Happy Halloween to all of you! Our first customers of the day (on a Road Trip from Oklahoma) rang the doorbell promptly at 10 am. When we opened the door, we were greeted with masks and a loud “Trick or Treat!” So we filled up their bags and purses with lots and lots of yarn as their treats for the day. (Um, no. Just kidding. They filled up their own bags quite well!) We wanted to make sure you knew that both Big Loopy (who stands on top of one of our yarn shelves, keeping an eye on things every day) and the Little Loopies (who congregate on the Loopy Island up front) are dressed for the day. Elf Donna makes sure that they are prepared for the different seasons. And then Susan brought Halloween tattoos and made us wear them. Should I keep mine on for the wedding that I’m attending tomorrow in Ohio?

I have a new cookbook that arrived this week and I think it’s my most favorite ever. (Which says a lot, because I may be guilty of collecting cookbooks…) It’s called “The Pioneer Woman Cooks“. I can’t remember how I stumbled upon The Pioneer Woman’s blog, but I have enjoyed reading it over the past year. What I like about her brand new (first ever) cookbook is: great recipes (and ones that I will actually make), step by step pictures, and fun stuff to read about life on the ranch. Most of the new recipes that I have tried lately have come from her, and I was so glad when I read that she had a cookbook coming out this fall. I think it would make a great holiday gift for several people on my list. (You know, the ones I’m not knitting for. And since I’m only knitting gifts for a handful of people this year, there are quite a few on the “no knits” list.)

<– Look – pictures of horses! I always wanted a horse, growing up. I never got one. And I also wanted an Easy Bake Oven that never magically appeared under the tree. Do any of you remember “really really really” wanting some particular thing? (Because, you know, that’s the way we talked about such things at that stage of life: really really really. Like you’d REALLY REALLY REALLY die if you didn’t get it). So were there things you really really really wanted and … never did get? Or does anyone remember spending a few hours poring over the Sears WishBook, making your list of things you had to have in order to survive another year of life? Or does this whole conversation just really (really really) date me? Yes? Never mind, then.

Sheri whonolongerwantsanEasyBakeOven.
ButI’dstilltakeahorse,evennow.

Ok. I’ve always said that I like rainy, cloudy days. I’ve always thought that I’d like to live in Seattle with their ratio of sun to cloud (and good coffee stands). I’m hereby declaring that I’m done with rain and clouds. Possibly forever. Our annual number of rainy days is 111. Seattle weighs in with 150. (And if you go to Quillayute, WA,  you get 209 days.) I couldn’t find it anywhere, but I’m pretty sure we have already flown by 111 and it’s still October.  I’m actually tired of rain and clouds. I never thought I’d see the day. So far this week: Sunday? Cloudy and rainy. Monday? Cloudy and rainy. Today? Cloudy, no rain yet. Tomorrow? Cloudy and rainy. Friday? Cloudy and rainy. Saturday? Partly sunny, but we’re driving to Ohio for a wedding. The forecast there for Saturday? Cloudy and rainy. It’s enough to drive a person batty.

This morning I woke up and thought that I really need a pair of yellow socks for a day like today. There might be no sunshine outside, but there ought to be sunshine in the knits. I found lots of options (and hey – look – they fashioned themselves into a sun!). Yellow is definitely a “Frank” color for me. I wear more “Marthas”. If St. Louis is going to pretend to be Seattle every year, then I will need to add more Franks to my sock stash. I do have a beautiful pair of red/orange Wollmeise socks that a friend knit for me. Those are my favorite Franks. But I still need to make Sunshine Socks for these cloudiest of days weeks months. And I think I need to carry them around in this sunshine-y bag. What is your most favorite BRIGHT pair of Frank socks? Or do you live in one of those near-constant sunshine areas and you need more calm/cool/Martha pairs?

Sheri goodthingitissobrightandcolorfulhereatLoopyCentral
Thatmakesthingscheerfulevenonthegrayestofdays

Three things that we did this weekend:
1. Explored another town nearby, checking out their antique stores and lunch places. It was a nice cool, cloudy day, perfect for walking into creepy antique stores like this one. Really, doesn’t this look like someone’s abandoned garage?
2. Stopped in to two local yarn shops. I bought buttons and books at the first place, and books and yarn at the second place. (Yes, you’re right. There is absolutely no excuse for me buying yarn when I have a whole shop full of my own yarn. sigh. But it was fun to look at someone else’s yarn shop for a couple of hours.)
3. Frogged a couple of projects that I no longer want to knit. It freed up some good needles and freed up some space in my brain.

