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.

A weekend of "I'd love to have the time to..."

DH and I have just had a weekend that I've often dreamed of. I actually extended it to include Friday as I wasn't scheduled to work in the store, and Monday which is my usual day off anyway.

The only criteria for what we were to do this weekend was that at some time we had to have said something like: "Someday we've got to..." or "I heard about this place we should try some time..."

And here are some of the places we visited and things that we did on our staycation weekend:

- Supper at Fasoolio's on Gardiners Rd. Amazing!

- Found Schroeder's restaurant on HWY 62 in Prince Edward County that features wheat free baking (hooray) and great food in general.

- Visited the Cidery at Waupoos and fell in love with their Cabernet Franc wine as well as their premium cider. Unfortunately at $24.95 a bottle for the wine, we left it until a more memorable occasion and took home some of the cider.

- Were directed, by Janet at Wilton Fibre Mill, to Fifth Town Artisanal Cheese store, also in Waupoos where I discovered yet another reason to love sheep. Bonnie and Floyd, their award winning sheep cheese is absolutely fabulous: somewhere between a mild cheddar and the pungency of a hard goat cheese. I still can't figure out how it's possible to combine the characteristics of such different cheeses but I can only guess that sheep are all about comfort , even in the cheese that is made from their milk.

- Stopped off at Lake on the Mountain park where I believe this picture of the Glenora Ferry was taken, which we crossed on to head back to Kingston.

-Had a great Chinese supper at New Henry's on Montreal St, a restaurant that we have passed almost every day for the 16 years that we've lived in Kingston but never tried. The food was really great. "Henry" the chef, said that he'd been there for 39 years, open each day from 9am to 10pm but when it's not busy he closes at 8:30pm. His day off? He takes Christmas day and lets his kids cook for him. The decor (velvet flocked wall paper and wood panelling with an array of the healthiest plants I've ever seen) is probably original and immaculate, as if kept to museum standards: an authentic piece of the '70's.

-Went to Fort Fright at Fort Henry...how fun.

- Attended the Empty Bowls fundraiser for Martha's Table. That one is on my calendar to get tickets for next year.

As I reread this, it sounds like my Dad's recounting of any excursions that my parents have taken: "...Then we ate here...Then we picked up some bagels there... Cheesecake at this place..." But why not? It was so fun.

And just so you don't get the idea that we did nothing but eat all weekend, we watched a DVD of an African movie called "Beat the Drum", (beautiful but sad), and a golden not-so-oldie: "The Rain Maker", and a tear jerker "The Painted Veil". And to round things out with a bit of action and gunfire, we went to the Cineplex to see RED with Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovitch and Helen Mirren. I loved it: The Geriatric A Team.

We also read and read and read, which for me included getting caught up on magazines and emails that I'd been wanting to go through more carefully. That's where I found this fabulous offer from Interweave Knits introducing their new line of ebooks. The one that I liked was : Knitting for Children. 8 terrific patterns from different Interweave publications including designs from Norah Gaughan, Ann Bud, with a felted frog purse, a sock pattern in any gauge to fit any kid's foot, a trio of earflap hats (shown here) and unspun roving mittens made of our lovely hand painted pencil roving.

I got to go through my latest of copy of A NEEDLE PULLING THREAD, the extraodinary Canadian needlecraft magazine that is now included for FREE to all members of the Canadian Guild of Knitters. I was delighted to find a lovely design by our good friend of WOOL-TYME Kingston: Sherri Bondy. Her Art Deco Cowl is beautifully classic, as all art deco designs are.

I also got to work a lot on my latest rug hooking design and really do love that art/craft as much as anything I've ever done.

All in all, it was a great weekend and it was a bit like having Thanksgiving all over again without the turkey, being grateful for the time and the company and the wonderful things that our area offers.

18 more days to Halloween

I just got an email from PolarKnit advertising their free Halloween themedpatterns on-line and was intrigued.

Before going any further, here is the link so you can start planning right away.

I saw the PolarKnit yarns at the recent trade show that I attended and loved the feel of it. It is made of actual polar fleece and comes in good colours and is nice to knit with.


BUT... Why didn't I bring it in?

This brings up a topic that actually came up in conversation earlier today: what are the criteria that we use in choosing a particular company to deal with or a specific yarn?

Generally, I use a series of questions that I ask myself, the first of which revolve around ease and dependability: Is this a company that I can rely on to deliver enough yarn on time? Do my regular suppliers have something comparable that I can include in my regular orders? Does the shipping from its place of origin cause me any issues? PolarKnit appeared to be okay in these respects although the representative wasn't actually there to ask questions of, so that made me a bit nervous.

The second batch of questions are more customer centered: Will my customers be able to work well with this yarn? Will it inspire project ideas for them? Will they recognize its value in relation to the price? And there I found the elements that made me pass up this yarn for this year, anyway. I'm sure that PolarKnit is a great yarn to work with; I'm a fan of polar fleece, why not in a yarn? But because of its very special composition, I guess, it makes it really expensive, especially considering the yardage that is in each ball. For that price, I want it to be REALLY special.

