Yarnathon

I feel I should explain what the Yarnathon is, how it works, and why it's so great. Most of my projects throughout the year are motivated by some aspect of the Yarnathon, whether it be earning a badge, buying yarn or joining a KAL. I will undoubtedly be mentioning the Yarnathon in just about every post! So here it is.

What is the Yarnathon?

It is a year-long competition between the customers of the Georgia located yarn store, Eat.Sleep.Knit. Anyone who makes a purchase is placed one of 4 teams. Each team completes various activities throughout the year including booster badges, KALs, and team challenges. Teams compete using a quantity of stars. However, you individually move on a game board of sorts and as you hit milestones of yardage, you earn prizes and store credit! The prizes can range from candy to stitch markers to travel mugs, as well as Eat.Sleep.Knit. branded t-shirts and project bags! Essentially, it's an incredibly engaging and fun customer loyalty program.

How it works

To earn prizes, you must earn a certain number of yards of yarn. You can earn yards by buying yarn, completing knitalongs, and earning booster badges.

Buying

Buying yarn is straight forward. Yardage you buy = yardage earned. ESK offers bonuses like a sweater boost on buying 6+ skeins of the same yarn. This gives you an extra 50% yardage added to your total. Every quarter there are a handful of yarns given a "Power Boost" which can range from an extra 50% of yardage earned to 200%!

Knit-a-longs

Every year there are a handful of knit-a-longs you can participate in. These must be completed with yarn bought from ESK. There is usually a good variety of types of KALs. When you complete a KAL, depending on the size of the project, you will earn yardage towards your total as well as stars for your team.

Planning for KALs is so much fun and it helps me be productive in my knitting throughout the year. What's great about the KALs is that they have deadlines to meet for submitting your project. If you meet that deadline, you are eligible to win $20 of store credit in a voting thread on the discussion board where everyone votes for their favorite project and a random winner as well. But there is no pressure to complete on time because you can submit the finished KAL any time before the end of the year. I love having the deadline. It keeps me on track, but at the same time, life happens. Not everyone can knit as quickly as others. Not everyone can complete projects realistically. 

Booster Badges

The booster badge club is my favorite part of the yarnathon. Think of it like earning a patch in Girl Scouts. You complete a knitting related task and earn that badge. Each badge is worth either 20, 15, or 10 points. Once you earn a certain amount of points you become eligible for a prize! This year there are 6 levels of prizes. You can earn yardage, store credit, and stars for your team total.

I really love the booster badges because they push me to branch out and try new techniques. They include things like knit a pair of socks, knit a colorwork project, make a pompom, steek a project, and complete a crochet project. There are badges related to purchasing yarn, as well. And there are badges for the oops moments during the crafting process. Some of my favorites are start knitting with the tail of your yarn and accidentally twist stitches when joining in the round.

Yarnatron

 The last way to earn yards is the Yarnatron puzzles. Every week there is a new puzzle. You must identify 2 skeins of yarn based on a picture of the yarn. They will have a common word in the names of their colorway. That word is the answer to the puzzle. You get 50 yards for each right answer for a total of 2000 yards for the whole year.

Why It's Awesome

Every year the Yarnathon is based on a different theme! This year it is candy land. The game board is candy themed and the store has acquired special candy themed yarn from dyers like Madelinetosh, Squoosh Fiberarts, and Blue Moon Fiber Arts. There are candy prizes and Candyland inspired game board. Each team mascot has a candy themed name. I am a Peppermint Pony. I love the amount of thought and creativity that is put into creating the Yarnathon each year.

It’s Simple

Yes, there are a lot of rules and components to the Yarnathon. But it is incredibly simple to see your progress on their website. When you log into your account you can view your current yards and stars earned, any KALs you have submitted for, what booster badges you have earned, and where you are on the gameboard through the Yarnathon Dashboard. You rarely must keep track of anything yourself. I really love the ease of the Yarnathon Dashboard. You also have the choice of how you want to participate. You can do as little or as much as you want.

