Spanish Fork resident turns crochet hobby into stocking business
A selection of stockings made by Crystal Jewkes, owner of Timeless Christmas Stockings, in her home in Spanish Fork on Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2012. SPENSER HEAPS/Daily Herald
A detail of a stocking made by Crystal Jewkes, owner of Timeless Christmas Stockings, in her home in Spanish Fork on Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2012. SPENSER HEAPS/Daily Herald
A selection of stockings made by Crystal Jewkes, owner of Timeless Christmas Stockings, in her home in Spanish Fork on Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2012. SPENSER HEAPS/Daily Herald
Crystal Jewkes, owner of Timeless Christmas Stockings, poses for a photo in her home in Spanish Fork on Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2012. SPENSER HEAPS/Daily Herald
Spanish Fork resident Crystal Jewkes, 39, launched her career in handmade Christmas stockings when she was just 3 years old. Not that she realized it at the time: While visiting her grandparents, the very young Jewkes acquired a lifelong interest in crochet that probably came about largely as a means to occupying the attention of a typically rambunctious toddler. “I would just sit with my grandmother and crochet,” Jewkes said.
Now a married mother of five, Jewkes, who also teaches secondary education at Brigham Young University, sells her signature Christmas stockings out of her home as Timeless Christmas Stockings (www.timelesschristmasstockings.com). Her husband, Tony Jewkes, who handles business development and marketing for Utah-based law firm Heideiman McKay Heugly & Olsen (HMHO), said he recently bought a large map of the United States and started using push pins to track where orders have been coming from.
“We’ve spanned the country already,” he said. “We’ve had orders from Washington, California, Florida, Maine and a lot of places in between.”
Jewkes started making her stockings more than a decade ago, but didn’t go into business selling them until recently. “For so many years she just made them and gave them to people,” Tony Jewkes said. “A lot of people suggested to her, ‘You really ought to sell these.’ “
Using Google, Tony Jewkes, 43, discovered that people frequently searched on the Web for high-quality Christmas stockings. People like Carol Linde, a self-described “summer Minnesotan” who spends her winters in Texas with her husband, Ken. Linde said that she wanted to find something special for her children and grandchildren.
“I Googled ‘Christmas stockings,’ ” Linde said. “I think she was on the third or fourth page.” Linde ordered 13 stockings and was so pleased that she sent Jewkes a photo of the entire family with their stockings. “I told her we will treasure them forever,” Linde said.
Starting out young
Jewkes turned out to be a quick study in crochet, all those years ago. At age 4, she made her first wearable item, a dark-purple sweater. “I still have it in my cedar chest,” Jewkes said. “My mom was so proud. She made me wear it one time for a talent show.”
As she got older, Jewkes said, her interest in crocheting hit a “sabbatical” period, but came back strong in her middle school years when she started to want to give Christmas gifts to her friends. “My mom would say, ‘Why don’t you make them something?’ ” Jewkes said.
A few years later, a brother asked Jewkes to make him a hat to wear to a high school football game. He went to Walmart to get yarn for her in his school colors, and she finished the hat in “about an hour.” “He came home from the game and said, ‘I have 10 orders for you. My friends all want them, too,’ ” Jewkes said.
By the time she was attending college at Utah State University, Jewkes had a regular sideline in hand-crocheted beanies. “While I was in college, I crocheted every spare minute,” she said. “I thought, ‘Well, it will pay for my tuition.’ My mom would say, ‘I’m going to the store, how many skeins of yarn do you need?’ That’s how she supported me through college. She supplied the yarn.”
For a while, Jewkes said, she would go to bed at night with ice and braces on her sore wrists. Since then, she said, “I’ve discovered ways to protect myself.” That includes doing less crocheting overall, as well as adding regular stretching exercises to her routine.
Also in college, Jewkes met her future husband — although she knew about him before knowing him. “Everyone who knew us wanted us to meet really bad,” she said. “It took us a while to actually meet — it was one of those things where I was dating somebody, and then that ended.”
The magic moment finally arrived while Jewkes was standing in line at the post office with her sister: “She nudged me and said, ‘Do you know who that is?’ I walked over to him and said, ‘So I hear we’re going to be a hot item.’ ” The first date was a few days later at Mandarin Garden in Logan.
A natural instinct
Tony Jewkes still has the first hand-crocheted item that he got from his wife. “It’s a knitted cap, a black beanie. I wore it the other day. I look pretty tough in it,” he said. On many of their early dates, Tony Jewkes said, Crystal had a crocheting project in her hands. “She can crochet pretty much anywhere,” he said, adding the she often crochets on long drives.
It’s not an aptitude that the couple shares. “There was one time where I thought, ‘You know what, I’m intrigued,’ ” Tony Jewkes said. He told his wife that he wanted to learn how she did it: “I think the lesson lasted about five minutes and she gave up on me.”
For Crystal Jewkes, crocheting is largely instinctual. She made her first Christmas stocking by thinking through what she wanted and then simply jumping in. “I struggle very much following patterns,” she said. “I have a pile of pattern books because, ‘What a perfect gift to give Crystal, a crochet pattern book!’ But I just don’t understand them.”
She does a lot of her crocheting for Timeless Christmas Stockings while watching movies. “Tony will say to me, ‘So what are we watching tonight?’ ” she said. Jewkes said she realized pretty quickly after starting to sell her work that she’d never keep up on her own, and spent a few years finding a supplier that could meet her standards. “They have to look exactly like mine, or I will not put my name on them,” she said.
There’s still plenty for Jewkes to do, however, and her business is growing slowly but steadily.
Spanish Fork resident Lacey McVea ordered five stockings last year after attending a Christmas party at the Jewkeses’s home. “They were displayed all around her house, and I just fell in love,” McVea said. In a sense, the stockings practically sell themselves. “When I posted photos of our stockings on my blog, I got so many compliments,” McVea said. “I just referred them all to Crystal’s website.”
Jewkes said she’ll be happy with whatever level of business Timeless Christmas Stockings eventually settles in at: “Just to see that people love them has made me very happy.” And she still loves to crochet. “It’s very relaxing to me,” Jewkes said. “I’m not going to lose my crocheting any time soon.”