7 years

It's Quince & Co's 7th anniversary! We can hardly believe it, can you? To celebrate this momentous occasion, we thought it would be nice to take a look at our body of work from the past year. And oh, but we have been busy, busy creating new yarns, colors, and designs since last July.

Before we move on to those lovelies, I want to take a moment to thank our staff in Biddeford and Portland, for taking such care and personal effort in making Quince what it is.

We often hear surprised comments about how small our workforce is. It's not immediately apparent that there is but a small handful of dedicated and enthusiastic people working like crazy behind the scenes. We are not a large, faceless company. A lot of heart goes into what we do and how we send it out into the world. Every single person here leaves their mark. Without them, there would be no seventh year to celebrate. Thank you.

What have we to show for the past year? Read on...

Collections

Since July 2016, we've come out with 13 new pattern collections. Thirteen!

The Tern 2016 collection featured 5 knits in our wool/silk fingering weight Tern; Summer Ebbs, a mini-collection of 4 shawls in Piper, Tern, Finch, and Owl. 

Glen, the first of our Fall/Winter 2016 mini-collections in wooly Finch, Chickadee, and Lark; Sea Smoke, our second mini-collection of colorwork and texture pieces in Chickadee and Lark; Lodge, a mini-collection of 3 knits worked in Phoebe, Lark, and Osprey; and our final collection of 2016, Weekend, with 5 pieces knitted in Finch, Lark, Puffin, and Ibis. 

We started off 2017 with a mini-collection of striped pieces by Barb Collins in Piper, Chickadee, and Owl, followed by our 6th installment of Scarves, etc. Our Spring 2017 offerings kicked off with the Piper 2017 collection, then Linen Noir and its linen pieces all in black; and Linen Verdant, with linen knits in evocative blues and greens.

Summer brought us our first Willet collection with knits for our cleaner cotton™ yarn, and in June came our Shawls 2017 collection with new designs in Piper, Chickadee, and Owl.

Books

In between our many collection releases, we've also published three books by authors we deeply admire.

Susan B. Anderson's String Along Toys, with patterns for her adorable mouse, monkey, and frog join-together toys, all in Lark.

In January 2017, we released Texture: Exploring Stitch Patterns In Knitwear, by Hannah Fettig, her designs beautifully showcasing textured and cabled knits.

Last but not least, Norah Gaughan's Framework: Ten Architectual Knits, worked in our linen Sparrow and Kestrel yarns, the geometric-based designs so distinctly and uniquely Norah.

Patterns

Scattered like stars throughout the year, we also released 11 individual patterns.

From the top, left to right: For our cleaner cotton™ Willet, Leah B. Thibault brought us Atlee and Caiterly; Pam's Lotte cardigan brought embroidered embellishment to the table; Ann Budd's Tavia pleated skirt in Finch was a hit with everyone;  the Petra cardigan was a fresh take on Pam's original pullover version.

Whitney Hayward's Watkins cardigan in Puffin was, and continues to be, a huge favorite; and the Lucy hats pattern by Dawn Catanzaro was our subscriber thank-you to celebrate the turning of the year.

Apex, a pretty colorwork hat by Olga Rych, and Isabell Kraemer's Laika shawl, were both new designs for our fuzzy wool/alpaca Owl.

And two more new Willet designs came out recently, with Dawn's Nina cardigan and Pam's Auger tank.

Yarns

Finally, we come to the very heart and soul of our company: Our yarns. A dizzying array of new colors, special limited-edition batches, and hand-dyed yarns by talented dyers kept us ever busy.

In July 2016 we introduced 5 new shades for Willet, followed soon after by our first release of 3 all-natural undyed colorgrown shades.

String Theory hand-dyed a special batch of Chickadee in 5 jeweled tones.

Our core wool palette expanded yet again with 5 glorious new shades for Finch, Chickadee, Lark, Osprey, and Puffin. Our Puffin saw star treatment with beautiful, natural Puffin hand-dyes in cutch, quebracho red, logwood, madder, and weld, hand-dyed by Kristine Vejar of A Verb For Keeping Warm.

We introduced 3 new shades for chunky merino/mohair Ibis, and released a small batch of Puffin blue heathers. Another small batch of blue heathers, this time in Osprey, were available exclusively at a number of our flagship stores.

A quintet of gorgeous new marled shades were added to our linen Sparrow line, and 5 new colors for our Kestrel ribbon linen, as well.

On Mother's Day, our limited-edition color Carnation returned.

And just this week, our Willet colorgrown heathers came back with a new fourth shade, green Lentil. We celebrated the 4th of July with the release of Tern indigo dyes created for us by Jody McKenzie Harris, right here in Maine.

This abundance of beauty gives us all the more reason to celebrate our 7th year! Here's to more of that...keep an eye out for our next collection, coming up next week (get our first announcements by signing up for the Quince e-letter).

We appreciate you coming along for the ride with us, in sharing our craft and in the joy of creating with passion and integrity. 

Our most heartfelt thanks:

To our customers, for your continued support and enthusiasm for what we have to offer.

To our suppliers and our vendors, for making all of this possible.

To the amazing designers and collaborators, for sharing their extraordinary work with us.

To our flagship and linen stores in the United States and worldwide, for making our yarns available in your neck of the woods, and for sharing your visitors' time with us.

To those reading, for hearing what we say.

And a very special thank you to Pam Allen, for creating Quince & Co.

Have a joyful weekend, all.