Good-bye Blogger

It's time to say good bye to the original home of the Cambodia Knits blog and move into the new home at the CK website. This was my first experience in blogging and it's been a very positive one. We've made a lot of great friends and fans here and I hope all of you keep checking in at our new home to see what we're up too. There is no way to 'follow' us at the new site, but you can subscribe as easy as 1-2-3 for an RSS feed to keep you up-to-date.

Thank you everyone for following us, checking in, writing comments and supporting us so many different ways! We couldn't have done it without you!

There's a new post already waiting for you here. See you there!!

Our New Website!!!

I can't believe I neglected to blog here about our new website!!

Thanks to the genius of Yumi Ichida, the patience of Yeng and the tweaking of House 32, we're up and running.

Have a look at www.cambodiaknits.com and tell us what you think.

CK on Twitter

I finally broke down and signed us up for Twitter. Twitter still doesn't make all that much sense to me. I understand how it works, but the idea of being bombarded, on your phone no less, by constant, sometimes banal, updates from around the world, seems odd. I'm still trying to work out the benefit over the annoyance.

To this end, CK is on Twitter. Find us and follow us here.

Help CK Grow!

We're growing to a new stage and we need your help to get there!

Cambodia Knits is excited to announce that we'll soon be working with Caritas in Toul Sambo to set up a full knitting workshop right in the community. Caritas are building new housing and community spaces, and there is room for a CK workspace! This means we'll now have an on-site dedicated space to assemble our products to completion.

Currently, CK has to purchase unfinished knitted parts from Toul Sambo, then assemble them together in the Phnom Penh office. With the new workspace, knitters will now be able to earn more by making completely finished products!

We're thrilled with this opportunity, so to get the space running we're asking for a small funding infusion.
Our immediate goal is to:

• fund the knitters' new training for assembly, and
• afford travel to the community during training
• purchase equipment and materials to create a safe and healthy work environment

Your donations will also go towards:

• setting up a contingency fund for staff; a set reserve that staff can borrow from, with no interest or advance
• signage, brochure printing and advertising to raise awareness for and promote CK
• business registration fees

Because we're not a registered charity, we can't issue tax receipts — however, donors will receive a heartfelt email of thanks, and a mention on our Donor Wall of gratitude.

Every bit will help CK get through this challenging stage. Please donate today via Paypal by clicking the button on the right hand panel.

Thank you!

Donations are fully secure using the PayPal system.

CK in Australia

Canberra to be specific.

Last month when we were en route to Sydney, (and nearly missed our flight because we forgot that Singapore was one hour ahead and while happily checking emails using Singapore airport's free wireless service at what we thought was 6:45pm with lots of time until our 8pm flight and Yeng's name got called over the PA and we both immediately realized our mistake and ran, ran, ran to the gate...) I got an email from a woman who runs a baby products store in Canberra, interested in our toys. It was serendipitous because we planning to be in Canberra only a few days later! We managed to meet Emma at Brindabella Baby and are more than happy to supply her shop!

She's just moved her shop to a new location in Canberra, Rodney's Nursery, 24 Beltana Road, Pialligo, and had the opening last week. We didn't get to see the new shop but from the photos below it looks lovely and inviting. Emma has been running the business for a few years, selling eco-friendly, fair trade products for the under 5 kiddies. She started doing this out of her house, but as the business grew and she found more and more great products from around the world, she eventually opened a shop. She focuses on products that are fairly produced and help the communities in which they are produced, a true ethical consumer. You can read more about Brindabella Baby and see more photos here.

More new stuff!

Since the beginning I have been thinking about how to best display finger puppets for sale. Way back when, I did a search for finger puppet displays and one that looked great was the chopsticks in vase options which we have been using since. It's a cheap, easy option and kinda cute. Not the best for shopping though as they tend to get messed up and it's sometimes hard to have a good look the bunch without tipping the display over.

So for the past few months, I've really wanted to improve on the display and since Phnom Penh is a great place to put idea into practice at any variety of small scale wood, metal, plastic workshops I thought it would be snap. Not so. Well, yes so, but you need to have the right person to do the legwork for you. Luckily, CK has Chariya who is not only a great translator, but a Sherlock Holmes when it comes to tracking down any variety of un-simple requests I have. Thanks to her, in less than three days we have our puppet stands!

New Price tags

We're getting more and more settled into the new space. Next step is to formalize the retail area in the front, but the knitters recently moved forward from the back of the room because the fan is better there. And I can understand! With the daily temperature hitting above 40C, it's painfully hot! We'll need more fans installed I think.

We're preparing some products to go to Monument Books today and we're debuting our new price tags. These will include the name of the knitter. The knitters were very excited about this. The website is almost ready for (go and have a peak, but there are few tweaks still to be made) public consumption. It's looking fantastic!