New hours for late summer

Beginning this weekend, we're switching over to our summer schedule of being closed on Sundays as well as Mondays.  We'll be open on Sundays again in September, and when "knitting season" kicks into high gear, we'll get back to being open seven days a week.

We'd like to say a big THANKS to our customers, who have made this our best summer ever.   The hottest months are still our slowest time of year, to be sure, but this summer we've been much busier than in past years.  Typically our business drops off significantly after Memorial Day, and we close on Sundays after that.  This year, weekends have been busy enough to warrant staying open on Sundays through most of July.  HURRAY!

Wool dilemma!

Folks, we don't know if you've heard, but there's a world-wide wool shortage.  As a result, wholesale prices of wool yarns are going up.  Which means we have some decisions to make.

As most of you know, our go-to worsted weight wool has always been Cascade 220.  It comes in a seemingly endless variety of colors, felts beautifully, and has nice stitch definition.  Unfortunately, Cascade will be raising their prices for fall, which means we will have to raise our retail price on the 220 from its current $7.00 per skein.  What do you think, knitters?  Are you loyal to Cascade 220?  Would you pay more (possibly as much as a couple of dollars more) per skein for this old favorite?

As we ponder this, we're also looking for alternatives that could be our new standard worsted weight wool if necessary.  Our leading contender right now is Nature Spun.  It's from one of our favorite companies, Brown Sheep, and is made in the U.S., with 245 yards per skein.  The retail on that one is about $7.25 per skein.

Please give us your opinions on this!

Orange Crush

 

Here's another great summer project, knit by Stacy and modeled here by the lovely Epiphany.  The pattern is Thira from an old issue of Knitty, and the yarn is Cascade Fixation (98.3% cotton, 1.7% elastic).  Stacy used about three and a half balls for the size medium.

Stacy says, "The elastic in Fixation made this project look really tiny while I was knitting it.  But I kept trying it on, and sure enough, it really was working.  Fixation will stretch to about twice its size if you want it to.  The pattern called for a size 5 needle, but I went up to a 7 to get gauge.  I'm not normally a tight knitter, but I guess all bets are off with this stretchy yarn, so definitely make sure you swatch before you knit with Fixation!  I love this top, and with my love of orange, it will coordinate with a lot of my summer clothes."

Cotton Rich strikes again!

Here's Tuesday night regular Sara with Mariele, who is modeling the adorable dress Sara made for her.  Sara used two colors of summer favorite Cotton Rich DK and the Rainbow Dress pattern by Georgie Hallam.  Super cute!

We have lots of beautiful colors of Cotton Rich in stock for your summer knitting.  The Rainbow Dress pattern is available for download from Ravelry here.

Holiday weekend

It seems like lots of folks are out of town this weekend. Friday and Saturday have been slow, so we've decided to be closed on Sunday, July 3. Have a fun and safe holiday weekend, everybody!