Perfectionism and the Bull.

You may remember a few posts back I mentioned about discovering work by Kingston's own yarn bombers on display on lower Princess St. Well as in everything else, NYC knows how to do it BIGGER.

This is the Wall Street Bull. The underlying statue is itself a work of guerrilla street art as artist, Arturo Di Modica placed him in the centre of New York's financial district without permission in 1987. Zoom ahead 23 years and you have New York yarn artist, Olek, doing her bit to add some colour to the financial district on a cold December night. Isn't he beautiful? I remember when I first saw this picture I was awestruck at the perfection of the fit, especially around all those fine curves of the feet and the horns. How could anyone possibly accomplish such precision...in secret, no less?

Then I watched the video of the assembly which took place this past Christmas Eve in the middle of the night in 20 F weather. (One must suffer for one's art). What struck me was that although art may look perfect at the end, it's creation involves a series of adaptations, decisions, reworkings, evaluations to achieve that illusion.

Here are some of the things that I love about her process - in relation to the work of those who have learned to improve their knitting skills with me:

-The artist was obviously well prepared in that she had all the pieces that she knew that she would need to cover every square inch of the bull, but from the way she has to tug and pull to make it fit, she proves that she is able to work with what she has, even if it isn't perfect to begin with.

-She isn't shy about sharing her work and her adaptations with the passers-by, even if it means that they see it as a work-in-progress .

-She takes huge delight in her work, especially when it's completed. We should all feel like doing a little "Rocky" victory dance at the end of a big job, knitting or any other task.

I have some issues with perfectionism myself. I think that I just don't have the make up to even pretend that anything that I do can possibly be perfect so I'm absolved of even trying.

Last week I was listening to the radio while working on my latest rug hooking project and heard Dr Brene Brown speaking about her book: "The Gifts of Imperfection" and felt so relieved that I no longer needed to feel guilty because I wasn't prepared to tear out an entire flower because one section wasn't exactly as I planned it, or rip back the entire sleeve of a sweater because I saw a mistaken in the crossed cable near a cuff.

That being said, like Olek, I have learned that in order to maintain the quality of my work, I better develop the skills that I need to deal with the errors and issues that might arise that keep the work from being the best it can be. So over the years I have learned how to use sewing thread to camouflage small inconsistencies in tension; I have added bands of knitting on both sides of a sweater under the arms to give it a bit more room if it's too small; I have removed ribbed bands and worked down to lengthen a garment; I've knit the back a smaller size than the front of a sweater in order to give more ease for those of us who might need it in the front and have "fudged" or eased the armholes to make them work together. And most importantly, I have learned, as Olek knows, that a good tug, especially when doing the final blocking of a piece can make a world of difference.

All of these tricks and the confidence to use them have come to me over 40 years of knitting and being too lazy or practical to start over. When a class member comes upon a major stumbling block in her project, I will offer possibilities...some based on the "do it over" model, others based on my more random attitude towards fixing the problem. I totally respect that some people would abhor the concept of a mistwisted cable in their garment but I also appreciate when product and process find a good happy medium and can coexist without making the knitter a slave to either one.

Very gingerly, let me say a few words...

I suppose I could explain my absence from this bandwidth for the past couple of weeks as being a byproduct of my holiday revelry and the madness of retail at that time of the year but it would only be partly true.

Last week I got an email linking to Mags Kandis' website announcing the end of the licensing agreement for Mission Falls Yarn, meaning that it will not longer be produced, and therefore when the stock is sold out, will no longer be available. Like all other fans of this beautiful product I was sorely disappointed, especially as I had just brought in the line of their sport weight wool just last spring. What an unfortunate loss - a wonderful product which was conceived, designed and actually spun here in Canada. But alas the world, knitting and otherwise, will keep on turning no doubt.

I don't mean to say that I was so prostrate with grief at the thought of losing a yarn line that I couldn't bring myself to write a blog post. I was however quite shocked by fall out and assumptions that this announcement brought with it and had to think about what I wanted to say. These assumptions originated with the following lines from Mags's original post:

Sad news:
As of today, the Mission Falls brand is no longer.
Happy news:
As of today, the licensee has begun liquidation of Mission Falls products. Yippppppeeeeeee for all you yarnie makers!

