I'm going to pop a quick little entry in here so that you all can get a glimpse of the new Bamboo from SWTC. It's called "Girlyflage" and I hope the color comes through in the photo on your monitors. It's pink, white, grey and brown - and it's totally cool! Very soft, and I absolutely love the way it's working up in this shell (the pattern is Knitting Pure & Simple's Basic Shell, which I will put on the website next week if all goes well). Anyway, here it is:
May 30, 2007
Here's what I was planning to post on Friday (May 25):
Okay, it's 8 p.m. on a Friday night, and I'm patiently waiting for puppies to be born. Maddie is tearing up her bedding like a madwoman, panting like a steam engine, and her temperature dropped a degree from last night (which is a sure indication that birth is imminent for those of you who are not Canine Midwives on the side). She's also spending a fair amount of time whirling around to look at her flanks with an expression of "What the heck was THAT" so she's clearly starting to have small contractions. My guess is tonight's the night. I'll post "before and after" photos. The Hand came up day before yesterday and set up a video camera so that I can monitor the whelping box area from my living room. Very cool to have such a technologically advanced friend!! Not only does she do the web development for Knot Just Yarn, but she installs video at my house...
Here's "before"
I have many photos to take of yarn for the online store. The back room is piled up with sample skeins, and as soon as these puppies arrive and are settled I will be back with nose to grindstone. We did receive an order from Southwest Trading of Bamboo and Oasis. The Bamboo order included a new pink and brown/grey "camoflage" color called "Girlyflage" that I couldn't resist. A couple of skeins made their way into my knitting bag, so that I could work on a summer shell while waiting for puppies to arrive. There's also a new color called "Midori" that is shades of bright lime to a deep almost black green. Images of all will be up on the store soon, so watch for them. I'll try and remember to come back and link on the yarn so if you're reading the blog it will take you directly to the yarn page in question.This may be a long night...Becky
...Back to May 30, 2007
It sure WAS a long night!! The first puppy was born at 9:45 p.m., just a couple of hours after I made the above blog entry. There were some complications with the whelping, and Maddie ended up having an emergency c-section at 3:30 a.m. We have 10 beautiful babies, but I have only been to the store for a short time. Laura is doing a great job of holding down the fort, and I should be back in the store on Friday as usual in time to help with the Anniversary Sale! Here's the "after" photo of the new brood:
We're having our Annual Anniversary Sale (10 years!!) this Friday and Saturday, June 1 and 2. The Hand is coming to my house to babysit puppies on both days, since these are two of our busiest days of the year. We hope to see you then - the sale is 20% off STOREWIDE, with a few exceptions (equipment, books, videos, classes, etc.). The sale is limited to stock on hand, and does not apply to online purchases...mostly because we haven't figured out how to do that yet! If you do want to take advantage of the sale prices but can't make it in to the shop, you can call us on our order line at 1-888-477-KNIT(5648).
It's sometimes hard to believe that this is our 10th year in business. Those 10 years went by in the blink of an eye! It seems like yesterday that I was organizing shelving and making initial purchases by sitting at a card table meeting with yarn sales reps...now 10 years later and we've been through a move to a new and better location, the ups and downs of market trends, and all the friendships that have been made. Of course, we couldn't have maintained a retail business without the support of you, our wonderful customers. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your support over the last 10 years!!
I'll try and get some photos during the sale, and have them posted next week.
Becky
May 24, 2007
Wow! What a week! Last week was a whirlwind - we started out the week with a dinner and awards banquet held at McIntyre Hall in Mount Vernon that was hosted by the Small Business Administration and Skagit Valley College to honor the Skagit County Business of the Year nominees...and yes, little ol' Knot Just Yarn was honored to be one of the nominees from Burlington!! Here's a pic of the certificate.
It's framed and in the shop, because quite frankly it isn't every day that a small retail business such as ours gets this kind of recognition! So last Thursday I attended the banquet. We didn't win, but I did get a really pretty bouquet of fresh flowers (and that certificate), and rubbed elbows with lots of business people from the area!
Then the focus was the LYS Tour, which was Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Whew!! I really really wanted to get some photos taken of the shop during the tour, but it was so wild in here all three days that we simply didn't get the chance!! Laura was found stretched out on the carpet in the back room at one point on Saturday afternoon, would have loved to have caught her with the camera but no such luck! Thanks to Angela at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, we had champagne and dark chocolate hand dipped truffles, and offered hot and iced tea selections from our teas all three days. The truffles and tea were a definite hit, and we received lots of wonderful comments about the shop and our selections! Can't wait for next year!!
