I MISS MY BLOG!

It's been way too long since I've had a chance to get to the blog and do some writing. But now I have the chance to fill you in on some of the things that I have been doing over the past few weeks.

One of the parts of my knitting store life that I really enjoy is getting to try out new techniques and having the opportunity to finish things and make them look good.

I get a chance to do a fair bit of this, which breeds experience, which means that I can get better at it, which means that I get to do more of it.

This jacket to the right is from the "Dozen Favorite Kids and Toddler's" book from Knitter's Magazine. A customer had ordered it for her granddaughter and when my knitter returned it to me, beautifully finished but without the glove "pockets" I was thrilled to be able to play with it. I took a picture when the pocket on the left was sewn on and the right one was part done so that you can see the inside of the half-glove which becomes the pocket. It's the cutest design and not very difficult. When sewing the pockets on I used a strong nylon sewing thread in navy and worked from the outside, doing a small backstitch between the knitted stitches. That way the thread sinks into the groove between the stitches and hides.
Some of you may know that in my former life I was a teacher. And one of the things that I do miss about teaching was learning new "stuff" on (good) PD days. (Not all of the "stuff" that we learned was of value, but much of it was very good.) So I booked myself out of the store for a day and took a "Professional Development" day and sat down with Cat Bordhi's book: New Pathways for Sock Knitters, and a set of needles and some yarn and proceeded to make Charlie's Seeded heart socks using her Sky sock "architecture". This is one of the most amazing books I've ever come across, where Cat takes the basic premise that in creating a sock you need extra room to accomodate the instep area and she adds those extra stitches at many different places in the design. I fell in love with the concept and within minutes I was designing an advanced sock course incorporating some of her ideas. (Watch for details of this class in the spring.)

This past weekend we had our 5th "Sock-in-a-day" workshop and once again I'm amazed at the fun that can be had by people who are willing to take a bit of a risk and learn a new skill. There were several people who had actually made several pairs of socks in their knitting careers but were always questioning the results and wanting to feel more confident. One of the ladies was actually keeping track of the number of new tips that she picked up during the day. It was good to have my belief that this class is great for anyone who knits confirmed.

Have we not been blessed with a ridiculously beautiful October? Yesterday we took the opportunity to drive through Prince Edward County and check out some of the wineries. (It does feel a bit odd to be drinking a glorious Chardonnay at 11am on a Sunday morning). We stopped in Wellington for lunch and walked around a bit to get the blood pumping again after the full English Breakfast, complete with deep-"fried bread". We came across this tree (these trees?). My husband teaches construction and is a bit of a tree fanatic so we stopped to take a picture of it for him to use with his class, and as I sat in the car waiting for him it occured to me that this tree really reminded me of a cable design. (isn't it true??) Anyway, I do believe that I'm back in the saddle again and will hope to be a bit more faithful to these blog posts as I really do enjoy the writing. Happy rest of October!

Knitting socks for charity??

We are often the recipients of yarn stashes that have been displaced: many people just realize that sometimes there is a better home for some of their yarns than under the bed or at the back of their closet, so they bring them to us and we promise that they will be of service to someone.

Often there are included the ends of balls of 4 ply sock yarn and we've collected these over the past few months and now have a good assortment waiting to be made up into some pretty funky socks or gloves for those who need some warmth.

Do you love knitting socks and have a eye for the challenge of combining bits and pieces into some fun gifts for Christmas at the shelter? Let us know and we'll be glad to pass the bag on to you. You can even return the socks to us and we'll find good homes for them.

Kaffe Fassett in Perth, Ontario!!!

What an opportunity that Janie H. knits has given to all knitters in Eastern Ontario in organizing an evening with Kaffe Fassett at the Perth District Collegiate Institute on Thurs. Oct 16th at 7pm.

There are few people who have influenced me as much as Kaffe Fassett in giving me permission to just enjoy the colours that are out there to be put together. He encourages us to use our eyes and our taste to identify if we actually like the way that different colours, hues and textures work together.



The last time that I wrote about Kaffe Fassett in this blog, I searched high and low for a picture of a sweater I had made when I had first been seduced by his "go for it" attitude towards colour. It was a giant pullover knit during the winter Olympics of 1992, at a time when winter had gone on way too long and I was needing some colour in my life. Kaffe, in his PBS show that I had religiously video taped from our old television with terrible American reception, was so exhuberant about colours and trusting your instincts that I dragged out my stash and "went for it". I still haven't found the picture of me wearing the resulting sweater that measured about 58" across the chest and was as cozy as an afghan, but weighed as much as an elephant. It was not something that I wore much if I was in an introverted mood.

