Heya folks, here’s a big update on where we’re at. 

Just before Frolic we were 3 weeks out on our very latest order. We had one week to prepare for Frolic itself and there was a tragic, young, death in the family of our assistant dyers, leading to them leaving us before we had planned for it. Without my assistants, one 40 skein dye run takes 12 hours of girl power. I put it in and we got to frolic and wingspan landed and we sold far, far more than we expected to. Aviary and the wooly mammoths had already done well, and wingspan put us over the edge. At the moment it’s looking like 8-10 weeks  to get fully caught up.

I have done everything I can to adjust to this unexpected turn of events; I obtained a new studio space, hired a new dye assistant, hired a customer service manager to make sure everyone was being heard, hired a developer to automate part of our process, and ordered enough new equipment to double our daily yield. During this process I am still dyeing every single day. I scaled back the store to inventory only, I cancelled our booths at Festival Twist, the Kawartha Festival, Barrie’s Fiber Spirit festival, and possibly even Kitchener Waterloo. 

That means we have committed to a massive space and a five year lease with no current revenue, and no guarantee that the sales will come when we reopen. That’s terrifying, but it’s the risk we took to expedite our timelines. Every day that we do not promote, produce and sell we are losing market share. I remind myself that no small company becomes a big company without going through what we’re going through, but the fact remains that it’s scary stuff.

We have been open from the moment we went viral; if you feel that the wait is too long you are 100% entitled to a full refund on the yarn. If you are alright with waiting then you have our undying gratitude and know that we are working as hard as we can.  

Yes, Italy was poorly timed for us. Those tickets had been booked for a year and a half, since the day a dear friend got engaged. There were those who made it pretty clear that we had no business going, but we were not about to drop out on her wedding and, I promise you, we were wracked with guilt every day. To the point where I was very sick. If you’ve never tried to clean partially digested carpaccio out of a bidet I don’t recommend it. 

As of the time of this writing we’ve been home 5 days. We’ve cleaned the space, laid down sub floor, primed and painted and gotten about a third of the way through the main floor. We’ve purchased and assembled furniture and begun to plan a space that will not only serve a functional purpose, but give our customers a place to come see us in person, pick up orders, enjoy knit nights with us, browse samples and swatches, and become part of our community. 

The internet is a hard country. Lots of folks have encouraged me to look after myself, to take things at a reasonable pace. I love every single one of you. Lots of other dyers have sent messages of love and support for which I am immeasurably grateful. It won’t surprise you to hear that there are also angry people; who I encourage to reach out to us for full refunds. There are also cruel people who resort to accusations and name calling. They are more than welcome to get their orders cancelled and refunded.

We do not invest much in advertising. Public opinion and the feedback we get online is everything to us. When that tide turns against us because of events out of our control we do our best to communicate, to resolve, and to expedite. We are only a four person business, not a big machine, and we are doing our absolute best. 

If you have a concern, please, please reach out to us by email so we can find a way to make it right rather than bring us down publicly within the online community. As we see time and time again, the opinions of the online world can make or break businesses, lives and people. I will be perfectly frank and vulnerable here and tell you that all the commitments I’ve made recently have scared the daylights out of me, and I need to believe that our community will back us when we are ready to return. 

Thank you for reading this far. Thank you for sticking with us this far.
I promise the future holds fun things if we can just get though this.  

Love

S.

The Blue Brick has grown beautifully, but with that come the necessary growing pains and we are long overdue for an overhaul to the way our store works. Increasingly long lead times have, completely understandably, led to frustration for folks awaiting their yarn packages. Ombre is not like tonal yarns, and I can only dye so many per day, limited by the size of my basement. We are so busy these days that we have made the extremely difficult decision to back out of Festival Twist this year, one of our largest and most enjoyable events, because we cannot prepare the stock while still looking after online orders. I confess to wanting to roll my eyes at everyone who has told me “it’s a good problem to have” (tell my customers that!).

We’ve talked about an inventory based store before, and I have generally avoided it because I didn’t want to limit what folks could get. However, it’s finally time to reduce our online store to inventory-only. We are not there yet, we’re going colour by colour as we generate sufficient inventory, with the goal of moving almost all yarns to an inventory basis within the next two months.

Special colours, heavy metal, sweater quantities and collection releases will still be dyed to order due to volume.

Ombre:

• All moving to inventory.
• The following colours are still available but when sold out, they’re gone: Maple, Cape Spear, Wheat Kings.

Tonal:

• Sock, lace, and Muskoka luxe are moving to inventory. Escarpment DK and Tobermory worsted are being left as-is; because if you order a sweater or blanket quantity I will need to dye it all in the same batch. These items will still be dyed to order as a result. If you want a sweater quantity of another base please email us, and we’ll be happy to help you place the order.

What does that mean for our customers?

Pros:

• If you were able to order it, it’s already on our racks and ready to be shipped.
• Bases that I have only a few of, but don’t normally carry, such as MCN sock, or worsted gradients, can be added to the inventory.
• My dyeing life will be simplified. Once the colours are all up to date I’ll be dyeing to top up inventory, and not to fulfill orders. This should make for a more streamlined process at our end.

