As promised, here is a photo of what went into our Summer Edition of the Sock Club. I had to laugh about the Kool-Aid. Obviously I am not a hand-dyer, because a few of you emailed to say you were momentarily alarmed to see Kool-Aid in there, thinking you’d have to dye your own yarn! Kool-Aid means “dyeing” to many, but to me it means “summer” - especially in the lemonade variety. So that was just a fun “summer” type addition to a summer package - not meant to make you work on yarn dyeing! Heather, from All Things Heather, did all of the dyeing for us. A perfect summer colorway for the Sock Club - Skinny Dipping. (A few of you have mentioned not wanting to use the cute little sheep soap so that you can save it, but the gals over at The Soap Plantation promise that if you use it, you can always hop over to their website to get more. We will also have that same “Lemon Loopy Soap” available here at The Loopy Ewe, soon. It makes a fun tuck-in gift for secret pals and knitting friends.) Thanks for all of your wonderful comments about our first venture into the sock club. I’m so glad you liked it. I already have the fall yarn here and Lisa is already working on the pattern and …. well, the fun little extra gift is also being worked on. So we’re already busy with the next installment for you.

I keep getting emails asking for a spot in the club. Unfortunately, we’re completely full for this year. Of course we’ll do it again next year and I’ll keep you posted on sign-ups via the blog and monthly customer email. However, in the meantime, I’m working on something fun to celebrate our one year anniversary in August. It’s not a Sock Club, but it will be a special limited edition offering for you that I think is going to be a lot of fun. So, there are still special things that you can be a part of.

We put up the Claudia Hand-Painted Sport Shorts over the weekend, as well as re-stocking the Wildhorse Farm patterns, adding in more lace patterns from Heartstrings, and adding in Miriam Felton’s amazing lace patterns. Next week we have a lot of yarn to go up. A LOT. We’ll see how much of it can be photo-ed in time. (We’ll also see if my shipping boxes arrive from the Post Office. Suddenly we are short shipping boxes - aack!! I’m not quite sure how that happened. And it takes forever to get them in once I order them. That’s about all I want to say about the Post Office today. I’m still not happy with them over price increases this go-round. Jeez.)

College Guy/Web Guy loved reading all of your birthday greetings - thank you so much! (I told him he ought to put all of your wonderful comments as references on his resume - ha!) Someone suggested that he can’t be College Boy anymore, now that he’s 20 - and you’re right. But College Man sounds too formal. So he’ll have to be College Guy in addition to being Web Guy. It was funny to read that several of you have daughters that turned 20 on Saturday, too.

Off to unpack more boxes of yarn that arrived today. I will have to hide it from WH. His photo-list is already too long. (Psst - I just put up more Crystal Palace Cotton Panda - woohoo!  I have 2 more new colors to add in later tonight or tomorrow - Circus and Fruit Salad.  We also have the other 6 new colors and re-stocking of everything else due to arrive any minute as well. I’ll put it up as it comes in.  I’m hoping another case or two or three will arrive tomorrow. I love this yarn.)

Sheri KnittingDaughtergaveme4moviesforMother’sDay soguesswhatwedidallafternoonandeveningyesterday?

Tomorrow, May 12th, is Web Guy’s birthday. (Many of you know that Web Guy is also College Boy.) He will be leaving the teens forever, and turning 20. That’s a bit hard to imagine. Where did all of that time go?? Thankfully, we’ll get to see him next week as we pick him up from college and bring him home for the summer. I’m looking forward to having an on-site tech expert for a few months again. It ought to be a calmer summer than last summer. Last summer we were knee deep in getting inventory in and setting up The Loopy Ewe. Our goal was to have it up and running by August 1st. Web Guy had been working on it since he arrived home from college (mid-May) and around July 1st he told me that he was scrapping the whole site and starting over. I had to sit down. In my mind, it went like this, “Starting over?? What do you mean starting over? You’ve been working on it for 6 weeks! We open in 4 weeks. How can you start over? We have yarn here! We need to get this going!” What came out of my mouth was, “Oh? Why?” Well, apparently the “template website” would never allow “us” to do the great things “we” wanted it to be able to do, so he was going to build it from scratch, instead. Starting 4 weeks before we wanted to open. In my mind, it went like this, “Aaaaaaacccccckkkkkkkk!!!!!” What came out of my mouth was, “Are you sure?” He said he was and that I needed to trust him, and so I did. Of course he was right. We opened August 1st. Of course he was right. I do love the extra things that we can do with the site that he built right in there. I might be biased a little, but I think he’s a pretty smart guy. And I hope you all will leave him birthday greetings in the comments to make up for the fact that he’s celebrating his birthday away from home!

