One Skein Secret Pal Wrap-Up
And announcing the new
Spin to Knit Handspun Secret Pal Swap
September 28, 2006

Thanks to all the participants in our One Skein Secret Pal exchange event! You were a wonderful group, and we’ve loved hearing about the friendships and exchanges you’ve made with fiber fans across the globe.

By now you should have completed your mailings to your secret pal and revealed your identity. As the exchange is wrapping up, we're still in the process of sorting out missed packages and missing pals. Our first priority is for people who haven't received anything in the exchange because of a missing pal. Our second priority is for people who have not received their August handknitted or crocheted one skein gift. There are many pals who have fallen behind in their knitting and crocheting and are sending their final gift a little late (nearly 2 months!). If this is your situation, please e-mail your pal immediately to let her know that you are late but haven’t forgotten. Please copy us (oneskein@interweave.com) on your correspondence. 

Did you enjoy receiving your knitted and crocheted gifts? In a recent Knitter’s Review poll, 53 percent of knitters reported that nobody has knit them anything in a long, long time, while 35 percent of knitters say they’ve never received a handknitted gift. These astonishing statistics are one reason we wanted to start this exchange—many of you were long past due for your own knitted gifts!

We also want to thank all the participants who volunteered to be angels to our pals missing gifts. There were hundreds of you who volunteered—many more than we ever needed—and we appreciate your kindness.

Although we will not be starting another One Skein exchange—this was a one-time only event—if you are a handspinner or knitter and want to learn to spin, you won’t want to miss our next event!

Interweave Press is celebrating the launch of Spin to Knit by Shannon Okey by starting a new kind of Secret Pals Exchange: The Handspun Swap. This exchange is open to spinners everywhere, with pal categories for beginner, intermediate, and advanced spinners; participants are required to have a blog, and skeins must be handspun by you. Registration is open now through December 1.

Details online at www.spintoknit.com.

Thanks, and happy knitting, crocheting, and spinning!

One Skein Secret Pal Update
August 7, 2006

Dear One Skein Secret Pal Participants:

It’s the last month of the One Skein Secret Pal Exchange. Have you thanked your upstream pal for your June and July one skein gifts? If you haven’t--stop what you’re doing, put everything aside, and write your pal right now. You should be acknowledging each month’s gifts with a personal e-mail or public posting on your blog.

On the giving side, if you have not sent your July one skein package to your downstream pal, or your June skein for that matter, please do so immediately. And if you’re running a little late with July’s skein, PLEASE let us (oneskein@interweave.com) and the person you’re spoiling know about the delay. It only takes a few seconds to send an e-mail that will save your pal from hours of worry.

Finally, don’t forget that August is the month you should send your final one skein knitted or crocheted gift to your downstream pal. With this gift you can at last give away your identity. How should you reveal yourself? Get creative! You can send your pal a photo collage that tells your life story, give away your blog address so he/she can start reading about you, or simply write a letter.

We would like to thank all participants for joining and having a great time over the last three months. We won’t be starting a new one skein exchange again this year, but stay tuned for information about our Spin to Knit Handspun Secret Pal Exchange that will be accepting new members in September.

All the best,

Jaime Guthals and Laura Levaas
One Skein Secret Pal Moderators
oneskein@interweave.com

One Skein Secret Pals Update
June 23, 2006

Hey Everyone,

I hope you’re having fun getting to know your pals. I even got a gift in the mail today (chocolate – thanks!) from a pal who is having an amazing time. I’m sure she won’t mind that I share her note.

“Thank you for introducing me to two extraordinary women who knit. I am really enjoying the One Skein Secret Pal Exchange.”

I also received this email a few weeks ago:

“I would like to thank you. Everyone takes things for granted or quick to complain. My secret pal lives in Harlem, NY, and her stash is only a 3 drawer plastic container.  I have a whole craft room full, with my fleeces living in the garden shed. After sending a few emails back and forth to one another, I realise just how lucky I am to live in a country of plenty and be able to afford my craft materials. Thank you for making me see just how fortunate I am.”

We’re approaching the last week in the first month of the exchange. A few folks are confused (don’t worry, it can be confusing!) about who they are sending skeins to and who they are knitting for.

1. You’re sending skeins to (and knitting for) your assigned secret pal. You are keeping your identity a secret from this pal until the final month, and you should be corresponding with this person about their yarn likes and dislikes (we sent you 14 questions to get this correspondence going when you were assigned.)
   
   
2. In return, you have been assigned to someone as a pal. They should be e-mailing you anonymously about your yarn likes and dislikes. If you don’t receive a skein by July 1, let us know and we’ll track down your pal or get you reassigned.
   
