My arrival at Yarnmarket

While Alex, Lori, Lynn and Jan were working hard to build Yarnmarket into the vast global enterprise it is today (okay, so I exaggerate!), I was working at a job in corporate America that would have sounded really neat to anyone who didn't actually have to do it. I got to fly all over the place meeting with people, and I especially loved meeting with people in San Francisco, London and Paris.

But the job was exhausting, required very long hours, and I'd stopped caring about the "seamless integration of disparate computer systems to optimize performance and streamline processes to improve the bottom line." I wanted to do something else. Specifically, I wanted to work at Yarnmarket.

It took a couple of years of nagging, but eventually Alex and his partner decided that they needed a full-time marketing person who'd make sure that knitters around the world knew about our store and would give us a chance to prove to them how wonderfully nice we are. (Remember...Fabulous fashions. Fast. And friendly.)

So one morning in March of 2007, I checked my bank account to ensure my annual bonus had been deposited there overnight (because I was going to need it!) and then I walked to my boss' office and resigned.

Yes...after 33 years in the corporate world, I was finally walking away from the meetings, the dress codes, the politics, the perks and the paycheck. The first three things, I wasn't going to miss at all. The last two things...well, it's amazing what you can learn to live without!

I've now been an official YarnMartian for 10 months -- and what months they've been! We launched BargainYARNS, our value-priced site, and YarnMerchant, a special service to help our colleagues in the yarn retailing business. We launched our own brand of yarns -- The Impressionist Collection -- and we added a lot more yarns to Yarndex.com, our online directory.

Best of all, we made all sorts of new friends in the industry. Some of them will even return my phone calls!