How we choose yarn

I was recently asked how I choose which yarns to buy.

First of all, it's really hard! There are so many choices! Jill and I do most of the buying at the needlearts trade shows. That gives us an opportunity to look at lots of yarn and make comparative decisions. We consider patterns we may be designing or want to design, what we think will sell in the shop, and many other factors.

However, yarn we purchase must meet criteria we have for yarns that are sold by Y2Knit. I like to say that every yarn has a story. If there's no story, that is, no interesting facts about that yarn that I can tell customers, then it won't fit on the Y2Knit shop. Sometimes the story is very compelling, other times, it's something simple that speaks to us. Here's some examples:

Brown Sheep: We carry several lines from this Nebraska company. We like BS because it's made in the USA and it's a small family business. We are also very turned on by the fact that BS recently put in a wastewater reclamation process that saves over 18,000 gallons of water per day. That's 90% of the water used at Brown Sheep! Robert Wells, PhD developed this system. When I asked Peggy Jo (Brown) Wells why they did this (at their own cost, without raising prices), she simply responded, "Because it's the right thing to do." That's the kind of people I want to do business with.

Some other companies are more obvious as their Fair Trade, environmental and socially responsible practices are part of what forms the company: Be Sweet, Frog Tree, Himalayan Yarn and Malabrigo come to mind. These companies are providing jobs for primarily women in underdeveloped areas. It's a well known fact that when women are employed and earning money they 1) feed their kids and 2) educate their kids. That's changing the world one person at a time.

So how about Kraemer Yarns that employees about 70 people in Nazareth, PA? The mill runs three shifts and is family and community oriented. This small company has demonstrated ingenuity at moving into the hand knitting business after so much of their industrial yarn business went overseas.

All of the American yarn distributors are providing jobs for people in their communities, from sales reps to warehouse workers. Most of these companies are family run businesses. This is a great industry to be part of!