I have to commend Mags on her post that day. After 15 years of her life being invested in building such a great brand it must have been a difficult one to write and to word properly. Unfortunately the yipppeeee has perhaps given a wrong impression.

As a yarn store owner I had a very different reaction to losing a yarn that is of such great quality. My first thought was: "I sure hope that they have lots in stock so that the transition to other options can be made more smoothly." It never occurred to me that it would be sold off at fire sale prices.

Mission Falls wool and cotton is still a very valuable commodity, made all the more valuable in the eyes of fans and those who have partly finished projects of Mission Falls yarns by the fact that there will be no more of it coming off the spinners. Why would I devalue it for that exact reason?

On a chat in Ravelry where they were discussing this very topic, one member said that she couldn't understand yarn stores that sell discontinued yarns at full price. Let me say that from this side of the counter, a product is worth exactly what a customer is willing to pay for it. And a beautiful yarn will not lose its quality or value just because no more will be available in the future.

Now don't get me wrong. Full disclosure here...I am a major bargain hunter. I have never seen a Clearance sign that I haven't investigated. And as a yarn store owner, many of you will know that we seldom have an empty section in our Bargain area of the store. But these are yarns that make it to my clearance table by virtue of their overproduction, or outdated colour, or their "orphanhood" being the last few balls of a dye lot. In my store, it all comes down to real estate: does a specific yarn deserve its place in the full price section or should it move on at a discounted price to find a better home under some deserving customer's roof.

Another thing that I want to say is that I really have appreciated CNS yarns' work in continuing and expanding the Mission Falls brand over the past few years. Yes, we all know that it isn't EXACTLY the same, but it was darn close to the original product that Mags offered us for so many years - and it remained a fully Canadian product. I for one think they did a really good job.

As for the cotton, in case you don't know of it, we started stocking Cascade Yarn's LUNA a few years back to complement the colour range of Mission Falls cotton. It is as close to the real thing as you can get in terms of texture and has been a very popular addition to our midweight cotton lines.

To sum up with my best wishes:
-Good on ya, Mags. Enjoy the next phase of your life.
-Thanks CNS - for continuing to bring us these great yarns for the past 5 years.
-And customers, a bargain is a great find, but good quality yarns are a bargain even at full price.

My Gift to You

We have a satelite dish at home and I often hear people asking how it's possible to have reception of 200+ channels and there's still nothing on TV.

Lately, I've taken this on as a challenge. Believing that there has to be something interesting or worthwhile on at any given point of the day, I'm willing to invest a few minutes to find it.

A few weeks ago on the Documentary channel I came across a great 65 minute film called LAUGHOLOGY which truly changed my life (for the time being anyway).

What an extraordinary look at the science behind laughter and how therapeutic and contagious it can be. The film brings us through many segments and stories, but my favourite part was the when we are introduced to Doug Collins, the man with the most contagious laugh in the world. This title apparently came about when Doug was randomly selected to take part in a segment of the Comedy Barn, and to the host's helpless surprise, Doug actually stole the show by doing nothing more than lauging...And the rest is history in that the YouTube segment called Dad at the Comedy Barn now has been seen by 21,035,246 viewers and with good reason.

I can't begin to count how many hysterical video doors are opened by Googling Doug Collins laughman.

And what a joy it is to spend some time with Doug. Not only is his laugh unstoppable, but he seems like such a genuinely nice man that you want to visit him often, and you always come away feeling refreshed and joyful.

My wish for each of you at this hectic time of the year is that you receive and give in turn all the benefits that the joy of a great bellylaugh can bring. And give yourself the gift of spending a few minutes with Doug. You'll not regret it.

A couple of distractions to check out.

So have you ever noticed that the crazier the pace of our lives becomes, the more we look around for things to distract us from the very tasks that we should get done to keep things from being so crazy??? I prefer to think of this as a simple trait of human nature and not necessarily a bad thing. After all, this nose to the grindstone is quite overrated in my opinion.

That being said, if you're looking for a few distractions to break from the pace in these last few weeks before the Holidays, here are a few that I'd suggest:

Wander through Downtown Kingston where there's a special treat awaiting your fibre sensibilities in front of Tara Foods/Vandervoort's Hardware on lower Princess St. Fun loving crocheters have decorated some of the bike racks there with colourful swatches of Granny Squares.

