On December 11th 2017, a special announcement was made in Clan Oscha:
“We have a special announcement today:
**Celebration Custom Collection**
We’d like you to help us design a bespoke Collection featuring patterns chosen by Mike & Vicki ahead of their semi-retirement.
Over the next few days we will be running polls to quickly whittle down to your most loved items that we will list for sale on the site by the end of the week, these items will be woven to order.
The original list of patterns you will select are from Mike & Vicki’s favourites. As our two esteemed Oscha Directors are moving on to pastures new we want to celebrate all the work and energy they have put into Oscha by featuring their favourite patterns for you to choose from.
It would take too long to list all the jobs Mike & Vicki have done at Oscha (there has been literal blood sweat and tears!) so let’s just go with the main headlines – Mike is the co-founder and creator of many loved patterns and colourways, with a great eye for colour, fastidious with detail and a lover of many artistic periods, most notably for us, the Art Nouveau movement. Vicki wrote many of our blog posts, ran our custom dyeing operation, coordinated preorders and managed all things wrap scrap!
We would love you to help us design some brand new wraps over the next week to celebrate their work with Oscha.
We are hoping for a speedy turnaround after the orders are placed, as we are using pre-dyed yarns, this means they could arrive in as little as 3 months time, however this can’t be fully guaranteed so please still allow the normal 4-6 months to see pre-ordered items being shipped.”
That same day a pattern poll was set up with Mike and Vicki’s favorite patterns: Okinami, Sundara, Roses, Rei, Orion, Ivy, Libero, Pavonis, Supernova and Lyra. Okinami, Sundara and Roses ended up being the top 3 most popular patterns (even though it was a very close call between Roses and Rei).
The next day, December 12th, a grad vote was set up to vote for a warp grad. One of the six specially designed grads would be chosen to be included into the collection. The Storm grad was the most popular grad. A blend poll was launched too, to be used as a guideline in creating the definitive mockups for the celebration collection.
Friday the 15th, on Secret Santa Stash Friday, the collection was launched as a preorder for ordering; ordering closed on Monday 18th.
Final products for ordering:
- Okinami Stirling
- Okinami Maida Vale
- Okinami Nydie
- Sundara Sailing
- Sundara Michael
- Roses Michael
- Roses Vicki
Products were available as wraps, RS’s, cairis, nook, strap protector, scarf, shawl and 1m scrap pieces.