So here we are, 16 years later and there has been a lot of creative and learning water that has flowed under my knitting bridge since then, and I still am so glad to have had that early encouragement from a stranger from across the ocean who felt that it was his mission to give people an insight into what is possible if you just use your eyes and learn to educate then trust your taste.
For more information, or for tickets, email: info@janiehknits.com or phone 613-326-0626.

Phone-y sheep???

How odd that these sheep would be grazing on a ceramic tile floor. Yet, look closely to see the amazing detail of these art sheep, covered in old telephone cord, with faces of rotary dial phones. The world is full of people who see things so differently. How fun is that!

Click on the title of this post to link to the site that explains their origin and existence.

For those who are in the neighbourhood, just wanted to let you know that our luxurious cashmere laceweight yarn has just arrived. I occurred to me that aside from drooling over the exquisite softness of cashmere, I had no idea where it came from so I turned to my trusty Google friend and voila! To the right we have a picture of a cashmere goat. He does look a bit rough and ready for having such a luxurious coat.

Baby camel yarn is in too!

We also have just received a good quantity of the 2009 Knitting Page a Day calendars, so put your orders in early with Santa as these tend to disappear early in the season.

As Jan exclaimed yesterday when she was unpacking our most recent shipment of new yarns: "I love the fall!!!"

OOPS, I nearly forgot to point out the link to the right (Where it says: "View our archive".) which takes you to back copies of our ever popular monthly newsletter. Check it out. It's like having a virtual rack of back issues of a favourite magazine that you don't have to dust.

I LOVE NYC

So tell me, what is not to love about a city that offers cheesecake

that looks like this? (How ironic that my daughter picked up a packet of "equal" sugar substitute to hold above the cake for perspective.)

The last time that we went to NYC I was amazed at how friendly people were, but I assumed that was mainly because we were tourists and that all those we were encountering were being paid to be friendly to us. But this time we really spent most of our 4 day stay away from many of the tourist hot spots and I was equally awestruck by the courtesy (yes, even among the drivers), the interest and the genuiness of the people towards us. Even the custodians in Central Park picking up the odd scraps of debris (it's incredibly clean, really!) never missed saying hello or wishing me a good day. Kingston is a relatively friendly city and certainly not very scary, yet you would seldom make eye contact with a city park worker. My sister explained it in this way, which seems to make sense: New Yorkers - especially in Manhattan - love to meet people from away who enjoy their city; they are very proud of it.

On day 3, which happened to be a Monday, I went on a yarn store safari and arrived at the 1st store on my list on the East side of Central Park and was "gobsmacked", as they say on Coronation Street, to find the store closed. I couldn't believe it...This is Manhattan for heaven's sake, not the back of beyond. After having walked the 35 blocks to get there it took me a few minutes to summon my energy and courage to move on to the next store about 5 blocks away. There I met Carol from the Woolgatherings, who was a perfect hostess offering suggestions for accomodations for our next visit, good restaurants, what other yarn stores might be closed and therefore avoided on this Monday, and a firm opinion about every topic that we covered. It was wonderful.

After lunch at an Italian restaurant that Carol had suggested, and

a magnificent coffee from a neighbourhood coffee purveyor, I took the "crosstown" bus (see how I'm into the lingo) and got to the Yarn Co. and decided to take a picture of their sign to prove that they are actually closed on Mondays.

One of the great things about a big city however is that there is always some competition nearby, so I was eternally grateful to find Knitty City (http://www.knittycity.com/ ) open and wonderfully welcoming. BUT to make the visit even better, through the door right behind me came Meta, a yarn store owner from Massachussets, who was also in town on the same sort of mission as I was - to scope out what the Mecca of fashion yarn stores has to offer. When we introduced ourselves to Pearl, the owner of Knitty City, she suggested that we go for a coffee and talk shop. And here we are, at a cafe on Broadway, and I'm having the time of my life.

