A Quick Hit and Outta Here For The Night

Just a quick post to show you the tiny bit of progress that I was able to muster last night on "Lucinda". Basically, I've made enough progress up the back to bind off a little bit for the armholes and start the decreases for same. See, not much to show, but a little bit


Yes, you see it being modeled by the lovely and talented Miss Connor, who's completely nonplussed by much of anything of late. Check it out


There was a group of seven fairly rowdy sock knitters gathered around her tonight, laughing and knitting and talking and the dog slept through it all. That's my girl!

On an inventory note, we did get two bags of Muench Touch Me in today, in shade 3618 (Light Brown/Toast). That's the shade used to make the "Vintage Velvet" scarf from the book Scarf Style. They're $13.50 each from us, so holler if you need a hookup for some yarn.

Another "new" item to stock would be more skeins of these shades of the Blue Moon Socks That Rock


All four skeins are singles (first come, first served) and are available as of this writing. Hurry up and e-mail me and we will get them out to you right away. There's no more Blue Moon expected in until mid-July, at the earliest. The only reason we have these is that they were not quite right for a certain someone.....who shall remain nameless but sends tasty gummi candies in the return box in an effort to appease me.

That's about it around here for now. I'm really trying to blog more frequently, but time is a precious resource. Plus, it's nice to have some knitting progress to share with you, and knitting time is also scarce.

BE WELL!!!!!!!!!

I Love A Good Exclusive

I am always quick to recognize that we work with some of the most fantastic people in our industry. I know that ThreadBear is "spoiled" by several distributors, on a regular basis, and we appreciate the fantastic level of service that is provided to us by so many good folks.

Today, I'm feeling a little "extra spoiled", as the great folks at Southwest Trading went above and beyond to make sure we had some special goodies for our yarn tasting event last night. They sent a gorgeous model garment, a shawl called "Mariposa" (with Tate sprawled out on the green ottoman behind it....that camera hog)


that's an exquisite project knitted with their Bamboo yarn that has a fun front closure


Suffice to say that the shawl garnered a good bit of attention when it arrived Friday morning and even more last night, at the function. This great pattern is made available at no charge with the purchase of the yarn to make it (four skeins of Bamboo..check out the colors available here, and remember to use the forward arrow in the lower right-hand corner to see all options). Even better--it's under $50 to knit this lovely shawl, and the bamboo yarn feels a good bit like linen, at a fraction of the price. We have tons of this FANTASTIC yarn on the shelves, but less than just a few days ago due to the popularity of this project.

They spoiled me another way, too. The big buzz at the recent TNNA trade show centered around one of their new yarns, Karaoke, which is made from 50% wool and 50% soy silk (a by-product of the tofu-making process). It's got a lovely hand, comes in solids and self-striping options (check them out here, and remember to use the forward arrow in the lower right-hand corner to see all options). It's an aran-weight yarn (18 sts over 4"/10cm) and comes in 110-yard skeins for $9 retail ($8.10 from us). It felts VERY nicely and the multis knit up in a self-striping pattern. Here's a snippet of the "Mermaid Mix" colourway (knitted by our good friend Honnay, from Cincy, who was here when the first samples of this yarn arrived in May)


Back to the spoiling part....I am pretty safe in saying we're the only yarn shop in the country to have some Karaoke on the shelves available for sale. They will start shipping orders taken at the end of this spring starting tomorrow (Monday), so ours will arrive late in the week, as will the orders for other shops around the country. But for now, I have a few multis


and a few solids


They sent just a bag of each color, so we're not loaded up on this stuff, but we'll have 50+ skeins of all ten solids and all ten multis in just a few days. But if you want to be one of the first kids on YOUR block to have some of this brand new yarn, just drop me a note and we'll start the ball rolling.

Curious about what to do with the yarn? Well, there's a pretty fantastic pullover pattern that they make available at no charge with purchase (gotta love those patterns with purchase!) called "Lucinda" that's just beautiful knitted up...see


I'm knitting a shop model of this sweater using the Wild Cherry colourway (#280 in the above photo) and it's coming along nicely for having just been started on Friday


And the pattern stitch is simple, but quite beautiful


(remember, pinks/reds/fucshias tend to be a beast to manage with a digital camera)

So, we're very lucky to be doing what we're doing--every day I'm thankful that I have the chance to interact with great customers, fantastic suppliers, creative individuals, awesome friends, and amazing products and call it play instead of work. And I'm fortunate that it's supporting Matt and myself right now. And I have no one to thank but our great customers and blog readers (you don't have to make purchases to be thanked, folks--even those who just drop by and those who leave positive comments support us on a variety of levels that I thrive on). So.......

THANK YOU FOR BEING THERE FOR US!!!!!!