The Community

The community of crafters that they have created around this game is amazing. The discussion board on Ravelry is such a great place to socialize, get help, and find inspiration. The employees are very accommodating and try their hardest to please as many people as possible and answer questions through Ravelry. They have a presence on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as well. People from all over the world participate in the Yarnathon and it is really a great group and a fun time.

Yarn Lotto

In every order you place, you will receive a Yarn Lotto card. You scratch off the 6 spaces on the card and receive the prize if you match three of the same! I love the chance to win store credit, yarn, yardage, and project bags. It is just a fun bonus that really sets this store apart from others.

Customer Service

The Yarnathon is awesome because of the amount of engagement the store has with its customers. The employees (or kitties as they call themselves) work so hard every year to create such a wonderful and rewarding experience for their customers. The employees are very accommodating and try their hardest to please as many people as possible and answer questions through Ravelry. They have a presence on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as well. The employees are quick to answer questions, provide color suggestions, and they are even so kind to contact you when they don’t have enough matching skeins of what you ordered. The shipping is so fast. If you order in the morning, it will likely ship the same day. I love Eat.Sleep.Knit so much that I consider it my local yarn store even though I live hundreds of miles away.

Final Thoughts

I have given a summary of the major components of the Yarnathon. However, I didn't touch on every single small aspect of it, and there are always fun surprises along the way. The game lasts all year and the kitties are sure to keep us on our toes with all kinds of challenges and games. Checking in on the group discussion board is the best way to find out what is going on. There is a questions thread available if you have any questions.

I highly recommend you check out Eat.Sleep.Knit and the Yarnathon. If you love the yarn they sell and plan to buy yarn anyways, you might as well join in on the fun and earn some cute prizes while you're at it.

Go forth and stash!

The Current State of Affairs - Sock Struggles

Following up on my goals for 2017, here is what I am thinking for my #boxOsoxKAL2017.

So far I have 1 pair of socks almost completed. I have a few issues with both socks.

Side bar: I have yet to find a sock formula that works every time. I have tried toe up, cuff down, different size needles, different yarn, and an assortment of stitch patterns. A side goal of this KAL, I'm hoping, is to achieve a sock recipe for myself. My feet are not tiny but they are smaller than average. Typically, I CO 64 sts. and go from there. I have a wide foot, no arch, and narrow heels, not to mention large calves. I thought I must not be knitting at a tight enough gauge. Perhaps my lack of arch is causing the bunching on the top of my foot. Maybe I'm not meant to knit socks.

The solution? The Fish-lips Kiss Heel. I bought the pattern (only $1 folks!) and tried following all of the sizing information provided. Maybe I skimmed it. I'm sure I didn't miss anything vital. Probably. Regardless, I thought this was my solution for socks. I think it still may be. So far this remains to be seen. It's probably user error...

I thought I knit the first sock too wide around and so the heel wasn't fitting right. It wasn't enough of a mistake to make me frog it. So, I continued on to the second sock. Finished it, slid that bad boy on my foot and, pop, my heel was perfectly cupped by the fish lips kiss heel! Amazing! My toes were not so fortunate. I have about 1 inch of excess fabric at the toe. How?? I used the cardboard foot that I made from my very own foot! The same one I used for the first sock. So I tried the first back on and lo and behold, that one was too long as well.

Fish-lips kiss heel sock in Freia Ombre Sock - Flare

It seems my mistake must be in where I measured my ankle bone line since that is how you gauge the length of the foot. I'm a little bummed and slightly annoyed. But that's what I get for tracing my foot myself rather than letting someone else do it.

Dejectedly, I am going to frog the heel and some of the foot on both socks. I will reknit and hopefully have a nice pair of socks in the end.

I'm not sure if I will retrace my foot form or just use another pair of socks that I knit as a reference. I only have one pair of perfectly sized socks and they are in fact an inch or two shorter than this new pair :( I thought the fish lips kiss heel would be my answer to toe up sock sizing, but I still screwed it up.

