We’ve had fun getting in more boxes this week! On Wednesday, it was the overload of Possum Sock yarn from Cherry Tree Hill. We have 32 unique (beautiful!) colorways that we have photoed and they’ll be up on the website next week. (What in the world is “possum” doing in sock yarn? Making it really really warm and toasty, that’s what.) This comes from New Zealand possums, which are much nicer looking and much peskier than their American namesakes. They are destroying the environment in New Zealand and using their fur in a yarn blend is one positive that can come from them. Cheryl at Cherry Tree Hill is only able to get the mill to spin this yarn base for her once in a blue moon, so she doesn’t anticipate that she’ll have it again for several more years. The yarn is soft and takes dye beautifully. I can’t wait for you to see the photos. (I grabbed a few skeins from the top box so that I could have a quick blog photo for you. Click on the photo to enlarge it.) This is perfect for socks, scarves, mittens and gloves. For those of you who want to make warm shawls, we still have some possum laceweight left from Cherry Tree Hill. It’s incredibly soft, too!

The other boxes that arrived are the Schacht Spinning Wheels! Silly me, I thought these wheels would come packaged in compact boxes like Louet, and we’d have to put them together. Nope. They come assembled with a box built around them. So you can imagine the space they are taking up here! We have the Matchless Double Treadles and the Ladybugs in. (We can special order the Single Treadles or their other wheels for you.) I’m itching to take one of each out of their boxes and set them up for spinning here at Loopy, but I’m not letting myself. First of all, we won’t have the room to do that until our expansion space is open. Secondly, I need to save this first batch for all of you. But SOON, I am going to have one of those cute Ladybugs with the RED wheel sitting here for spinning. We’ll have the wheels up for sale on the website early next week, too. (It looks like we are only going to be able to ship these to the 48 continental states, and we will ship them out to you via UPS.)

Several of you have asked what scarves I have on the needles. (Remember I told you that I had FOUR on the needles? Turns out I was wrong. I have six.) I have two scarves of Wollmeise going - one in another Feather and Fan pattern and one in a lace pattern that I bought at Knitch a few weeks ago, one in a Chevron-type pattern out of Noro Silk Garden Worsted (mmm - warm and wonderful. I’m using colorway 282), two regular Chevron patterned scarves - one in Fiesta Boomerang (Madrid and Plum Pudding) and one in Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sport (Jeans and Vera) and my KAL scarf out of Dream in Color Baby (In Vino Veritas) with the Gust pattern. Since I’m almost done with the Noro Silk Garden Worsted, I’m about ready to cast on another. I think that any normal person knitting person would do the same thing, when faced with completing a project. Why not start up another? This time I’m making another Feather and Fan out of the new Noro Silk Garden Sock in that gorgeous ivory colorway. I have a rather goofy looking chenille-type scarf (one of my first scarves that I knit up several years ago - it really needs to be retired) that I seem to grab a lot in the winter. I know it’s because ivory/cream/natural tones go with whatever sweater or coat you’re going to wear it with. I’m doing myself a favor and knitting up a new one with the Silk Garden Sock, so that I can get rid of the other one. (In the photo - the top three don’t really have too much finished. And look at how the Gust heads off to one side in a bias as you knit it. I’ve been assured that this blocks out. The bottom three have more done and are turned under. I really ought to finish some of these…)

So am I alone in this continual casting-on, or are there some of you out there who start new things even though you have other projects going that you still like working on? I know people cast on when they get tired or frustrated with other things, but what if you LIKE all of the things that you’re working on? Does that stop you from starting other things? You’d think that it would.

Sheri besideswheelsandpossumsocks,ourfunnewLoopysweatshirtswillgoupnextweek,too!

We had a great time at the Midwest Fiber Fest last weekend! I headed out on Friday morning (and of course Loopy insisted on tagging along.) Does it mean anything that my knitting bag was as big as my luggage for the whole weekend? I really love that bag. I had to pack a lot of knitting in there, because heaven forbid that I might run short of something to knit. (Never mind that we were going to a fiber festival where I could buy more. That doesn’t count.) My drive up took forever. Chicago is really only 5 or so hours away, but I was driving “in Chicago” for about an hour and a half, between the road construction, the rain, and the rush hour traffic. I was glad to finally get to Crystal Lake, where we were staying.

