Yarn Harvest

We pulled apart our 100th sweater today!  It kind of crept up on us, but while we were stamping on sweater lot numbers, there is was: one, zero, zero.

The sweater of honor was a very dark blue, tweed sweater, which pulled apart nicely into a plump pile of 5 skeins.  Here is the sweater:

And presto, here is its light worsted weight yarn:

I doesn’t feel like we’ve pulled apart that many sweaters.  In fact it feels like we got started just yesterday.  I guess time flies,  at least when we’re working in the “sweatshop,” aka my garage.  I must say that I’m looking forward to sweater #200, then #500… and then #1,000 and onwards.  We are definitely growing bigger.

Which brings us to the second milestone we’ve reached.  Yarn Harvest yarn is now available in a brick-and-mortar retail establishment!  More specifically, an artisan gallery here in East Austin.  This is a big step for us and we are naturally excited about it.  The gallery is called Goods East and it is located at 1601 E Cesar Chavez.

Looking forward to seeing everyone at HOPE Farmer’s Market this Sunday.  HOPE was recently named the best thing to do in Austin on Sundays by the Austin Chronicle, and I couldn’t agree more.  Come see us and enjoy the last weekend in January.

Cheers,

Greg

IMPORTANT NOTE: We will NOT be at the HOPE Farmer’s Market either January 3rd or 10th.  We are taking a much needed vacation to recharge our batteries after the busy holiday season.  We will be back at HOPE for regular business starting Sunday, January 17th.

The year 2009 was a very good year for Yarn Harvest.  And we want to thank everyone for the absolutely amazing support and feedback we’ve received.  This is our first try at being entrepreneurial and it definitely has a learning curve to it.  Happily though, we say goodbye to the decade knowing that we have everything set up for us to keep growing in 2010.  We are sustainable ourselves… which is always a good feeling.

So what are our plans for 2010?  Well, for starters we are going to begin offering more products salvaged from sweaters.  In addition to yarn skeins, we will also be selling felt pieces and buttons for your crafting needs.  We will also be exploring the possibilities of us starting to sell our yarn in area yarn shops.  If all goes well, Yarn Harvest will soon be coming to a store near you!

But mostly, we want to focus on getting to know more knitters and crocheters in the first months of 2010.  It has been the most pleasant surprise to find that the thing we enjoy most about setting up shop at HOPE is meeting our customers. It keeps us motivated and constantly exited to be doing what we do.

So on that note,  I want to wish all of our friends, old and new, the very, very best and a Happy New Year.

Cheers,

Greg

Badda bing…  Badda boom.  Out rolls my newest and shiniest koozie to-date.  I cast on fewer stitches this time, so it fits like a glove.  And narry a dropped stitch in the entire project, if I may say so myself.  I think one more koozie like this and I’ll be able to declare mastery over all koozies that are orange, light-worsted weight, and made-up as I go along.

The thing I learned this koozie, was how using different combinations of stitches really makes a difference in how tight-knit the koozie turns out.  The bottom half of the koozie is seed stitch, while the top half is garter stitch.  I could feel the yarn tighter on the needles when I was doing garter stitch, while seed stitch was much more loose.  In layman’s terms, the top half is packed in like sardines in rows, while the bottom half is more like the net to catch the sardines with.

In other equally important news, we set up shop for the first time at the HOPE Farmer’s Market in East Austin this past Sunday.  It was fantastic.  HOPE is relatively new, this only being its 6th or so Sunday, and I think it has a bright future ahead of it.  It is situated at 4th and Waller, at an old warehouse that has been refitted into an artist studio.  Half of the market is fresh produce and food items, while the second half is dedicated to art and other hand-made creations.

The minute we got to the market, it felt like the right place for us.  The vibe just felt good.  So much so, that we are going to make it our regular gig here in Austin.  Every Sunday, you will be able to find us at HOPE Farmer’s Market, from here on out ’til the foreseeable future.

The best part, in my opinion, of HOPE is that it opens at 11:00am. Not at the break of dawn, as most farmer’s markets do.  The extra couple of hours after a Saturday night is very much appreciated in my book.  And plus, once you do leisurely roll into HOPE, it’s the perfect time for brunch!  Come see us this Sunday and see what I mean… good times at HOPE.