Three kinda creepy things that we ran into while out and about:
1. The Tractor Dude from a local pumpkin farm. His grin is a little menacing, don’t you think?
2. The Beard Guy with the spider in his beard. (Photo taken in another antique store which was actually quite interesting.)
3. The horn chair/stool that we found in another place. I know that some of you will probably like it, but I found it creepy. And dangerous looking. Not something I want in my living room.

Three Nine things that we just put up on the website for you to check out:
1. Madelinetosh Sock
2. Dragonfly Fiber Djinni
3. The YoYo Cash Fingering
4. Fleece Artist Nyoni yarn at a super special price
5. New colors from Alchemy
6. Stitchmarkers and Spinning Keyrings from Dyelectable Yarns
7. Dream in Color Smooshy re-stock
8. New color from Dream in Color – Prairie Grass in Classy, Smooshy and Baby
9. Cute Christmas Ornament Kits from Kalamazoo Knits (or you can use your own ornaments and stash leftovers and just get the pattern here.)

Sheri didyougetthreethingsdonethisweekend?
Ordidyouseethreecreepythings?
Ordidyoujustgobuythreenewthingsinthisweek’sUpdate?

Fall. That’s what. Lots of color (despite too much rain). We have reds and oranges and yellows.

Love all of these great colors which make the trees look like they are ablaze! Fall is my favorite time of year. (Although I might say that about Spring sometimes, too. I’m fickle.)

And there is knitting going on. Remember last week when I said that I wanted to make these cute mitts next? Here they are and I love them. Since I can’t keep my hands off of the skeins of Cascade Eco Alpaca when I walk by those shelves, I thought that I ought to make a pair of mitts to put ON my hands this winter. I made them extra long on both ends, because I like my wrists to be warm, and I like most of my fingers to be warm. (But I also like having my fingers not wrapped up in wool, in case I need to use my phone while I’m out and about.) In the “when will I learn?” category, I had to frog the first mitt when I realized that I didn’t pay attention to the cables and had one going one way and the next going the other way. Then I had to frog the second one when I realized that I paid no attention to the fact that I was supposed to be knitting the RIGHT one, not another LEFT one. (I tried just ripping out down past the thumb, but the yarn is so wonderously fuzzy that I was pretty sure it would be easier to just frog the whole thing and start over.) Really, I don’t know where my head was while I was knitting this week. Luckily, the end result was worth it and I will be wearing these all winter long. Need some quick gifts? The pair will only take a couple of evenings to knit and you’ll be done. Just pay attention to your cables and your thumbs. (Note – even with adding in extra length on both ends, it still only took 1 skein of the Eco Alpaca, with some left over. This would also knit up beautifully in Cascade 220, Malagrigo Worsted, Shibui Worsted, and Dream in Color Classy.)

There is a lot of yarn in the photo room today, getting ready for Monday night’s update. We may have filled up the whole UPS truck yesterday. I’m sure our driver was delighted to get all of those boxes out of his way, once he had made the delivery to Loopy Central!

Is anyone going to see that really scary movie that is coming out this weekend? Sometimes I like scary movies, but I think this one would cause me too many nightmares. I’m thinking I’ll pass on it. What’s another good one that is recently out? I’m in a movie-going mood and need some suggestions.

Sheri CollegeDaughterwenttovisitWebGuyinFLforherFallBreakthisweekend.
Betthey’rehavingfun!

I sure like this Multnomah pattern. I cast on for this second one, almost as soon as the first one was off the needles. It has 3 things that I like:

1. I can make it with fingering weight yarn. (Some of that laceweight yarn scares me. And we won’t even talk about broomstick lace.)

2. There is a lot of easy-peasy garter stitch.

3. The border is done in one of my favorite patterns – Feather and Fan.

Oh, and bonus #4. It doesn’t take 25+ hours to complete!

I was particularly motivated to get this one done because it is in Fall colors and I wanted to wear it this season. Although I’m sure I will wear it in the winter, too. I might need a spring colored version in a few months as well. I used 1 3/4 skeins of Colinette Jitterbug, and I adapted the pattern by knitting to 265 stitches before starting in on the Feather and Fan border.