Saturday morning we had a cup of coffee (Caribou Coffee - yum!) and we headed out. It was drizzling, but fortunately many of the booths were inside. We met up with Adrianne and Kris within the first few minutes and had fun hanging out with them the rest of the day. It didn’t take too long to find the animals. Loopy and I both really liked the angora bunnies that were for sale. I stood and held one for about 20 minutes while talking to their owner. The bunny couldn’t have been sweeter! I tried to talk Janice into getting into angora bunnies, but she would not be swayed. (Seriously - she has the perfect setup for them. I don’t.) Oh well. We also saw two alpacas who were more chatty than any I had been around before. They make a kind of humming noise and these two were humming the whole time we were standing around photoing them. Very cute.

I was happy to find Jennie the Potter in one of the booths, and I bought a vase-type-of-thing to hold needles. I had seen her wonderful pottery before and now have a few pieces of it on my wish list. I posed Loopy by one of the bowls so that you could see her work. She makes mugs, plates, bowls and vases, with knitting and spinning themes and different color options.

We also saw a few different sock knitting machines and this guy was demonstrating how to use them. I have heard that the learning curve is high, but boy, does it ever look fun. Just turn the crank and out pops the knitted fabric. He said it takes him about 3 hours to knit a pair of socks, which includes the set-up and the kitchenering of the toes at the end. Interesting. (I do still like knitting them myself. I just think it would be awfully fun to be able to whip out some samples of how different yarn lines knit up. But then again, who has time to learn to operate one of those things?) This guy is an elementary school teacher and is looking forward to retiring in a year so that he can spend more time working on this machine.

What did I buy? Well besides the pottery, I bought … quite a few fun skeins of yarn! But some of it are lines that we might be getting here so I will keep it all under wraps for now. It was fun to see lots of different options. Here’s a picture of Dianne from Creatively Dyed. She had a great booth set up and it was nice to find her there. She also does booths at Stitches, so you can look for her in all of those places as well. (We just got in a big order from her. The yarn is absolutely stunning - wonderful colors. That went up this week. The Seacell roving will go up next week.) I also ran into Gale from Gale’s Art (forgot to take a photo) and she promises that our next Black BFL order is in the works. We love her roving.

After we had gone through the entire place twice, we decided that we’d had enough (or maybe we decided that we had spent enough - or maybe, like this photo of Janice shows, we couldn’t make up our minds any more) and headed home for an afternoon of knitting and spinning. Here’s a photo of Adrienne giving Janice some spinning instruction (and Kris helping!). Adrienne is such a great encourager and teacher. (She repeatedly said, “Don’t say that I’m a spinning teacher. I’m really not!” But she really is. She talks about spinning things that are way beyond me and is a wealth of information. Which just shows me how much I have yet to learn!) I finished a sock out of Earthly Hues, which I’ll photo and show you on Friday. This is a new line that we’ll put up next week. I also realized that I have FOUR scarves on the needles. FPS. I really thought I was done with scarves, but I keep finding fun patterns for them that I want to knit up. And fun yarns to do them in. Still wishing I could find more time to knit, too. You know, to get all of those scarves done.

I definitely want to go back to this festival next summer and Janice agrees. Who wants to join us?

Didyoucatchallofthefunstuffthatweputupforthisweek’sSneakUp?

Sheri figuredsinceIwasupat1amfortheSneakUp,Imightaswelldotheblogposttoo
Yawn….

As promised, here are the questions you all have been asking and emailing lately. And because a list of Q&A is just boring, I have added in “detail” photos taken here at Loopy. See if you can figure out what each one is (before you read the comments or the P.S. at the bottom, where I’ll put the answers!)

- Yes, we have the Noro Silk Garden Sock here. We’re photoing it this week and it will go up next week. We have so many bags of it that I doubt we will ever have to re-order it again, but you’re welcome to prove me wrong.
- Yes, we have several hundred skeins of Cherry Tree Hill’s special Possum Sock coming in. We’re getting it in exclusive colors so it’s taking a little longer to dye, but we hope to have it in the next week or two. (Warmer than Alpaca, softer than cashmere, rarer than either one. You need some.)
- Yes, we will be getting the Harry Potter Opal yarns in as soon as they are ready to ship them out. (Yes, we heard about the disastrous flooding, yes that does affect how much of our original order we’ll be able to get, but yes, we already have more on order for the second shipment.)
- Yes, we have more new indie dyers already working on orders for us, yes we have more regular yarn companies that we’ll be adding in over the next several months, No, we are not going to be adding in any more bags or totes, FPS. (That’s a bald-faced lie. We all know that I have bag issues and am always on the lookout for other interesting ones. But with the new space, I have room for lots, right? And I did sort of order more bags today when one of my reps stopped by. ahem.)