After I sort out the perfect size for my socks, I plan on using my stashes sock yarn throughout the year. Here is what I have decided on so far:

• Freia Ombre Sock - Flare
• SweetGeorgia Sock - Intergalactic
• BMFA BFL Fingering - Dr. Baker
•  KnitPicks Felici - Balloon Ride, Ever After
• Shoppel Wolle - Crazy Zauberball - Grey
• Knit Picks Stroll Fingering - Dogwood Heather, Pumpkin, Wonderland Heather
• SweetGeorgia Yarns Tough Love Sock - Grapefruit, Lemon Curd
• Cascade Yarns Heritage Silk - Herb

WOW. I didn't realize how much sock yarn I had until I just listed it out. It would be amazing if I could knit all of that yarn. On top of it, I'm hoping to get 2 pairs out of some skeins. My feet are small and I like ankle socks.

As far as patterns go, I may branch out into a textures design like a rib or maybe Hermione's everyday socks. I don't want to get too complicated because I suffer from second sock syndrome. I even bought a long fixed needle to attempt two at a time socks, or at the very least magic loop. I think wooden dpns are slowing me down! Bring on the lightning-speed, metal needles. I will become a sock machine!

Knitting Goals - 2017

Why Make Goals?

Let's pretend this post is actually being made on the first of the month. I need an excuse to talk about my knitting goals for this year! I figure this will be a good starting point for the blog.

So... goals, goals, goals. I think of my knitting goals to be quite loose. Knitting, for me, is not my number one priority in life (though I wish it could be), and so I won't be too mad at myself if I can't stick to these goals. I will of course do my best to achieve them but life happens sometimes, and this year is turning out to be a pretty productive and busy year for me.

Regardless of my doubt in my ability to reach these goals, I think it is very important to set goals. Setting goals and planning my projects for the year really helps me to be productive. The same goes for anything in life, I think. I find it becomes very easy to sort of yet days slip by without accomplishing much. As I've grown older I have developed a sort of urge to do something. If I feel like I'm not doing something productive, it really bothers me. I hate wasting a weekend getting nothing done. To stay on track, having goals keeps me focused towards something. It gives my everyday life some meaning.

How does this relate to my knitting? Well, having a plan allows me to move from project to project without much downtime. As soon as I finish a project, I already have the yarn and pattern ready to go for the next one. My hope is that this method will keep me from straying from my stash yarn to new delicious yarns (spoiler alert, this is my main goal this year).

My Knitting Goals for 2017:

• Knit 12 pairs of socks (#boxosoxKAL2017)
• Knit perfect fitting socks
• Complete the highest level of the Q1, Q3, and Q4 KALS of the Yarnathon
• Knit entirely from stash
• Only buy new yarn with store credit
• Finish the pixelated pullover I half frogged a few years ago
• Toss or donate old/undesirable yarn (possibly sell/trade on rav)
• Post on this knitting blog once a week minimum
• Organize yarn and group skeins with patterns

To elaborate, my biggest goal is to knit from my stash. I'm trying my hardest to save up money this year to buy a house. Last year I might have gotten a teeny bit out of control buying yarn. Iwas buying yarn every month! And as tempting as brand new skeins are, I really really need to back off on the buying. I was fortunate enough to receive some store credit to Eat. Sleep. Knit (my favorite online yarn store) for Christmas. I will be slowly chipping away at it. As much as it pains me, I shall resist the yarn-y temptations!

And in all honesty, I think I will really benefit from stash knitting. I probably have some yarn I've completely forgotten about. I think it will challenge me to be more creative and really work with what I've got. It is so easy to overlook yarn buried in piles and stashed in drawers in favor of a pretty new one. The best part: if I can make this happen, I'll have room for more yarn next year plus a whole pile of beautiful hand knits!


I'm really excited for this year and everything that it will bring me. My life has been moving so quickly in the last year, yet so, so  slowly in some ways. I finished school and found a job, bought a car, and now I'm looking to purchase my first home! And I will be knitting all the while. Feel free to join me on my knitty adventure~!

~Happy knitting~

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