Today’s recipe is one that I will make again when we can celebrate his birthday in person. It’s fun and delicious!

Dirt Cake

1 large package chocolate sandwich cookies (like Oreos)

1 package (8 oz.) cream cheese

1/2 cup butter or margarine

1 cup powdered sugar

1 large carton whipped topping (12 oz - Cool Whip)

2 boxes instant vanilla pudding (3 1/2 oz)

2 1/2 cups milk

1 tsp. vanilla

Crush cookies and put 1/4 of the crumbs in a brand new large flower pot. (You can line it with foil if it makes you feel better.) Mix cream cheese and butter until smooth. Add powdered sugar. Fold in whipped topping. In separate bowl, mix milk, pudding and vanilla. Fold both mixtures together. Alternate layers of the pudding mixture with cookie crumbs, saving enough to completely cover the top so that it looks like dirt. Pop some gummy worms or new silk flowers into the top of the pot. Refrigerate until serving time.

Sheri wishingallofyou(andyourmoms)aHappyMother’sDay!

Crickets. That’s the latest “imitative sound” my little 1 am bird friend has added to his routine. Crickets. All was well and good as I was working on the computer at 1 am last night and listening to his cheery little voice in the big evergreen outside my window, but by 1:13 a.m., I was in bed and wondering when he would shut up go to bed himself. I’m still trying to get a photo of him. I think some neighbor might shoot him first. Not that I have neighbors like that. Although I did witness my neighbor across the street using a BB gun on something in his front yard, but I pretended not to notice.

ANYWAY, here is the sock that I finished over the weekend. It’s a new yarn line - Misty Mountain Farm - in their Blue Ridge Jubilee sock yarn. We’re hoping to have this line in soon. This picture is totally washed out and WH is not here to fix it for me. The colors are darker and prettier in person. The pattern is Little Arrowhead Lace (pg. 93 of Charlotte Schurch’s new More Sensational Socks book). I like the look of it a lot, but didn’t particularly like knitting the pattern. I WILL finish the second sock, anyway. Eventually. I have to put my SOTSS program together. (Summer of the Second Sock)

We’ll be making the postage changes on the website on Friday evening, for packages going out next Monday (the day of the increase.) I know it’s necessary, but I’m still not happy with the post office. I heard today that other delivery services might be adjusting their rates in the next few weeks and if that is the case, just know that we will certainly investigate and keep other options open if something better comes up.

Did you see the Sneak Up was Snuck Up at midnight (ish) last night? I already have more on order in the areas that have sold out. Never fear. I won’t even bother to tell you what you might’ve missed. But there are lots of new things still available! I’m not sure if we’ll do a Sneak Up next week, as we will be traveling a bit (Thursday to pick up College Boy, Friday to head up to Iowa for a graduation party for the weekend). If we can get a few more things up this weekend, we’ll do so. Otherwise, you’ll be in for a massive Sneak Up the week of the 21st. I expect a lot in between now and then. (Don’t mention that to WH. More photo work for him. He’s spending SO much time photographing that I offered to hire a photographer so that he didn’t have to spend so much time on it. He told me I couldn’t afford it. He’s probably right. He’s sort of free. I like that.)

Sheri sofuntohearfromyouSockClubbersasyouaregettingyourpackagestoday!

