1. A major yarn company recently instituted a program whereby fledgling designers gain practice, recognition, and some compensation whenever their patterns (always in the corporate yarn, natch) are sold by this company. When the metaphorical Young and Ambitious in our fields are encouraged, we're all for it.

But we have recently been deluged by so many designers sending patterns our way in this company's yarn, and at such a low price point, that we're concerned about being perceived as a house organ for this company. Someone once exclaimed of us: "You're like Switzerland!" in terms of not favouring one yarn's or designer's or publisher's cause over another. (Not taking advertising helps, too.)

So, here's our thinking: since this company makes it possible for designers to earn a couple of bucks or something from every pattern they sell, then the introductory market levels are getting covered. Meanwhile, there are other market segments needing reinforcement, and we'd like to continue to do that.

THEREFORE be it known to all (wo)men, that effective midnight UTC (the old Greenwich Mean Time) at the beginning of 1 February, 2010, our minimum pattern price will go to $3.00 US from $2.00. Those publisher/designers who wish to increase their prices are welcome to do so (across the board, please, not just with us). We hope this doesn't cause any undue inconvenience. This will be the last minimum increase for a while, but almost certainly not the last one forever. Be prepared.

2. We are extremely pleased and proud to release the Haiti-benefiting Sprout Center Detail Tank pattern from Classic Elite Yarns, which greeted most of us first thing this Tuesday morning through CEY's weekly Web Letter.

Classic Elite Yarns is giving 100% of their revenues from this pattern in this medium to Haiti charities. We wanted to make a similar contribution. But we can't donate 100% of our portion, because we always pay the initial PayPal transaction costs for every sale: so the more and better the pattern sold, the quicker we would have gone into a deathly financial spiral, losing more and more money at a faster and faster clip. So we simply bumped the commission rate on this pattern to that of our other charitable patterns (like the Arizona Llama Rescue ones). We don't make any money, but we don't lose any, either. Classic Elite will distribute all the proceeds, their contribution and ours, so there are no extra administration costs. This is in addition to our 2%-of-the-gross-of-December 2009 contribution to the Canadian Red Cross (done last week).

We are so grateful to this pattern's buyers, those smart and generous knitters who love a good pattern and have very kind hearts, too.