Shopping in Merrimack

For over 25 years, Franklin Block Opticians' two resident eye doctors have pored over eyes, expeditiously filling precise prescriptions in their onsite lab. The staff, meanwhile, curates their frame selection with a keen eye for style, featuring designs from Dolce & Gabbana, Versace, and Armani that keep vision blur-free and adept at Italian accents.

Artisan clayworkers toil over Great Bay Pottery's ever-ready kilns crafting one-of-a-kind stoneware pottery, including sturdy floor vases, convenient serving dishes, and all manner of saucers for UFO hoaxing. Patient clients can watch as potters spin their new piece of practical decoration into existence and finish the piece to their specifications with painted and glazed designs in nautical, arboreal, or impressionistic themes, among many other options. For a small fee, the potters will inscribe any piece with a message for personalized gift giving.

At Jo-Ann's Gardens, rainbows don’t just spring from clouds. They can be grown from the ground up, with help from raindrops, sunbeams, and earthworms’ sweet, tender lullabies. Some rainbows are made of flowers such as geraniums and petunias, which bloom from hanging baskets and patio pots. Others pepper the tree nursery, where evergreens mingle with budding hydrangea and sugar maples that blush red come fall. Proven Winners annuals add pop to garden beds in the spring and summer, and perennials weather harsh winters to bloom year after year. The garden center also peddles plant-tending tools, landscaping staples, and garden decorations, which range from stone statues to three hues of mulch. In addition to cultivating seedlings in seven greenhouses, attentive staffers arrange cut blooms at the floral shop and install sod, ponds, and irrigation systems through a landscaping service. :m]]

Inside a sea-foam green shingled house nestled on a verdant, wooded property, A Pot of Gold Gift Shop hoards more than 5,000 European beads and charms. Owner Laurette Baenziger leads jewelry-making classes where guests can craft bracelets using their favorites from a selection of more than 2,000 shiny charm beads that would drive a magpie to madness. In addition to premade jewelry and handbags, the shop stocks natural shea-butter skin lotion from Dolce Mia and Swanky Sweet Pea bath products shaped like cupcakes and cookies that soothe and smoothen skin with cocoa butter or sweet almond oil.