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Fellow knitsters, 

It’s save to say that I pretty much received all my spring/summer yarns at this point, and they’re absolutely mouth-watering delicious!!

And I know that I promise pictures but…

 You know, it’s so hard ß– she says in a most whiney voice!

I may or may not add pictures this weekend but let me at least tell you what all came in. Maybe you’ll be tempted to visit! Ohh, and did I mention that it’s supposed to rain this weekend? Perfect knitting weather! Hee hee hee… 

New Magnificent Yarn 

The Organics

Everyone is going green… We’re living healthier lives and are aware of our environment. We recycle, renew, reuse…and, quite frankly, it feels wonderful to be a part of all the efforts.

And what could be more perfect than yarns that have been grown, sometimes even hand-picked, cleaned, spun and dyed environmentally (and people) friendly?

Remember that commercial…Cotton, the fabric of our lives…? In it, people wrap themselves in cotton, snuggle up to it, smell it, and are all around happy.

 Well that’s exactly how I feel about the following three organic cotton yarns… 

Sublime Cotton

 100% organic cotton, DK weight and with excellent pattern support.

With this yarn the whole package looks and feels organic, including the wrapping, the writing on it and even the pattern booklets. Just leafing through the pages makes you feel like that cotton commercial – happy and beautifully environmentally friendly. And this is just the presentation, mind you!

 The yarn itself is just as lovely. Its colors are soft hues of all the basics from cream to brown. It has a smooth soft texture and knits up evenly and actually rather quickly. I have a sample garment in the store and so far I can’t detect any sort of stretching or sagging!   

PureLife      by Rowan

 100% organic cotton, DK weight, also with excellent pattern support.

PureLife is another attractive choice if you are thinking about trying out organics. Unlike Sublime Cotton, its colors aren’t solid, rather they are tinted within, which means that for example one of my favorite colors – a sort of raspberry violet – contains several shades of lighter and darker raspberry within the dye. It looks very pretty knitted up!

PureLife’s colors are different from Sublime and a little more intense, which is why I ordered both.

 I also have a sample sweater for PureLife, and again I can’t detect any sort of stretching or sagging within the garment!  

Sky      by Tahki Stacy Charles

100% organic cotton. Light worsted weight. There are many patterns out there for this weight yarn.

Sky just arrived, yesterday. I immediately ripped open a bag and cupped one of the brown balls in my hand. It felt wonderful. Again, pretty colors, slightly different than the other two, which pretty much offers a larger spectrum of hues to the choosey knitter!

I have yet to work up a sample of Sky but I can tell you that I as well as many of my customers are very pleased with these three organics!

Aside from magnificent adult patterns, they also lend themselves to adorable baby/toddler and children pieces, all environmentally friendly of course!

Can’t you just see yourselves, wearing a beautiful knitted top, holding a cute baby with both arms slightly extended in front of you – also in a beautiful knitted outfit – while the two of you slowly spin in a circle with spring flower blossoms falling and butterflies flying all around you?

Of course, the whole scene happens in slow motion for a more perfect dream-like effect!

 Ahh, yes, cotton, the fabric of our perfect lives!

Well, I am taking a break now. All this talk about yarns…I must knit for a while. 

There’s more yarn in the shop to talk about. I’ll be back later.  Taataaa,a 

So…for a little over a year, I’ve been experiencing, well…”issues”. You know, like getting warm at odd times, sleeping crappy…being cranky (though Mr. Knitting Nest would tell you that this is a normal character trait…hmpf), and other things that are…different than they used to be! 

Finally, after sobbing hysterically during a commercial – and no! it wasn’t some heart-wrenching Hallmark card spot either, I made an appointment with my doctor. I was told that I was really a bit too young yet to experience perimenopausal symptoms. This view was only strengthened by the fact that I am apparently still producing the “normal” amount of hormones. I was sent home with the suggestion to de-stress my life a bit and take it easy. I don’t believe him… 

And here I am! Taking it easy at 4:33 am on a Saturday morning. I mean how long can you roll around in bed with cats squooshing you?  Okay, enough of the whining.

