We Have Some Winners

Susan and Tabitha are the lucky winners of some new Sol Joy sock yarn! You'll all have to start stalking their blogs now to see what they do with it. :-)

Everyone Needs A Little

Romance...



You can reach Sue at 518-523-9230 or you can email her too. She's back from Stitches West and can't wait to fill more orders for this awesome yarn!

Am I blue? Yes, I'm blue.

BlueSteps. Love. It. It reminds me of our pool nestled under the trees in the backyard. Can you tell I'm ready for summer? Like always, you can email Sue or call her at 518-523-9230 if you want some of your very own.

I've decided to extend the drawing until the end of the weekend too so if you want a chance to win a hank of Sol Joy just drop me a note in the comments and tell me what you think the ideal yardage is for a sport weight sock yarn.

Knew Knittin'

I have a ton of things on my must knit list.




This isn't one of them. It is pretty though. Isn't it? It's a little top down sweater for the baby (btw Clara, the baby is now 4 but since she's the youngest she's probably going to be stuck with the title for some time LOL) that I'm working in CTH Potluck Worsted in the Jewels colorway. I cast on Monday evening and this is where I was last night before bed.



This is on the must knit list but isn't going as quickly as the sweater.

It's a Sol Joy sock in the Cold Lagoon colorway. While I'm still absolutely enthralled with this yarn I must admit I don't care for working it on a size 1. I don't think it should be worked on anything smaller than a 2. Maybe even a 3. Ever. Seriously. But since this is an experiment in yardage needed I'm doing it. At least I have an absoutely wonderful yarn to work with.

Speaking of yardage needed, what do you all think is a good yardage amount for a sport weight sock yarn? 310? 350? 400? Leave a note in the comments between now and Friday and tell me what you think the ideal yardage would be and I'll enter you in a drawing for some fabu Sol Joy.

Another KAP Update

Laurie has stalled on her jacket while she's waiting for a replacement needle that splintered and cut her finger. OUCH. Hope it doesn't cut into your knitting time Laurie! :-)



Shelby is waiting for her yarn to arrive so she can get started on hers. I hear she ordered the eggplant. ;-)


Jo posted this to share:

Looks like she'll be wearing hers before she knows it.

I've not heard from Barb. I hope she's doing well. :-)

Me? I finished knitting on Saturday and then attached the collar and seamed the sleeves on Sunday.

I'll be starting a smaller version for the baby soon. Will post pictures as soon as I get going.

RedWood

Here it is, the new Sol Joy for this week...




What do you think? I love it! The little bit of color here and there is fabulous. Call Sue at 518-523-9230 or email her if you'd like some. Go ahead. You know you want to. :-)

You Give Me Fever

Scarlet Rose...



I think I'm in love.

Don't forget, if you'd like to order any of the Sol Joy sock yarns you can call Sue at 518-523-9230 or drop her an email. She's super friendly and will be more than happy to get this yarn in your hands as fast as she can. :-)

Favorite Color Swap Questionnaire

1. What are your top three favorite colors?

Blue, pink, and black.

2. What crafts do you really enjoy?

Knitting.

3. What products do you really covet?

Lightweight Socks That Rock, 50 Baby Bootees to Knit, and Glitterbug.

4. What other activities do you enjoy besides your favorite crafty things?

Spending time with my kids and hubby. :-)

5. Is there anything you collect?

Yarn, patterns, and needles.

6. What is your zodiac sign and/or Chinese zodiac symbol?

Aries. Yup, I'm a Ram.

7.What are your favorite……

scents/smells?…Anything fruity. Floral scents tend to give me a headache but I love tree scents.

types of music and/or bands?…I love country music.

authors?…Stephen King and Dean Koontz

animals?…dogs, cats, and any animal that produces fiber that can be spun into yarn.

places to shop?…my LYS and etsy.

season?…winter

yarn/fabric/paper/other craft supplies?…I love the new Sol Joy sock yarn that is coming out from Catalina Yarns as well as their chunky Alpaca yarns. I also love tightly spun fingering weight sock yarns, any soft natural fiber, and Addi Turbo needles.

candies or goodies? Green & Black's Organic Milk Chocolate. Yum.

8. Do you have any wish lists?

Nothing on paper.

9. Are you allergic to anything?

Smoke, cats, and dogs.

10. Do you have any pets? What are they?

We have a beautiful 2 year old little Shih Tzu girl named Dixie and a black and white 2 year old kitty boy named Mickey.

