So, I’ve learned that there are those famous people who feel the need to jilt and completely ignore their admirers…

And then there’s DEBBIE MACOMBER – bestselling author of over 100 MILLION copies of her books (I can’t even imagine such a number!) – a wonderful and sweet person!!

 Debbie came to The Knitting Nest for a book signing, yesterday, and I can only rave! Throughout the afternoon, she wore a radiant smile, which never once faltered! She graciously (and patiently) accepted the love and admiration of roughly 100 fans. She autographed copy after copy tirelessly even though quite a few devotees had brought 2, 3, in some cases 5 books for her to sign. She took time to chat in her soft-spoken manner, with each admirer who approached the table, face aglow and clutching a copy of her latest release, Summer on Blossom Street.

Wow! Thank you so much Debbie, for your down-to-earth kindness, and for continuing to bring us wonderful touching stories about Life and the women living it.

Time to ENJOY!

So here we are, doing a little of this and a little of that; some gardening, some cleaning and a lot of enjoying each other’s company…at home.

…shhhh…I’m also enjoying some guilt-free knitting…but don’t let Mr. Knitting Nest know…he just doesn’t quite understand.

 I went to the grocery store a few days ago to get salmon filets for dinner. My recipe called for skinned filets but when I got to the deli, all they had were filets with skin. How hard can it be to skin a salmon filet? I thought to myself but since I wasn’t sure (and feeling age-induced no-nonsense, forthright and gutsy) I decided to ask.

“Excuse me, I began and this was my first and only mistake, “how do you take the skin off the filet? I’ve never done that before. Is it hard?”

The clerk stared at me slightly perplexed and said: “Well, I can take it off for you (and here, I got ready to smile thinking ohhh, what a nice attentive man…) but it’s gonna take me a long time.” (I blinked..errr…what?)

“My knife’s really really dull. It’s gonna take a long time.”

Hmmm.

Needless to say, it took me a moment to process this interesting chain of events. Did I ask for him to take the skin off and just not remember (age-induced forgetfulness)? Did I in any other way indicate that I would like him to take the skin off? Not knowing how to respond to his proclamation of having a very very dull knife, I smiled rather forced and said: “Oh, I can do it. (Since this was what I had in mind from the beginning). “Is there a special way to get the skin off, I should know about?”

“Naw,” he said and made a quick sawing motion holding an invisible knife in his hand.

“You just hold the skin at the corner and then cut it like so.” More sawing to and fro.

He wrapped the salmon.

“Thank you,” I said and walked off totally dazed and confused by what had just transpired. I mean really…should you share the fact that you have nothing but really dull knives in the fish and meat deli with your customers? Why would you offer to do it if you know it’ll take a loooong time because you only have dull knives? Should you not just tell them how to skin their own filet right off the bat? 

By the way, it’s a pain to get the skin off salmon but I pretty much chuckled the whole way through, thinking about the conversation I had at the deli counter…

In the end, the salmon turned out excellent!!

Ohhmeegosh! Have you ever tried to create a prayer shawl with nothing but the Trinity Stitch, hm? No? Well let me tell you… it’s a great big pain if you make a mistake. Oh, what was that? Put in a life-line, you say? Come now! It’s me you’re trying to reason with! Hahaha! I give good advice but generally, I don’t follow it! You knew that though, didn’t you?