And to show that they aren't ashamed of their stitching obsession, there's even a little card attached to each asking you to send fan email messages to Outlaw Wool Lovers.

It's fun to think of a little bit of subversive stitching going on right here in our own backyard.

Or you might want a bit of diversion delivered to you through your computer:

A few weeks ago, we received the special 100th issue of Knitters Magazine, also celebrating their parent company, XRX's 26th year in business. This double issue of the magazine contains a full 50 patterns and is a great buy, but the cool news is that they are actually making this edition available for free to any Mac, PC or iPad user. Link here to receive your free digital copy of the magazine and spend a few relaxing hours dreaming about projects that you can make for YOU after the holiday rush is over.

Or if a little fun knitting is the sort of distraction that you're looking for, what do you think of this great little Holiday knitting project? Isn't it the cutest, although I'm not sure that the avian world would actually classify this little fellow as a partridge to go along with the pear but it would be fun to put on the tree anyway.

Find the free pattern to make these lovely ornaments in Patons on line newsletter.

Meanwhile, I'm off to leaf through a couple of new rug hooking books that I just picked up...and perhaps sneek a peak at the Julia Child/Jacques Pepin cookbook that Alana brought in for me to browse through. We might either have Blanquette de Veau with Pomme de Terre Dauphinoises or grilled cheese sandwiches for supper, depending on how distracted I actually get.

In the 2 days since the newsletter went out...

It's good to have this edition of the newsletter "put to bed" and I can only say that much as I enjoy writing it, I'm certainly glad that it's a monthly deadline that I have set myself and not a weekly one. By the way if you aren't signed up to receive it regularly through email, you should be.

But as life would have it, no sooner did I hit the send button but I received an email from a customer telling me about her participation in the Ravelry Advent Lace project. What a great idea: you access a different part of a lace scarf pattern for each of the 24 days before Christmas. When I went on line to check this out I was surprised to find that there are actually 2 such projects through Ravelry. Both seem to be from German knitters who appear to be equal opportunity designers, recognizing that the world of lace knitters is divided very strongly between the chart people and the written instruction group.

The one pictured here is by Unikatissima and the other one, cleverly hiding any photographic representation of the finished project is by Kristen Benecken. Now I'm the first to admit that I don't have the concentrated time to do a lot of lace knitting but I was pretty awestruck at the concept that a person on this planet would have the time during the month of December to accomplish each of the 24 sections on each of the next 24 days. What a challenge it would be and it will be fun to check in on the groups to see how people are keeping up with the pace. They don't even have hours of dedicated television watching to fill as we do during the Knitting Olympics.

We've had a good response so far to our first Knit-Along, scheduled for Feb. 2011 when we will knit the wonderfully versatile February Lady Sweater, including some responses from customers outside of our geographical area who want to participate on-line. This could be really fun. If you would like to learn more, link here.

Also, in that same Inbox batch of messages, I got one from Elizabeth McCarten letting me know that she had a new free download through Ravelry of a reversible cable scarf called Tumnus, a lovely design to try for someone special. By the way, everyone should check out Elizabeth's blog to see her wonderful photos of the city as seen through the eye of an artist discovering her new surroundings. If you are a Kingstonian you'll see the common through a fresh set of eyes. If you're from away, you'll be seduced to visit our great downtown area.

Frills

Do you remember the Eyelash yarn?

To be quite honest, we had eyelash yarn in the store for a year and a half before the craze caught on. We used to have it in a little basket, with about 2 balls of each of the 7 or 8 colours that we carried. We had one customer who loved it and made quite a few projects of all sorts with it. It seemed as if she was the only one who had any interest in buying it even with the cute little bolero jacket that we had on display.

Then the TSUNAMI of popularity hit. It was not uncommon on a Saturday to have a half dozen customers picking up 30 balls of this yarn, not to mention the 30 customers who were there to pick up a half dozen balls. There were some days when we could have auctioned off 2 balls of black FUNNY that were returned for 5 times their regular price.