The other issue is that for some reason, they consider 12 stitches over 4 inches to be a Chunky weight and 16 stitches to be a Worsted Weight. This is much heavier than any other yarn on the market. It would drive a knitter crazy to get all set up with their yarn and a "chunky" pattern only to realize that they would need much more yarn than they expected AND they would have a terrible time trying to achieve a typical chunky gauge.

All this to say that each LYS has a different focus and set of criteria when choosing yarns. Each shop owner has their own priorities, preferences and penchants in style. I'm sure that PolarKnit yarns will find a good and happy home in many stores. It just occured to me that readers would probably find it interesting as an exercise, to hear a bit about why some yarns that I see make it in to my store and some don't.

I was however so pleased with the fun patterns like the one above and this skull beanie, both available as free downloads, but I do advise customers to be very careful and look at the pattern gauges closely before choosing a yarn, or 18 days won't be enough time to knit it twice to get the right size!

Having "Fun" with the Solution Sweater.

This is the story, in point form, of the sweater that I've made for my brother's 50th birthday. I call it the Solution Sweater as my way of seeing it as a wonderful learning experience redefining all of the interesting challenges that this darn thing has presented, and the solutions that were handed to me along the way.

1.About 2 years ago, I had chosen and put aside a gorgeous discontinued brown Noro Aran weight yarn for this purpose. Anthony, the brother in question, mentioned that he always wanted a green Aran sweater. Solution: Alternate the chosen brown yarn with rich green Manos del Uruguay. It looks great...just like the forests of Vancouver Island where he lives.

2. A hood, said he. I'd really like a hood. Or maybe not. Could you make it with a hood that can come off?

3. Sure, said I. Solution: a hood with a series of small buttons around the bottom that can fit in the holes on the inside of a double neck band.

4. Oh, said I. You'll have to have a zipper at the neck or it will look like a little kid's hoodie. (As I'm saying this, I realize that if the zipper is worn open it will show the tacky inside of the zipper.) Solution: Make a second band on the inside of the sweater and slide the zipper between the 2 layers. Picture at left.

5. Make a swatch to check for colours and designa compatibility. This next picture is proof that I did a swatch last December. (Check my Flickr account. I really did do this swatch before beginning.) More about this later.

6. Knit 2 sleeves to make sure that tension is really okay. Sleeves come out fine. More about this later.

7. (Full disclosure, and a little bit of a spoiler alert: I did get some help here from one of my knitters to do the back with armhole shaping to accomodate a set-in drop sleeve, according to my directions. Also had her do the front to the zipper opening and armhole shaping.)

8. Picked up and finished the front to include the zip opening but forgetting that the back had armhole shaping. Solution: Rip back the back of the sweater to the armhole shaping which is then redone to match the front. (I was not about to do all that front neck shaping again.)

9. Design hood. Knit part of hood. Run out of green yarn. Solution: Find that the emerald green of Topsy Farm's wool is almost exactly the same colour, if a bit thinner. It's okay for the bit that I have left.

10. Sew the sleeves in. Discover that the sleeves have a depth of 8". For those of you who sensibly rely on patterns, 8" is the sleeve width of a fine lady's sweater. A man's jacket type sweater needs at least 10". (You do remember that I made and measured the sleeves in step 6 and they were fine when I made them.) Solution: If you look carefully just below the little red line triangle of the blocking board on the picture here, you will see a band of knitting where the stripes are going perpendicular to the rest of the sleeve. (we'll call it a design feature of some great ingenuity and importance to the integrity of the entire piece). These are bands of short rows that I picked up along the inside of the arm on each side to add the missing couple of inches.

11. While knitting these bands, finish the skein of brown yarn that I wound a couple of weeks ago. Go to the stash and retrieve another, knowing that because this was the original yarn that I intended for the entire sweater, there was plenty. This is a picture of the first of 7 skeins of the beautiful Noro yarn that was destroyed by mice and/or moths over the past 2 weeks. Solution: Turn blue while holding my breath as I examine the 8th and last skein of the yarn. Silent prayers to the knitting gods are answered; the last skein is intact.

12. Sew the sleeve extensions and side seams. Lay the hoodless sweater on the floor to admire the rough beauty of a finished garment before it's blocked. Try to ignore the nagging optical illusion that makes it appear to be smaller than I expected it to be.

13. Flatten out the sweater and measure one last time to reassure myself. Scream. (Remember the swatch from step 5?) Breathe deeply and remind myself that the evil knitting gremlins could not possibly have stolen an inch from each side of the sweater, making it 4 inches smaller in total than it had been when I measured the pieces before sewing them together. This is simply not possible. Solution: Put the whole thing away until the morning when I get up and soak it in a bath of water and Eucalan (to relax the fibres) and block it on the board to the exact size.

14. I am planning on sewing the buttons to the hood tomorrow and HOPE that the idea works and that the effect is a good one. I'll let you know.

All this to say that despite the ...INTERESTING...aspects to this project, I've really enjoyed it as it has given me a chance to "build" a proper sweater from the beginning, refining some of the skills that might have gotten a bit rusty lately and learning as I go along. Meanwhile here are a couple of pictures that also show how nicely the colours work together and how the corrugated ribbing from the bottom of the sweater worked to tie in the blended colours.

I'll hang the finished piece at the store until mid November when the birthday guy comes to town. All in all...it was a lot of FUN.