For our pattern of the tour, we offered the
Skagit Tulip Booties, which is a design by our own Laura Kelly. We did find an error in the pattern, drat! (Actually, the discovery of the error can be credited to Nancy S. - thanks, Nancy for catching it!) The correction can be found on the
Tips and Freebies page of the website. The booties were a hit, and we nearly sold out of all our
Dale Baby Ull - but never fear, it's reordered and should be here in time for the Anniversary Sale. That's going to be the next big event, so remember to mark your calendars for Friday and Saturday, June 1 and 2! It's coming up fast!! Details of the sale will be emailed and found on our website as we get a little closer...but basically we do a storewide sale with very few exclusions at a 20% discount. Two of the busiest days of our year, even counting the Tour!!
Photos and products are being added to the online store, so keep checking back. I'm going to be busy over the Memorial Day weekend with Maddie, a Rottweiler that is due to have her puppies sometime between today and Monday. I'll post pictures! She is so full of puppies that my vet couldn't count them all during the ultrasound, so keep your fingers and toes crossed that all goes well with the litter. I'll be somewhat scarce around the shop, but will try and post from home.
Happy Knitting,
Becky
May 14, 2007
Great news -- we're all set! The credit card processing and secure ordering is all finalized on the website, and the shipping links are working perfectly. We're adding new items and images as fast as we can...so bottom line is orders are being processed and shipped! Thanks for your patience while we got the last few loose ends tied up. Now the online store is all ready to go (thanks in huge part to The Hand!)
As you might know, the arrival of the new book
Favorite Socks – 25 Timeless Designs from INTERWEAVE, inspired us to revive our Sock of the Month Group. This month’s project, “Merino Lace” is a fingering weight sock that features multiple columns of lace that extend from the cuff all the way to the toe. It’s simpler than it looks and loads of fun to knit. (Also a great excuse to try out the new Addi Turbo LACE needles – we just got a new shipment in today). We wrote about the finished sock and included a photo a few days ago….but (drum roll, please!) I actually finished a pair and had to show them off.
Look! An actual finished matching pair – ok so we’re easily amused around here. At least we’re happy.
Oops. We found another error in the chart.
Favorite Socks is in reprint, so hopefully the errata will be caught on the next printing…but in the meantime drop us a note for the fix.
As before, the SOTM group meets during our regular drop-in class time on Wednesday morning and Thursday evening and there is no enrollment fee, just buy a copy of the book from us and say “Sign me up!”
There’s a bonus – you get 10% off of your project yarn each month when you buy the book! So a discount on yarn and the corrections made for you ahead of time. What more could you ask?
Laura
May 7, 2007
Monday, and the sun is shinin’ bright! What a gorgeous day!! It was busy all day around the shop, it seemed we were running at high speed the entire morning… I picked up the freshly printed copies of the
Skagit Tulip Bootie along with the photos for the pattern and spent the morning gluing photos onto patterns and putting them in sleeves to get them all ready for sale.
As you can tell from this photo, I’m feeling much less frazzled by the website. We are in the final stages of setting up the credit card processing and working very hard to get items listed in the store, plus putting up color card and images. Right now, you can still place an order, but we’re not quite ready to take your credit card information online…so if you do place an order expect a phone call from us providing shipping costs and asking for your payment information. (And please do NOT send us any credit card information by email).
It’s almost 5 p.m. and things have somewhat settled down so thought I’d give you all the most recent report. I have the
Skagit Tulip Bootie pattern all ready in their protective covers, if you’d like a copy watch for them to appear in the online store in the Pattern category (or you could stop in or give us a call!) This was Emma’s first modeling job, and we think she did great.
I have a busy day tomorrow, lots of paperwork and meetings. Sue (a.k.a. The Hand) is doing a superb job with the revamping of our website. I’ve heard back from some of you, and do report the positive comments to her. Every day should bring something new, so check back often!
Happy Monday,Becky
May 4, 2007
Stardate Five-Four-Two "Oh Oh" Seven
We've been gearing up for the LYS Tour coming this month. You can find information about the tour on our home page, or by checking
http://www.knotjustyarn.com/www.lystour.com for more details. Dates of the tour are May 18, 19 and 20. It should be a fun weekend, and we're hoping to see all our regulars and meet lots of new regulars!