On a much, much brighter side: The Knitting Nest celebrated its 4-Year Anniversary on Tuesday,  April 15. We’ve been having a sale all week long, especially tempting because new yarns for the summer keep trickling in, and to get those on sale is a wonderful treat. Thank you everybody who visited this week! Here’s to many more Anniversary Sales to come!! 

Now…have you heard the biggest news of them all? The Knitting Nest will soon move to a new bigger, most wonderful, awesome, grand, unbelievably hip (yet continuously cozy) home!! The contract has been signed, the contractor has begun to build out the new spot, and we are putting together the grandest grand opening of all! Mr. Knitting Nest will put up a page solely for the progress of “The Lofts,” which is what the new place is called around here…There’ll be pictures, comments and news about how it’s going, and ohmeegosh, I can’t wait for you to see it. The Lofts (actually Davis Lofts) are located in an old refurbished warehouse right in downtown Maryville. We purchased two units and broke through the wall to make one big one! And it’s breathtaking! Most of the walls are brick, and we have open ceilings, which give the place a wonderfully spacious feeling. We have an awesome balcony that faces out back toward our public library and across parts of the greenbelt of Maryville. It’s deep enough where we can sit and knit comfortably for most of the year. We just love it…

I can barely wait to show you some pictures…maybe Mr. Knitting Nest will have time this weekend? I’ll bug him about it and we’ll see. We’ll keep you posted with details. Moving date has been tentatively set for around the beginning of July! 

By the way, am traveling to Hendersonville, TN, once again on Sunday for another workshop. So if you’re around the Neighborhood Knit Shop, come on by and say hello!  

Time for breakfast. Have an excellent day, y’all!! 

a   

The Neighborhood Knit Shop- www.theneighborhoodknitshop.com - in Hendersonville and The Knitting Nest have serious history together! We go back a looong way, yup, we do! And it’s really funny (or strange, sometimes downright weird and creepy) how things happen and come together seemingly random-like! You do know that things happen for a reason, don’t you? 

-doodododo doodoodoodooo ßam humming the theme music from the Twilight Zone… 

Let’s see…The Knitting Nest has been open for almost 4 years now ( April 15)…so I’d say about 5 years ago, Mr. Knitting Nest and I traveled to Chattanooga’s Genuine Purl knit shop because we were told that the “two pearls” were the sweetest shop owners and very helpful with advice on operating a yarn shop; poohh that was a rather long explanation. Well, as it turned out the two ladies, Katherine and Sherri were not in that day but our visit was wonderful as well as fateful because we met –and I apologize but I don’t remember her name-Pat’s daughter and son-in-law. Pat is the owner of The Neighborhood Knit Shop in Hendersonville….So, the three of us sat down and started to talk, and as it turned out, Pat’s daughter was also in the process of opening a knit shop…near Nashville. J Her          husband, a computer wiz talked to us about using a POS system (Point of Sale) and suggested we computerize the inventory as well as the financial sides of the business…ahh yes! That would be Mr. Knitting Nest’s specialty.We parted ways and went off into the world of “I think, eat and breathe Knitting.”

Sometimes I wondered what had become of them, and hoped all had worked out as well for them as it had for me.Somewhere down the line and a few years later, a customer told me about a new knit shop near Nashville and I said, I bet it’s that gal I met in Chattanooga… and it made me smile to think she’d opened her shop and was living her dream just as I was. Fast forward to the present and my workshop at The Neighborhood Knit Shop!

First of all, this class was absolutely fantastic! Pat and Sharon (shop manager) had taken care of everything!! The response to my visit was immense and the group quite large! Thank you all for coming and for making me feel like one of the girls – all warm and fuzzy inside! Being such a huge class, we were lucky to have a big space right next door, empty and available to us. Aside from my students being excellent knitters, I also had help from three Neighborhood Knit Shoppers, Mandi, Sharon and Deb who are all wonderful knitters and patient teachers. Thank you, girls, for taking the time and energy to help out and keep everyone organized and on the same sock page!