Now for the questions that weren’t as easy as yes/no:
- What wheels will we carry? To begin with, Schacht, Louet, and Ashford. At least that’s the plan. The Schacht wheels should be arriving soon.

- When will we have more sweatshirts in other sizes? We have a new style and color for you and we’ll show you a photo when they all come in. We love the sweatshirt jackets that we bought the first time, but thought it’d be more fun to get a new style and color whenever we need to re-order. (Personally, we think a whole Loopy Ewe wardrobe is a fine idea.)
- Can you get other fabrics in the Lawre’s Laine bags? We have more on order.
- When will you have more Dream in Color Smooshy/Classy/Baby in? We have standing orders with them every month, so we get re-stocks of it often. So the answer to that question is always “soon”. In fact, more Smooshy went up yesterday afternoon. Did you see?

- When will you have more of the Loopy Legends in? Angelina (Zen String) is the dyer of that line for us and she has had a busy summer of moving. She promised that we were next up on her list as soon as she has a dye area again. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that it won’t be much longer. (And it’s about time to add 12 more Legends to the line - that’s exciting!)
- When will you have ________ in again? (The blank is usually filled in with one indie dyer or another.) We have standing orders in with most of our wonderful indie dyers, which means that they’re usually working on something for us. We keep quite a few here at TLE so that in any given week, we have one or two or several indie selections to update and offer to you. Most can only do orders for us every 4-10 weeks in the quantities that we order (it depends on the dyer), so we have enough different lines to be able to rotate. I can pretty well guarantee that you’ll never find ALL of our indie lines stocked at the same time. They’re all on different schedules and we like it that way. (Because you know, if they were all IN at the same time, they’d probably end up all being OUT at the same time, too.)
- “What’s going to be in the Second Anniversary Kit??” Well fun stuff, of course! We have a special colorway that Jana at Hand Maiden dyed up for us on the Casbah yarn base, along with a pattern that Debbie O’Neill designed to go with that very color, and then we added three other things to the kit as well. The kit is called “Loopified”, because when we’re doing orders each day and we come to one that has a new Loopy Groupie, we say “Loopify them - woohoo!” It seemed like a fitting name to celebrate our Second Anniversary. We’ll share a photo of our “Loopified” kit as soon as we get the last two items in. We’re hoping to have this kit up sometime the first week in August.

And that’s the way things stand at the moment. If you have another question that I didn’t answer, just email. Also, several of you keep emailing and asking why I don’t put myself in the Limelight. That seems a little strange to me, but if you have questions that you’d like to submit for that, I can try to do that sometime. Email me any questions and if there are enough things that you want to know, we’ll work on it. (I mean LOOPY will work on it, of course. Loopy does the interviewing.) Email is: sheri AT theloopyewe DOT com I promise to forward them right on over to Loopy.

I’m heading up to the Chicago area today for a weekend with my friend Janice. We’ll be at the Midwest Fiber Festival on Saturday, in case any of you will be there as well. We’d love to see you! (Note - no email capabilities until I get back into the office on Monday, so I’ll catch up with emails then.)

Sheri canIbuysheepataFiberFestival?Ithinkweneedsome.Don’ttellWH.
AndofcourseIhavenowheretoputthem.Details,details.

(Speaking of details - could you guess what was in each close-up photo? Here are the answers:

1. Loopy’s Eye
2. The heart brad on our needle inventory cards.
3. The machine that spits out all of your shipping labels.
4. Part of the “h” in our “The Loopy Ewe” letters on the wall.
5. A section of the over-sized sock blocker that the Spring Flingers all signed.
6. This one was just a test to make sure you were paying attention….

That’s the only complaint I’m going to make about the heat. Just what’s in the title. But let me just say that at least the ocean breezes cool things off at night in Florida, whereas it just goes from “hot” to “still hot” in the evenings here in St. Louis. FPS.

