A busy week at the shop

This is what running a yarn store should be all about. It's been a week of beginnings, firsts, great sales, great people and interesting knitting puzzles that I get to play with in my head.

We began last weekend with our first class on intarsia techniques, which is the technique involved in producing a picture or any blocks of colour into your knitted fabric. We used Dora here as an example of how easy it is to find pictures on the internet then trace them on to the graph paper that we can supply at the store that is designed to reproduce just about any knitting gauge that you can come up with. This custom sized graph paper is just one of the freebies that we are glad to offer our customers who have taken on the task of pleasing a young fan who needs to have their favourite character or logo on their sweater. (Don't forget that any licensed designs can generally be reproduced for your grandchild's sweater but not to sell at a craft show for your customer's grandchild.)

Then on Tuesday we welcomed Alana as our newest staff member. Alana is new to Kingston, extremely knowledgeable, and a calm and patient helper to all knitters with questions. Please feel free to pop in and welcome her to our knitting community.

On Wednesday we received our first shipment of patterns for traditional rug hooking. These are beautiful pieces in all sizes, from small samplers for the novice who just wants to try this new craft out, to this beautiful "Wee Patch of Sunflowers" which measures 15"x25" and would make a gorgeous rug or wall hanging. It's nice to be able to offer a wider variety of crafts, using our great selection of yarns to customers who are looking for new fibre areas in which to branch out.

And speaking of new fibre areas, on Thursday I picked up a new batch of hand dyed fleece in so many vibrant colours. These bags have become so popular for needle felting, embellishing and to add vibrant colours to thrum projects that where as I used to replenish our stock about once a season, now I'm visiting the supplier about once a month. It's a joy. By the way, we hope to be offering an intro class to all types of felting in the winter. Stay tuned for our new list of winter classes which should be out early in December.

A couple of weeks ago I got to go on a yarn buying trip to 2 of our major suppliers' in Toronto and came back with a mountain of deals for every taste. We have soft and fluffy, lacy, shiny. I was amazed at all the great deals to be had and am so happy to see it being gobbled up by savvy knitters. Come and check it out; there's still a great selection for all of your Christmas gift knitting.

Finally yesterday, Saturday, was a great day: busy, fun, with many interesting aspects to it. First I had a lady and 3 lovely girls who arrived to tell me that they had suffered a major crisis in their house. One of the girls who was 8 years old, had just finished her first hat and the dog, Pippen, had liked it so much that he decided to show his appreciation by chewing on the hat, causing a looney sized hole at the back. Now this was no ordinary hat: the ribbing was perfectly executed, the body part of it was in a lovely lime green merino wool with a beautiful band of fairisle zigzag knitting around the middle, with perfectly placed decreases that led to a great shape at the top. Did I mention that the knitter was 8 years old! and she really knew what she was doing as she explained each procedure to me.

Thank heavens, I was able to repair it and Pippen was let out of the dog house, and each of the little girls went off with a project in one of our biodegradeable bags. All is well with the world. Wouldn't it be nice if all major crises could be taken care of with $1.55 worth of tapestry yarn and a few well placed stitches.

Later in the day I met with Tanya White and her mother/knitter. Tanya is a 4th year fashion design student at Ryerson who is producing her final project: a men's spring collection which is to include several hand knitted pieces that she has designed. They were needing some ideas and advice on yarn selection and execution techniques. What fun! Like a family doctor who spends his/her day looking at infected ears and inflamed throats, it must be fun to get an interesting rash now and then. In the same way, daily we answer questions about the meaning of SSK, or how to get stocking stitch to stop curling (you can't,) that it was a pure delight to figure out how to make Tanya's concepts become reality. We're hoping to show pictures after her presentation in the New Year.

Hoping that the rest of your November (the dreariest month of the year in my opinion) is full of fun knitting ideas in preparation for the Holidays. (I just finished a tea cozy which I'm going to felt today for one of my daughters, and a University colour appropriate sweater and leggings for a naked teddy bear who was brought to school by my youngest daughter when she left home in September. But don't tell them about these things. It's a surprise.)

Sometimes the temptations are just too great.

Today I began my first pair of toe up socks using Cat Bordhi's book that I spoke of in the last post: New Pathways for Sock Knitters. I love it, but my most important recommendation to all is to have a giant pack of post it notes beside you when you begin; there are lots and lots of references to charts, directions and patterns that send you scurrying all over the book, referencing what you need to know to get on with you new sock technique. It's not for everyone but I'm having a ball.

Then just to get my nose out of the sock that I'd been working on for a few hours by now (funny the chiropractor seems to think that it should be forbidden to work on knitting for more than 30 minutes at a time.) I went on Ravelry, just to see what the knitting world was up to. From there I ended up redirected to a YouTube video on the basics of needlefelting, which I also love to bits. From that video, I found this site at http://www.feltalive.com/onlineclass.htm where Kay Petal offers an online class to create these most adorable characters. One of the great things that I found there was that she names our very own Andrea Graham, of Odessa, as one of her inspiritions. Check out Kay's site and Andrea's too http://www.andrea-graham.com/ to see what another branch of the fibre world is playing around with.

P.S. Of course, WOOL-TYME Kingston carries all your needle felting needs.

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.