It was so fun to attend Elf Cassie’s wedding last weekend! We miss her around here, after having her all summer long. Unfortunately we couldn’t talk her into quitting school and joining us full-time. (As a parent, that’s a good thing. As Head Loopy, that’s sad.) She looked beautiful and her new husband is a cutie. Loopy was excited to be able to attend the wedding and wish them well. They’re off on a honeymoon to St. Thomas this week, and then will head back to Chicago to Trinity College, to finish two more years of school. We know they’ll be back to visit when they’re in town. (Right, you two??)

The noise mess demolition continues next door. Here’s a picture of our kitchen (it used to look like this) - notice the hole in the wall? This kitchen has to go in order to link the two spaces, but there is another kitchen in the new space so the red microwave and coffee pot will soon have a new home. When I put my camera into the hole, the second picture is what I see. Part of what I see. Hard to believe that this will all eventually come together to make a bigger and better Loopy Central. (No worries - they have big plastic sheets sealed to the walls to prevent any dust from coming into our area and getting into the yarns.) Actually, I took these pictures on Monday. Now the kitchen wall is completely gone. Joe works quickly. In about a week, he’ll take down another big wall between the two spaces. We’ll keep you posted!

As promised, here is a photo of the first thing I have knit with my own handspun. This is roving from The Sanguine Gryphon that spun up just beautifully. Since I spin thicker than I want to (need more practice), the scarf isn’t very long. More of a neck warmer that will look nice with a shawl pin, I think. (Pattern is a combination of a chevron pattern, interspersed with a few rows of garter stitch.) It’s very “springy” feeling, and that’s because I am obviously still putting too much twist into my spinning. sigh. I finished up another skein of handspun as well. This one is from Yarn Love and I love the colors! (Well, perhaps that’s because Katie at Yarn Love took my favorite colors off of my Ravelry profile and made up a colorway for me. Gotta love Katie.) This is YL’s regular superwash. We currently have their merino/bamboo blend in stock and someone emailed me specifically to tell me how much they LOVE this roving (and to tell me to thank Wendy and LB and Julie and Alice for getting me into spinning!) I started spinning up some of the Lorna’s Laces roving last week and am almost finished with that as well. I definitely need to spin more of that. I’ll photo it when I get it done!

Short week this week as I’m out of town on Friday for the weekend. I’ll check back in with you on Monday, when we’ll have the Elves in the Loopy Limelight! College Guy and Knitting Daughter College Girl both leave for school a week from tomorrow. I can’t think about it.

Sheri tryinghardtobuildarovingstashthatrivalsmysockyarnstash,apparently

Do you mostly knit for yourself, or do most of your handknits end up being for someone else? I find that I mostly knit for myself these days. I’m not sure why. I decided pretty early on that if I was going to do gift knitting, it was going to go to someone who’d really appreciate the time and effort that went into it. (Like another knitter, or someone else who works with their hands.) The exception is knitting for babies. I haven’t had any babies to knit for, but when I do, it will be just for the fun of making those tiny cute outfits/socks/hats/whatever and it’s totally fine that the baby won’t know the difference between that and the storebought ones! Babies are the exception. (Now I just need to wait for some babies to appear in my life. Well, not in MY life, per se, but you know what I mean.)

Miss Violet emailed me yesterday to let me know about a special new concept in dyeing that she has come up with, and it started me thinking about knitting for others. She calls this line of hers “Intention Yarn” and here is what she had to say about it:

“As prayer-shawl knitters will tell you, there is a certain power in knitting something with meditative intention. There’s a whole school of thought that says that the love you’re feeling when you’re knitting something for someone can be felt when the recipient uses the item.

Lime & Violet’s Intention Yarns takes this concept one step further, attempting to start the process from the very dyeing of the yarn to be used in the project of your choice.

Intention Yarns are dyed using the same process as most hand-dyed or hand-painted yarns, with colors that are selected for a relevance and conveyance of the yarn’s purpose. During the last step, however, just before the skeins are steamed and the dye set, we write the word or phrase on the skein, like you see in the “love” photo.

The final knitted object doesn’t show much sign of the original word, but while knitting with these yarns, every so often, you come across a very small “spot” of the word, which serves as a mental reminder to refocus your attentions back on your wishes and prayers for the project. It’s very subtle, but effective as a reminder to keep your attention and intention on the recipient or focus of the project.”