Here are a couple of things to consider for next year to get rid of the deep winter blaaahs:

The last weekend in January marked the 4^th Annual Knitting Retreat for The Knitting Nest and I have to tell you that we all had a blast!  For the last four years 15 – 18 women have journeyed into the mountains to a secret hideaway cabin, which stands on 100 or 200 acres…in other words it’s very very secluded! The manner in which we officially start our weekend has become a rather tranquil and wonderfully familiar routine… à After I arrive at the gate sweaty, flustered and apologetic (usually 10 – 20 min behind schedule), most everybody else is already waiting, their cars huddled up close to one another in a heap of color, safely off the twisty deserted road. With key in hand, I rush to the locked gate – only this year, the lock had numbers instead of a key hole and all the way from the agency I was in a state of panic because I thought I might forget the combination! Trust me…it’s pretty impossible to do that! At the gate, I usually tug and wiggle and curse under my breath before I get the darn thing open. Then I run back to the car, jump in and head the caravan up to the cabin. I don’t know about the other girlz, but as we trek up the steep gravel driveway, sheer excitement grabs hold of me. It bubbles up from the inside out! My heart takes an extra beat and a huge grin spreads across my face! We are finally here once again! The next step in the order of things is for everybody to get out of their cars and make their way inside to claim a bed. And then there’s no stopping us! Within minutes everybody is unpacked, all the food and drinks have been stowed in the kitchen and dinner is cooking on the stove.

For the next two days, we sit in this nice big cabin, a fire crackling in the hearth, and all we do is eat, drink, chat and knit to our hearts’ content! It’s quite wonderful!! And funny. Ahh, the stories, I could tell but as the saying goes: “What happens at the retreat says at the retreat!” Let’s just say, we all know a whole lot more about Robin’s grandma and each other than before we stepped through those great big log doors!

Then last weekend, My friends Maryann and Kerma and I dragged Mr. Knitting Nest to a knitting cruise! We had this planned for about a year now, and actually joined the girls from the Hendersonville Neighborhood Knit Shop. I had no idea what to expect…would we knit all the time? Would there be time to go on shore? Could Mr. Knitting Nest enjoy himself without knitting (of course, he would! He doesn’t knit if you can imagine that!!).

Well, it was absolutely awesome!!! We left freezing cold Maryville on Thursday morning and flew toward sunny Miami. The ship - Celebrity Century - was docked and waiting for us at the Miami port, and soon we were on board, in our rooms and unpacked. We had book a stateroom, which boasts its own little balcony and let me tell you if you ever have the opportunity to do a cruise, get a cabin with a little balcony! Spend that extra money, it’s absolutely worth it not to be cooped up in a small space, even if it’s just for a four-day cruise like ours!!

We took off at 5 pm. A huge ship like that, it’s like a floating city! It sort of just glides out of the dock and you’re on your way….

Arrgh! Time to get ready for the day. I’ll be back, hopefully with some pictures to show because that’s just more fun!

Hello Everybody and welcome back!

Yeah! And so I thought I would be all regular and bloggie…and those of you who know me KNOW that I am a complete babbler. I mean, just get me started and I go on and on. Well, not so last year - obviously - since my last blog entry was in May 2008. Hmmm.   

A few words in my defense: In March of 2008, Mr. Knitting nest and I bought a most gorgeous loft in an old refurbished brick building in downtown Maryville, TN. For the next three months, we were busy building it out and making it a cozy new home for The Knitting Nest. I think we succeeded. It turned out absolutely beautiful and very comfy. You can check out the pictures on my website.

AT THE SAME TIME, I was working on my new sock book:

 Now isn’t this cover beautiful? I think it complements the purple of the first book wonderfully -

2 Peas in a Pod! :) 

The book is scheduled to be published in June. Needless to say, I am very very excited! And I think the patterns - cuff-down and toe-up - are really pretty. At least my patient test knitters have told me so. 

So you see, I’ve been busy, and for a while, I thought I was going crazy but then suddenly, The Knitting Nest was moved into its new home, the manuscript ready and sent, and I found myself back in California for 10 days, visiting family and friends and RELAXING. That was awesome and helped put some energy back into me. You know, just in time the holidays. And they were great!

My New Years Resolution: NO STRESS ALLOWED!   

And so I am going to stretch and have another cup of coffee, and perhaps tomorrow, I’ll be back to chatter more because there is always lots to tell!                                                                                               

antje

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 

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   

-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

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