Hey - I’m back! Thanks for all of the welcome home emails - that was nice. We had a great time in Florida (did I mention that it cools down a bit at night?) and I think that Web Guy was happy to see us. Or he was happy for some home-cooking. One of the two. It was nice to see where he is spending his summer and we enjoyed touring the company he is interning with. Seems like a great group there and we’re so glad he has had this opportunity and experience this summer. Knitting Daughter was glad to have her brother to spar with battle in Guitar Hero for a few days. We had fun hanging out, watching fireworks on the beach, shopping in downtown Venice, and catching a few movies. And a few cooking shows on TV. Remind me not to watch any more cooking shows on TV. It becomes painfully clear that, although I thought I was a pretty good cook, I am not. Not in the least.

I did some knitting, although not as much as I thought because I did a lot of reading. I miss having time to read and it was a great way to spend a few evenings! I finished a second sock and did another sock from a new indie dyer. I’ll show you those later. Check out this lovely Neighborhood Fiber sock (”Shells” pattern, Cooper Circle colorway). I just love the depth of color (and the yarn base) in this line. I also did a Feather and Fan scarf for myself, since I fell so in love with the other one I made this summer and sent to a lovely person in a swap. This one is Wollmeise Krauterbeet. (I thought the new shoots on this bush would look so pretty in this photo, but what they ended up doing was just making the scarf look lumpy and bumpy. It really is a great scarf, away from the pokey branches.) Speaking of Wollmeise - we will put up over 300 skeins next week, in its own quick Sneak Up. (It will go quickly, the skeins aren’t reserved for you until you complete the checkout process completely, and yes, I know it’s frustrating to try and get Wollmeise.) Here are the colorways that we’ll put up (in the 100% Superwash base): Indisch Rot, Barista, Veilchen, Emil, Lowenzahn, Poison Nr. 5, Franz with Chicken Pox, Krauterbeet, Zenzi, Pfauenauge, Spice Market, Am Kalten Polar, Birkenrinde, Turkis und Karneol, Raku-Regenbogen, Campari Orange, and Rhabarber.

I also found the yarn shop where I want to spend my weekly Knitting Night, once I retire. (Although that might be a touch difficult since WH and I want to eventually retire in CO and this shop was in GA…) I had a great time at Knitch and you have to stop in if you’re ever in the Atlanta area. Kim and her staff couldn’t be nicer, and the whole place was beautiful and welcoming and relaxing. It’s one of those shops where you walk in the front door and breathe a sigh of relaxation. Also, they have a cute bug out front, knitting away, who was very happy to see Loopy and have a picture taken with him. (And two cute Italian Greyhounds - Tank and Olive - who will make you want to own one.) Definitely worth a visit.

Oops - I just hit “publish” and I meant to hit “save”. FPS. Anyway, I just did a quick little Sneak Up, so head on over and check it out. We have a brand new yarn base from Cherry Tree Hill called Select Supersock and it’s wonderful. The lower micron count means that it’s as soft as can be, and it also takes the dye very intensely. We have it at a special introductory price of $22 a skein, going to $24 a skein soon. Also, we added Chic Knits patterns, more Fiesta Boomerang, Chewy Spaghetti Sport, more Atenti bags, and Spindle City Yarns.

Sheri betterclosequicklysinceIhavehalfofapostsittingupthereandhavenoideahowtotakeitbackoff.
DidIalreadysayFPS??

Ever wonder what we talk about as we pack your orders here at Loopy Central? Well, pretty much everything from A to Z, actually. (We have fun!) But today I kept a list of the things we wonder about all of you. (I thought this was a good “wonder” pose from Gracie.) So here are the things we’ve been wondering and discussing lately. Feel free to leave us some answers if you’re so inclined. (Also, feel free to let us know what you wonder about us!)

1. How many people hide stash from husbands or significant others? (Elf Marianne says the trunk is a great place to hide stash. Not that we’re encouraging that.)

2. What is the sneakiest place you’ve ever stashed yarn?

3. How do you find the time to F5 for Wollmeise Sneak Ups? (Many of us would rather be F5-ing than cleaning house, for instance.)

4. Do you knit at stop signs?

5. Who blogged about a Jitterbug project lately that has everyone buying the same colors this week?

6. How close do you cut it when knitting on a deadline? (We get emergency calls. We know.)

7. Speaking of emergencies, has anyone had a true knitting emergency? Other than a deadline or a birthday gift that you needed yesterday?

