Basically you pay up front for X installments and they send you a new box every month. I started with the bi-monthly plan (1 box of yarn every 2 months) which in and of itself, is not cheap at all! But if you are used to spending a lot of money on yarn and whatnot, this is actually not a bad deal.
My first box contained this amazingly gorgeous green Siidegarte Siide-Flauschig yarn from Siidegarte in Switzerland:
(The colorway is Aichblatt which means Oak Leaf in Swiss-German, according to the owner of the company, whom I asked over Instagram.)
It also came with a couple of free patterns:
These get automatically saved as PDFs to your YarnBox Library. I downloaded mine to my PC and printed out one of them to begin my project. :)
I began knitting the "Sproinger" hat pattern. http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/sproinger
It's a really fun looking hat and definitely very slouchy/spring-y/squishy looking. (Gotta love the way people describe yarn and patterns, lol!)
So far so good! I really adore the way this yarn feels and smells, and plus green is my favorite color (well, right next to pink, that is!) The other possible colorway was blue, which is really nice as well, but I am WAY happy with my green, wouldn't trade it!
You can see past companies YarnBox has featured in their monthly boxes by visiting this page:
https://yarnbox.com/yarnbox-store-locator/
Before I had subscribed to them, I bought some yak yarn from Bijou Basin Ranch which was one of their previous suppliers. I was VERY impressed with the quality of their 100% yak yarn. I don't think the 100% yak was in a Yarnbox, but rather, one of their blends. Man... I love knitting with obscure animal fibers/luxury fibers/whatever you call it. I'm one of those weirdos who's all like "damn, if you can brush it and spin the hair into yarn somehow, I want to buy it and knit with it!" Haha. Maybe I should find a luxury fiber of the month club...I've seen a few on Etsy but they were hella expensive...which makes sense! But the one I really wanted to subscribe to costs an arm and a leg in part due to shipping from Australia. Bummer.
Anyway, I digress!
I was so happy with my first Yarnbox I decided to upgrade my membership to getting 1 box every month, billed every 3 months ($111.)
I plan to try KnitCrate too. In fact, I just received notification that they shipped my first KnitCrate! Excitement! I will have to post a review to compare/contrast YarnBox and KnitCrate later. I told myself I'd try both and stick with just one that I like better but now I am scared I will love both so much that I won't want to stop getting both in the mail. AHHH. Now I have like 5 subscriptions...Netflix, Warcraft, Ipsy, YarnBox, and KnitCrate. >__<;; bye bye, hard-earned monies. :P
It's a great colour and a yarn box seems cool, but I don't use yarn enough to do something like this.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious about the yak yarn.
Hoping it's the right day, happy birthday!!!!
It is quite nice! Oh and haha my birthday isn't until December 1. :) But I did celebrate my mom's birthday a few days ago. <3
DeleteWhat is your experience with Knitcrate?
ReplyDeleteSorry I never replied to your comment, for some reason my blogger account was not notifying me whenever I got comments and I missed a bunch. :'(
DeleteI have only ordered two Knitcrates. The first one was terrible. The second when was pretty good, and I loved it and finished my project (it can be seen in one of my more recent posts of Finished Projects, it's called Faraway So close: http://prettykissblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/belated-update-finished-project-spam.html )
The reason why I hated the first Knitcrate I got was due to the pattern. I got very plain colored yarn, I think it was greyish tan/white color which at the time did not excite me though now I could use more neutrals in my stash lol.... BUT the pattern was TERRIBLE it was sooo confusing. Many others had issues with it too. I think they did not test it enough before releasing it for sale. It's called Jasminda. It's a gorgeous shawl but I just could not figure it out for the life of me. :( *tears*
Also with my Yarnbox sub, I have it set to auto renew twice yearly. it's a big payment when it does, but it amounts to each of my boxes costing only $35 a month which includes lots of amazing high quality yarn plus at least one knit and one crochet pattern and sometimes a little bonus is thrown in like a Soak sample or some yarn snippers. Knitcrate had good stuff too but I was in it more for the yarn itself and the patterns and not so much the 'bonuses'.... they gave me these really gross vegan cookies that I disliked, but they also gave me some hand lotion in the box that had the Faraway so close pattern which I loved. Kinda just hit or miss.
But what I also like about YB, is the types of yarns they pick, the colors, the patterns, and the fact that their Ravelry group is pretty sizable and it is by no means difficult to swap or sell your unwanted yarn in their ISO/Destash thread.
Anyway sorry for my rambles. That was really long, and really overdue, so i apologize again. But I hope it helped some. The long and short of it, is that both services are pretty good, but I thought YB gives you more bang for your buck, and from a personal preference standpoint, they strike a chord with me, whereas knitcrate did not. But both are good. :)
How much was the shipping cost of the yarnbox classic to Australia?
ReplyDeleteHmm I'm not sure...I live in the US and it ships from Chicago. I'd check on their website because they're under new ownership and so it probably has changed.
DeleteI'm so sorry Kate, I thought you were in Australia. Thanks for the reply 😋
ReplyDeleteLol no worries! I wish I was in Australia now. It's about to be winter time in this hemisphere 😧 lol. I did check on their website just now and I think it's $15 US for shipping to Australia but you might want to double check.
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