11. Please include anything else you would like your secret pal to know about you- anything that would be helpful in finding you little gifts that you will really enjoy.

I love all tea with the exception of green. I've also recently become addicted to vanilla chai. :-)

Super Sweet Secret Pals

My super sweet secret pal Shelby sent me this absolutely incredible final SP 9 package yesterday...

Oh, you want me to unwrap it? Well ok, here goes...

That's right folks, 2 bars of incredible handmade soaps (Cheek to Cheek and La-Tea-Da), a magnet from her recent trip out to Vegas, some amazing Darjeeling Estate Golden Tipped tea from Stash, a beautiful tea bag holder, the Great American Aran Afghan book I've been wanting so badly, the most gorgeous hank of In The Navy STR I've ever seen, and to top it all off she made me a set of 5 beautiful stitch markers and a card. Is she the greatest or what??? I honestly can't thank you enough for being such a wonderful pal Shelby. I can only hope that your pal was as good to you as you've been to me. Mwah!!!

On the other end of the SP9 front, I spoiled Clara. She's the mom of a beautiful 2 year old little boy and I had a great time getting to know her better. Stop by her blog and say hello. :-)

Trinity Update

Laurie got her yarn, started swatching, and is now off and running on her back...

Jo had this to share a few days ago...

And Barb is finished with her back and has one front almost finished.

Everyone is doing such a great job and I'm having so much fun seeing your beautiful jackets grow. :-)

Super Bowl Super Sale

While everyone else is sitting on their duffs pigging out and watching TV today I'll be making way to Lake Placid to participate in Sue's annual Super Bowl Sale. That's right. Every yarn in the store is 15% off today! Guess who'll be buying enough chunky alapaca for 2 more Trinity jackets today? That's right. ME! Sale prices apply to phone (518-523-9230) and email orders for today too. :-)

Lagoon

Are you ready for this??? I'm super psyched to present 311 luscious yards of the TWO newest Sol Joy colors...

That's right, 2 colors this week! Here's what Shaun has to say...

"Our next colorway for the Sol Joy line is Lagoon (top hank). This is the color Kerry first knit-up into a sock and posted pictures. We added a variation on the Lagoon colorway and call it "Cold Lagoon" (see bottom hank). This color has a stone-washed effect.

Don't forget, all you have to do is drop Sue an email to get your very own Sol Joy! You can also give her a call at 518-523-9230. She's even open on Sunday. :-)

Sol Joy

This is the moment we've all been waiting for! I'm so excited I can hardly stand it! The new Sol Joy sock yarn from Catalina is here. RIGHT. HERE. RIGHT. NOW. I have goose bumps.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Shaun, the owner of Catalina Yarns, earlier today. I must say that I wish everyone could be lucky enough to speak with him. He is amazingly brilliant and knows all the super details about the yarns he sells right down to the history of the animals the fibers come from. Fascinating. Both Shaun and Sue are decent, honest, and friendly people who take a great deal of pride in their businesses and I'm so incredibly proud to know them. And no, they've not paid me to say that. LOL

And now without further ado is a word from Shaun...

The response to Kerry's review of our new hand-painted sock yarn, Sol Joy, has been overwhelming. At the time and even now, we were market testing the new line with selected consumers and had planned a formal launch for some weeks from now as we are still in pre-production. The release of the yarn via Kerry's blog has turned out to be, truly, a happy accident.

Many knitters and several of our retail customers read Kerry's blog and asked us to move up our launch of the new line even if it meant releasing one color at a time and in limited quantities. The response has been so intense, we have been persuaded to move up the release using pre-production stock.

1. Starting today, Friday, January 26, on her Blog, Kerry will preview with you a new color for the Sol Joy sock line. We will release one new color every Friday on Kerry's Blog.
2. Available stock will be limited because these are pre-production quantities. First come, first served. If we run out of that color you can place a back-order with the retailer.
3. Adirondack Yarns will be filling the online orders of visitors to Kerry's blog.
4. Anyone buying Sol Joy, via Kerry's blog and Adirondack Yarns (see Link), will be the first consumers in the US to receive this new yarn and in that color.


