Yay for teamwork

Today was a busy day in the shop, but also in shipping! When it's crazy busy (and even when it's not!) we can really pull together and work like a well-oiled machine. I am lucky to have such a great staff. It's great when people know what's required of them, can prioritize and shift gears a million times a day, work hard, and manage to have fun at the same time.

We got in a lot of yarn today. I went downstairs at one point and couldn't even get through to the shop - our UPS guy had sort of blocked me in. Barb and Michele and I all worked hard to unpack the 12 large boxes that came in. We had some help from Bob too, thankfully. We went through the special order book 12 times (once for each shipment!) and took the special orders/back orders up to shipping to be sent out today. It was already VERY full in there, because Mondays are pretty busy internet days.

Barb cranked on shipping, Michele handled the shop with some help from me during busier times, and I was able to get 45 more knitting patterns up on our website. We sat down last week and sort of set up a new "system" for us internally, to make things easier and quicker for patterns to be put online. And after testing it today, I can say, it worked really well!

I spoke with Larisa at Offhand Designs today, and our fall bags should be arriving soon. She is going to send me some high resolution images of her latest fabrics so I can post them on our site. I can usually borrow images directly from her site, but this time hers are smaller than what I need for my format. And you know how we like to display accurate photos! I wouldn't want to distort her beautiful fabrics.

Tomorrow is our sushi lunch for Kalen's birthday last week. We decided last year that sushi is how we like to celebrate our birthdays around here. Cake is great - we all love it, and it's certainly cheaper, but birthdays only come once a year, so we decided it was a better birthday treat.

Next blog post will be regarding an upcoming booksigning. Stay tuned!

Oh, and here's a recipe to share - since I was asked. It's a butternut squash soup, very tasty:

1/4 C olive oil
2-3 lg onions, diced
6-8 garlic cloves, minced
2 tsp minced gingerroot
10-12 C vegetable stock
6 C diced butternut squash
3/4 C rice (basmati)
1 tsp salt
freshly ground black pepper

1 C minced fresh parsley
grated parmesan cheese

1) Heat oil in a large stockpot over medium heat. Add onions, garlic & gingerroot and saute until the onions are golden (10 minutes?)
2) Pour in stock and bring to a boil. Stir in squash, rice, salt & pepper and bring to a boil again, stirring often. Reduce it to a simmer, then cook it about 45 minutes, or until the squash & rice are very tender.
3) Remove half of the soup & puree it in a blender or processor. Return it to the pot. Taste to correct seasoning. Just before serving, stir in the parsley. Serve with grated Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top. (I usually puree all of the soup. Both are good.)