And then at one point, Pat walked up to me and said, you know, you and my daughter and her husband met before…and that was all she needed to say! I was like, no way, how cool is this? Her daughter was the woman I had met in Chattanooga all those years ago! As it turns out, her daughter and husband moved away and Pat slit comfortably into place and took over the business. And you can tell that she likes it very much and that her customers are happy and content to be there.

As for me? I am coming back to The Neighborhood Knit Shop in April – just couldn’t stay away! J antje

Okay, so I keep promising to write more frequently…well, I don’t know about y’all out there but for me, life has been so busy already this year! The days just fly by; melt one into the next before I can blink. It’s a crazy world we knit in! My travels continue though, and the next stop after Minnesotaaaa was Nashville and Angel Hair Yarn – www.angelhairyarn.com - another great store to visit!

I met co-owners Pam and Andrea and Pam sat in the class and patiently worked on getting her socks cast on and started. She’s very sweet and her laughter is definitely infectious. Mhm! So we all laughed a lot, especially about…how shall I say this…interesting new ways of working the 2 sock/2circs technique.   Seriously though, Pam did just fine as did the rest of this group! I hope you guys will send some pictures my way!!! 

If you ever visit Angel Hair, Pam and Andrea and all the wonderful scrumptious yarn they have tucked away here and there, I think you’ll enjoy spending some time perusing, petting, holding and taking home little treasures. I know, I did…yes, yes, I admit it, okay? There Mr. Knitting Nest! If you read this, I bought yarn. But then, you’re not surprised, are you?  Tataa,antje

Fellow Knitting Fiends…  

Okay…the Mall of America is a place to behold…but be scared, be very scared to step inside! It’s so huge (7 acres!) that you basically don’t know where to look first, never mind where to go. Yes, it does have a full-fledged amusement park complete with cool-looking rollercoaster and Ferris wheel. Notice how I said cool-looking? Just wasn’t brave enough to step on.

This mall has been studied by…errr…mall scientists, I guess? Because you get handed a big shopping bag from your motel for the Knit Out with a lot of calculated and researched mall data; somebody must be behind this investigation! Among many fascinating Mall of America facts is this, perhaps the most important one for any shopper to know, if you’d spend only 10 minutes in every store, it would take 86 hours to get through the mall. Well, I barely made it through two stores. Then I was so overwhelmed by the size of the place and the masses of people, I just gave up. Of course, shopping was not the reason for my being there anyway!  

 It was The Knit Out, and that was great fun! Most of the isles on the first floor were filled with booths from magazine, book and yarn vendors. They’re not allowed to sell merchandise but knitters got free patterns, magazines, info sheets and stuff like that. The most fun were the free demos and book signings. I met so many wonderful fellow authors and knitters! Bestselling author Debbie Macomber was there, as always sweet and with a smile on her face. She patiently signed books for hours; and Nicky Epstein, a bundle of energy, introduced her most recent publication, Cover Up with Nicky Epstein. Knitty Gritty’s Vickie Howell hosted the Authors Forum, where I shared the stage with Kristin Nicholas, Edie Eckman, Isela Phelps, Karen Thalacker, Kim Werker, Susan B. Anderson, Melissa Morgan-Oakes and Annie Modesitt. 

 Author’s Forum                   Errr…I’m listening!!                   

NEVER without my knitting!!!                                               

               Meeting many awesome people and fellow sock-knitting addicts.

 Being a first-timer among veteran authors, I had no idea what to expect at the free half-hour Demos, I was scheduled to give. My heart sank as I walked toward the little square, cordoned off and set up with a table and about 15 chairs in each corner, for my first presentation…two of the 4 tables no longer had any chairs standing in front of them, I caught a glimpse of the last one being dragged to a third table, which by now had about 50 chairs around it, plus people standing and sitting on the floor wherever there was room left. I looked at my husband thinking, great, now even if people wanted to partake in my demo, they can’t sit anywhere. We looked for a clue as to which table had been reserved for whom but none of them had any signs or names. Finally, my husband walked up behind the crowd of waiting knitters and asked who they were waiting for, and the woman said, we’re waiting for the sock lady…Errr…my jaw dropped to the floor with a loud thud. I’d had no idea that this many people would wait for me to tell them about Knitting circles around Socks!

