Ok, I’m here. Slightly late, but that’s pretty much the story of my life. When did I set this blog up? Ooh, who knows? August, I think. And it’s what, November? Ho hum.

But I think it’s time to make a start. If nothing else, I’m going to need a record of what I’ve done and when, to jog what’s left of my memory. This Ecoknits thing happened so damn quickly, I’m not quite sure how it all really started, but I do know I blame Sarah for a large portion of it. We were chatting one night on MSN, as you do, and got to talking about business and websites and making a few pounds to offset the cost of raising small children. And then we got onto the work/life balance that so many people get so very wrong, and how we didn’t want to do that. And how you need to do what you love, because then that stops it being just work and makes it a job you genuinely enjoy. What did I enjoy? What do I love to do?

Pretty much anything that involves yarn, to be honest. Now that gardening is out of the picture (long story, worthy of another couple of blog posts come spring), my one true passion is for knitting and all things yarny. My house is full of the stuff – in everyroom there’s at least one cotton shopping bag with a project in, and my kitchen corner is piled with bags and boxes and padded envelopes containing wool, needles, books, patterns… anyway, you get the picture. I might even post a picture if I can figure out how you do that on Wordpress.

But where was I? Ah, beginnings.

I’d been looking for some organic cotton a while before this conversation, and had bemoaned the fact that the lovely organic, ethical type yarns were few and far between. You could get his yarn from this seller and that yarn from another seller, and where were those lovely needles to be found again? Then it hit me – all these threads could be neatly tied up if I put together my own little website selling ethical, organic, fair trade, sustainable, natural yarns for the discerning knitter and crocheter. (we’re not toolist around here – I don’t mind if you use a hook instead of pointy sticks to make your thing. Bi-stitchual, we call it.)

I umm’d and ahh’d over whether I could actually do it. Sarah poked me a number of times on line and then James (aka himself, DH, the kids’ dad) grumbled that if I bought any more knitting wool, I needed to start selling it as we were running out of room in the house. This coming from a man who buys Land Rovers for the fun of it. What takes up more room, I ask you – a dozen balls of yarn or two old knackered Discoverys? Hmmmm?

Sorry, I digress.

That kind of cinched it though. I would start my website. So on 15th April 2008, I bought www.ecoknits.co.uk. Found a host, letshost.ie, through James, that ticked all the boxes. Not that I had many boxes. Whilst I’ve been surfing the internet for the past, ooh, 13 years (!) I’d never figured out how anyone actually put all that information up there for my delectation. It just, well, was there. And if it wasn’t, I knew it wouldn’t be long before someone added it to the great library in the ether that is the World Wide Web. I’m doing it again, aren’t I? Where was I?

I did something daft and placed a big order for wooden needles from India on 2nd May. Well, hell, I thought, they’ll take a while to turn up…

I did a little online course starting May 7th. That was fun. In the middle of that, I spent many an hour online trying to find a shopping cart because I absolutely loathe OSCommerce. I’d tried it, and it just hadn’t worked. It looked, well, like OSCommerce. Apologies to those out there who use it and like it, but I didn’t have the wherewithal or the know-how to change the appearance sufficiently to prevent it looking like a zillion other websites out there. I wanted simple. I wanted clean lines. I didn’t want to have to click nine different drop down menu lists to get to the page where you could click ‘add to cart’.

We found Mal’s Cart. (We being me and Sarah – my invaluable assistant. I did resolve to teach her to knit so I could repay her help with yarn… but more on that later). Mal’s cart offered me pretty much exactly what I wanted – a simple bit of form code that I could drop under each item on the website, that took you to a secure cart held on their server. I could do multi-choice forms, for needle lengths and sizes, I could do radio buttons for “or” selections, or square ones for “and” selections, and it was simple, straightforward and most importantly of all, free! Tick that box.

I spent May and June emailing various suppliers, including people in Ulan Bator, Mongolia; South Africa; companies that imported stuff from Peru and Uruguay; found needles from the USA. But then my conscience started to prickle me. I was supposed to be Ecoknits. The “Eco” was an important bit of my name. Just how eco was it to be importing stuff from halfway around the world? Think of the air miles! Think of the carbon footprint… I baulked at the South African stuff, as although it was gorgeously soft bamboo, machine washable in a myriad of wonderful colours, it would be coming from the bottom of the world. Via plane. I couldn’t do that, could I? I may yet change my mind if I can get them to send it surface. I should ask, actually…

But I did find two British companies that sold Peruvian yarn. And I decided to stock them for a number of reasons, which I’ll cover in another post. I found some yarn from Uruguay. And then I found my English yarn. Lots and lots of lovely English/British stuff, produced by artisans and small businesses with love and care and attention to detail and no air miles involved. Perfect!

I dug into savings, and ordered. Oh the boxes that started arriving. Then I had to buy other stuff, a daylight bulb for taking photos with, packaging materials, storage boxes to keep the kids and the puppy out. Someone mentioned Inland Revenue and accounts. Um, you mean I have to do this properly?

Ok. Tune in next time for the great saga of “Officially Starting a Business”. It’s nowhere near as hard as you might think!

Insert gratuitous picture of delicious fair trade sock yarn here…