For the first time in the HISTORY of Classic Elite!!!

Classic Elite Yarns is, for the first time EVER, making current season patterns available for digital download online! With the explosion of digital resources available to crafters (blogs, websites, YouTube, and the now-indispensable Ravelry...), we are used to information at our fingertips. Traditionally, our current season patterns have only been available to those who have booklets in hand, but you have asked for instant access and we are delivering!

Have you heard of Patternfish? It's a third party website that sells patterns to knitters and crocheters around the world to buy and download! Patternfish takes no advertising, has no editorial voice, and is fully invested in their mission to digitize and make available all the patterns they possibly can, even including print patterns from predigital days...

These are not the first Classic Elite patterns on Patternfish... Many of our older patterns, most of which are now out of print, have been digitized and are available for purchase. A search for Classic Elite as the publisher yields almost 500 patterns, sortable by gauge, size, knit style, category or difficulty level. You can even specify "No Seaming"! You'll find designs from Kristin Nicholas, Norah Gaughan, Annie Modesitt, Margery Winter, and our very own Susan Mills, now creative director of Classic Elite! You'll even see a few shots of a young, stunning Uma Thurman, 17 year old knit model...

Six of our Fall 2010 patterns are now available on Patternfish for download, which means you can keep them forever and ever and ever (spoken like a true product of the digital age...)

Corona in Giselle

Spinnaker in Inca Alpaca

Birch Leaf in Montera

Haven in Wool Bam Boo

Boxcar in La Gran

Encore in Fresco

The format of the downloadable patterns is our new and improved layout, featured in the blog just a few days ago. You'll see bigger text, bigger charts and schematics, wider columns and more pictures. Visit the e-Patterns page on our website to download one today, and don't forget to browse our classic patterns at Patternfish!

Shopatron

The word "Shopatron" evokes images of armies of retail robots, programmed to do our bidding...Oddly, it kind of is a robot designed for just that very thing. Classic Elite Yarns is a direct-to-retailer company, selling wholesale to the lovely brick-and-mortar and online stores you know and love. However, what if you see something on our website that you really like? Or that you haven't seen at your LYS?

When you click on a product on our website, you will see a "Buy Now" button on the left side. That button is powered by the aforementioned Shopatron.

Your order is sent along to them, where a sophisticated algorithm designates the closest retailer with your product in stock, and that retailer fills your order! You can either have it mailed to you or even pick it up in person.

For consumers, Shopatron is a great way to connect the experience of browsing through Classic Elite's full line of yarns and patterns on our website and receiving our actual products by mail at home. It also means you're receiving orders from an LYS near you, so you're supporting the stores that are the lifeblood of our industry. For us, it gives us a direct way to support our retailers by filling orders through actual brick-and-mortar stores and to connect directly to our consumers through our website. For retailers, you can benefit from the promotion we give our products through classiceliteyarns.com in addition to what you are already doing on your own website; and it's completely free to sign up! It's a win-win. You can find more information on Shopatron through the Classic Elite section of the Shopatron website.

Happy shopping!