{"id":37064,"date":"2025-10-23T13:35:02","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T17:35:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=37064"},"modified":"2025-10-23T13:35:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T17:35:14","slug":"needles-knits-set-to-close-after-more-than-30-years-helping-keep-aurora-cozy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/needles-knits-set-to-close-after-more-than-30-years-helping-keep-aurora-cozy\/","title":{"rendered":"Needles & Knits set to close after more than 30 years helping keep Aurora cozy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Needles & Knits, Aurora\u2019s only wool shop, is set to close this fall after more than 30 years of helping knitters in the community keep their loved ones warm and cozy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Founded 31 years ago by Tove Gilje, a resident of Aurora for 41 years, the store is winding down operations this fall as the 81-year-old business owner eyes retirement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A native of Norway, Gilje grew up in a time where knitting was not only a popular pastime, but a necessity \u2013 and even something that was taught in schools. Times may have changed, but the passion for the craft has not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI come from Norway and when we grew up, it was considered one of the poorest countries in Europe; it\u2019s not anymore because they found oil in the North Sea and that changed the whole economic picture, but when I grew up, we were a poor country and Norway had been occupied for five years and had absolutely no resources,\u201d Gilje shares. \u201cSo, we learned to knit. We had to keep the sheep farmers alive! That\u2019s how we learned in school and knitting and crocheting was part of the curriculum.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After she and her husband, Terke, came to Canada, they settled in this community where they ran an ocean transportation business, a venture that might seem unlikely for a rather landlocked town like Aurora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe made it work,\u201d says Tove, but, as she approached her 50th<\/sup> birthday, she was looking for new challenges and a change of pace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy husband and I worked together, but you can only do that for so many years \u2013 and either you get a divorce or you get into something else,\u201d she says with a laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knitters and crocheters may be forgiven for letting out a sigh of relief she chose that second path; while there were three wool shops in Aurora when she first moved here in 1984, the last one closed the same year she opened Needles & Knits on Yonge Street, just north of Kennedy, in a former house that had seen many years as an antiques shop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cProbably very poorly,\u201d she says with a chuckle when asked about how she went about building the business from the ground up. \u201cI had no background in retail, so it slowly grew. This is a peak-and-valley type of business, but knitting and crocheting will never go away. It\u2019s been a joy to build this up and be able to help and assist people who do this type of craft.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back at what set Needles & Knits apart in the knitting and crocheting community, Gilje takes great pride in her knowledge of fibres, different kinds of yarns, offering a variety, and being able to provide advice on which materials work best for specific projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She finds customers often come in with, at the very least, a \u201cbasic knowledge of knitting,\u201d but \u201cwhat I often find is that when you use a pattern, most of them have been translated from a different language and that translation can be somewhat confusing. That\u2019s where I come in because I speak German and all the Scandinavian languages except Finnish.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you run into a problem, either you give it up or you get help and I would like people not to give up, but to help them over that hurdle,\u201d says Gilje, noting that with her closure, a \u201cfriendly competitor\u201d in Newmarket might be the last one in York Region still standing. \u201cI\u2019m very proud of what I have done. I feel I accomplished something and now Karen in Newmarket will continue. I usually say we\u2019re friendly competitors; we cooperate and I will continue to give her a hand when she needs it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for what\u2019s next?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI probably should catch up with all the things I should have done over the years at home,\u201d she smiles. \u201cI have no regrets. It\u2019s been fantastic \u2013 a really fantastic 30 years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Needles & Knits, Aurora\u2019s only wool shop, is set to close this fall after more than 30 years of helping knitters in the community keep their loved ones warm and cozy. Founded 31 years ago by Tove Gilje, a resident of Aurora for 41 years, the store is winding down operations this fall as the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":37065,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/2025-10-23-07.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9DO","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 22:46:08","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37064"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37066,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37064\/revisions\/37066"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}