Personalities Of The Peninsula: Cedar’s Slow Fashion Maven Melissa Kelenske

Melissa Kelenske has soared through seventeen summers in retail in the county — even more if you count the summer jobs she had while a high schooler at Glen Lake. Time flies when you’re having fun, but retail burnout is real, too. She counters it with a late-season swim at Good Harbor, or with a mood-shifting, five-minute stop on the side of a Leelanau County road on the way home.

Kelenske is a professional knitter, supporter of fellow makers across the county (pictured above, modeling the Suttons Bay clothing brand Toile and Stripes), and one half of the radiant duo behind the Wool & Honey yarn shop in the village of Cedar. Kelenske bought the yarn shop in 2006, with her best friend/sister Liz Neddo becoming her business partner in 2012.

Being fully present and face-to-face with customers is still the backbone of the business, Kelenske says, but so is fostering close-knit ties to the county for customers who have never been here. She handwrites thank yous to their 400 yarn club members, and also connects with fiber artists all over the country writing their Instagram and Facebook feeds, and the shop's weekly email newsletter that reaches tens of thousands. 

Leelanau Ticker: Who are your customers these days?
Kelenske: Probably half of our customers are people that may not ever cross the actual physical threshold, but what they like about this place is that it’s like a relationship. [That can mean] when I decide, yes, I'm going to make a handknit sweater, I know that this yarn came from an alpaca farm in Empire.

Leelanau Ticker: Would you say that the social media arm of your business is a huge part of how you can make a storefront in Cedar work?
Kelenske: Absolutely. That's the contrast from the late 2000s to now. I mean, I'm thinking about this woman, Cassie, who lives in Pennsylvania, whom I've never met, but is an original yarn club member. We're on peoples’ bucket list. I think it's just people wanting to be connected to other people. As I step back, I can kind of see that the way that Liz and I are with our customers is trying to invite people into a space that they may not be physically able to. But that's the beauty of social…

Leelanau Ticker: Do you think that’s also because your notes and dispatches are from Leelanau County?
Kelenske: Yes. But we've found that because we have always lived it, it’s not a schtick.

Leelanau Ticker: These seem like good times for business, but it wasn’t always that way?
Kelenske: The first almost seven years were just really slow, really hard, really bad years. And I had tried to sell it.

Leelanau Ticker: Good ol' burnout?
Kelenske: I was doing all of the things alone. Seven months out of the year, seven days a week. Then my sister said, ‘instead of selling it, let me be your partner. We can do more together, and when I can help you physically do things…then sales will come from it.’

Leelanau Ticker: And that came true?
Kelenske: Not initially, but yes. I love the reach that we can have now, that 10 years ago was not possible with only a traditional brick-and-mortar. But I do sometimes wish that we could go back to the days of just unlocking the door and being with people face-to-face. That is just not sustainable these days.

Leelanau Ticker: Your social media posts and your newsletters are both grounding and revealing. How did you come to this very open way of talking with customers?
Kelenske: Not having any real formal training, businesswise? So stumbling into doing what feels right after lots of things didn't feel right for a long time. Maybe some people would say, ‘oh, this is too touchy-feely’ or ‘too much of me’…but at the same time, all we ever need and want is to connect to other people. So, I’m just not going to stop doing it. [Laughs]

Leelanau Ticker: Do work and life blur when you are sharing so much of yourself?
Kelenske: I would love to say balance is the direction that I'm aiming for. But I just don't know if it's possible. When you're in northern Michigan, that's just how it is. There's a part of you that is, you know, always doing a little bit of work and always a little bit of home. It's just this layered story that everybody's got.

Leelanau Ticker: In your family that's true, right? Your husband Curtis is part of a fifth generation farm raising cattle in Leelanau County.  And many have tasted Curt’s Corn!
Kelenske: Yes. We are not currently living on the farm…we live just a mile away. We knew we wanted to be close to continue to be a part of the farm.

Leelanau Ticker: Do you harvest corn with Curt?
Kelenske: Before we had our kids [Sasha and Sienna] I would! This year I went out on his last night of picking. With five teenagers out there with us, we picked 600 dozen ears in three hours.

Leelanau Ticker: Wow! 600 dozen.
Kelenske: It was right before Labor Day weekend…and he had to go back to school!

Leelanau Ticker: Right, because he's also a teacher…what does he teach?
Kelenske: Fifth grade at Leland Public School.

Leelanau Ticker: Where did you grow up?
Kelenske: We grew up near Glen Lake School and La Becasse. I am a native Burdickville-ian! My first job was in Glen Arbor. I worked at Glen Eden Resort, which is sadly gone now. I was a waitress. It was an “American Plan Resort” and guests in the little cottages and rooms upstairs would come to this communal room for breakfast and dinner. It wasn't fine dining but the food was incredible. And I've worked in all of these other places in Glen Arbor: Cherry Republic, Western Avenue Grill. After college, I was the production manager at Leelanau Coffee, worked at Coldwell Banker on Saturdays.

Leelanau Ticker: So you never went to business school, but had a real-life immersion in Glen Arbor?
Kelenske: Absolutely.

Leelanau Ticker: What’s it like being a retail business owner now in Cedar?
Kelenske: Cedar is so comfortable and also filled with incredible talent. Dana Fear is a metalsmith across the street and her work is so exquisite. She is a genius. She makes what’s called kinetic jewelry. Liz Saile up the street. The Polish Art Center. And and it's incredibly easy for our customers to come in, sail into a parking spot, and not be rushed. And that just makes sense for slow fashion like ours. When you are knitting, you're doing it oftentimes intentionally to just wind down. Cedar makes it incredibly easy for customers to decompress.

Leelanau Ticker: What do you see as the future of retail in the county?
Kelenske: It’s always a little precarious. We're not sure what that looks like it…I mean, for us, it absolutely is staying here. When we shut down in 2020 for about eight weeks, we said, ‘maybe we should just do retail online only. Because this would be a lot easier…wouldn't that be great?’ But then another famous yarn shop on Bainbridge Island shut down. And it made us feel like ‘no, this is why you have to do it.’ Even if people will never be able to come, they know that they can call up a place called Wool & Honey. We are really here.

Leelanau Ticker: Things are at a crossroads in the county with more people moving here, and people needing to move away as well. What does that have you thinking about?
Kelenske: I would like to see Leelanau be a place for more people, and that all people who are interested in being here can be here. And there are some real roadblocks right now for that, affordable housing primarily. I think that we need to kind of reconfigure our thoughts about what housing looks like in northern Michigan. And it does not include all single-family dwellings. Leelanau County has always attracted people who understand how lovely it is. And oftentimes those people...have so many gifts to bring. I think people have shown that they are incredibly creative in the ways that they make life happen and thrive. But I am scared that people are just barely surviving. And I want them to have the right to thrive, yes, in a location that is good for them and that feels right for their family. And for that to be true for people in every type of community.