Just in case some of you haven't gotten the newsletter or seen the ad in the paper, I wanted to remind you that from Monday, Feb 11th to Saturday, Feb 16th we have our 6th annual Midwinter Sweetheart Sale where all of the regularly priced yarn in the store is on special: if you buy 4 balls, you get the 5th one for FREE! They don't have to be the same colour, type or style of yarn, it just has to be the 5th ball that you buy to be FREE.
ALSO, for those among you who have knitting friends...if you bring your friend with you, you both receive an extra 5% off your entire order!
And one last word about the sale: We have been having such success with using the reusable shopping bags that we are offering a free stamp on your Customer Savings Card to all who bring their own bags for the week of the sale.
There, enough of the advertisement. Hope to see you there.
Now, I wanted to tell you a sweet story that I was reminded of yesterday.
On a nice Saturday in February as yesterday was, a knitting store can be a busy place, so it's particularly appreciated when you get a moment to chat with some of the customers. Yesterday, I had a lady who bought a good batch of yarn that was in skeins and consequently needed to be rolled into balls. She was musing about how she would achieve this as she lived alone. She thought the back of a chair would fill in as a skein holder, then I remembered and told her about the time when I was in the hospital after delivering my first daughter and was so desperate to knit, having run out of yarn; I only had skeins left. I HAD to roll some more so that I could continue. For reasons that I choose to forget, I wasn't able to get out of bed and so I propped myself up with pillows, wrapped the skein around both of my feet and spread them apart to make the skein taught, and wound my way back into the realm of being able to knit. The customer and I both had a good laugh about that memory, and she said that she thought it would be a good idea and that she might give it a try.
Today, when I sat down to write in the blog, I went through my file of interesting knitting tidbits that I like to collect and to my shock, there was the Mon Tricot Magazine from Aug/Sept 1977 (the issue that would have been on the newsstands the day that Elvis died, by the way) that contained the pattern that I was knitting at the time of my confinement a few years later.
Now I would like to tell you that the sweater looked as nice on me as it did on her, considering my dedication to the task. The reality was that I had gained 60 lbs during that first pregnancy, so I was really knitting blind not having any idea how I would look post-baby. Well I guess I didn't have much faith in my body's ability to bounce back because my gorgeous burgundy wool sweater turned out so big that it would have fit the model who was wearing it and her companion who was standing next to her in the picture. Oh well, I eventually ripped it out and made a nice fairisle yoked cardigan from a pattern that I found a few years later in Canadian Living, another great source for knitting patterns in the '80's.
Now and then I come across a knitting book from Pingouin, Phildar or Mon Tricot from that era and am always amazed at how timeless the designs are. Those French designers in the '70's and '80's had their finger on what the knitting world was going to like for a long time. Both of these pictures could be in books that would be published today.
Lest it sound as if I'm pining for the "good ol' days", I am also pretty "with it" in the cyber contact and knitting worlds. A couple of weeks ago I was on a Women's yoga and business retreat at the Gananoque Inn (yes, it was heavenly). What a great time. But the whole phenomenon of Facebook took up a certain amount of our chatting, and as many of us had not had any experience with it, the organizers offered to run a mini intro workshop for the uninitiated among us. Then couple of days later I got my invitation to join Ravelry (the on-line knitting community similar to Facebook but dedicated exclusively to knitters and crafters.)...and life has gone off the rails since then.
One of my daughters refers to Facebook as "Crackbook" as it is so addictive, but truly it is fun, (and in the zen way of looking at things, it gives me an opportunity to cultivate and practice self discipline). I'll be trying to keep both pages up to date and have the Ravelry page link to this blog, but if you're on Facebook and would like to link up, I'm under my name: Anne Woodall and also WOOL-TYME Kingston has a business page. So much to learn, so little time. And then when am I going to get any knitting done...?
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