I warned him. I told him how many boxes would be on the porch for the sock club. I don’t think he quite envisioned this. (And actually, this is not quite all of the boxes awaiting him today, because there were a few more to pack and it also doesn’t include regular orders from the weekend, yet.) At least the sock club group stacked well, being all the same size and shape. So - I hope you like it! I can’t wait for them to arrive at your house. I coaxed my mom and dad into helping again on Saturday and then made them pose for a picture. They were a HUGE help! Don’t forget that you’re welcome to take the Sock Club member button (in my sidebar) if you’re in the sock club. It has been fun to see them on different blogs already! And if you’re a button collector, then you know how to do it the correct way, saving it to your own server and all. I have no idea how to do it. I just send a link to Web Guy and ask him to do it for me. (Maybe I shouldn’t admit that. Never mind.)

Knitting Daughter was working on making mini yarn cakes for the Loopy Sock Kits (one of the fun gifties that we give in orders) and low and behold, look at the photos that I found on my camera when I went to upload the most recent ones to the computer! Hmmm. I’m guessing she was a bit bored by the whole yarn winding activity, what do you think? It made me laugh, though!

I forgot to tell you about another great yarn that we will have going up this week - this is merino/cashmere/nylon blend from The Knittery in Australia. I’ve had it here for about 2 weeks now (waiting on photos) and I can’t quit looking at it. I love the colors. We have her regular sock yarn base on order as well, so that will be in later. Also - since we are doing lace yarns, we needed something fun to go along with that. We have beautiful shawl pins arriving soon in sterling silver and copper from Designs by Romi. You will love these. They are perfect for shawls, but also on scarves, hats and bags as well. I have been eyeing Romi’s beautiful work for months, in anticipation of our lace line.

May will be a busy month around here. I was looking at our “coming soon” section and realized that I expect orders from 10 of the 11 companies listed there this month. (Yarn Love will be back next month.) In addition to those, of course we have NEW yarn lines coming in as well. I will keep you posted. I have been working with our “top tier” indie dyers to insure that we get regular and frequent orders from them, to keep all of us well-stocked. I’m also looking forward to attending the TNNA Market in Ohio, the first weekend in June. We went to this last year and it was invaluable, as we were finalizing the vendors that we wanted to carry here. I think it’s important to be a member of The National NeedleArts Association and to attend the market at least once a year. This business is very important to us, and we always want to stay on top of what’s new and what’s popular in this industry. We’re committed to finding the best for you! I’ll let you know what I find there that weekend that we all need.

Sheri yarnprogressphotosonWednesdayIfinishedanothersock(singular.sigh)

I was dropping off international orders at the post office yesterday and talked to the nice postal gals about the increasing postage rates. ugh. I’m tired of postage going up! We’ll have to be making some website adjustments in postage prices when this goes into affect in a week. I wish I didn’t have to do that. I was particularly appalled to hear what the international rates are going to. So we’re exploring other shipping options for internationals this week. I’d rather see them cut Saturday deliveries instead of raising rates again - but she assured me that that would not help. (?) She said that for every penny the gas prices increase, it costs the postal system $8 million. Yowza. I guess I had better use up my Loopy kisses stamps.

We have a weird bird that lives in our yard. I have tried to get a picture of him just to see if anyone can tell me what he is. I assume he’s a mockingbird because he does ALL different bird sounds. We’ll be sitting on the back porch and he starts into his whole program. Cracks me up because he doesn’t stop until he has done them all, one right after the other. He does blue jays, cardinals, sirens (yes, sirens), etc. And when he gets through the whole routine, he stops for a moment and then starts again. The funniest thing about him is that he also enjoys going through his routine at 1 am. (How strange is it to hear a bird joyfully singing at the top of his lungs in the middle of the night? Darkness and bird sounds don’t go together in my mind.) So - does anyone else have birds like this? Weird. But actually, he makes me smile. He’s just so happy all the time.

