2013 in review and a give-away contest
Happy New Year everyone! I hope that this upcoming year is a happy and properous one for you and yours with lots of yarny goodness in it.
2013 was another year of growth for me with regards to Yvieknits Yarns. I hosted my first open house for Yvieknits Yarns at my house on Saturday, February 9th to celebrate the first anniversary of my website. Everyone who attended seemed to have a great time and several expressed the hope that I would have another open house. I decided to host one every six months (the next one will be on Saturday, February 8th).
I attended The Gathering in Port Hope for the second time on Saturday, April 13th and it was a lovely time. This time, my friend Francine of Fancy That – Creations by Francine attended this event with me.
On Saturday, June 22nd, The Loop in Halifax, Nova Soctia hosted my first trunk show at a yarn store while I have in town visiting my best friend and her family. 
There was a very good selection of my yarns at the show due to the fact that I brought over 100 skeins along with me and that Mimi placed an order with me about two weeks before. I loved the setup that Mimi had to display my yarn in her store.
In August, I hosted my second open house on Saturday, August 10th and Francine and I shared a booth again at the second Twist Festival on August 24th and 25th. We were both pleased to see how much the attendance of this festival had increased from last year.
September was a very busy month for me. I mailed out two yarn orders (1 to The Loop and my first order to The Robbins’ Nest in Brighton, ON). Francine and I attended the second annual Wolfe Island Fibre Fest on Saturday, September 14th and The Robbins’ Nest also hosted a trunk show for Yvieknits Yarns on September 27th and 28th during the annual AppleFest in Brighton.
I was a vendor again at Ottawa Knitting Guild vendors’ night in October. I visited Yarns etc in downtown Ottawa in mid-November with samples of my yarns as I heard that the owner was looking for another local dyer. She agreed to carry my yarn and I brought what I had available for her to choose from a few days later. She decided to carry all 10 of my yarn bases and chose a selection in each of my yarns.
I launched two new yarns this year, Merino Single Ply Fingering and Merino/Silk DK, and I’m pleased to say that they were both well received and three of my retailers are carrying both of these yarns.
I’m happy to report that my total sales for 2013 have more than doubled my sales from last year. To celebrate this fact, I would like to hold another contest to give away a skein of my Merino Single Ply Fingering yarn 
in either the Orange Julius or Pewter colourway (winner’s choice). 
I chose these two colourways (created for Christmas gifts in 2012) since I had added both of these colourways early in 2013 and they have both sold well. These two skeins are still listed on the Merino Single Ply Fingering page so you can see the details but I have temporarily removed the “add to cart” buttons.
Contest Details
For a chance to win your choice of the Merino Single Ply Fingering skeins shown above:
- add a comment to this blog post stating what you would make with this skein if you won
- one entry per person please
- contest closes at midnight on January 8th, 2014 EST
I will use a random generator to pick a winner on January 9th.
Note: Do not worry if your comment is not displayed immediately. I manually review all comments that my anti-spam filter flags as spam every day and I will restore your comment.