We are so happy to be getting Miss Violet’s first batch of Intention Yarns here at The Loopy Ewe. (And in the future, you will only find them here and on her website.) This first batch will include 15 different colorways. They are: Peace, Balance, Love, Clarity, Strength, Connection, Healing, Patience, Joy, Faith, Hope (shown at the top of the page), Fertility, Perserverence, Courage, and Creative Inspiration (shown here).

She also says, “The colors will remain constant (but handpainted, expect a few variances between skeins and dye lots), with one exception: Creative Inspiration is different every time, an explosion of colors on a white base, to simulate the creative process.”

Watch for this yarn to arrive and go up on the website in about 2 weeks. We think it’s a very special idea and we know you’ll like it for knitting beautiful things for those you love.

Now we have some prizes to give away! Y’all outdid yourselves in the comments section from last Friday - woohoo! We have loved every comment that you left and we’re going to go back to them whenever we have a bad day! (Not that we have many bad days. But I’m a little concerned that several of you mentioned we ought to avoid “The Terrible Twos” stage. We hope to do just that.) For this contest, we had over 1600 comments, so we’re giving away prizes to 16 different people! Each prize package includes one skein of Wollmeise, one skein of yarn from another one of our awesome indie dyers, one Loopy Red Canvas Sock Bag, one sock pattern, and one Loopy Ewe pin for your knitting bag. We hope you love it! The packages are going out to these 16 randomly drawn people: Julie-Ann in Jamaica, Theo in OR, Teri in VA, Kirstie in Canada, Debbie in WA, Cathy in VA, Erin in MN, Nancy in IA, Liz in IL, Adina in OR, Heather in OH, Janet in CA, Karin in NC, Michelle in IL, Tammy in CA, and Sheryl in VA. All of the winners have been sent an email, so if you’re wondering if it’s YOU, check your in-box!

So - do you knit more for yourself or more for others? We’re curious!

Sheri thisnewyarnmightjustinspiremetoknitforothersmoreoften

It had to happen. You don’t combine your space with the space next door without a lot of pounding going on. It started with the walls, and now it’s in my head, FPS! I know it’s good news - it means that we’re getting closer to expanding. But oh my, it has been noisy here. I snuck in and took a picture. They’ve been cutting through the drywall and are working on taking down the metal frames today. (See the far wall in the photo? That backs up to this one and will be taken down at the very end.) It will be nice when it’s all done and we can show you fun pictures of the new space instead of messy ones.

Speaking of fun pictures, look at these two cute boys with their Loopified tattoos! I think they are wearing them proudly. When we get done sorting out all of the kits, we’ll put the extra Loopified Tattoos and the Loopy Ewe pins up on the website for you. Coffee Mugs? That was a “kit only” item. We’ve had about 7 break in transit so far (out of the 400 kits). Even though those are pretty good odds, it still reinforces our opinion that we don’t want to carry them all the time. We’ll do another cool kit sometime late fall or early winter and we’ll add another mug to that one, too. We know that there are a lot of you who wanted them and didn’t get one.

We had a great weekend with Janice and her family - very relaxing, lots of knitting and movies. (Although we did manage to hang out at Loopy for awhile and catch brunch at Granite City after church on Sunday. Remember the amazing cinnamon rolls that they have? YUM.) Zoe-the-cat who always curls up on my lap when I knit, decided that she’d rather sit with Janice’s Daughter K-L for the afternoon. You’d never know that K-L is allergic to cats, would you? She’s working on a scarf out of All Things Heather. We were all knitting scarves this weekend. I knit one up out of a skein of my Sanguine Gryphon handspun roving - the first time I had ever actually knit something with my spinning. I’m washing and blocking it today, so will show you the finished product when it dries.

The happy anniversary comments you have been leaving are so wonderful! We love reading them. A few of you have mentioned that the higher the comment-number goes, the less chance there is to win. Not true. We just add in more prizes so that your odds stay the same. It’s our anniversary, after all. We want to give lots away!

Sheri whoalreadytooktwoAleveforthepoundingheadandit’snothelping. . . . .

