Leaving her sheep and “yarn farm” behind in Pequot Lakes, MN, Kristin Lindholm and her husband moved to Grand Marais to work in education in 2020. On her first day in town, she had one thing on her mind.
“The first place I went to, obviously, was the yarn shop to find my people,” Lindholm said. “I woke up and I said to my husband I’ll be right back and I walked to the yarn shop.”
Not only did she find her people at Dappled Fern Fibers, but she also found a second home. It was a serendipitous moment, as it was Lindholm’s first day in town and the first day the brick‑and‑mortar shop opened in 2021.
“Here was Dorothy, and she was just so welcoming and so lovely,” Lindholm said. “She was asking me all about who I was and where I was from, and she was so intrigued about being a shepherdess. I just was like, okay, I can live here. I’ve found my place.”
Dorothy Broomall and Mary Ellen Ashcroft founded Dappled Fern Fibers after a Boundary Waters canoe trip in 2020. Seeing a need for knitting supplies and connection during the pandemic, they opened the store online that November.
“For the first year, it was just online sales,” said Lindholm. “From what I understand, people would order online, and she would package things up and put them in a box outside of Drury Lane, and people would go pick up their yarn.”
Broomall wasn’t a knitter herself, but she recognized the need for a place where people could gather around fiber and community. She learned to knit and built the shop around that mission.
“She wasn’t a knitter and became a knitter,” Lindholm said. “But she really formed the yarn shop as a community sort of service of a gathering place to make and be and gather. Her gift was really forming that community and forming spaces where people could gather together and have safety and do something they loved. I think that is still really our big focus of Dappled Fern.”
Lindholm and Broomall became fast friends, and Lindholm began working at the shop the following summer, returning each summer for the next three years. She didn’t know it then, but that first visit would eventually lead her to owning the shop. Broomall, a life coach, later developed a wool allergy and felt called in a new direction. She opened Wandering Fern Retreats in December 2025 and sold the shop to Lindholm, who now works to carry forward the “Make, Gather, Be” mission.
As part of that mission, the shop hosts two Fiber Circles every week, Thursdays from 5:30 to 7 PM and Saturdays from 10 to 11:30 AM. Fiber Circles are open to everyone of any age, skill level, or art form. Some folks knit, some embroider, some mend clothing. Lindholm said they’ve had people come to journal or simply sit with others.
“It’s just kind of an intimate gathering where it’s a safe place to come. You just know that you’re going to be welcome,” she said. “Once the weather gets warmer, we’ll be on the beach, but right now they’re in the shop. It’s something else to be able to sit next to an amazing body of water and an amazing place and just do our art and be a community outside where everyone can see.”
Attendance shifts with the seasons and the week, Lindholm said, sometimes drawing twenty people, sometimes just two or three, but always keeping the same welcoming feel.
Dappled Fern Fibers also offers classes, including a Color Work class taught by Susan Johnson coming up in May. Registration will soon be available on the shop’s website. The class is for advanced beginners.
The shop carries a lot of great finds like embroidery and felting kits, Wooble kits, t‑shirts, and a wide range of tools and supplies. And of course, there is the yarn.
“We’re pretty picky about where we get our yarn,” Lindholm said.
“We have some hand‑dyed yarn that is specific to the North Shore and can only be found in our shop,” she explained. “We have a spring line that has different colors that you would find on the North Shore. They’re dyed by Minnesota dyers called Sister Weekend Yarn. We also have dyed yarn from Lavender Lune Yarn out of Pine River, Minnesota.”
In an unexpected full‑circle moment, Lavender Lune Yarn once used fiber from Lindholm’s own sheep back in Pequot Lakes.
Lindholm feels crafting and learning new things are good for the soul.
“It makes you happier because you’re doing something with your hands and your mind,” she said. “Whenever I sit down and make something, I’m always super joy‑filled.”
That joy is especially felt when she is with her Dappled Fern community, where Lindholm reiterates, “everyone is welcome.”
“Just being in that space, it inspires me,” she said. “It is my happy place. It doesn’t feel like a job to me. It’s everything that I love. The people are just amazing.”
Dappled Fern Fibers is always looking for volunteers. For more information, visit dappledfernfibers.com, find them on Facebook, or stop in and see what you can unfurl at the Dappled Fern.
