It’s the first of the year, and at Eat Sleep Knit, January 1 that means it’s time for a whole new Yarn Marathon! This year, we’ve decided to overcomplicate things add a whole new level of yarn- buying fun with teams!

If you’re familiar with the way the Yarnathon works as an individual, nothing has changed – every time you buy yarn in our shop, we’ll keep track of the total yardage of yarn you’ve purchased. Power boosts for select heavier weight yarns and sweater boosts for buying 6+ skeins of yarn continue as always. And as always, you’ll earn a $20 store credit for every 5,000 yards of yarn purchased plus nifty prizes at various milestones.

New for 2014 though, there is an extra challenge for those who wish to join in – help your team be the one with the most Yarnathon finishers at the end of 2014, and earn even more free yarn, plus a super secret prize for the winners!

You’ll be randomly assigned to one of four teams when you sign up, and if you visit our Ravelry group, you can join in team challenges, team knit-a-longs, team contests to help your team win the race.

This year’s teams are: the Octopurls, the Fiber Monkeys, the Roboknits, and the Stitchosaurs. Visit your team’s Ravelry thread to meet your new teammates!

How It Works:
The team that finishes the year with the most individual Yarnathon finishers wins the race! Each quarter, you’ll have a chance to participate in a team knit-a-long, a team trivia contest, and several smaller challenges to boost your individual and team yardage.

All members of the winning team who participate in 2014’s Yarnathon in anyway (either through purchases or participation in team events) will receive a gift certificate, and finishers on the winning team will receive a super secret yarn prize as well! To try to keep the race as fair as possible, you can contribute even without finishing the Yarnathon – at the end of the year, we’ll award each team a “virtual finisher” based on the number of team members who’ve hit smaller goals – 1 virtual finisher will be awarded for:

• Every 2 team members who reach 1/2 Marathon or more
• Every 3 team members who reach 10 miles
• Every 6 team members who reach 5 miles

What else is new? Well as you can imagine, these new team mascots have given us a glut of new opportunities to put adorable and funny yarn-related illustrations on bags, mugs, and shirts. We’ve got a few more designs trickling in at the end of the week as well!