Wow. I can hardly believe that we are celebrating our Second Anniversary at The Loopy Ewe! Things have changed so much here since we first opened. We started with just a few lines (Regia, Claudia Hand Painted, Lorna’s Laces, Cherry Tree Hill, and Schaefer) and things have grown just a little bit since then! We started in this little side room in our basement (which I thought was a perfect little “sock yarn nook” and would serve us well) and now we’re waiting to expand our space again for the 3rd time. (I hear pounding. I think walls are coming down next door and the space is being made ready, but they haven’t punched through to us here yet, which means they’re not yet ready to make it all one big space.) We started with a few hundred skeins of yarn, built it up to 7977 at this time last year (remember that blog contest?) and …. well, let’s just say that we have thousands more than that now. (ahem. Someone keeps ordering more.) We started with just two customers - my mom, and my good friend Janice, and now we have lots of you and you all have become very dear to us. (You make it possible for there to BE a Loopy Ewe!) Thank you for all of your support and encouragement over these past two years. Y’all are so much fun and we feel lucky to have you. We’re looking forward to many more years with you.

In honor of our Second Anniversary, we put up the Anniversary Sock Kit last night (edited: now sold out…), and we’re having a blog contest today! We have set aside plenty of prizes (including several skeins of Wollmeise that I saved just for this) and we’d love for you to enter. All you have to do is leave a comment on today’s blog and you’ll automatically be entered. (Any comment will do: “Happy Anniversary”, “have a good weekend”, “enter me into the contest”, “I need a latte”, etc. ) We’ll leave it up to you. We’ll announce the winners next Friday, so you have a week to read this and leave your comment. We also put up a new Photo Gallery - one called “Loopy Central”. (We started calling it Loopy Central way back when it was still in our house. It just means the heart of all things Loopy - it’s where everything happens!) The gallery contains photos taken around here, to give you a picture of where your orders come from. We will continue to add to this photo gallery as we get the new space set up, and I’ll add photos of all of the Elves, too. We hope that it makes you feel a part of things here at The Loopy Ewe. (And remember, you’re always welcome to come visit in person. We’d love to see you.)

Sheri friendscomingfortheweekend.mustcleanthehouse.
wouldratherbeknittingthancleaning.Wouldn’tyou?

It seems like our space is shrinking. This place seemed so big when we first moved into Loopy Central. I thought we’d have plenty of room to grow for a long time into the future. Somewhere along the line, someone kept adding in more stock and a few more products here and there, and all of a sudden, the walls are shrinking. Or something. Here are a few of the boxes that have arrived so far this week. The UPS gal hasn’t been here today yet, and when she comes, I don’t know where she is going to put anything. We need to unpack these and make room, don’t you think? (Or someone needs to stop ordering things.) And here’s what our front entry room looks like at the moment. Not nearly as nice and cute as when the boxes aren’t there. These are fun boxes, though, and they won’t be around for very long. They contain something that will be going into our Second Anniversary Celebration Kit - woohoo! More about that in a couple of weeks, when we hit August 1st. But back to the space problem - we have a solution. We’re knocking down some walls and expanding things around here. Didn’t you wonder where 240 different colorways of Cascade 220 would end up? We have a whole wall planned around it. We’re able to get the space next to us and once it’s all done, you’ll never know a wall was knocked down - or so they tell me. I’ll have to get a picture of Joe, the guy who does all of the work in this building. He knocked down all of the walls that sub-divided Loopy Central before we moved in, and I have great confidence that he’ll make the addition look just as great. Target date for the new addition is August 15th, and we’ll keep you posted. We have so many fun things planned! (Note - UPS just left - 8 more boxes plus a box marked “perishable” and “haut chocolat” and “open immediately”. Like they needed to tell us that? Inside we found the most exotic sounding chocolate bars I have ever seen. Check them out. Our sweet friend Capi sent them to us - thank you, Capi!! As soon as this blog is posted, we’re having a chocolate tasting. That Bacon Chocolate bar will be first, because I can’t even imagine it. And then we’ll unpack all of the cases of yarn that have piled up this week…)

It has been a busy week already. The Wollmeise went up at 9 pm on Monday night and sold out in 5 minutes again. (4.8 minutes, for those of you who like precise numbers, and we had over 300 skeins of it this time.) I have no explanation for such craziness, (well I do - it’s beautiful yarn) and I know it’s frustrating for those who would like to get their hands on a skein of it. Remember to check Claudia’s site on Fridays, as that is when she does her updating a few times a month. (Not every Friday - just some Fridays.) She is working so hard to get as much done as she possibly can and she’s already working on another order for us. We’ll keep getting it, and we have a few changes in the works for the next Wollmeise update. The Barista colorway sold out first and Knitting Daughter thinks that is pretty great since Claudia did that one up in her honor! We will definitely have it again. Here is the photo of it if you didn’t get to see it.

