LYS Review: All Books, Chattanooga, TN

All Books has terrible reviews on Yelp.This is probably because the store has a split personality, both of which could probably be featured on an episode of hoarders. It's definitely the weirdest local yarn shop (LYS) I've ever been in.All Books, as you might guess from its name, is a lot of used books. However, it's also random piles of yarn and features spinning wheels. The store is run by an older woman named Polly who sits in the store and knits and spins all day - you can buy yarn, roving, her handspun, and her handknit hats, scarves, etc. She has also set up a dye kitchen in the shop. Two small dogs also hold court... and I have a suspicion they might bite customers. The terrible reviews on Yelp seem to all come from people wandering in, expecting from the name to find a bookstore. It appears Polly is way more interested in the fiber side, which was great for me.As I mentioned, the shop has a lot of spinning wheels. I currently have a Louet S17 but am thinking of selling it and getting a different one. I went with Louet because I learned on a Louet, but before I upgrade to something else, I wanted to test drive. Polly was thrilled when I came in asking about wheels and seems to be a spinning missionary - she immediately told me she'd give me a great deal and offered to teach me to spin for free. She'll teach anyone to spin for free - at the expense of paying attention to customers coming in looking for books. When I told her I already knew how to spin and wanted to try her wheels, she immediately barked at her young male assistant to start getting down all the wheels, including Schachts, Kromskis, Ashfords, and Majacrafts. I'm fairly certain that this is one of the only stores in the area where you can test any wheels, not to mention such a variety, and the shop gets lots of customers who travel to it specifically for that reason.Unfortunately, not all of the wheels were properly set up because sometimes customers who don't know what they're doing fiddle with them. In any case, I tried a little bit of everything and came away liking the Ashford Kiwi the best but not 100% ready to commit.When I visited the shop a few weeks later, she had gotten all the wheels set up properly, so I ran some roving through a few of the wheels again and determined that the Kiwi was the best fit for me. Polly's pricing method is haphazard - she looks up the price on the Woolery.com website, then knocks off some of the cost arbitrarily. :) She seems to price books the same way, from what I observed of her interactions with book-buying customers. (She gave one guy a discount on a book after she badgered him into getting down a wheel for me.) My new wheel will be shipped straight from the Ashford factory to my home in Kenya, so it'll be a while before I receive it, but I'm really excited. If any of you want a Louet S17 and extra bobbins for a good price, let me know.Along with the wheel, Polly threw me a plastic grocery bag and told me to go fill it with free roving. On my first visit, I had not really wandered the store, being so focused on the wheels. However, everywhere you look, yarn and fiber and STUFF is literally spilling out of bags, out of unlabeled boxes, into walkways, etc. Again, if you're looking for books, the store is claustrophobic. If you're looking for fiber, it's still claustrophobic. However, the tidal waves of things threatening to bury you are things that make you think, "Hmmm. Not a bad way to go...Between my first and second visits, Polly had made some effort at organizing the yarn in the front. I saw Noro, lots of Ice yarn from Turkey, and more Brown Sheep than I've ever seen in my life. Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport is my *absolute favorite* for colorwork, but I have a huge bin of it at home in many colors, so I resisted. Several other yarns of the Brown Sheep company were represented, as well, in quantities that boggled my brain. I think Polly buys the leftovers from color runs. Polly has a habit of steering conversations through a series of complete non-sequiturs, which makes you a little off-balance, but I *think* she said at one point that Brown Sheep dyes lots in batches of 800 lbs at a time. In any case, she assured me that one of the chunks of roving I picked out to take with me was from Brown Sheep, but I'm taking her word for it, since I grabbed it out of a random trash bag.In short, All Books is not your typical LYS. I've never seen anything like it. It was an "experience," as is Polly. You can't go in looking for anything in particular, unless it's a spinning wheel. Everything else is going to be a discovery, as in the kind of discoveries archaeologists make when they unearth treasures buried beneath rubble. But show the slightest interest in yarn or fiber, and Polly will love you.  All Books is located at 410 Broad Street, Chattanooga, TN 37402 and does not have a website.