Being a remote rural yarn shop comes with its challenges. We’re pretty remote for a yarn shop  with an immediate population of barely 2,000 between our two towns and then a 60 (even then, no traffic lights) to 100k drive to the next towns.

However fortunately our town attracts great visitation, particularly on the weekends, so we get lots of people coming into our shop. The downside to this is that visitors aren’t all knitters. In fact for a yarn shop, the majority of our visitors are passing through and just love to look at our shop and displays. So we make sure we have plenty of tempting hand knits on show with a good selection for sale. It seems a pity to attract so many people and not have something to offer them.

This means that Gemma and I are always creating gorgeous but more simple knits for the shop that can be sold but also serve dual duty in showing off yarns and pattern samples for knitters. We create many simple patterns ourselves that are available to customers, making the most of beautiful fibre textures and colours or using interesting stitches. Last week was Beanie week, with versions of ‘Snug’ using Kidsilk mixed with our new Convent Irish Tweed. This week it’s our rustic tweed ribbed wrist warmers. The cold weather has depleted our stocks of hand knits drastically!

We know our patterns work well to sell and are also great for anyone doing hand knits at the markets – simple but effective. A few tips we’d give anyone who would like to try their hand at the markets with hand knits – always use good yarns. Most people can gauge quality and will pay for it, which leads to the next point. Don’t undercharge – value your work and don’t undersell the value. Our hand knits are a valuable source of income to us and help us offer something to potential customers who love our shop but aren’t exactly in the market for a skein of artisan hand dyed yarn.

Having beautiful tempting hand knits on display has encouraged many a casual tourist back into knitting or even into picking up needles for the first time.

We’re now finding that Convent & Chapel Wool Shop is a name on many knitters “must visit” lists and are becoming a destination shop, attracting our share of visitors to our amazing town and region. We have lots of people on their national road trips making sure Rylstone is one of their stops and are even finding international visitors asking their hosts to include Rylstone on their itinerary – and are not disappointed when they arrive.

Of course, we also love and greatly appreciate our online customers, although we wish we could ask them what they are making with some of the wonderful order combinations we receive and would love to see their finished projects.