We also put a lot of new things up last night and you need to check them out, if you haven’t already! We added in Hazel Knits (a new indie dyer for us), Noro Silk Garden Worsted, Fleece Artist Merino (some gorgeous semi-solids this time), Perchance to Knit, Spindle City, Indie Dyer, Opal Hundertwasser, Lorna’s Laces (more Franklin’s Panopticon, and we will also have it in the roving as soon as we can get that photo-ed), Spritely Goods Sidhe, Trekking, Jade Sapphire Silk/Cashmere, S.R.Kertzer On Your Toes Bamboo (wool free, SO soft), new colors from Colinette Jitterbug, Jade Sapphire Cashmere Scarf Kits (you will not believe how wonderful that cashmere feels), and Beanie Baggies.

I’ve been getting some “are you going to be getting this?” kinds of emails, so I thought I had better address them on the blog. I’ll answer all of those on Friday. (Some of the “are you getting this?” answers are in all of the boxes that have come in this week.) It will kind of update you on what we have coming in and a few things that we have planned. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a picture of Loopy taking a snooze. He found a delightfully comfortable bed, but I’m not sure that Gracie appreciates it at all …..

Sheri thereisaveryshadycharacterwalkingacrosstheparkinglotwithastrangelookingbag.
Whatdoyouthinkhe’supto?IthinkhewantstostealourChocolateBaconBar.

(Caution: long post. Too much to tell. Pour yourself an iced tea before reading on…) I’m back from steamy Ohio and almost caught up on the email situation. I thought about all of you so often while I was walking around the floor of the Convention Center in Columbus. I kept finding things that I knew you would like! So I thought I’d do a blog post on most of the things that we’re adding. There are still a few secrets, of course.

I arrived on Friday night, just in time for “Sample It”. This is a crazy hour-long selling event (and the only time that you can actually buy things that you can take home) and it’s not for the Faint of Heart. Each company has the opportunity to sell a “sample” of their products - as long as it’s something new for the season. They get one table in the very large room, and fill it with their samples for sale. (Can you imagine 20+ people crowding around each table, several deep, waving money or checks?) It’s a fun start to the weekend. If you survive the masses, you know the rest of the weekend will be a piece of cake.

The mornings start bright and early. A little too early, since it’s an hour earlier than my time zone. Of course you can opt not to take any 8 am classes, but most people would rather learn than sleep! My first class was “The Best Kept Secrets of the Most Successful Shops”, presented by Christine Bylsma and Kathy Morrow. I had actually visited Kathy’s shop a couple of years ago, so it was fun to see her again. It was a good class with lots of great ideas - I took notes! My second class was on Monday morning at 8 am - Celtic Cables by Melissa Leapman. I learned to do her “amazingly inventive way to increase and decrease before cabling so as not to cause any puckers on your fabric” system. It was a good class, and she was happy to pose with Little Loopy. (Oh - you thought Little Loopy stayed home to work? Well that’s just one of the many mysteries of being “Loopified”. All kinds of things can happen.)

I spent several hours walking around the floor, putting in orders, talking to all of our different yarn companies, and finding new items for our “maybe” list. Pretty soon I was ready for a Latte Break and I took it outside on the patio with this group. There is no shortage of interesting conversation when you have Cat, Janel (check out her new sock book - I got a copy!), Anne, Clara, Stephanie and Franklin at the table. Loopy was glad that Franklin held on to his feet in the photo. It was a precarious situation.

