Chapter 11: PLY Turns One!

September has always meant new beginnings to me. Going back to my school days, September meant a new outfit, maybe a new haircut, new grade, new class, sometimes a new school, and new notebooks with crisp lined pages waiting for the date to be printed in the bubbly heart-dotted writing of a pre-teen girl. So it made total sense to me, that Pretty Little Yarns Ltd should open its online doors in September too, and now a full year later, that we celebrate the anniversary of that opening with a sale!  The sale will continue until Wednesday September 4th on all yarns with promo code PLYturns1  

This has been an interesting and exciting year for me filled with so much learning. Learning to run my own small business with photography, marketing, and e-commerce is of course a big one. Learning about myself was an unexpected side effect of working for myself.  And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention learning about the crafting community and about the world at large. I’m so very grateful to all the customers who have bought from us. To the friends and family who have supported us behind the scenes whether as a sounding board or a babysitter. And to the BIPOC, LGTBQ+, fat activists, and other marginalized groups for the emotional labour that they have put out this year which has taught me a lot and lead me on a journey to learn and unlearn even more. And to my husband, Andrew, and partner in all things, for all the late nights and early starts and everything in between.

But this isn’t an academy award speech so, I’ll leave the thank yous right there and look instead on to the exciting things we have in the shop now and in to the next year.  With a background as an interior designer, I have always felt called to design, but with so many beautiful patterns out there I have been petrified to try. Knowing I wanted the shop to have its own pattern collection I instead approached a friend to work with us on the first set of patterns. Jennifer Lam designed and wrote the patterns for the Adaline Collection while I test knit it and worked with Andrew to create the perfect photography and layout. We just soft-released the Adeline Hat pattern at the FibreSpirit Festival and will be bringing the coordinating cowl pattern to the Kitchener-Waterloo Knitters’ Fair.  Soon after the fair you will find these patterns up on Ravelry and our site, so stay tuned!

The cowl pattern isn’t all that’s new at the Fair. We also plan to bring yarns there from our new supplier, Essence of Autumn!  Picking our selection was excruciating because the bases all sound lovely and the colours are gorgeous, but I did my best to pick yarns that complement our current offering, and I know many of you will be happy to hear a number of them are non-superwash.

We still have two sizes of craftvent calendars available for a limited time. Our 12 day calendar, which includes 6 mini skeins and a series of 6 days of treats and tools can be made in a Muppet or Nutcracker theme. Meanwhile our 25 day calendar is made up of 12 mini skeins in both themes, and 13 days of treats and tools. I simply cannot wait to put these little parcels together for you.

In the next year, you can expect to see more items made in house. I don’t want to give it all away, but I already have two patterns in the ideation stage, plus more felted stitch markers, rolags and batts to come, which I am very excited about.

So without further adieu, let’s kick off this next year!  And don’t forget, as our thanks to all of you for taking this journey with us, take 20% off all yarn purchases from now until Tuesday with code PLYturns1.