The Idea Behind 'The Yarn Archive / 针织产品'

Hello,

Thanks for taking the time to read this blog post!

I thought I'd take this opportunity to introduce myself properly and the idea behind 'The Yarn Archive / 针织产品' and how this project has taken over my life (in the best way possible) the past few months.

My name is Cindy and I'm a British Born Chinese, daughter to a first generation immigrant family, My parents migrated to the UK from South China during their late teens and met here before starting a family. Whilst my Mum had the support of her family as they migrated together as a unit, my Dad came to England solo so he had little support when he first stepped foot into the county. Representation for my cultural roots and hertiage is something that I'm passionate about, especially when I feel like there's a lack of that here in the UK.

As for why I've decided to create 'The Yarn Archive', it all started off with a discussion with my Mum. She's an avid crocheter and was asking me for recommendations on Chinese or other Asian-branded yarns to try, and that's when I realised I couldn've name one singular brand off the top of my head. Curious, I started researching if these sorts of brands are even available here in Europe and that's when I noticed the lack that there weren't many options to choose from, if any.

That's when 'The Yarn Archive' was born. I wanted to raise awareness around the diverse range of Asian-rooted fibres that have not been discovered here in the West. From thorough research, there were so many unique brands that created such beautiful fibres and I thought it would a shame for it to be only experienced by knitters in Asia. 

For the next few weeks, I started to work on this website from scratch and ordered samples from various brands from China, Japan and South Korea. My time would be split between market research, learning how to build a website on Shopify and contacting different brands to learn more about their products. A lot of time was also spent on testing and swatching different yarns ranging from Tibetan Yak to the most random combination of materials. It was exciting to play and experiement with so many different brands, motivating me further to make this project possible. 

After a lot of experimenting (and budget constraints), I finally settled on first doing a soft launch of under 20 products to see what the reception will be like. I'm a little nervous on how you guys will respond to the yarn brands I've curated but I'm also confident that you'll enjoy what will be avaialble so far!

As always, I'm grateful for all the support so far and I hope you continue to join me in the journey to champion and discover new yarns from Asia and beyond!

Love,
Cindy