It's Joulupukki night!

Tonight is our craft night here at Kyarns. Every member of our staff is hanging out together so I can show them how to make a Joulupukki... or "Yule Goat". Yule Goats are typical Yule decorations in Scandinavia (though Finns don't consider themselves to be a part of Scandinavia - that's a different topic for another day). Read this if you are interested...

Never heard of a Yule Goat? Don't worry. Nobody on my staff had either! I grew up with a mom who loved (and still does!) all things Scandinavian, so we've had Yule Goats in all sizes in our house each winter holiday season. And when I saw them in Finland a shop window, made with a single (but large!) skein of paper yarn, I knew I had to make one for myself.

I struggled a bit through the Finnish instructions (actually, I struggled MORE than a bit, since Finnish is one language that even Google Translate can't handle!) But I went back into the shop and had the woman show me each step. It took her about 3 minutes - and was very helpful, since I am totally a visual person. I went home and in just a couple of hours I had my very own Joulupukki. 

So tonight, it's Yule Goat night here at Kyarns. It's doesn't involve any knitting or crocheting, BUT it does involve one very large skein of paper yarn. We've all picked different colors and there's going to be a lot of squeezing paper skeins, tying, and cutting. Oh, and little sushi eating too. 

We'll have some pictures to share tomorrow. Want to learn how to do this? We're hoping to schedule a class on it this summer!

Resolutions Anyone?

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a great holiday weekend. We've been talking about our resolutions today, and thought we'd share our craft related ones with you.

Barb: To finish a project before starting another one.

Chrissy: To spend more time with her "other" fiber related hobbies (spinning, learning to weave, etc.)

Michele: Finish at least one of the two sweaters (for herself) that she has yarn for. (She knits a lot for her husband and sons, and not enough for herself!)

Shawn: To finish her Noro Mitered Square Blanket (that she hasn't touched for 6 months)

Jill: To experiment with Finnish paper yarns and find some really neat projects that we can do with them here at the shop.

We also have some non craft related resolutions (in random order!):

• Continuing to keep each day in perspective
• Finishing home renovations
• Running a half marathon
• Be more adventurous in cooking
• Paying off a car loan

What are your resolutions?

Hours this weekend

It's the end of 2011, and I just wanted to remind everybody about our shop hours for the next few days.

   Friday 12/30/11: Normal hours 10am-5pm. 
 
   Saturday 12/31/11: Open 9am-2pm (closing early for New Year's Eve).

   Sunday 1/1/12: Closed. Happy New Year! (We're always closed on Sundays.)

   Monday 1/2/12: Closed. 
 
   Tuesday 1/3/12: Back to normal hours, 10am-5pm.

Thanks everyone for a great year!

Holiday spirit anyone?

It's hard to believe that the holidays are almost upon us! The lack of snow this year has really made it hard to believe that Christmas is coming. We've had snow off and on, but it's always followed by a day of rain. Check out the treacherous sidewalks here:

That's about 2" of solid ice!

We'll all be glad when the snow falls and sticks around for a bit!

Because we're traveling back to Vermont for the holidays, we didn't get a tree here. Even if we'd wanted to get one, things in Europe are different. In the states, parking lots in most towns turn into Christmas tree markets right after Thanksgiving. Here, the tradition is to put the tree up on Christmas Eve. The whole day is spent decorating the tree, then opening presents and eating a meal with family. You can't even find a tree to buy until at least December 18th. And, the people I've talked to usually take their trees down by January 6th. So that's a pretty short window! Without our own tree, and without tree lights visible through apartment windows, we've been having a hard time believing that Christmas is this weekend.

No snow, but our Christmas Market in town is still fun to visit!

I've been doing some other holiday activities here with the girls to try to get us all in the mood. We've baked a lot of cookies and have been packaging those for friends here. I remember baking with my mom when I was young and I'm so glad my girls are enjoying doing it with me. 

Sophie helping with the thumbprint (or pointer print?) cookies

It's a much longer process here in Finland because of the petite ovens that are so common here. We had many nights of late cookie baking but we were really pleased with the results. 

Fortunately we DID give most of these away, because we certainly don't need to eat them ourselves. 

We've also gotten creative with gift wrapping. The paper yarn here is beautiful. It's made from the leftover pulp from the paper mills. There are several different weights of it and some are used for knitting and crocheting. Most of the patterns are in Finnish, and unfortunately the people who teach the classes do not speak English very well. I am still trying to see if I can learn how to do a few fun things with these yarns, so I can bring them back and hold some classes this summer. They also use these yarns for non-knitting related crafts. I used two of the thinner weights to tie around some gifts. 

It looked great with the Finnish newspapers I used for wrapping. Why not recycle? I was taking so many of these down to the recycle room, so I thought I'd put them to better use.

And I'm bringing some back for my staff so I can teach them how to make something pretty cool... but it's a secret so I can't share it until after we have our staff craft night, on Wednesday, January 4th. I had everyone pick a color and now I just have to fit these huge skeins into my bags.

LARGE suitcase and water bottle for reference. These skeins are HUGE!

At least it's just paper and they are not too heavy!

A Holiday Sock For Jack

contributed by Shawn

Polly brought in her latest finished project to show us and get us into the holiday spirit this week.  She has just finished her grandson Jack's holiday stocking using Nancy Lindberg's Christmas Socks pattern.  Isn't it just too cute? 

Polly told me this morning that she was very impressed that the pattern allows you to choose your own motifs to place on your project so that you can customize the stocking for different people.  I think the tiny Santas and reindeer for Jack are a good choice! 

You can see another combination of the motifs that are possible in our shop sample here. 

Polly worked with the Plymouth Galway yarn and added a few tiny details that really make this special.  Take a look at the tiny silver bells she added and how each of the beards has just a bit of extra soft fuzziness!  Polly held a strand of the Plymouth Angora yarn with her cream colored Galway when she knit the Santa motifs to add this effect. 

Nancy's pattern also has a number of other advantages and tips that make for a great finished project.  This sock is knit in the round on a circular needle.  Polly and I agree that for the two of us this makes the color-work motifs much cleaner looking in the finished project than if we were to use the flat knitting intarsia method.  We can also both knit much faster in the round!   

Polly also took the pattern's advice to work the name band on her project on both sides of the sock so that it can be hung facing either direction.

This is more difficult if you need to put a long name on the band, but for Jack it works great!)

Ruffle Alert!

For the second year in a row, ruffle yarns are a big hit for the holidays. The popularity of these yarns is no surprise, but this year we've had a harder time keeping these yarns in stock, and so have our suppliers! We have received some recent shipments and so we do have quite a few of these yarns in stock now - even if your favorite is not available, there are plenty of choices for substitutions that are very similar, if not almost identical.

So, here's a quick stock status for those of you who are planning to make a ruffly scarf or two in the next week and a half...

As of this posting, we do have 6 colors of Triana Lux and 7 colors of Triana,
4 colors of Flounce, 6 colors of Lacey and 3 colors of Flamenco. 

We also just received another ruffle yarn called Broadway. This is similar to the Triana Lux - it has a thin metallic fiber running along the outer edge. Just one skein is enough for a scarf and it's gorgeous. Check it out!

Scarf with 1 skein of Broadway