The six knitters call themselves "The Needle Nuts," but what really makes them wacky is yarn.

"I have more yarn than A.C. Moore," confessed Barbara Devarenne, 52. Responding to a few incredulous looks, she added, "I'm serious."

Fellow Needle Nut Dawn McCormick nodded solemnly. "She's serious."

So having Linda Ostroff and her traveling yarn shop come to their recent weekly meeting at Mary Lou Cuneo's Franklinville home - with seemingly endless skeins of yarns in all colors and materials spreading over three tables - was a dream come true. Or a nightmare. Depends on your point of view.

"It can be overwhelming, especially if you're a fiber nut," Ostroff said. "I have customers who see a yarn and say, 'I cannot live a day without buying that yarn.'"

For about a decade, Ostroff has been in the online yarn business, working out of her Clayton home. But last fall, a customer an hour's drive away in central New Jersey asked Ostroff to bring her wares to a knitting circle.

It was, Ostroff says, her "Aha!" moment. The knitters loved the chance to feel and even try the yarns before buying, a sort of "yarn tasting." Thrilled by the success, Ostroff decided to make the traveling shop her thing, visiting knitting groups at homes, in libraries or at restaurants from North Jersey to Virginia. She now visits two or three groups a week, free of charge unless the location is more than 25 miles from her base. Her prices range from $2.99 to $86 a skein.

It's a simple business model: If the customers can't come to you, then you go to them. But Ostroff didn't change her way of doing business out of necessity - she still does, after all, have customers buying from her online store. She went on the road because she enjoys meeting fellow knitters, sharing ideas for new projects, and recommending new products.

In some ways, it's like any other at-home sales party, whether it features candles or kitchen products. What makes this experience unique is Ostroff herself. She is a natural show-off, a little loud, a little brassy, happily working a room of fellow fiber fans. She teases, cajoles, laughs. She rushes around her tables of wares, putting different yarns side-by-side then announcing them as "fabulous" or tossing them aside as unfit to go together.

"The No. 1 rule of selling is you have to believe in what you sell, and I totally love this," said Ostroff. She gives "old enough to be a grandmother" as her age.

"This is not work."

Ostroff says that now is the perfect time for yarn sales with a twist: In trying economic climates, people tend to nest, she said, staying home more and doing "comfort things, and there is a comfort to knitting," she said.

The Needle Nuts enthusiastically agree. Davarenne, of Winslow, came across Ostroff's Web site a few months ago and found that Ostroff carried yarns not available in local stores. She invited Ostroff to a Needle Nuts gathering.

"I spent $180 that night," Davarenne admitted. "I still have an outstanding order."

Part of Ostroff's appeal is her offerings: Besides offering yarns from well-known retail companies, she also sells her own custom blends, more than 300 of them, like "Too Hot to Handle," a blend of black, purple and red with an eyelash effect - little strands of thread seemingly winking at the buyer.

Another is her attitude. "Don't ask me anything important or say anything profound," she quipped before running out of the room for a moment. To McCormick, who took a seat far from the yarn tables and tried to avoid even looking at the products, she asked, "You're not on a diet, are you?"

And, of course, there is her discretion, key for these yarn addicts. Once, Ostroff said, a woman came to one of her shows carrying her jacket. She knotted one sleeve at the bottom, pushed her purchases into the sleeve, then exited, telling her husband she hadn't found anything she liked.

Other clients ask Ostroff to ship their goods to addresses other than their own.

"If you just paid something off before you come to one of these, that's a good thing," said Carol Thomas, 60, a school bus driver who knits during stops.

Even though all of the Needle Nuts had pledged they only wanted to see Ostroff's new yarns, not buy any, three of them ended up making purchases. Thomas, of Grenloch, thoughtfully mulled over a bright tropical blend of wools that she thought would make a nice sweater for her granddaughter. Karen DePasquale, 45, of Williamstown, picked out three skeins of orange yarn that she planned to use - somehow. Eventually.

"Sometimes you have the pattern and look for the yarn. Sometimes you have the yarn and look for the pattern," she said.

McCormick stayed in her seat at the outskirts of the room, sneaking side glances at the other knitters and the yarn displays. She tried to be strong - and then she saw the brown skein of thin, silky yarn that created a spider-web effect once knit.

"Michelle, pick up that yarn," she ordered another knitter. "I'm not touching it. If I touch it, I'll buy it."

She touched it.