And finally, if you’re ever having a bad day, maybe you can hint about it to your WH and he’ll do what mine did yesterday. Maybe he’ll bring you Coldstone Creamery Cake Batter ice cream. (Nothing added to it - just plain. There’s nothing better than that.) He’s a good guy. Actually, he’s a good guy who will be spending a good part of the weekend photographing things for all of us. (The Midnight Sneak Up seemed to work out great last week, don’t you think?) Here’s our list of what we’re hoping to put up sometime next week: Stone Barn Fibers (new to us, beautiful colors), bunches of Fleece Artist regular sock and also their Sea Wool Bordello socks, Hand Maiden cashmere and Hand Maiden 150g Sea Silk in new colors, more Peppermint Mocha from Claudia, and something new from Claudia as well - skeins of “Sport Shorts”. I had talked to Claudia awhile back about the yardage in her sportweight skeins, and how some people seem to run out before their pair of socks are done. She is experimenting on us by letting us offer “Sport Shorts”. These are half skeins of her sportweight. So those of you who found that the old skein worked just fine for your size feet can order 2 Sport Shorts, and those of us who have bigger longer feet, can use 3 skeins. I think it’s going to work out just great. Do keep in mind that when you click on “What’s New” on the website, there are often more than 5 pages of items, so not all of the new things show there. That’s one reason I try to give you a list the week before - so that you’ll know what yarn companies to click on to see the full offering. It’s so fun to have new stuff going up all the time.

Sheri sockclubboxesarescheduledtoshipoutMonday-woohoo!
Yes,I’llpostapictureofthecontentsbutnotforaweekortwoso
thateveryonegettingthemcanbesurprised,first.
DidyouseethenewSockClubblogbutton?Ifyou’reinourSC,feel
freetotakeitandpostitonyourblog.(savetoyourownserveryadayada)
thiswasannoying-awholeparagraphruntogether,huh?
Haveagreatweekend!What’reyouknittingthisweekend?

Time for a Three Things post. Why? Because it means that I have too many random things to say today.

Three questions you have asked recently:

1. “What pattern were you using in your lace knitting?” It’s Heartstrings Scotch Thistle Shawl which I have sitting here, waiting to put up on the website for sale, as soon as I get a second, along with Miriam Felton’s amazing lace designs.

2. “What pattern were you using on that sock in Monday’s post?” It’s Little Arrowhead Lace - pg. 93 of Charlotte Schurch’s new More Sensational Socks book (which, by the way, I like a lot.) The yarn? Gotta wait on that one. It’s on order.

3. “I received so many pretty yarns in my last order from you, which one should I start first?” Umm… I have no idea. I have the same problem, because I added too many to my own stash from last week’s Sneak Up.

Three things that went up in last night’s Sneak Up at midnight:

1. Cider Moon - new colors, and repeat colors that flew out of here the last time.

2. Interlacements Tiny Toes - re-stocked in all of the colors.

3. Claudia Hand Painted - all 30 of her brand new colors.

Three more things that went up last night:

1. The Loopy Ewe felting kit (and just as we were about to sell out today, the mailman arrived with a big box of our next order from them - so they are still in stock!)

2. Schaefer Lola - did any of you see your colorway names used from last week’s blog contest?

3. Perchance to Knit’s laceweight yarn in her exclusive Midnight Rainbow/Harlot’s Peacock colorway.

Three people who helped in the Loopy Room today:

1. Susan-the-awesome-assistant (who helps almost every day)

2. My mom (who was working on something for the sock club)

3. My dad (who put together 150 boxes for sock club shipping)

Three things I have to do today:

1. Laundry. Big time.

2. Yarn order unpacking. Big time.

3. Sneak Up order packing. Big time.

Three things I’m happy about in May:

1. College Boy comes home on the 17th!!

2. Knitting Daughter finishes up her Junior year of high school!!

3. New yarn lines are coming in!

So what three things do you have to tell me? Three things you bought from The Loopy Ewe today? Three things that are on your wish list? Three things you’re happy about in May? Three things you need to do? Three things you’re knitting on this week? ………….

Sheri it’spouringrainandIlovethesekindsofdays!Doesthatmakemeweird?