By dinnertime, I was glad to be away from yarn (can you imagine?) and out getting a good meal. I had a lot of fun going out for dinner with Nancy and Veronica, the Dream in Color girls. (Except that they ordered an appetizer that had raw meat in it. The waiter corrected us and assured us that it was “cured”, but it just looked raw to me.) We got back to the hotel rather late in the evening and this is important to note. Why? Because when we got back to the hotel to hang out in the lobby with a bunch of knitters, there was this weird thing going on with dry ice in a bowl and knitting things surrounding it. I can’t explain it. The best explanation? The result of a long day of yarn fumes and a late late night, apparently. Is there a “Dry Ice Vibe” that I’m not aware of? Is this some way to hasten the completion of your knitting, or the sales of your new book? Does it make money appear in your totebag? I’m puzzled.

Sunday - more walking and talking and ordering and chatting. I met Dianne from Creatively Dyed, as well as Tricia (one of our brand new indie dyers). I had fun catching up with Cookie A (her hair is blue now. I love how the accent color changes from time to time. It was green at the Spring Fling.) I talked with Jess and Casey and Mary-Heather, and Little Loopy wanted to pose with Bob-the-finger-puppet that the Malabrigo folks made for Jess and Casey. Doesn’t Loopy look happy about that? There is just never any shortage of interesting people to run into at TNNA.

There’s also never any shortage of yarn and products to view, and I picked up some new stuff for us. The new “seasonal color” for the Namaste Bags is this gorgeous blue. Fortunately, I came home with one! Also, fortunately, we will have our Namaste bags completely re-stocked (including the new color) as soon as they get home and can ship them out. Their warehouse has just been re-stocked, and I know that some of you have been waiting to get one. We have new colors (and old favorites) coming from Fiesta Baby Boomerang, new colors (and old favorites) from Colinette Jitterbug, 6″ Rosewood Sox Stix (coming from Lantern Moon this fall), brand new Alpaca Blend sock yarn from Alpaca With a Twist, new colors from Mountain Colors Bearfoot, and wonderful Targhee Top Roving from them as well (Little Loopy wrapped up in it). We have Silk/Cashmere laceweight coming from Jade Sapphire, as well as their brand new Cashmere Scarf kits that comes with the yarn and a booklet of 7 patterns designed specifically for men. (What a perfect gift to knit up for the holidays.) Lots more colors of lace from Prism (including some subtle blends that I couldn’t leave alone), a new cashmere blend of sock yarn from Pagewood Farms, new patterns from Gardiner Yarnworks and Chic Knits, Beanie Baggies (a weighted sock-holder bag), spinning wheels from Schacht, and needles from HiyaHiya. The biggest order we placed was for all 240+ solid and heather colors of Cascade 220! I went to the show wanting to find a good solid-colored worsted weight line and queried a few sweater pattern designers to see which line was a “must have”. Hands-down, Cascade won. Not only is it great for sweaters, but it’s also great for FELTING. (And if you’re going to carry the line, then you might as well “go big” and get it all.) This will round out our worsted weight offerings at The Loopy Ewe for awhile. (For those of you who were here for the Fling - don’t you wonder where all of that yarn is going to go? You know how full Loopy Central is already. We have it covered…..) Watch for these lines and others to trickle in to The Loopy Ewe in the next few weeks and months. We’re happy with everything coming up!

Speaking of that - this week’s Sneak Up went up yesterday morning and contained all kinds of fun things that went like hotcakes. We added Malabrigo Worsted, Cherry Tree Hill’s Summer Sock, Duets Skinny, All Things Heather, Perfect Day Yarns, Indie Dyer Yarns, Tempted Glam Girl, and Berroco Sox. We’ll be re-stocking Crystal Palace, Austermann Step, Trekking and Sockina later this week, and we have those cool Atenti bags I was telling you about. We unpacked them today and I had the Elves pose with the different fabric options. Those will go up next week. In addition, our Neighborhood Fiber order has shipped, as well as The Sanguine Gryphon, the Large size of GoKnits bags, Dream in Color Classy, new colors of Trekking (including new Hand Art colors), and Yarntini. We’re working on the photos and will have all of that up for you asap.

I know I have taxed your patience with this long post (and you probably ran out of iced tea mid-way through). I’m heading off to take Knitting Daughter up to her college orientation on Thursday night, so no blog post on Friday. After this long post, I don’t think you could’ve handled (or needed) another one this week anyway, right? I’ll be back with you on Monday! In the meantime, what have you been knitting since I’ve come and gone??

Sheri whostillhasawholelistofthingsonthe”futurepossibilities”listFPS