I can’t believe it’s been a year since our Kickstarter was funded!
Thanks to our backers, we moved out of my basement and into this happy place with our little store up front and space to dye all of our yarn. When we put up the Kickstarter project, we had no idea what would happen and waited with trepidation when it finally went live. After weeks of setting up rewards, crunching numbers for the move and days of filming and editing the video, we pushed the button to make it live with trembling fingers.We held our collective breath, wondering if anyone would even notice.
Imagine our surprise and gratitude as we compulsively hit “refresh” and watched first a few, then many of our friends, customers, family and knitters we have never met pledge to make our dream of a real studio a reality. Only three days! That’s how long it took with so much generous support coming from the knitting community.
I may have cried with relief when we hit the magic mark when we knew we would get funded. I may be tearing up a bit now just remembering it.
In this past year, we’ve gotten the store all outfitted with custom shelves, added a new sink in the dye area and generally made ourselves very comfortable and happy here.
We now have eight people working at the studio, all of whom are amazing. They’re all knitters except our newest person, but she’s a spinner, so it’s okay. Many of our people are either mothers or students, and I try to make it a supportive, welcoming environment for those whose schedules are in flux. We’re working toward a living wage for everyone and a working environment where every person feels valued. I count myself so lucky to have found Amy J, Amy D, Shari, Tashi, Katie, Emily, Sarah, Bug and soon Liz. You could not assemple a more creative, competent, resourceful and hardworking bunch of people.
We’ve held dyeing classes, techniques classes, Machine Knitting classes,a Retreat, a holiday party, Spring Fling, hosted knitting groups, and created Take-Out Tuesday as a beloved shop tradition.
We’re hosting Ann Budd this summer and a second Knitcircus Retreat is in the works for fall with the lovely Susan B. Anderson.
We still have more big dreams of adding more yarn lines, improving the store, traveling to more shows, partnering with more designers and podcasts, hosting more parties, classes and events and maybe even having a mobile store one day.We are enjoying every day in our lovely new digs and cannot thank you enough.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for making our Studio and Store dream come true.
Happy summer,
Jaala