Wheel of the Year Club – FAQ
This page is intended to answer as many questions as possible about Yarnscape’s Wheel of the Year Club. If you have a question that isn’t answered here, please feel free to email me, or leave a comment on this page. I will email you the reply, and answer the question here for others, too.
- When does the club start?
The first delivery for the club will be shipped for October 31, otherwise known as Halloween, Samhain, or the cross-quarter between the autumn equinox and midwinter. - Is there a signup deadline?
Signup for full club membership closes on October 17th, two weeks before the first shipment. If there are places remaining, you can sign up after this deadline for as much of the club as still remains – at a discount to make up for the deliveries you have missed. - When can I expect deliveries?
Full year members and six month members can expect deliveries on or about the following dates:- October 31 (Halloween)
- December 21 (Midwinter)
- February 2 (Candlemas)
- March 21 (Spring Equinox)
Full year members will get the following additional deliveries:
- May 1 (May Day)
- June 21 (Midsummer)
- August 2 (Lammas, or First Harvest)
- September 21 (Autumn Equinox)
- What about shipping?
Shipping is included in the price. Worldwide.
- Isn’t the Wheel of the Year a Pagan thing? Is this going to be a religious club? Will it offend my beliefs?
Be reassured! This club does not have any religious bias, and I would never push religion (or any other agenda) at anyone who wasn’t interested. The Wheel of the Year is a way of dividing up the year based on the natural rhythm of our orbit around the sun. Four of the key dates are the solstices (shortest day and longest day) and equinoxes (day and night the same length), which are astronomical, scientific facts. The other four dates are simply placed neatly in the middle of the four quarters of the year defined by the solstice and equinox dates. The Wheel of the Year has been adopted as an alternative calendar in some Pagan belief systems, but all of us outside the tropical zones experience seasons, and we can all enjoy them and celebrate the turning of the year.
I sincerely hope this club will not offend anyone, although only you can know the details and depth of your own beliefs. - Do I have to pay for it all at once?
No, but if you do, you get a discount! All the clubs include the option of buying membership up front, or subscribing via a regular payment. Payments will be timed to align with each delivery. - Can I cancel?
I hope that most folks who sign up to the club will want (and intend) to be in it for the duration! However, if you pay by installments, you can cancel at any time by cancelling your PayPal subscription. - What if I’m allergic to angora? (Or alpaca, or mohair, or…)
Let me know when you sign up. An ideal place to put this information is in the ‘Instructions to the seller’ field in PayPal, but if you forget, just drop me an email. I can cater for most allergies and preferences, though obviously it will cut down on the variety you get in your shipments. I cannot at this time cater for people with a wool allergy, as most of my products contain wool!
If you want to be sure before signing up that I can cater for you, please, drop me an email. I will do my best. - Will the colourways be exclusive to club members?
The club colourways are guaranteed to be exclusive to club members for a full year. I may then decide to release them as publically available colourways – but then again, I might not. - I live in the Southern Hemisphere!
Lucky you! I’m afraid, though, that you will be receiving a midsummer-themed shipment when it is midwinter where you live. I can’t do seasonally appropriate colours especially for you this year. I thought about it – I really did! – but I realised that I would actually have to run two separate clubs, with two sets of exclusive colourways, in order to make this work whilst preventing spoilers for other participants. Perhaps next year.
- Can you tell me more about the Wheel of the Year?
Apart from the answer to question 4, I’d direct you first to the Wikipedia article, though it has a definitely Pagan emphasis. Other than that, I’d say that it’s a way of looking at the year that stems directly from many beliefs, worldwide, about the cyclical nature of time. Early people saw day/night cycles, lunar cycles, annual cycles – and the cycle of birth and death – and thought that all time was made up of cycles – wheels within wheels of interlocking time.
There are many, many different sets of symbolism associated with the seasons and the turning of the year, and they can make for fascinating research. But I’m going to leave all that to you!