Your glad to have found a home blogger,

Greg

I opened up my Austin American-Statesman this Thursday morning to find an article titled, “Artist turns old sweaters into new fun.” Needless to say, I was excited to read more.  This is right up the alley with what Yarn Harvest is doing.  It is too cool to find out other nifty things artists are doing with second-hand products.

The artist, Sarah Bird, takes her second-hand sweaters and tumbles them in a washer, turning them into pieces of felt.  She then takes those felt scraps and crafts hats, scarves, slippers, and other wearable pieces of art.  And this year, she’s been invited to participate in the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar… congrats to her for that!

The coolest part about what she does is that she finds her sweaters way down in Laredo, at huge warehouses full of discarded clothing.  This clothing is packed up and exported to developing countries, where they are sold in markets.  Now that you think about it, I imagine that this is one reason why you find Nike shirts in every country of the world.

We’re always on the lookout for new sources of sweaters, and hopefully we’ll be able to make a trip down to Laredo ourselves, to dig through this mountain of second-hand clothing before they get shipped away from our shores.

And speaking of digging, it is definitely time to dig in for the winter.  Snow is forecast for the weekend here in Central Texas!  Yarn Harvest will be up in Canton, TX for their Trade Days, and we are going to make sure we bundle up.  Packing for our trip, I feel like we are heading out on an arctic expedition or something.  We’ll be back in Austin on Sunday though, for the HOPE Farmer’s Market.  Hopefully, it will still be crisp, wintery, and full of holiday cheer down here.

Your excited to be in Austin this Holiday Season blogger,

Greg

We’ve planned out our holiday schedule for the year, so now we know where we will be setting up shop in the upcoming weeks.  With retailers calling the Friday after Thanksgiving “Black Friday,” and online stores calling the following Monday “Cyber Monday,” we figured we’d just out and claim the entire month of December.  How about that for retail ambition!

So, our “Yarn Harvest December” is as follows:

December 4th and 5th we will be up in Canton, TX for their monthly First Monday Trade Days.
December 6th we will be at the HOPE Farmer’s Market in East Austin.
December 13th we will be at the HOPE Farmer’s Market in East Austin.
December 17th we will be at the Parkside Community School Holiday Bazaar in Austin.
December 18th and 19th we will be at the Fredericksburg Trade Days outside of Stonewall, TX.
December 20th we will be at the HOPE Farmer’s Market in East Austin.
December 27th we will be at the HOPE Farmer’s Market in East Austin.

All the details of the events, including directions and websites, can be found on our products page towards the bottom.

Oh, I received plenty of compliments about my koozie over Thanksgiving.  I used it extensively to put it through its paces and it performed wonderfully.  Handled like a dream… taking corners well and never loosing a drop.  I’m starting on a new and improved koozie soon and it was suggested that I knit in the UT Longhorn logo on my next go around.  My attempt should be interesting, in the least.  Stay tuned.

Looking forward to more cold weather.  Cheers,

Greg

I’ve finished my first try at knitting koozies… to grand success I do humbly believe.  The picture below speaks to my accomplishment.

Indeed, I think that all the little holes, mis-stiches, and loose threads add a lot of character to my creation.  I couldn’t be more proud of it, regardless of the fact that it is a tad too short to cover the entire can.  Or that I had to overlap the length of it, since I cast on too many stiches.

I tried to follow the pattern supplied by my friend, but I must admit that a couple of times, I figured I’d just go out on a lark and reverse the order of the rows.  I think it lends the finished product an affect similar to pointellism, wherein you get a much better sense of its true grandeur when viewed from afar.

All in all, what I’m trying to say is that although it may have plenty of little mistakes, I couldn’t be happier with it.  It was big learning experience for sure, and I’m glad I pushed through all the hiccups along the way.

Next time, I’m going to refine it so that it fits a little snugger.  And maybe with fewer dropped stiches.  And maybe with finger holes to hold it with.  And maybe… ah, I just need to get started!

