Knitting

Free Patterns, Tutorials and Project Ideas

An Update on the Stitches/XRX Story

by

Recently I shared the news that XRX, the company behind the Stitches live and virtual events, had announced it would be filing for bankruptcy and was canceling all events. So far the actual filing doesn’t seem to have happened, and a search of the South Dakota Secretary of State’s website shows that XRX, Inc. is still in good standing, with its next annual filing due in June (the last one was filed June 17, 2022). The statement on their website says the company is “in the process of being dissolved” and that they are working with an as-yet unnamed bankruptcy attorney who should be contacted by creditors.

A virtual Stitches event wrapped up the day before the announcement that future Stitches events would not move forward and  teachers were not paid for those classes. There was also a virtual event happening in June that students have already paid for and teachers will not be paid for.

The next in-person event was slated for Minneapolis in August, so there are lots of victims here, including:

  • teachers who were planning classes, bought supplies, paid for travel and were expecting to be paid for the event
  • yarn companies big and small and other vendors planning to attend who might have paid for travel and who now have excess inventory without a place they were counting on to sell
  • students and others planning to attend who are out registration fees and travel expenses

While some travel expenses can be cancelled this far in advance without too much of a penalty, the main issue for students and others who wanted to attend the event is the registration fee, which likely would never be repaid by XRX.

There have been reports in the Screwed by Stitches Facebook group of people successfully getting chargebacks on their credit cards for these expenses. Even if the purchase was made outside the regular window for claims, it’s worth giving it a try because some credit card companies have been willing to consider the transaction date as being the date of the event rather than when the charge was made.

In that same group you will find lists of teachers and vendors who were scheduled to attend Stitches Midwest if you want to support them. I mentioned this in the first post, but if you are a vendor or teacher who has lost income from planned Stitches events that now aren’t happening, Knitty is offering free ads, and that’s another place the rest of us can go to support these members of our community.

LessonFace is offering reduced fees for teachers through August for those who would have been teaching at Stitches events and would like to use their platform. The offer is good on up to three three-hour sessions per teacher.

Jill Wolcott also has some great general advice on what to do when things go topsy turvy in the industry.

I’ll continue to update this story as there is more to tell.

Comments

  1. I am wondering if I should worry about my personal data, on the online account I had with Stitches.

Have you read?

Easy Knit Baskets to Use All Your Stash

For the past few years I’ve taken part in a Christmas in July blog hop that encourages people to get a jump on their making for holiday gifts. 

I love to use yarn I already have for these projects in the hope that people will consider what they already have that they can use to make projects for themselves or to give as gifts. 

This year it was a couple of knit baskets made using partial balls of yarn left in my stash from other projects. 

They use the same basic pattern but the first one is made with two colors of bulky yarn, and the second used two strands of worsted weight yarn held together, which made the gauge about the same, but I cast on fewer stitches to make a smaller version. 

The bottom of the basket is square, though you can make them rectangular if you’d rather. Then I just knit up the sides in rounds until I was about to run out of yarn. This gave both baskets rather short sides — maybe more like a tray than a basket — but you can keep knitting as long as you like to make the sides of your basket as tall as you want. 

They’re worked in seed stitch, which keeps the edges from curling and adds a nice texture to the baskets.

Of course this also allows you to use even more odd balls from your stash. I’d love to make a big one someday combining lots of different yarn. I mean, I’d probably use it to store more yarn, but that’s a fine thing to do. 

As it is, these little trays are great for sitting on your desk or bedside table to hold little things that always seem to appear there. I like to use one to hold the supplies for whatever project I’m working on, things like little scissors, my tape measure, a crochet hook, etc.

And they would make good gifts on their own or as a container to hold some other goodies if you like. 

You can find the free pattern for these stash busting baskets over at Our Daily Craft.