CHECK OUT ZOE'S NEW OUTFITS

I finally got Zoe to pose in two of her new summer outfits that I made her. She loves the Banyan skirt. I made it a little longer than her Tiger skirt - but otherwise it is the same. Banyan comes in great colors and it is very nice to knit with. http://www.theyarnco.com/brand_display/378. Her Tika dress came out great also - I was going to do this three row fairisle pattern - but it was too much work - so I just did a cute A-line dress with two row stripes. Again, there are lots of fun color options - http://www.theyarnco.com/brand_display/432. I wanted to get some more pictures on - her mayra sweater, her sky cardigan and her soya top - but she was done - so next time. Got to get to work - we are seeing another rep to order more yarn for the fall. I think she has muench, classic elite and punta del este. And next Friday we leave for Columbus to go to the yarn show. I can't believe it is June next week!

RAVELRY ANYONE?

I am sure that I am light years behind those of you reading this blog but... I have recently discovered www.Ravelry.com. For those of you who do not know what it is: "Ravelry is a place for knitters, crocheters, designers, spinners, and dyers to keep track of their yarn, tools, and pattern information, and look to others for ideas and inspiration." It is very cool. You can keep track of all the yarns you have, all the projects you have made or are in the process of making and best of all you can see what tons of other people are making. The site divides projects into different categories so if you are looking for a cable pattern, you can click on cables and see a bunch of cable projects that people have made. Many tell you the source of the pattern and what yarn they used. Another great thing is if you really like a particular yarn and want to make something out of it, you can search that yarn and see what others have done - it definitely provides lots of knitting inspiration. At the moment, we are trying to get a bunch of our projects up onto the site. It seems like it will be a great place to showcase our designs. We apparently need to join flicka in order to get the photos on - so Julie has to deal with this - but hopefully we will get this done soon. When we were trying to figure out how to add our photos, we searched our names and it was awesome - all these photos of projects that people have done out of our books came up. It was really great to see so many of our projects actually being made by people we don't know. There are tons of them on the site. To get onto Ravelry you have to sign up and then wait about two weeks or so to get your "invitation" - it is not really an invitation - it is just that the site has grown so quickly - they are adding people onto it bit by bit so that it won't crash. I am not really so big on trolling the web for knitting inspiration and such - but I think this is a pretty unique site that most knitters will enjoy.

BUYING SEASON HAS BEGUN!!

Julie and I have begun our fall buying. There are quite a few nice new yarns out there -- it is always so hard to decide what to get and what to get rid of! We saw our Knitting Fever rep two weeks ago -- Knitting Fever carries Debbie Bliss, Noro, Sublime and some others. Debbie Bliss is coming out with a really nice new yarn called Como - it is 90% wool and 10% cashmere and knits at 3 stitches to the inch. It is very light and soft. And it comes in her usual beautiful palate of colors. Another nice new yarn we found is an Organic Merino Wool by Sublime. It has a slightly felted look and is a dk weight. We are also going to get a new Noro yarn called Yuzen - it is silk, wool and kid mohair. It comes in 5 great colorways. And a new Silk Garden sock yarn! We couldn't decide whether to get the regular Silk Garden again - so we passed - but we could be convinced otherwise if many of you had a strong opinion about it. Then last week we saw Diane and Stacy from Tahki Stacy Charles. We ordered a ton of Zara, Zara Plus and Torino Bulky! They also had some really nice new tweedy yarns - Sedona - which is 90% merino wool and 10% silk and knits up at 4 stitches to the inch. And Tweedy Angora - which is super soft and has a very subtle tweedy effect. We ordered a fun boucle yarn that will be great for scarves and edging - Riccolo. A Teva Durham yarn - Tundra that is 2 stitches to the inch but super light feeling. And Merino Cable - a wonderful merino wool that has a unique twist and knits up at 4.5 stitches to the inch. Plus many other staples and new yarns. This Thursday we are seeing the Westminster rep - Rowan, Gedifra, Nashua - so hopefully they will have a great new line also. And we go to the TNNA yarn show at the beginning of June - so much yarn - everybody will have to start knitting like crazy so we can pay the bills for all this great new stuff!!!! Finish up your stashes this spring because you won't want to miss all the excitement that will begin here at The Yarn Co. in August! Is there anything that people are looking for in particular that we can think about during our visit to the show? More organic yarns, more hand dyed? Any ideas are welcome - and we will consider them!