SOL JOY: A Review of the Yarn and More Detail.
Sol Joy is a new hand-painted sock yarn offered by Catalina Yarns.
. The basics:
o Superwash merino wool,
o 100 gram braided hank,
o 328 yards,
o $19.95 suggested retail.
o Woollen spun!
o Eight initial colorways
. The yarn is woollen spun rather than worsted spun. Thus the fibers are not parallel. The overlapping fibers trap air and insulate more than worsted yarns in the same fiber. Your socks will truly be woolen socks.
. Woollen spun yarns have an uncommon spring or bounce (or 'sproing' as Kerry says). You won't believe it.
. The colorways are designed to be more subtle and understated than most sock yarns now available. The method for calculating and creating the color-way repeat is proprietary and prevents unwanted pooling.
. The yarn is re-hanked after hand-painting so the yarn, as you see it in the braided hank, presents a truer sense of what the colorway will look like when knit up.
. This hand-painted yarn will never bleed.
. This yarn is actually super-wash fiber. Knitted socks will not shrink.
. Knitters and fiber enthusiasts are tactile. So we added some fun and another layer to the sensory experience of fiber. Smell the yarn when you receive it. What do you smell? Strawberries? Green Apples?

The first color-way we are releasing is called Meadow. See the image below.



If you would like to order this yarn, contact Adirondack Yarns by email. Tell them what you would like to order (Sol Joy), how many hanks, and provide your shipping address and phone number. Adirondack Yarns will confirm your order by email and call you to secure payment information. Starting next week you will be able to order this yarn directly from Adirondack Yarns website rather than by email.

Buttercup Beauty

I have been trying to post for the past 2 days and haven't been able to get photos to upload. I blamed it on Blogger. Turns out it was just the format the pictures were in that was preventing them from loading. Live and learn right?

What I've been dying to show you is the progress Barb has made on her Trinity. She's working it in this gorgeous soft yellow color and it's amazing. She wrote on Monday and said she had started it over the weekend.
Doesn't it just scream SPRING???
Barb also shared with me a picture of her sweet little girl. Look at that face! You'd never guess she was responsible for ripping out 3 hours worth of Barb's first attempt at the jacket and destroying a hank of Alpaca. Think she's lucky she's so darn cute?

KAL Update

Barb in TN just received her yarn and is hoping to start hers this weekend. She ordered buttercup and I can't wait to see how it works up. It's going to be gorgeous!

Here is Jo's progress:

Isn't it lovely?

And my progress:

I hope everyone sitting on the fence decides to jump in and join us. I can't wait to see this jacket worked up in some different colors!

Clear as Mud

So many of you have expressed interest in joining the Trinity KAL and I can't tell you how excited I am for that. It would be so much fun to have lots of company! Lots of you have had questions so I'd like to give you all a little more info...

1. It is sized small, medium, and large. The finished measurements (unstretched, of course) are 38, 42, and 46 inches. This jacket has lots of give and seems to run big. My middle monkey normally wears a womans large shirt and she fit fairly easily into the small size. If you need a smaller or larger size it would be very easy to adjust the pattern to fit your needs.

2. The small and medium sizes require 11 hanks of yarn and the large requires 12.

3. Sue sells the Catalina chunky yarns for $12.95 per hank. This is the price BEFORE applying the 10% discount Sue has so graciously offered. When shipping outside NY there is no sales tax. I think the sales tax for customers in NY is 3% but please don't quote me on that. It might be 4%.

Now about my hubby...

1. He asked for a hair cut. A hair cut for him means shaving his head.

2. He had not had a hair cut in quite some time. His hair was a little over 2" long.

3. I shaved all but that one spot on the side of his head.

The thing that struck me as being so funny was that he didn't realize that his entire head was bald except for this spot on the side of his head. He hung out down here with me for almost 45 minutes before he went upstairs for his shower. He WASHED HIS HAIR and still didn't realize that he had a CLUMP OF UNSHAVED HAIR on the side of his BALD head. I laughed and laughed. It wasn't until he got out of the shower and was standing (for the second time mind you) in front of the mirror to shave that he noticed the clump of hair. He came down and headed back to the kitchen so I could shave the spot after he finally noticed it. I refused. He didn't argue and offered to go to work as is. That totally knocked the wind right out of my sails. I shaved the spot. He's still going to forget things (he did tonight) but I'll always have this memory. :-)

Lesson Learned?

I'd like to start this post by saying that I love my hubby. I could list a million things about him that I like. Tonight, however, I'm going to list one thing about him that drives me crazy. He's forgetful. I'm not talking once in a while forgetful. I'm talking ask him to take the garbage out and 30 seconds later he's standing in the kitchen scratching his head wondering why he's standing in the kitchen.