Have you heard that shawls and scarves are “in” this season? (We are nothing if not hip, right?) I don’t see a lot of handknit shawls for sale, but I have been seeing quite a few scarves in the catalogs. Most of them are big, warm, worsted weight ribbed versions, done in solids and stripes. Like this one. And I liked some of the color combinations in this one. Here’s another, and another.

If you’re looking to make some of these, you can’t go wrong with Cascade 220. It has every color and shade variation known to man. 2 skeins of Cascade will do you. Or if you like the 4 color versions, get 4 colors and make two scarves out of them. How about team colors for someone’s favorite sports team? Or school colors for your sons/daughters/nieces/nephews? Maybe your sister always wears black and needs a red/white/black striped scarf to pep things up? Or maybe your brother would look great in a classy black/light grey/dark grey combo? Don’t worry about a pattern. Just do a simple rib (K1,P1, or K2, P2) and play with the colors and stripes. You can make them all the same width, or do random patterns. If you make one, I’d love to see photos! Here are some quick three-skein combos that I put together on the table in front of the Cascade wall. All of these are from the Cascade 220 line.

Colors on the left: 4001, 8893, and 9408

Colors on the right: 2403, 9499, 9543

Colors on the left: 7811, 8414, 9411

Colors on the right: 9407, 4008, 8339

Colors on the left: 9424, 8686, 1208

Colors on the right: 8906, 8404, 7814

It’s time to vote on your favorite finished Girasole from our 3rd Quarter KAL. Hop on over to the Loopy Photo Gallery and pick one, then email your choice to support @theloopyewe.com.  We’ll tally up the winner next week. I know many of you are still working on yours. Just add it in to the gallery whenever you finish up. We love seeing how they all are turning out!

And we have winners from our October blog contest, last week! Thank you for all of the cupcake suggestions (and for making me make peanut butter frosting). We’re sending colorful yarn prizes out to: Noella in MA, Shelane in FL and Bonnie in OH. Congratulations to each one of you!

Sheri nowthinkingImightneedastripedscarf
Butfirst,I’llstartTravelingWoman

Paul and I went back in time yesterday. There is a little German festival in Marthasville, MO each fall, called Deutsch Country Days. It’s on the property of a private farm. This family has acquired 19 log buildings and a covered bridge, from places around the St. Louis area, and reconstructed them on this wooded property. They have done a great job of keeping most all of the trees around, and just putting up the different buildings on the hillside. During the Deutsch Days festival, most of the dwellings have people in period costumes, recreating the tasks from those days. We saw pies baking in a hearth fire, sausage being stuffed (I never like seeing that), wash being cranked out, and meats being smoked. The blurb on the website says they’d demonstrate natural dyeing, German fractur, and sad ironing as well. Isn’t all ironing sad? (I had to look that up. It means “heavy, dense” in Old English. You know, those metal irons that they heated by the fire?) We also saw rug hooking, rug braiding, quilting, and lace making. And I found this cute puppy for sale, but WH said we didn’t need a new puppy. I had a hard time tearing myself away from him. (The puppy. Not WH.) It was a beautiful, cool fall day, perfect for spending the afternoon enjoying a peek at the past (and being really happy that we don’t live there.) I’m sure the owners of this farm were really happy to have sunny weather, as it has been raining here for days on end.

We also saw this gal working on an afghan in the mock-general store:

A spinner demonstrating how to make yarn:

And plenty of music and song:

If you live somewhere in Missouri, you ought to check it out next year. I’m sure we’ll go back!

In knitting news, my second Multnomah is blocking and I’m almost done with those fingerless mitts that I mentioned on Friday. Photos on Wednesday. Now it’s time to start the Traveling Woman shawl.

In Monday Update news, we have a brand new indie dyer just up that I know you are going to love. Kimber (of Fiber Optic) is a chemist and after listening to her talk about dyeing for 15 minutes at the Sock Summit, I was sold on her incredible yarn. (Not that one look at her line didn’t already sell me on it.) The dyes almost take on a multi-layered look. Lovely. We also added in new Trekking XXL colors, re-stocked some Lorna’s Laces Sock and Sport, and added some new Kalamzaoo Knits patterns (baby socks that I want to make even though there is no baby in my life, and the holiday ornaments that we all loved last year, plus a new mitten ornament.)  Come check it all out.

Sheri sunisshiningforthethirddayinarow.Amazing!