8. How many projects have you started and not yet completed? (Some of you may take the Fifth on this.)

9. What is your favorite colorway name? (We liked Blended Frog, in a weird sort of way.)

10. What kind of funny looks have you received when posing Little Loopy or the Loopy Postcard for taking photos? (Elf Donna had someone call her a freak when she did this out in Colorado.)

11. Have you ever had your order shipped to someone else’s house (or your work) to keep it a secret?

12. And the most important question the Elves want to know - “How come no one ever knits socks for us?” (I told them they all have to learn to knit their own socks. Some are socks knitters, and others …. are not. But we’re working on that.)

Sheri wealsotalkabouttheinterestingstreetnamesyouallhave,
theincrediblygoodtasteyouhaveinyarn/bags/patterns,
thenicenotesthatyouleaveforusinyourordernotesandinemails,
andthefactthatyouallprovideuswithjobsecurity.Y’allareverylovedaroundhere!

KD and I had a great time in Indiana for College Orientation Week-end. First of all, she drove the whole way there and back so that I could knit. Isn’t she the best? (She loves to knit - but not in the car. That works out really well.) I’ll have to show you pictures of both of my Feather and Fan scarves on Wednesday. I love them, and I don’t get to keep either one. Oh well. But beyond the knitting, I discovered that I am kind of a fickle person when it comes to coffee. This first photo is taken from our hotel room. That’s how close we were to Starbucks - right there next to the hotel parking lot. But did we go there even once? No. Because we like the coffee at Payne’s better. Their Mocha Lattes and Caramel Lattes are wonderful! We went there the first night we arrived and sat out in their patio area until after midnight, drinking their wonderful coffee. Then we had to go back the next day for more. I didn’t take a photo of the inside, but it’s very cute. I might have to have a little coffee shop when I retire someday. Of course there would be a corner set aside just for knitters.

On Saturday, we attended the exciting Strawberry Festival in downtown Upland. (Downtown Upland is all of 2 or 3 blocks long, but they know how to throw a Strawberry Fest.) I made KD and our friend Jess pose with some flats of strawberries to prove that we were there. Apparently we missed the Barbershop Quartet which came later. (Did I mention that there was a lot of fun to be had?) Another favorite stop that day was to Ivanhoes for a sundae. If you have ever been anywhere in mid-Indiana, you have probably heard of Ivanhoes and their 100 flavors of Sundaes and 100 flavors of Shakes. My favorite is the Trojan Two - ice cream, chocolate-covered graham crackers, fudge sauce and peanut butter sauce. YUM. We make at least one stop at Ivanhoes every time we are up there visiting. Really, between Paynes and Ivanhoes, it’s totally worth heading up Highway 69 and getting off at Gas City for lunch, ice cream, and coffee to go.

We’re having a great week weather-wise, but last week it was HOT and I snapped this picture of Casey-the-dog, cooling her paw. When she was a puppy, she used to put her whole head on top of the register. That changed abruptly one day when the tag on her collar slipped between the slats and the whole register cover pulled up, attached to her collar when she tried to move later on. She howled and cried and carried on until we came running to rescue her. For about 10 years after that, she wanted nothing to do with registers. Apparently in her old age she has semi-forgotten why she didn’t like them, because now she cools her paws there.

We have a busy week this week. In the Sneak Up (coming sometime soon) we’ll be adding The Sanguine Gryphon, new Indie Dyer colorways, Yarntini, new Trekking colors (including the Hand Art colorways), large-sized GoKnit bags (which y’all have been asking for) as well as their new royal blue color of bags, Dream in Color Classy, Atenti Bags, and a few new accessories. On Wednesday, I’ll be telling you about our next KAL project, and on Friday we’ll have our June blog contest. Speaking of contests, I drew the names of the DC-KAL winners way back around June 1st, but have never put them in the blog! The drawing was open to anyone who completed their sweater and posted a photo by June 1st. Many thanks again to everyone who participated, and for those of you still knitting, keep going and keep adding your photos to the gallery. It’s so fun to see what everyone has accomplished! We drew 3 names and these gals win a $30 gift certificate to The Loopy Ewe:

Vicki from Massachusetts, Sheri from Colorado, and Cynthia from Ohio!

Sheri what’syourfavoriteicecreamcombo?