Manic-In Monday

Our gal is still acclimating to colder temps after a long summer spent in sunny & tropical places. Clearly, she's a bit delusional and thinks she's still on a beach in Hawaii (is that a lei around her neck!?) That's okay, with the wind, rain, sleet and snow that we've now had for 3 days straight, it's easy to understand why she is in fantasy mode...

Even though it's grey and damp outside, she's going to stay cozy in this beautiful sweater knit with bulky alpaca. And since blooming flowers are a thing of the past in these parts, I'm sure her scarf will bring her some good cheer during these damp, grey days.

Sweater: Raglan Pullover, knit in Nashua Handknits Paradise yarn from the Nashua Handknits Paradise pattern booklet
Scarf: Blooming Scarf, crocheted in Mission Falls 1824 Wool yarn from the Mission Falls Goes Crochet pattern booklet

Look what mommy made me do!

Michele was stash diving recently and decided to make a gift for some friends who have a dog. She first checked out her pattern stash, and came up with an old Minnowknits pattern for a cute dog sweater (and to answer the question that I know will come up... no, we don't have it!) Then she dove into her yarn stash and emerged with a lot of Nashua Handknits Paradise Remember the Eli Hat Pattern she came up with this year? She made a lot of them as gifts, and has quite the Paradise stash!

So she finished this adorable dog sweater, but didn't have a dog to model it. Enter Skitz. What a tolerant kitty! Well, she may be tolerant, but I'm not sure how thrilled she was for this modelling assignment... Here are Skitzy's comments:

Are you kidding me? Who wears these things? Oh yeah, those inferior things called DOGS. Blech.I have to admit... it's pretty. Nice pattern. Great colors. And oh, how it compliments my gorgeous complexion! Now wait, let me turn to this side. It's my better side - and you know we all have a better side!Look how it brings out the green in my eyes... Boy do I look GOOD!

Okay, that was fun. Thanks for making me feel like a super model. I enjoyed wearing it, but this is more like it. Purrrrrrrrrr.

Customer Projects

This morning was so beautiful! We are approaching peak foliage here in Vermont, and it was so dramatic against the dark sky this morning. Now the blue skies have taken over, and it's going to be a gorgeous fall day.

We've had a slew of finished objects in the shop this week. We haven't captured all of them, but now that I have an extra camera down in the shop, we are trying hard to "snap" each finished item we see so we can share them with you.

First up: Margo P. and Katelyn Z. came in with a beautiful assortment of felted mittens. They bought some Cascade Eco Wool and Tahki Ritratto to make some more. The Ritratto is a great addition for felted pieces - you can see in some of the mittens that it really adds a little something special for each pair! Then Chris W. came in wearing her Ellis Sweater from Norah Gaughan Volume 2. Shawn snapped the picture and I wish I could have seen it in person - it looks amazing! Chris used Berroco Inca Gold. We used to have a shop sample in Berroco Love It, but that yarn was discontinued so we've had to retire the sample. Seeing her sweater makes me think we need to make another one in a different fiber...

Yesterday Kristine L. (oops, I mean Kristine K. - can't get used to that married name, sorry!) brought in her cute little Dale of Norway sweater for Lucy. Obviously, we're looking at Baby Ull here! She had wonderful success with her steeks and I helped her pick out the cutest little heart buttons from Danforth Pewter. (I can't believe I don't have Danforth buttons online. Duh! I'm working on that today!)

Then this morning Michele brought in her finished hoodie sweater in Nashua Handknits Paradise. It's gorgeous! She's never sent away for a custom zipper before, and she's never put one in either. I helped her measure for the zipper, and once it arrives I'll help her with putting it in, if she needs it. It seems scarier than it actually is.

Have a great weekend everyone!

A happy ending & some tips to beat the masses

Polly came in to work yesterday to find that her hat had dried. And guess what? It's really almost perfect! The only thing a little "off" is the cute I-cord tie at the top, and we think it just needs to be reattached a bit. Then nobody will know that her beautiful hat almost met its death in a cold and dirty snowbank last weekend in downtown Burlington. And we'll never tell... will we?

Here she is, all smiles, with it on yesterday. Notice the gorgeous scarf she has that coordinates with the hat. For the scarf, she used one Be Sweet Magic Ball and 2 skeins of Nashua Handknits Julia, each in a different color. She knit it lengthwise and it came out really well.

Yesterday we sold out of the Cascade 220 (the colors we are discontinuing) in a matter of hours. We picked 18 colors, and are replacing them with colors we haven't had before. These 18 colors were discounted by 30%, and so I sent an email to our bulk email list. Within just 3 hours, everything was gone.

Some folks were bummed that they weren't able to buy this yarn. By the time they opened the email (later in the day, or this morning) the yarn was long gone. I'm sorry - when we put something on sale, we have no idea how long it will last. We have a HUGE email list, and even though we had a HUGE number of the Cascade skeins on sale, the folks who ordered in the first several hours after the email went out, well, I guess they were yarn hungry. You can tell just by looking at the boxes that are going out today... they are all really large boxes, which means people really stocked up on this sale.

So if you missed out on this sale, or any other, here's a suggestion. I did put this yarn on sale the day before the email went out, and we actually sold quite a bit of it that day. I do normally put things on sale about 24-48 hours before I announce them to the masses. So it's a good idea to save our sale page in your favorites list, and check it often. That way, you can take advantage of a great buy, before it's all gone.

But you may be connected in other ways, and we are too. You can follow us on Twitter if you'd like (look - the Cascade 220 announcement!): or you can become a fan of Kyarns on Facebook:
where we post notes and send updates on special deals.

And, as a side note, the Cascade 220 colors that we still have in the shop (the ones we are keeping) are all 15% off through the weekend.

Now this, I like!

Our Jojoland distributor sent us a link to this free pattern the other day - it's called the Inside-Outside Scarf and it can be found on knittinguniverse.com (do a search for 'inside outside' on the bottom right when you get there.) Anyway, my Jojoland distributor suggested we do it up in 2 balls of Rhythm, but I had just completed a different scarf with that yarn, so I picked something different.

I pulled two balls of Nashua Handknits Vignette and 1 skein of Cascade Baby Alpaca Chunky. I started on an 11 but it was too loose, so I ripped back and am now on a 10.5 (perfect.)

It's a fun 4 row pattern. And the reverse side is quite interesting too!