The Year that Was, and The Year that Will Be

A new year is here.  Usually, I would have posted a long rambling year wrap up by now, but well here we are.  So, if you are so inclined, pour yourself a beverage of choice, and join on in for a bit of a fireside chat, about the year that was, and the year that will be.

Firstly, I want to express my deep gratitude and appreciate for each and every one of you.  Your support saw us through another year, and my humble gratitude cannot be expressed enough, it truly does mean everything to me.  It means our employees all still have jobs, our sheep are all still well fed, and well we are still here.  Sometimes in this ecommerce space, it always feels like I am the only one speaking, and it feels weird and one sided, just words on a screen than really don’t mean anything.  But to us, the entire team, without you, there would be absolutely no point in rambling on any longer.  With that said, lets dig into the year-end wrap up, shall we?

What a year this has been.  (Warning, I am about to get vulnerable and real again, so if you’re not into that, I get it, just skip past the next paragraph or two)

The year that was, was purely about survival, pivot, adjust, try to do the right thing, stumble, make bad decisions, make good ones, make mistakes, learn, get up, try again, rinse and repeat.  After we closed the retail space, the whole business model changed (obviously) it felt like starting over, but without the naïve sense of optimism, and free from the stress of the financial fallout of the last 3 years, it's sometimes hard to remind myself "that this like starting over, because in a lot of ways we are.  But we did it.  We made it.  And I am grateful, I am humbled, I am human, and I are.  I am so proud of our team.  We’ve had to make decisions we didn’t necessarily want, but the one thing I learn over, and over again, is that without lemons there is never lemonade, and without a strong wind, there is never a strong oak.  So, this is my big goodbye to the year that was.  Goodbye to the strife, and struggles, and say fare thee well. 

Of course there things to celebrate, with your help we were able to raise just over $2000 for Team Rubicon Canada, we've made huge progress on the Covid 19 Memorial Blanket, and Sydney and I survived the hurricane.  Mostly, our team is still together.

This year will bring about change, like all new years do.

 Things we are looking forward to the most.  First, our beautiful new logo!  Sydney designed it, and I’m in love.  It captures so many things for me, new beginnings, while embracing the past in a positive way.

We are so excited about changing our computer operating systems (the side of our website that you guys don’t see, but causes inventory situations, etc.). It’s going to take some time, but our IT person already has most of the invisible part done.  This will make all the steps of your experience as a customer so much better, and we are so excited about that.

Each week we will be posting a Knit as well as a Crochet project of the week, think of it as a bit of an inspiration generator, so if you aren’t following us on social media, this would be a great time to start, but we will also send them via email for those who don’t use social media.  Just fun ideas, and points of interest.

This month we will be announcing our, Sock of the month club, each month we will dye a colour, and Amanda has deisgned a pair of socks to go with it. There will be 100 skeins available, and on a first come first serve basis, these are not a subscription.  Each month we will post them, approx. mid month, and they will ship out on the 25^th of the month (as long as that is a day the post office is open, otherwise the next available ship date).  We will post more about this all in an individual email when the first one goes live (it’ll be soon).  This months colour is   called “Stick Season” and was dyed with the song by Noah Kahan turned up loud, and on repeat.  I love this song, and I love how the colourway turned out, enough so, I’ve cast on a sweater in it.  

We will remain committed to causes that are near and dear to our hearts.  We continue to work hard on the Covid 19 Memorial Blanket Project, (you can check out our last update in a recent blog post) we did some more press on CBC radio, which we posted to our Youtube Channel (Tangled Poets) and hope to be able to gather up the thousands of more squares required to complete the project.

Tangled Poets is excited to hit the road again, with festivals starting to line up nicely in the schedule.  So hopefully we will get to see you somewhere along the way.  Festivals are such a happy fulfilling place to be, and fills us with joy each time.

Each month we will be bringing in a new yarn, from either entirely new yarns, or revisiting old classics (like Marble Chunky and Everyday Worsted, for example) We will feature them heavily, and with the new website, there will be a bunch of pattern options available at your finger tips.  We are excited to focus in this, it’ll be fun to play with new yarns, and share our discoveries with you via short video clips.

And a few more surprises, and interesting things as the year progresses.  We hope you will join us on this journey.  As we find our way in our new business model, and new operations.  I believe that the starting over in a way is rejuvenating, and I think you’ll love what we have mapped out.

So welcome the New Year, we hope you'll join us in this years journey.

With much love and gratitude

Heather