I hope the commencement of Holiday Festivities finds you well.  Cheers,

Greg

We have finally launched our online store! You can now browse through a good portion of our inventory, and make a purchase of whatever yummy recycled yarn tickles your fancy. We will be adding new skeins to the store as we make them, so make sure to check back frequently. Also, we’ve posted locations of where we will be setting up shop in the future. Look at the bottom of the products page for the upcoming events we will be participating in.

In honor of launching our online store, Sean and I will be knitting koozies. These koozies will represent our first ever attempt at a full-blown, complete knitting project. We’re mastered the art of knitting swatches, and now it is time to move on to the next level!

A friend of ours was kind enough to knit up some sample koozies to give us something to shoot for. She also provided the pattern which we will be following. Send us an email if you’d like a copy of the pattern and we’ll gladly send one to you. As you can see, these koozies are going to be some shnazzy accessories for drinking one’s favorite beverages. The only thing more fitting for the launch of our online store would be champagne-glass koozies. Wouldn’t that be cool! Perhaps for our next big milestone.

We should be able to unveil our attempts at the koozies by our next post. We’re looking forward to it and we’ll take all that beginner’s luck that is sure to flow our way.

Till next time, cheers!

The goal!

It’s been quite busy here at Yarn Harvest since our last post.  We’ve been working very hard to build up our yarn inventory over the past couple of weeks, as well as making sure that we can open our online store soon.

We will be setting up shop this Thursday at the First Thursday festivities on South Congress, here in Austin.  This will be the first event where our yarn is for sale since the Best Little Yarn Crawl in October.  We will be setting up in a tent at the tent-vendor space next to the restaurant Vespaio’s, which is on the corner of Congress and Milton.  See the map below.  We should be up and running around 5:30pm and we will stay until around 10:00pm. Since we will not be able to set up with wireless internet, we’ll only be accepting cash and checks this time around.

Our next big milestone after this First Thursday will be the opening of our online store.  We are expecting to do so over the next two weeks.  We wish we could smash a bottle of champagne against our store as we launch it out into the great, wide internet, but being a virtual store, we’ll have to make do with a toast.  In honor of launching our website, Sean and I are working on knitting koozies, so that we can toast each other with creations of our own yarn.

Our next blog post will feature those very koozies, which also happen to be our very first knitting projects ever.  Stay tuned…

Cheers,

Greg and Sean

View Larger Map

Yarn Harvest is open for business!

It feels like we’ve been working towards this moment for a very long time, and boy are we excited to be here.  The idea for Yarn Harvest started 9 months ago, when two childhood friends returned to Central Texas with the seed in their mind to start a business.  Those two childhood friends (that’s us, by the way) started getting involved in the crafting scene in Central Texas, and one thing led to another until they hit upon the idea of recycling sweaters into yarn.  We planted that idea into the ground here in Austin and today, Yarn Harvest is finally bearing fruit.

We affectionately call the cycle of turning sweaters into yarn and then turning that yarn back into sweaters and scarves and such the “Circle of Yarn.”  In fact, we sometimes jokingly play that song from the Lion King’s opening scene, while holding up our skeins in the air and singing, “…it’s the Circle of Yaaaaarn!”  All jokes aside, we are serious about keeping our impact on the planet in mind, while cranking out enough yarn to keep all those knitting needles and crochet hooks busy.

The next opportunity to purchase our yarns will be on November 5th, when we will be setting up a tent during First Thursday on South Congress in Austin.  We will be setting up in the tents next to the restaurant Vespaio’s, which is on the corner of Congress and Milton.  First Thursdays are always fun times, and we’re especially looking forward to this one.

As for our online store, we are planning on opening it in the first part of November.  Stay tuned.

We enjoy getting emails from fellow knitters and crocheters, so feel free to drop us a line on our contact page.  And we really love seeing pictures of what has been created with our yarns.  It completes that Circle of Yarn and lets us show what people are doing with our yarn.

And with that, it’s time for us to get back to the sweatshop to unwind more sweaters.  We look forward to hearing from you and seeing you at our tent at the upcoming First Thursday on South Congress.  Cheers!

-Greg and Sean