Sunday he threw his $150 tool box loaded with $200+ worth of tools and headed out to a friends house about 15 minutes from home to help him with his car. He told me when he left he'd be about 2 or 3 hours. Imagine my surprise when 30 minutes later I heard the truck pull into the driveway. He walked through the door and I asked what he had forgotten. Turns out he had forgotten to close the tailgate on the truck. He got to his friends house and realized this when the tailgate was already open for him and his tool box was missing. He had looked for it all the way back home and couldn't find it. He went back out and home again and couldn't find it. I drove out and home again so we could both look and we couldn't find it. I was sick to my stomach.

I called the town and state police and asked if anyone had turned in a tool box. No such luck. Monday he called the local radio swap program and let them know he had lost his box. They announced it for him twice. He called the paper and asked them to run an ad offering a reward for the person who had "found" it. It started yesterday. No luck.

Tonight his cell phone rang and I answered it. "Hello? Is this the person who lost the tool box?" Why yes, this is the person who lost the tool box. "I have it." Really? So I got my hubby to the phone and he got the dudes address. His wife found the tool box on the side of the road right at the top of our street and brought it home to her husband. So hubby drove the 20 minutes out to get his tool box. An hour later he returned with his tool box and all his tools. Less $40 for the reward.

I decided tonight that I needed to teach hubby a lesson. And we all know there's no better way to get the lesson to stick than doing something that really grabs the learnee's attention. Right?


The best part? He didn't notice it until he got out of the shower about an hour after I did it. I was hoping he wouldn't notice at all and someone at work would point it out to him tomorrow. Oh come on, you gotta admit it's a little funny.

Dandy Discount

I just heard from Sue and she's offered to give a 10% discount on the Trinity jacket kit if you mention the blog! How cool is that??? I've added a link to her email in the sidebar so it doesn't get lost in the posts. I hope you decide to join me. It's an awesome pattern and will make the perfect jacket for spring and fall! I've wound all the yarn for the one I'm starting and will be casting on in just a little bit.

Trinity KAL

Remember the Trinity jacket?

100% pure Catalina Baby Merino Chunky goodness. I'm getting ready to start another and was hoping we might start a knit a long. The pattern is free with the purchase of the yarn and you can get the yarn from Sue (who designed this gorgeous jacket, BTW) at my wonderful LYS. She has lots of gorgeous colors and she loves to ship! Check out the Baby Merino and Baby Alpaca colors that are available.

If you'd like to join just send me an email with your name and a link to your blog if you have one. I'll add you to the sidebar and post progress pictures here each week.

I thought this might be a fun thing to do to keep my mind off the sock yarn that's coming. BTW, be sure to keep an eye out as Shaun (the owner of Catalina Yarns) and Sue (the owner of my wonderful LYS, Adirondack Yarns) have an incredible surprise they're putting together and it'll be announced here first! You have no idea how excited I am! I still get goosebumps every time I think about it.

From the horses mouth...

I wanted to post this comment from the owner of Catalina Yarns here so you'd all see it...

"My name is Shaun Koch, owner of Catalina Yarns. This yarn will be available in limited quantities in about 3 weeks. We are rolling it out to selected retailers at that time. So, stay tuned to Kerry's blog and we will update her and she can share availability information with fellow bloggers. The yarn is a superwash merino from South America and hand-dyed in the US. The yarn is woollen spun, not worsted. The woollen spin is what produces the 'sproing' as Kerry says. Better yet, woollen spun means the fibers are directionally mixed rather than combed parallel. This creates minature airpockets, resulting in a warmer garment/sock than the exact same fiber spun worsted and knit up. Thus these will truly be woollen socks. The yardage is 325 yards in 100 grams, and the weight (thickness) of the yarn is closer to sport than fingering. Best of all is the handpainting. Our dyer is one of the best in the country bar none and her colorways are to die for."

I want to thank Shaun for sharing this info with us. I found it absolutely fascinating. I also want to thank my wonderful LYS owner Sue for giving me the opportunity to play with this yarn. She totally rocks!

Oh, one more thing about this yarn...

It doesn't lean. I know, you all think I've really lost it now. Sproing. Leaning yarn. But really, you know how sometimes when you're knitting along with an awesome pattern and it should have nice straight lines but instead you get lines that look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa??? I can't for the life of me think of the term for this right now, bias is coming to mind but I don't think that's it exactly...anyway, this doesn't do that at all. My rows of blueberry waffles are just as straight as a row of soldiers. I like that. Alot.