Happiness is Having a Needle in My Hand: Loretta Spear's Stitching Life

Loretta Spears owned a needle arts shop in Arvada, Colorado called Fiesta Needlearts.  It was there she started designing counted canvaswork charts and mystery projects that were published between roughly 1986-2000.  The Denver newspaper took photos of her inside Fiesta Needlearts in 1974 so the shop was open a good long while.

https://lorettaspears.blogspot.com/2014/01/1979-photograph-of-loretta-spears.html

Apparently her shop offered counted canvaswork and cross stitch charts, plus crewel and latch hook designs as well as knitting wool.  Her husband Max also did framing in the shop.
https://lorettaspears.blogspot.com/2014/10/beginning-needlepoint-at-loretta-and.html

Here's a photograph showing her in her shop.  The background appears to show knitting wool in bins.
https://lorettaspears.blogspot.com/2014/01/1974-photograph-of-loretta-spears-in.html

I have photos of a selection of her business cards.
https://lorettaspears.blogspot.com/2012/02/lorettas-business-cards.html

The "Happiness is Having a Needle in My Hand" title above is a quote from Loretta Spears' online notification that her lease had changed and she was giving up her shop.  Loretta closed her shop in the fall of 1996.  Her last ornament chart is dated December 1996.  She also used this quote in some of her instructions.  I've seen it in the chart for Galaxy, for example.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.crafts.textiles.needlework/McNsJj3OEoU

Her first mystery design was released in 1993.  These appear to have been offered to customers at the shop and were also available to online customers at a forum on RCTN.  This was a time of real productivity on Loretta's part as there were fourteen designs in all.  The last design was released in 2000 so she must have designed roughly two mystery projects a year over this seven year period.  The mystery designs were meant to be handed out a lesson at a time (you can find them on eBay with all the lessons still sealed) although I think once they were available for a while, Loretta would sell a kit with everything included.
http://lorettaspears.blogspot.com/2015/09/a-message-from-loretta-with-mystery-13.html

The ornaments she designed appear to have been first available in the mid- to late 1980s and she published charts for them until 1996, probably because she closed her shop in the fall of 1996.  At first she called most Christmas Heirlooms and used the Loretta Spears Designs name, then started giving them names under the Christmas Heirlooms Collection name.   In January 1994 Loretta dropped "Christmas Heirlooms" from the name of her small ornaments charts and used only "Needle Adventures" as the publication name.  In 1995-96 Loretta started using the Loretta Spears Designs name again instead of Needle Adventures on her chart cover sheets.

If the cover pages for her Needle Adventures charts interest you, here is a link.
https://lorettaspears.blogspot.com/2015/09/lorettas-needle-adventures-cover-sheet.html

If the covers for her mystery designs interest you, here is a link.
https://lorettaspears.blogspot.com/2012/04/mystery-chart-cover-pages-and-ebay.html

After her death from cancer (?) in roughly 2002-2003 (I don't know the exact date), Loretta Spears' family honored her wishes by not republishing any of her mystery designs or ornament charts and have refused multiple offers to license her designs.  I know some of her models, threads, and unsold charts and mystery instructions were sold by her son at an estate sale in the summer of 2015.