Thank you all for your time and patience. Knit on! antje  

Woodstock, Georgia…no, that’s not where the big Woodstock concert was held but I’m sure, most of you knew this already! I’m such a foreigner…it was actually held in Bethel, New York. Thank goodness, I ask my husband first, and not Debi or Caryn at The Whole Nine Yarns in Woodstock, GA. I almost did though, and I would have been so embarrassed.

Okay, The Whole Nine Yarns is an aaamazingly wonderful warm and friendly yarn shop! Aside from plenty of fibers to drool about, Debi (the owner), and the rest of the gang simply made Maryann and me feel comfortable and right at home.

And they like to laugh a lot, which is addicting, and so we all laughed a lot during the Sock Workshops. Now isn’t that much better than crying?Seriously, the workshops were a blast! Thank you to all the gals, and Jacob and Bruce, my two male students (yeahheee!!) who participated and bravely worked their way through the various step. Afterwards there was a lot of hugging good-bye, which I thought was a cozy and perfect finish to our visit!  You all were magnificent!!

They thought they were clever…

together they only used 2 balls of yarn,

each one casting on with an end of each ball, hmmm…

Caryn, Me and Debi

Tired but happy at the end of a successful Sunday.

Good morning!

My book travels have begun! Yesterday, my wonderful friend, Maryann, quite a few books, yarn, needles, patterns…oh, yes, and some clothes and toiletries, hit the road on our way to Roswell, GA to visit the Cast On Cottage for a Demo Session. We made good time, and arrived at our hotel in just a little over 3 hours. Then we were off to the shop, which is located in a quaint, dare I say historic area, in a beautiful little old white house. It’s basically exactly what most of us envision to be a perfect location for a knit shop. If you ever have the chance to visit it…do it, because the Cast On Cottage is filled with a wonderful selection of many different yarns throughout its multiple rooms. The Demo Session was awesome! We had great fun knitting on our socks. I always love to see what colors and patterns everybody chooses. And today, I’ll be back for a book signing and…errr…perhaps a little shopping. But really, just a tiny inzy bit. Thanks to everyone for their warm welcome! It made my visit to Roswell a wonderful experience.

Fellow Knitting Fiends!

2008 hit the ground running…Any New Year’s resolutions you’d like to share? Hmmm?

I read somewhere that New Year’s resolutions set you up for failure. It’s a psychological thing. This may be true since my resolution was to slow my life down a little, enjoy the day, the moment even, rather than racing from appointment to chore to this and that…running here, driving there… Well, this worked for about three days. Seems to me that trying to “de-stress” only stresses me more. But then something happened that made me stop, sit and enjoy!

The first huge shipment of brand-spanking-new yarn arrived at my door step!

Wow!! I tell you, as I ripped through the cardboard box and tore the first plastic bag so I could reach that fluffy baby-minty ball of yarn…I actually salivated! Yes, I do that on occasion when an especially yummy yarn teases the nerve endings in my fingertips. And so, I pulled that ball of yarn from the mangled bag and out of the shredded box gingerly up to my face. I smelled it, petted it, rubbed my cheek against it (don’t worry, I don’t wear make-up!) and sighed. Ohh, it was so beautiful and soft!

Right there, that very moment, that’s what relaxed me, that’s when my stress fell away and was replaced with quiet serenity.

I spent the next several days unpacking, receiving and re-organizing to make room for it all, and I was one happy relaxed knitter! Please check back in a day or so and see what gorgeous yarns are making there way into this fiber fanatic’s life!

Until then, have a great day!

a

Fellow Knitters~What would you say if NOT ONE BUT TWO BESTSELLING AUTHORS visited you and asked you to sign a copy of your book for them?