You'll want to know more about Aslan Trends

It was a typically busy day at Yarnmarket. Alex and Jan were out of the office. The phones were ringing off the hook. When I picked up the receiver, the voice on the other end had a wonderful, South American accent.

"Hello," he said in a voice that makes you want to close up the shop and hop on a plane to Brazil. "My name is Angelo Fernandez. I have studied Yarnmarket and I've decided I would like to do business with you."

Now, if you knew how many calls I get each day offering me a "once in a lifetime opportunity to form a strategic alliance with synergistic benefits," you'd wonder why I didn't immediately hang up.

But something about Angelo was different. I instantly liked the guy. He told me that he was running a company called Aslan Trends, and he asked if I'd seen his advertisements. Sure, I had. They were plastered all over Vogue Knitting. How could anyone miss them? I knew the guy knew marketing.

Angelo told me about his wonderful yarns, his company and their ethics, and how much he wanted to work with us. Normally, I don't even speak to manufacturers because that's what Jan and Alex do. But they weren't there and Angelo had captured my interest. I let him know that I'm not the decision maker in that area, but he said he wanted to put together a box of yarns so I could look at his products, anyway. He assured me I'd be impressed.

Well, a few days later a box arrived in my office. When I opened it up, I have to say, I was really impressed. I examined all the materials that Angelo had thoughtfully put together, and I took the box to Alex and announced, "We've got to do business with this guy!"

Even he was impressed with the quality and softness of the fibers. The Royal Alpaca felt so amazingly wonderful, you would have sworn it was cashmere. Before you know it, Alex was on the phone and we were the proud purveyors of yarns from Aslan Trends.

I'm telling you this now because I want you to keep your eye out for our upcoming Spotlight on Aslan Trends. I've spent the past few days working on it (with lots of help from Michele, Stefanie and Jenny)and I think you're going to enjoy learning about this company and their designs.

The fibers are beautiful and lend themselves to some truly beautiful creations. I'm sure you've seen a lot of them in the knitting magazines and online.

Wouldn't you know that Angelo would have the smarts to hire the brilliantly talented Nicky Epstein to create a North American book of patterns? Her book, Enchanting Collection, is doing extremely well and we've just had the pleasure of working directly with Nicky to create a Yarnmarket exclusive pattern that uses Aslan Trends yarn and Namaste Farms yarns together. We'll have the pattern available for you anytime now, so keep watching.

If you aren't already a subscriber to Spotlight be sure to sign up today. Each month we present a different company and talk about their products, patterns, history and philosophy. We've posted past issue of Spotlights in Knitch Magazine's archives so if there are any you're curious to learn about, you might want to check them out there.