She shut down her brick-and-mortar yarn shop after six months because kits, not yarn, are the profitable product. Kari’s shop was in Maplewood, New Jersey, a short train ride from a lot of New York City writers and creatives. She still calls it the best money she spent that year because it produced the Wirecutter pick, which drove at least 10x more kit sales than she had before. Kari’s kit had four things going for it that most beginner knitting kits do not. A “workhorse” yarn her distributor guarantees for reorder, so a Wirecutter pick will not sell out and go dark when the yarn is discontinued.