Laura celebrated a birthday yesterday, and we had a little impromptu birthday party complete with cake (Thanks, Pat). It was an interesting cake, and a choice that I've never seen before but think is a very clever idea...this one was one half carrot cake and one half German chocolate (you can see it in the lower left corner of the photo, complete with the German chocolate topping on one side and those little frosting carrots on the other). I had both, of course. I like the idea of not having to choose, plus it's a great excuse to eat two pieces of cake. There were no candles (we didn't want to set off any fire alarms) but there WAS singing!
Emma came by the shop this afternoon for a little "Gramma time" but we wore her out with all the picture taking and planning for putting items up in the new online store:
With luck, the online store will be up early this coming week. To start with, it will only have a very few items. Bear with us, and soon you will be able to view and order many of our yarn selections, plus needles, notions, books, kits, equipment...we're only going to be limited by time in getting all the information gathered up and online. I have spent the better part of today taking photos for the website, and at the rate I'm going it will be a good long time before I get everything that I want online. So, basically, you can shop for a few things right now, and then every day there will be new items added - keep checking back!
The Hand went home for a few days to recuperate and take care of her own life, and I'm trying not to mess up all her hard work... so as soon as she's back we'll have more changes and information on the site (including this blog entry, which I'm not going to try and publish by myself - I have visions of disaster flashing before my eyes when I even think about it!!)
Becky
May 1, 2007
Our very first Blog entry, Stardate Five-One-Two “Oh Oh” Seven:
We are very excited around here. We’re also getting a little punchy around here…if you
look at Becky's picture on the “Who We Are” page, you may get some idea. “We’ve” been working on the website and online store for what seems like months now. In reality, it’s been about two weeks. I say “we’ve” because “I” have done very little. My hero, Sue Ledoux, has literally moved into the shop and my driveway (she has a motorhome, I’m not making her sleep in a tent!) and has been working diligently and daily on this Major Accomplishment. In case you haven’t met her, she’s very cool. It’s unlikely that you will ever get to see a photo of her, however. Every time I try and take her picture I get something that looks like this:
Maybe we’ll stop calling her Sue and start calling her “The Hand”…but I digress. This is supposed to be about knitting. Isn’t it? So, back to knitting.
This Spring, we received our standing order of
Favorite Socks, 25 Timeless Designs from Interweave. In the Old Days (or the 90’s, whichever you prefer) we used to work on a Sock of the Month. After knitting a sock every month for several years, the bloom went off the rose and we moved on to Other Things. Well, that all changed when the UPS man brought in the book order!
Favorite Socks is a total winner, and we were again inspired to offer a Sock of the Month. You will find details of How It Works in the
newsletter. For right now, here are photos of the SOTM progress:
May is “Merino Lace” knit here in purple (my favorite color, if you come back to read more blogging you will soon realize this fact) Fortissima. One big advantage of knitting each sock up in the month prior to it being the official SOTM is that whoever is doing the project is going to find any errors in the printing (and here’s a hint…there was one). That means that you don’t have to struggle and curse with errata – that’s right – we’ve already done it for you!! We’ve called Interweave with the correction, and they hopefully will make changes upon reprint. In the meantime, if you want to know what was wrong (and all our SOTM members already know, so they are one step ahead) just send us an
email.
April was “Mock Wave Cable” shown in bright red Fortissima with heel and toe in basic black (I guess Laura was in a Canadian Mountie mood that day). It also had a boo boo in the chart. Again, if you are interested send us an
email and we’ll share the correction. I think Interweave will also have the corrections on their site soon, if they don’t already. This one was designed by Ann Budd, and she called back herself about the error. When she was on the phone, I told her what we’d found and could almost hear the click of the light bulb when she looked at the chart!
March was “Embossed Leaves” which was knit in a pretty pink and purple-y (is purple-y a word? It is now) Tofutsies, which is a way cool yarn from Southwest Trading that contains soysilk, superwash wool and chitin. Chitin? Yep, chitin. That’s a fiber made from crab and shrimp shells, and it’s supposed to have ‘natural anti-bacterial properties.’ I don’t know about that, but it sure has some ‘natural silky good to knit with and feels great on your feet’ properties. I can’t wait to get the next order of all new colors – SWTC promises it’s coming soon!
Enough for now. It’s time to go make some more decisions about the website. Check back with us, things are changing daily!!
Cheers,Becky
