YarnYAY! to Cease Production of Yarn Subscription Boxes

Vickie Howell, yarn industry cheerleader extraordinaire and founder of YarnYAY!, a subscription box for knitters and crocheters, has announced that the company will cease production of the boxes this winter.

The December box will be the last one for people who purchased the monthly subscription plan; quarterly subscribers will get a last package for winter in January.

Howell says in a Facebook post announcing the closure that the company kind of fell into her lap at a time when she was looking at getting into retail but wasn’t sure how to do it. The long version is in the post, but the short version is, after expected support from CrateJoy fell through at the last minute, she ended up taking on the whole project herself.

The first crates went out in May 2018 and were focused on knitters, but since June of that year both knitting and crochet projects have been offered in the boxes, which include yarn, notions, patterns and other fun stuff.

Howell says YarnYAY! has partnered with more than 175 small businesses to provide products and patterns for the crates.

“Over the past 18 months however, while prices from everything from fiber and cardboard, to software and shipping have relentlessly continued to rise, subscribers to our monthly box (YarnYAY’s main source of revenue) have steadily dropped,” she wrote. “The losses have snowballed and now, to quote an infamous start-up CEO’s recent announcement, ‘we have more debt than assets.'”

In order to support Howell and the YarnYAY! team through this transition, she asks that people buy the December box or preorder the quarterly box. There will also be inventory clearances going on over the next few months as operations wind down, so be on the lookout for that as well.

We’re always sorry to see a bit of the fiber arts industry go, and we wish Vickie (who’s a former Craft Gossip-er from way way back!) the best in whatever’s next.

[Photo: YarnYAY!]

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I feel like I haven’t shared many knitting machine patterns lately, probably because I haven’t been using my knitting machines much lately. (I finally made space for them to live on the bookshelf in my office, and now that they have a “place” it’s almost like I forgot they existed for a while.)

But I did recently make a little cat bed, that surely would work for a small dog, too.

This one uses two different sizes of knitting machine: a larger one (it could be any in the 40-48 needle range) and a 22 pin.

The larger machine is used in flat panel mode to make the bottom pillow like part of the bed, while the smaller machine makes a long tube that is used around the edges as the sort of walls of the cat bed.

For stuffing I used a bit of leftover quilt batting for the pillow, and some cut up old T-shirts for the tube.

You can use any worsted weight yarn you like (I used two colors of Big Twist Pound+, which comes in huge skeins that weigh more than a pound). Acrylic or cotton yarn is nice for washablity, but you’ll be cranking for a while so make sure you use a yarn your machine likes so it’s not too much of a struggle.

You can grab the pattern for this cat bed over at Our Daily Craft. I’m sorry to report the pictured is as close as a cat has gotten to it so far, but maybe your cats like to be cozy more than mine do?

If you’re looking for more options for cute handmade places for your cats and little dogs to rest, check out this roundup of knit pet beds. I still want to knit one by hand but the machine version was definitely a faster option (especially good since my cats are ungrateful).

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