Tucked at the back of the narrow strip-mall shop, behind rows of bookshelves, is an unexpected surprise: a sanctuary for knitters and spinners, and a classroom for those who wish they were.

Proprietor Monica Hall made her dream come true when she opened Rumplestiltskin in August, not long after she woke up in the middle of the night with the idea to combine her love for the written word with her appreciation for natural fibers - the stuff that makes knitters and spinners swoon.

Although she competes with other Cache Valley booksellers, the bookshop's emphasis on natural-fiber arts fills a niche in this northern Utah community.

The store's unique inventory includes several types of wool from sheep; long, silky mohair from Angora rabbits and goats; as well as plant fibers that include hemp and soy silk.

A spectrum of colors - ranging from the soft tan and brown animal downs to vibrant hand-painted yarns - can be found in equally diverse textures.

Hyrum resident Tracy Coburn added knitting to her list of hobbies after she noticed the new store that opened near where she works.

She took a beginning-knitting class and has been hooked since.

"There are yarns over that there that you can't find up here at all," Coburn said. "And there's a lot of local people that spin this yarn. That's something real special."

Kelley Fallin is a spinner and weaver who has found a market for her hobby by selling the fibers gleaned from llama and alpaca animals on her Hyde Park farm.

"Natural fibers are so much warmer, and they're so soft," Fallin said. "You feel like you are so close to the earth and to where you came from."

Now that Rumplestiltskin is up and running, Fallin said she looks forward to learning how to knit with the yarns she spins.

"It is so much fun to go over there," she said. "You feel at home immediately."

It was the unique variety of yarn that caught Hall's eye more than a dozen years ago, when she wandered past a spinning wheel at a county fair in California.

"I didn't know what it was. When they explained it to me, I thought, 'I have to do that,' ” she said. "It was the color and texture that attracted me."

Hall had already been a knitter for a decade - long enough to know that she couldn't afford to buy the yarns she liked best. Spinning offered a solution and opened a whole new chapter in her life.

"I saw that there's a way that I can make these yarns," she said. "What you can do as a spinner is limitless. You can make plain yarn. You can make novelty yarns. You can spin any fiber."

For example, over the years, Hall has spun yarn out of winter hair shed by a favorite dog.

And she and her children routinely plucked, from pets kept at home, Angora-rabbit down.

Hall said she is drawn to the folk craft in part because it produces useful objects, such as articles of clothing.

"You can knit or weave something from commercial yarn too, but it's not the same, especially if you're up close and personal with the animal," she said.

Evidence of such spinning dates back 25,000 years, when humans rolled fibers between the hand and thigh to create a primitive yarn, Hall explained. These primitive peoples then tied a stone to it to give it weight and created the first drop spindle - a process that has changed little in modern times. Nearly 500 years ago, spinning wheels evolved, and it became the job of the oldest daughter to do the spinning, hence the name "spinster."

Even today, women in the Andes Mountains in Peru are still walking around following their flocks with a drop spindle in their hands, she said.

ajbrunson@comcast.net