Cons:

• If you order more than one of the same colour you may want to add a note to the order letting me know if they’ll be used in the same project. Otherwise you will get the two skeins on the wall which may or may not be a perfect match.
• If there is a colour you want and it’s not in stock it won’t be available. In that case you can definitely write to us and inquire after either a custom order, or when we plan on restocking.
• During busy times, after festivals, or when our suppliers are backed up, there may be shortages in the online store. We will our best to level these out so they don’t impact the customer.

We hope that this new system will allow us to fulfill more quickly and reliably once it’s in effect. Again, it will take time to fully top up and switch over all the colours, with the goal being two months out.

Thank you everyone, for your patience with us as we get over these growing pains. Hopefully the new system is more comfortable for everyone!

So far, I’ve stayed out of the discussion on IG about racism and inclusion in the knitting world. I’ve never made a secret of the fact that I’m brown in my posts, or that my family is multi cultural. I grew up in the diverse city of Toronto, and felt that I hadn’t really experienced racism in any meaningful sense. 

I also personally didn’t connect with a lot of the rhetoric, which didn’t seem conducive to positive change, and in some cases felt tantamount to bullying. I’m all for education, not shaming. I’m all for that which unites us, and against that which divides. I wasn’t personally a fan of having folks who were obviously well-intentioned with their hearts in the right place feeling super guilty all of a sudden for the circumstances of their birth. Historically, I’ve had way more trouble being a woman than I have being brown, and I feel strongly that us ladies need to stick together.

Then, at Stitches West, I overheard this conversation in the washroom (from a stall, they couldn’t see me).  It was two vendors discussing the show, totally normal, and then one vendor said: “I didn’t make as much money as usual. I think it’s because it’s a very ethnic group this year and it’s full of trash who aren’t spending any money”.

I came out of the stall, and we immediately all looked at the floor. So, before you ask, I don’t know who they were or what companies they represent. I scrubbed my hands, face burning, and ran out of there.

I don’t know what made me feel worse, that I internalized the humiliation, even though the comment wasn’t intended for my ears, or directed at me, or that I immediately began gaslighting myself on their behalf. “Did I really hear that?”, “Maybe they meant something else?”. 

Then I thought a little harder about my own past; I remembered that I initially took up Karate, 25 years ago, because my family was targeted in a racially motivated hate crime at Scarborough bluffs. That was a Big Obvious Thing, where anyone would get it. But there were also small insidious things, and they’re harder to get.  I realized that downplaying hurtful things is a trend. 

Every time someone asked me “where are you from really, after repeatedly being told that I was born and bred in Toronto. Every time someone joked that I was “practically white” and meant it as a compliment. That time I made small talk about the weather at a baseball game and was told “we don’t get cold, we’re Canadians”, as though somehow I wasn’t (effectively divesting me of the only country I have). Every time a friend has said something racist and then exclaimed “I don’t mean you! You’re different!”. Every time someone was surprised that I didn’t have an accent, or that I turned out to be brown in person after only talking on the phone. When Saks Fifth Avenue opened in Toronto I went looking for a dress for a wedding. A staff member politely told me “the Bay is that way”, assuming I was lost. The list goes on. 

So now I think, I need to say something on behalf of both myself and others. And you know what? I don’t even know what that something is. Maybe it’s as simple as “Hey, this happened, and I can’t pretend that it didn’t”, or “Hey, the problem is real”.  Part of me also wants to say “If you’re reading this, I sold plenty to BIPOC shoppers, so maybe you just suck.”, (It’s petty, I know).  

Worth noting: the incident was reported to the organizers and they had a funny feeling they knew who the vendor was. That kinda tells me they have done this before, or have a reputation for being racist, but seem to be getting away with it, which is the point I’m trying to make. {EDIT – It was not my intention to imply that the organizers were complicit in any way, they were in fact horrified, and issued a general message to all vendors, which I have shared below}. And no, it wasn’t reported by me because I was still feeling awkward and humiliated about outing them. That tells me something else, about the tendency to internalize hate and redirect it to ourselves. So when people trying to instigate change come off as excessively forceful, perhaps we should have a little empathy towards them before we judge. 

Having said that, this is worth a read:

https://medium.com/s/digital-trauma/how-woke-became-a-weapon-304f265282df

“Plenty of activists argue that shaming those who err while striving to help build a resistance is a counterintuitive practice. “To organize such a movement necessarily means that it will involve the previously uninitiated — those who are new to activism and organizing,” writes Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a Black female activist and author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, in a piece reflecting on critiques of the history-making Women’s March. “We have to welcome those people and stop the arrogant and moralistic chastising of anyone who is not as ‘woke’… [movements] are built by actual people, with all their political questions, weaknesses, and strengths.””

Another great quote:

 Patrisse Cullors, a queer Black woman and co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, spoke about the downfalls of woke shaming in an interview with Complex last year. “Woke shaming is really unfortunate,” Cullors said. “If we are trying to build a movement to save all of us, we need to be able to invoke faith in people who are new, who are learning, and who are willing to grow. There is a difference between people who are bigots and people who are trying to figure out their way in this. We should have patience.”

Regarding how we can do better, maybe it doesn’t need to be Big Obvious Things. It can be little helpful things. When my dad worked as a factory manager he would stand by the punch clock in the morning and learned to greet everyone in their own language. Something I’ve always respected him for. Something to model myself after.

“Treat everyone with politeness and kindness, not because they are nice, but because you are.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

S.

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on Thursday February 28th, the organizational committee of Stitches West issued the message below:

We’ve added a new tool to our website! Watch the video below to learn more :)