When the conversation turned to Anniversaries (Pearl's store had been open for 3 years and Meta had just had their 1st Anniversary sale), I shared with them our experience of our giant 5th anniversary extravaganza, which started on Sept. 11th, 2001!, and how the store was packed for the entire day with people following events on my little 12" television. I think that it was in watching their reaction and reflecting on how proud and generous New Yorkers are that I realized what it must have meant to be part of that experience, powerful as it was for the rest of us, if you were a local.

I can't wait to go back...but I guess I must.

IMAGINE

It's hard to "IMAGINE" that at this time yesterday I was making my way through Central Park in New York City on my way to meeting a lovely fellow knitter and advocate for the knitting cause, Phyllis, whom I had met the day before on my Big Apple knitting store safari.

More about that tour later, but the day was perfect weather wise, so I decided to pretend that I was a real New Yorker and walk the 28N+10W blocks to the appointed restaurant from the apartment where we had stayed during our 4 days in the big city.
Now you don't have to be a whiz at math to recognize that if you cut diagonally across a space, it's shorter than walking around, so I cut through Central Park to get away from the constant NOISE (which amazingly all but disappears within 20 feet inside the park) and to shave a bit of time off my trek. I knew that I had to head North West as I was at 60th St E and wanted to get to 77th St W so I aimed myself in that direction (it's all so logically rectangular) and followed paths that were heading off to the leftish and found myself walking, by pure chance, into Strawberry Fields, of the song, and more recently immortalized by this Italian Mosaic tribute to John Lennon who was shot in front of his apartment just a few hundred feet away.
It was an amazing find, not just because I'm a bit of a Beatles fan, but more because I'm a completely, hopelessly addicted people watcher - and what a place to watch people. I'm sure that I heard 7 or 8 different languages in the few minutes that I spent there. There was every skin tone from probably every continent on earth among the 30 people who were respectfully looking at the few memorials that were left at the site. Someone had even left a battered guitar, covered with tacky stickers with a hand printed sign that said: "Make a wish". It appeared that whoever it was who deposited this token by the famous "Imagine" site was just passing on John's frustrated entreaties about thinking well of yourself, of your world, of those around you and your collective future.

IMAGINE

Needless to say, none of this has anything to do with knitting but it does have a lot to do with what I find interesting in the world. The trip was magnificent in so many ways. And those of you who knew me 4 years ago, when we went on our first trip to New York will be pleased to hear that I made it back without breaking any bones - last time it was a bone in my right hand that go crushed in a trip/fall on our way back from a Broadway show.

The knitting side of the trip was fabulous, from the 90% completed glove of Malabrigo's new sock yarn, to meeting several shop owners and staff, and being surrounded by the beauties of yarns that are difficult for us to access here in Canada. But again, more about all the knitting stuff in the next few days.

The September newsletter should go out on time (Monday) and any of you who would like to receive it and have not signed up yet, please link at left to the sign up site. Have a safe and happy holiday weekend.

Move Over Oprah, Look Out Martha, Debbie Bliss Has Arrived!

Sometimes I get the feeling that I'm always gushing, both here and in the newsletter, when I talk about things that I like. I guess the fact of the matter is that when I'm buying for the store I tend to order what I like, so I get to share what I like, and it always sounds like I like everything.

The Debbie Bliss Knitting Magazine (premier issue) was something I expected would be lovely. Debbie is one of the few designers who was well established when I got into this business 12 years ago, and she is one of the few from that era who is still fresh, still creative and still around (from a design perspective, I mean)

It took a few days of carrying the magazine around in my Loblaws
Green Bin, which is my traveling office, before I got a chance to go through it with a coffee and a muffin this morning. I'm glad I took the time to sit and enjoy the experience as it is a publication deserving of some quality time to savour it. I LOVE IT!!!

Truly, for the first time in a long time Debbie had me drooling over each page (like she used to in my earlier days as a knitter, more than just an LYS owner) and planning how I could run away to a monastery dedicated to knitting in order to make every pattern. I could think of a recipient for each and every design, from the most simply glorious peplum sweater I have ever seen (for me, of course), to the mini egg cup cozy/sweaters (for my niece), to any of the gorgeous men's sweaters (all the guys in my family), to the stunning array of garter stitch baby blankets (and I don't even like garter stitch).

It's nice to spend a half hour every now and then, forgetting that I already have 3 socks, and 2 sweaters on needles, not to mention a lineup of ideas for designs for our pattern web site, floating around in my head. Anyway, check out Debbie's mag. (available at WOOL-TYME Kingston of course.) You'll like it too.