November 2022 Newsletter

Two months to Christmas and we have plenty of choices of presents for you and your crafty friends and family members. There are always gift vouchers that can be used to purchase or part-purchase anything in the shop, including classes. But wait, there’s more. Read on!!

Sale on Cotton and Wool Fabrics!

All our beautiful woven winter wools, woven wool blends, and cotton velvet fabrics are now on sale at 20% off their regular prices.

And so are our craft cottons (except for those in our Japanese section). There are excellent bargains to be had here: we’ve even marked down brand new fabrics to make room for other stock.

New knitting accessories

Speaking of other stock, we have some new knitting accessories:

• bamboo bowls for your wool,
• knitting bags in several styles,
• comb-style knit blockers,
• boxes of 100 locking stitch markers,
• the brand new book Invasive Hats, containing 8 wonderful colour-work hat patterns,
• swivel cables for KnitPro tips
• ‘Mindful’ row counters.

Some of our supply lines are a bit shaky still but you can always ask us to try to get in anything you want that we don’t have on the shelves.

Classes

Our new adult class schedule through to the end of year is up and running so if you’re keen to learn or improve a crafty skill, enrol now! Class sizes are capped at 6, which makes for an excellent learning environment – and actually we can’t cope with more than that in our classroom or around the table in the shop!

We strive to keep our class fees low, which means we need good enrolment numbers for a class to proceed. Sometimes we have to cancel or defer a class because too few have enrolled and, much as we hate to disappoint those who have enrolled, we just can’t run too many classes at a loss. One thing enrolees can do to increase the changes of the class happening is persuade a friend to do it too!

I’m interested to hear customers’ views: do we increase our class prices so we can go ahead with fewer enrolees or do we stick with our policy of keeping class prices down? Is there a middle ground?

Yarn news!

As has become normal in these abnormal times, some yarns aren’t available when we would like to have them but, overall, things are better right now - just as we head into summer when there’s less demand for many yarns! We’re very happy to have back in stock Touch Yarns 12 ply mohair merino and the possum silk merino. Our selection of fuzzy yarns is the best ever, with the recent addition of wonderful colours of Katia Ingenua (78% alpaca) and Sesia Eiffel and Vivienne (70% mohair 30%/silk). And we still have some Rowan Tweed Haze and all the available yummy colours of Indiecita 14ply alpaca.

We’ve also brought in most of the latest 8 ply Chaska Muhu alpaca range - but we have no space to display it yet! (Hence the sales of other stock). If you can’t wait to see it, just ask. Other retailers price it at up to $19 for a 50 gram ball but we’ll be selling it for $15.

Yarnologie Volume 3 coming soon!

The next issue of the popular magazine Yarnologie is due here soon. If you want to put your name down for one of our 12 copies, phone or email us. You can find the last one here.

Buttons

Those of you who shop here often will know we are button boffins. Keeping up a great selection of quality buttons isn’t easy but we do our best. We’re very pleased to have back in stock some “old man” leather buttons in black and brown. Jo’s dad – and probably many other people’s dads - had a sports jacket with these buttons on and they evoke fond memories so she was especially pleased when her son chose the same buttons recently for his snuggly shawl collar cardi.

Yuri bears for Ukraine!

We were able to contribute 90 lovingly knitted bears to Rymans for their appeal for gifts for Ukrainian children. A big thankyou to all our customers and staff who made them. They were beautiful and characterful - each one different from any other. (The photo is of our second batch of bears!)

One bear arrived in the shop soon after the cutoff date of 30 September. If it’s yours, we can return it - or we can give it to Crafting Threads of Aroha.

Other charity news

This is a reminder that we’re a drop-off point for donations to Crafting Threads of Aroha – a group of volunteers who make and distribute handmade items for babies, children and adults who need them. You can ask to join the group’s facebook page and, once approved, you‘ll see what other members are doing and what items are needed. It’s very humbling to see how generous so many people are with their time and skills. The recipients range from newborns to hospice patients to homeless people and others going through very hard times.

Several of our customers are regular and plentiful donors of beautiful woollen clothes and rugs to this very worthwhile charity. Another option if you want to help is to donate clean wool and fabric to be used by Crafting Threads volunteers to make items that are needed.

$3000 prize winner from our shop!

A woman from Auckland rang Jo this week to say that, through her purchase at our shop when she was visiting for WOW, she’s won the WellingtonNZ/WOW $3000 spending spree prize! (And she is looking to spend a good part of it in the shop – hooray). We are delighted! We gave out hundreds of those wee purple flyers and did our spiel about keeping your receipt and entering the competition online – and it’s excellent to know that it paid off for one of our customers. You gotta be in to win!

Social media updates

If you don’t follow us on Facebook or Instagram, please consider doing so as those are additional ways of keeping up to date with what’s happening in the shop. We post news of classes and new stock regularly, and of sales, and things we’re proud of – including customers’ creations and our window displays. We aim to inspire you or at least make you smile!

Best wishes

from Jo, Robyn, Jess, Toni, Annie, Vincent and Cerys