, they began sending out curated yarn boxes to dedicated knitters, which included special features of local artists’ products, like a hand-painted mug, as well as yarns and patterns. “The winter [box] was how we started with our website,” Shen said.
While assembling their initial campaign for Gather’s funding, Shen said that she and Weeks Cart drew on their experiences working in the College’s administration. “I used to work in development, and Ashley worked in alumni engagement, so we felt like we were able to send out a story about what we’re trying to do,” she said. The campaign, which solicited donations directly through their website, aimed to raise $50,000 to fund initial inventory and community outreach events. “We thought it might take maybe two months to finish it, and it took less than two days,” Shen said.
Even with the overwhelming support of their community, finding a home for Gather on Spring Street proved difficult at first, according to Shen. “[It] was a bit of a journey,” she said. “We had been hoping to be on the ground floor, just so that we would be more visible on Spring Street. But there’s not a ton of options.”
The College-owned spaces, which make up around 50 percent of Spring Street, were mostly unavailable during their search, so they decided to explore the space for lease inside 57 Spring St. Previously a law office, the spot fit their needs perfectly. “The skylights [have] that nice natural light, [and] the exposed brick — it just felt like a really lovely space,” Shen said.
Gather filled a niche that was left empty on Spring Street for a long time. “There’s been no yarn shop on Spring Street since the early ’90s,” Shen said.
Making the space feel accessible for students has been a priority for Shen. “We really wanted to be somewhere where it felt easy for the College community to just wander in and do stuff,” she said.
In addition to being a retail space for yarn, equipment, and patterns, Gather is also a community space. It hosts three weekly “sit and stitch” gatherings in its cozy living room where members of the Town and College community gather to celebrate fiberwork and exchange tips. They meet each Wednesday from 5 to 7 p.m., Thursday from 1 to 3 p.m., and Sunday from 10 a.m. to noon. Gather also hosts workshops for creating particular projects, which customer Jen Rork ’95 strongly recommends. “There was a class on knitting two socks at once, which I loved,” Rork said. “I knit like four pairs of socks for myself, and they’re the most indulgent things ever.” Rork, who was an original yarn box subscriber, also designed Gather’s brand identity.
Weeks Cart and Shen have organized several community knitting events to bring stitchwork to the greater Town community. This January, Weeks Cart taught a workshop for fourth graders at the Williamstown Elementary School, which Shen said was funded by a grant from its endowment. With the help of student volunteers from Weeks Cart’s Winter Study class “Knitting for Mindfulness,” they taught each fourth grader how to knit their own square. Each colorful project knitted by the fourth graders has been sewn into a large tapestry, which the owners hang proudly in the entrance to the store.
According to Shen, Weeks Cart gave everyone a pep talk before the class began, but ultimately, it wasn’t necessary. “Like three minutes in, [a fourth grader] was like, ‘I’m amazing at this. Like, I’m so good,’” Shen said.
The workshop was a success, and it even generated some new customers for Gather. “A lot of them have really taken to it,” Shen said. “We’ve had the fourth graders come in and buy yarn for their projects, or come hang out.”
Gather is filled with personal ties to Shen and Weeks Cart’s pasts. In a small coat rack area, a few vintage sweaters are displayed among the jackets and backpacks of current visitors. Inside one light pink cardigan is a label which reads, “Hand Knit by Elizabeth Weeks Zollars,” Weeks Cart’s great-grandmother.
From these antique signs of love to the kid-friendly projects Gather always keeps in stock, the space has become intergenerational, a place where students and locals can form unexpected connections over spun wool. “You’re a student for four years, but you’re an alum forever,” Shen said.