   
3. When you receive your skein, it’s cool to let your pal know that you’ve received it by thanking them on your blog or via e-mail – otherwise they are hanging out in limbo land wondering whether it got lost in the mail.
   
   
4. If you haven’t been e-mailing your assigned pal, get cookin’! If you have, excellent. If you are confused, please visit http://www.oneskein.com/secretpal.asp and review all the details before you e-mail me at oneskein@interweave.com.
   
   
5. That’s all!

Thanks again and have fun.

Secret Pals Exchange Update
Friday, June 9, 2006 

One Skein Secret Pal June reminders:

Hey Pals – remember to correspond with your assigned secret pals this month and send out your first new or never-been-used skeins.

One Skein reminder: send skeins to the pal from which you are keeping your identity a secret; you’re receiving skeins from the pal who is keeping their identity a secret from you.

Mailing tip for US to Canada pals: To avoid duties, you may want to indicate on the package that it is a gift.

If you have any questions, please review the FAQ before contacting us by e-mail at oneskein@interweave.com.

Secret Pals Exchange Update
Friday, May 12, 2006

Registration for the One Skein Secret Pal Exchange is now closed and we wish to thank the more than 700 knitters, crocheters, and spinners who signed up to participate. We hope you are as excited as we are about the response.

On May 10 and 11 we sent personalized e-mails to all participants with their assigned pal’s information. If you registered on time by May 1, you should have received this e-mail from us. Please check your primary e-mail account to find out the identity of your pal. If our message is not in your primary e-mail account, you also may want to check your anonymous account and your Spam and Bulk mail folders, as you may have a sensitive spam blocker that blocked our original e-mail.

If for some reason you did not receive your pal’s info from us, please drop us a line at oneskein@interweave.com, and we’ll contact you again about your match.

With sign-ups now complete, we thought you’d be interested in these odd facts about the participants in this exchange:

• About 10 percent of participants live outside the United States. In all, most foreign participants hail from the United Kingdom and Australia, with Europe also largely represented by pals from the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. We also had one pal from Malaysia and another from Japan!
  
  
• Of the participants in the United States, the states most represented are California, New York, Texas, Washington, and Oregon. The states of Alaska, Delaware, Utah, Vermont, and North Dakota only attracted one participant each.
  
  
• Nearly 50 percent of you have allergies. One peculiar thing we noticed is that our foreign participants did not claim as many pet allergies. These are things that make you go hmmm .
  
  
• 65 percent of you have blogs or websites and will be using them to communicate with your pals and thank them for spoiling you with skeins. Everyone else will be corresponding by snail mail and e-mail only. (Where possible we tried to match up bloggers to bloggers, nonbloggers to nonbloggers.)
  
  
• We were surprised to see how many of you cross over into other craft categories, with beading and paper crafts the two most popular craft hobbies—after knitting, spinning, and crocheting, of course! Some of our favorite off-beat hobbies were the Argentine Tango, Collecting Really Obnoxious Christmas Music, Ikebana and Kyudo, Formula 1 Racing, Acupuncture, and Organic Gardening (you are after our heart).

Thanks again to all the fiber enthusiasts who signed up to participate in this first exchange event organized by Interweave Press. We’re having a great time getting to know you, and we hope you will bond with your pal in your common love for the fiber arts.

As a final reminder, please make sure you fulfill your obligations in this exchange:

1. The One Skein Secret Pals Exchange will run the months of June, July, and August 2006.
2. In June you send one new or never-been-used skein to your assigned pal with the required letters and correspondence.
3. In July you send one new or never-been-used skein to your assigned pal with the required letters and correspondence.
4. In August you surprise your pal and send him/her a finished knitted or crocheted piece made from a single skein. You can knit or crochet with any skein and it does not have to be one you received from your pal. In August you finally reveal your identity to your pal with this mailing.
5. If you have a blog or website, please use this venue to publicly thank your pal for each gift. You can get creative with this by uploading photos of your skeins or sharing how you might be using the skeins. Maybe you’ll even want to write a haiku about your skeins. And because your pal doesn’t know your identity, you can talk about and show photos of the progress you’re making on your final knitted and crocheted gift for your pal.

Most importantly, be sure to have fun with this event and treat your pal as you’d want to be treated. If you’re assigned to a foreign pal, keep in mind that your packages will take longer to get there, and you should always try to send at the beginning of the month. Keep your packages timely, and if you’re a slower knitter/crocheter, get started now on that final one-skein creation. You can always look to Leigh Radford’s new book, One Skein: 30 Quick Projects to Knit and Crochet for inspiration and project patterns.

If you have any questions, please review the FAQ before contacting us by e-mail at oneskein@interweave.com.

Thanks and happy knitting, crocheting, and spinning!