Join our (virtual) Community

"Knit with attitude is a contemporary, welcoming yarn shop and community hub in the heart of vibrant Stoke Newington, East London. Knit with attitude is a welcoming place open for all, where you will find the engaging conversations, the support you need, and where laughter sits loosely. Sometimes if you peak through the windows on early mornings you'll catch the team dancing and singing along to our guilty pleasures, volume turned to the maximum, setting the mood for the day. Knit with attitude is unpretentious, anti-cliquish and open minded, a space we hope you feel is yours and where you belong."

When asked, this is how I will describe my shop, our little corner of the yarn universe. It sets out the vision I had when opening our doors more than ten years ago and what I have tried to achieve, it tells you what we are all about now and in the future. Community is and has always been at the very heart of what we do here at Knit with attitude!

We have always been conscious about our wider community, I built my own website long before an online shop was common for small businesses, and long before you could get ready made platforms like 'build your shop in a day' kind of thing. And through this we were able to connect with friends from far away and beyond from the very beginning. I have to admit though, I would never have seen coming a year like the one we have just experienced and the pandemic we are still living through worldwide, and how important our online community would turn out to be. It forced us to reach out even further, to redefine the activities, conversations, and bonds created through the shop itself and come up with ways to maintain and continue this in a virtual reality. It became tremendously important for us to create the same environment, the same atmosphere, the same spirit in our online space as what we've previously made in our physical space. We increased our activity through social media, and very quickly established our weekly virtual knit nights, and my newsletters suddenly went from being a 'once in a blue moon' happening to a weekly correspondence.

When I was little I used to have pen pals. Writing letters was something I enjoyed so much I actually had a membership in an international Pen Pal organisation for kids (no, I'm not joking, these things used to exist) where you could connect with other children all over the world. I had the closest friendship with a girl in Addis Abeba, shared food preferences with a boy in Melbourne and planned to visit a girl in Florida (having visited Disney World with my mum at 7yo I was desperate to go back). My past as an obsessed letter writer is something that keeps coming back to me now and then, having moved from my home country I often plan to surprise someone with a proper old fashioned letter, I plan to get hold of some lovely stationary and even have the wording ready in my mind, but then hectic everyday activities interrupts and it ends up with the thought... 

I truly enjoy writing these weekly letters to you all, and it has struck me how this relates to my fondness for letter writing. Reaching out to you, not to mention when you guys take the time to write me back, makes me feel connected, like I belong to something larger, much larger than myself and my closest surroundings. It has truly made a difference for me and the way I coped with isolation and social distancing, it is teaching me that new ways of human interactions are developing and that old ones are to be rediscovered.

With so many new followers joining us through our different channels recently – I wanted to specifically welcome you all, and maybe offer a small lay down of what our newsletters are all about. I try to send them out weekly, although occasionally I won't, I try to keep them short and sweet, but occasionally I won't. The newsletters are my personal communication with you, my direct line to the friends of Knit with attitude and they do tend to be personal. In our newsletters you will be treated as a friend, you will get the inside information first, you will be the first to know what goes on behind the scenes, there are offers and special treats of course, and it is where you'll find the latest updates on our most popular KWA Playlists, the tunes that bring joy! Some guilty pleasures, some classics, some tunes to get you dancing, and some to unwind.

The newsletters are also your direct line to me, I receive so many lovely emails from many of you responding to what I've written about, telling me about your knitting journeys, sharing everyday musings. Each and every email is read and deeply appreciated, and I do try to answer as many of you as I can. As I said, community has always been at the centre of everything we do here at KWA and I often feel that our newsletter correspondence is the beating heart of that very community. 

I feel such gratitude to each and everyone who decides to join in and follow along on our shared creative adventure. As a small token of our appreciation, for as long as you are a newsletter subscriber you will receive a lifetime 5% discount on all orders placed with us online, this can be used in combination with other discounts as well, like the referral programme where you can gift a discount to friends should you decide to tell them about us – all information about this can be found on the Knit with attitude front page online, just scroll down to the bottom. There is no code necessary to claim your subscriber's discount, but when purchasing need to be logged into a customer account using the same email address as you used for the newsletter subscription, this will connect the dots in our system, identify your subscription and the discount is automatically added at check out. 

Thank you so much to each and every one who choses to follow along, you all make up the fabric that is Knit with attitude!

Maya xxx