Snow everywhere

For those of you who don’t live on the East coast, you may not know, but we have been having a record-breaking snow in the Mid-Atlantic. DC has 30″, Baltimore 27″, Philly 26″–it has been simply incredible.

It started Friday about noon. It increased in intensity through the day and until mid-morning today, Saturday (2/6), when it finally began to lighten just a bit. It seems to have quit altogether now, and it’s 7pm.

Deep enough for ya????

As most of you know, I grew up in Wyoming, and as a child I learned all about being “snowed in.” We always considered it a luxury–you can’t get out, go anywhere, do anything, and no one can complain that you’re lazy. So you do anything you want–my favorite activity for being snowed in is always jigsaw puzzles. Completely unproductive, yet entertaining.

Of course you could knit, too.  Which I am, in fact, doing with some Lang samples for the Spring & Summer season.  We will be taking some of these yarns to Stitches South in Atlanta in April.

Mountain Meadow Wool — New yarn!

We first learned about Mountain Meadow Wool in a blog post that appeared right after the January 2009 TNNA show in San Diego.  Their yarn was highly praised by several reviewers, including Cat Bordhi.  This is a daring venture by two moms in north-central Wyoming to help bring the wool from local sheep ranchers to market.  They have been working on this project for over 5 years!

Mountain Meadow Wool

Being from Wyoming myself, I contacted them immediately to find out the whole story, and to see what we could do to help them grow and “get out there.”  These women are committed to not having these wonderful high-micron fleeces thrown away, and to encouraging the ranchers to make the most of their livestock in sustainable ranching methods.

>>Private comment to those of you from heavily populated states like NY, CA, IL, OH etc:  When you come from a place where there are more antelope than people, you really care about people from your home state who are trying something new like this!<<

Anyway, we’ve been communicating by email for the last 5 months, and I finally got to meet Karen and Valerie at TNNA in Columbus.  It was so much fun!  They are just the people you would want to have as neighbors, and their yarns are just wonderful, and getting better all the time.  Right now we have the worsted weight 2ply and the chunky 3ply in stock.

Mountain Meadow Wool Yarn

They are also coming out with a  fingering/sport weight, and we will be carrying that soon.

This yarn is just fabulous for dyeing, with either kettle techniques or for hand painted colorings.  It’s great as is, though, with it’s natural off-white color so reminiscent of aran sweaters.  The worsted weight is on the heavy side, and will be great for any aran type pattern.  The chunky is just fabulous–so in style right now and a really quick knit.

So, so soft–Mountain Meadow Wool’s Wyoming Merino!

New Accessory offerings too!

There were lots of new exhibitors who were showing needlework accessories.  A number of new tote bag manufacturers were there, in addition to the well known ones like Offhand Designs.  There seemed to be many more jewelry displays than last year, and a couple of new booths for buttons.

Totes by Offhand Designs

Bags from Timeless Totes

Handmade accessories by Jul

Creative Displays at TNNA

Alchemy yarns made a bouquet

Alpaca Lace weight “Halo”

So many creative ways to display the new yarns and accessories–this makes it more fun! Take a look!

New trends

Home decor was hot at TNNA– everyone from the Ultra Chic designers to the least-cost yarn reps were showing home decor ideas. Of course the needlepointers and the cross-stitchers were laughing behind our backs, because they always are into home decor. But if you’ve never considered knitting a pillow or such, take a look at these:

Dog Sweaters were hot!

Round pillows for your sofa

New Book from Knitters: Home

Do dressed-up dogs qualify as home decor? Maybe…. I’m not really sure since we do our decorating with cats!

Pictures of New Goods

Of course the best thing about TNNA is seeing everything that is new for the upcoming fall season. There are no cameras allowed on the market floor, but outside the market there are two display areas for new goods, one strictly for yarn and one for yarns and other items too. Here are some photos I took for you:

Some beautiful yarn, hanging in hanks

Trendsetter Yarns, by Barry Klein

New yarns from Skacel

Shibui Yarn

more…..

Notes from TNNA

This was a great TNNA market! I came home feeling newly energized and enthusiastic about knitting & crochet: new yarns, new designers, fashion trends. It was actually the most exciting Market I have attended, even though there were fewer exhibitors and fewer attendees than previous markets. Maybe it was just that all the excitement was distilled down and distributed among fewer people.
I arrived Thursday afternoon and went to a class on intentional patterning of hand-dyed yarns. I need to actually try it out on some of our yarn before trying to communicate it to all of you.
Friday I spent most of the day in class with Cat Bordhi, (you’ve heard of her, right?) learning more about writing up patterns for kits. Cat is one of those people who just “charges into the fray” and somehow things come out right. So much energy!
Monday morning I spent with Lily Chin, in a class on interpreting fashion trends. What a fun and knowledgeable lady — she is soooo talented, and she talks a mile a minute.

I hope to use these classes to increase the interest in our newsletters as well as our products and patterns that we offer to you.

Next post, pictures!

And we tried something new, too

Besides just going to Stitches South, which was new, we also made our first attempt at putting a garment into the Stitches Fashion show. It was a duster-length jacket in Super 10 in a brilliant fuchsia color. Gosh, we were soooo nervous–we had no idea if people would like it. There were about 500 people at the show, and when they didn’t like something, there was a lot of silence.

I was so relieved after our entry went on the runway!! The Stitches people hire professional models, and have a first-rate “dresser” there to accessorize every garment to show it off, and she did an outstanding job. She chose a great model, dressed her in white, and hung the fuchsia jacket on top. There were oohs and aahs, plus applause, and we could hear people around us talking about it. Because of contracts I wasn’t able to get a photo of the jacket on the model, but here’s a picture of it hanging at the booth:

The Azalea Jacket that was in the fashion show

I was so pleased–it got a lot of appreciation from the crowd and we sold several kits for the jacket in the next two days. It will be up on the website soon.

And the odd part about Stitches South….

Was that we were the only vendor there with mostly cotton (we took Super 10, Sirocco, and Ecoknit Organic Cotton). Most of the booths there had wool, and we heard from more than one customer that the word spread over the market floor that we were there with cotton for the Southerners. Here are some basic pictures of our booth:

Super 10 display

More of the booth and sample garments

And did I tell you how nice all the people were? They were just fantastic. More next post
(yes that’s me on the left trying to stay out of the picture–obviously without success)

Stitches South adventures, continued

As I left you we were gratefully falling into bed, but the next morning, Thursday, we were up and ready to get started to finish setting up and decorating the booth. We made a quick trip to a supermarket (don’t you always forget something??) and our check-out cashier, Peter, gave us some great advice on getting some breakfast:
The OK Cafe

The OK Cafe, Atlanta

What a great, funky, Southern restaurant, with good food and smiles everywhere–not just the employees, but all the customers were having a grand old time before 9 AM! The decor is a cross between mid-fifties kitsch and recent folk art, with sculpture everywhere, including a 2-story “money tree” in the middle of the round dining room. The waitresses might be dressed like those in American Graffiti, but they were absolutely, positively one-of-a-kind characters, who were all tremendously helpful, gracious and fun. Our first waitress, Chelly, was a dead ringer for Diana Ross c.1968–tall & willowy with that great angled haircut and super-sultry soft voice. And AJ, who dressed her hair with a fabulous sparkly corsage, had a blinding smile and personality that was both sparkly and blinding! The food was great, and copious too-I asked if anyone ever finished the 12″ pancakes we saw going by, and you guessed it, the answer was no.

OK Cafe with mural

The next time you’re in Georgia, check it out!! The OK Cafe, where Everything’s OK, All Day