My favourite business story in the 14 years that I've had the store is of an older woman who won the Best in Show prize for knitting at one of the local fall fairs where we had donated a $25 gift certificate for the prize. She had never been in our store and arrived with 2 of her adult daughters to see what we carried and to spend the gift certificate. They all fell in love with the eyelash yarn and I finally lost count of how much return we made on that "donation" but between this lady and her friends and extended family at least 250 balls of eyelash yarn were purchased that season.

Enter FRILL SEEKER and the other frill yarns that have taken over.

Again, we had an identical yarn in different colourways 2 years ago in the store, and again we had one forward thinking customer who loved it and was responsible for about 75% of the sales that we made when we carried SOLO in the store. But for some reason it just didn't catch on until this season.

And predictably, there just isn't enough stock. How can anyone predict what will go "viral" in the knitting world, or any other aspect of life for that matter?

I was at the distributor's warehouse last week and heard that they had invested $6 000 to air ship a tonne of FRILL SEEKER yarn to Canada. That is one heck of a lot of frills. Last week we received 32 bags of that lot and have but a few balls of just 3 colours left. More is coming later in the month, this time by ocean freight (sensibly), and yet another shipment is expected with new colours to arrive before Christmas.

It reminds me of the Cabbage Patch Doll craze, where my mother, God bless her, fought the crowds at the Bay on Rideau St in Ottawa to get one for Christmas for our oldest daughter, who drew on the doll's face some time in early January. And bless her in turn, Catherine just wasn't a doll kind of kid.

Anyway, this new one is a fun yarn and a nice gift. (Apparently, FRILL SEEKER scarves were spotted by one of our customers in Mont Tremblant fashion boutiques and are selling for $50.)

At right is a picture of RIZOS, by Katia, another version of the frill yarn and a bit more sophisticated. We will have a bit in stock but I had to fight to get 2 of the last 4 bags in the warehouse where it is housed. The knitting world can be a tough one. It's good to know that our customers appreciate the battles that we face to get the yarns they want. LOL.

A bit too much knitting, perhaps.

I've loved knitting all my life. I was quite young when daydreams often consisted of how to make a knitted swirl go around a sleeve. But I have to say that even for me, the wallpaper in this hotel room might have been a bit overwhelming.

Joanne, one of my customers, brought this photo back from a trip to Ottawa recently where they stayed at the Hotel Indigo. Having recovered from the shock of finding an entire wall covered with a mural of a sweater that I owned in the '70's, I was intrigued as I'd never heard of this hotel before, having worked at the Chateau Laurier in my early twenties, and Ottawa being my second home.

When I looked it up on-line, I was taken aback on several fronts. First of all, it would appear that this pretty upscale "boutique" hotel has this type of mural wallpaper in all their rooms. The ones that they feature on the web site have you sitting in a forest of birch trees, or in a much-larger-than-life field of wheat.

Secondly, I was blown away when I realized that the Hotel Indigo is actually the latest incarnation of what used to be the old YMCA, which is right across the street from the old YWCA, and is the corner where my brother, Andy and I first found our Independence when we were but 7 and 9 years old.

We were the oldest of 5 kids and with one car and a Mom who never did want to have her driver's license, we were shown the way then allowed to go to swimming lessons by ourselves, taking the 35 minute bus ride over from Hull in Quebec, getting off at the Chateau Laurier, walking along Wellington to the front gate of Parliament Hill, then turning south on Metcalfe St and walking down the 6 or 7 blocks to our respective Ys. We never looked back. Andy has traveled extensively in Asia and has been on just about every continent on this planet. Although I haven't been as far afield, I have an instant sense of comfort in any city that I've ever visited, and independence is my middle name.

But can you imagine? Today, I believe that allowing your 7 and 9 year olds to take the bus alone to another province is considered a chargeable offense. Children's Aid would no doubt have something to say about it.

Everyone at the class was pretty amazed by the Hotel Indigo wallpaper and wondered aloud what percentage of the people who were assigned that particular room were knitters? Could you actually request a room with a particular scene? Anyway, in the way that life would have it, Alana came across this other version of knitted wallpaper the very same week that Joanne brought us the picture. I'm not big on a white on white colour scheme for my house for obvious reasons, but I must say that there is something much more appealing to me in this warm and balanced MEGA ribbing.