Holiday Hours and Sale!

Time to give thanks for our favorite local yarn shop! Here's some good news and some useful info:

• The shop will be closed early on November 22, so there will be NO Chicks with Sticks that day. What will we all do? Work on our holiday knitting!
• The shop will also be closed on Thanksgiving Day.
• But, yay, on Friday and Saturday, November 24 and 25, there will be a BIG SALE, with 20% off everything in the store except sale yarn and classes! Plan to drop by then for holiday gifts or for yourself.
• Even more exciting, the shop will be OPEN SUNDAYS from 1-5pm on December 3, 10 and 17! Bring your friends and relations for Sunday fun.

We hope to see everyone soon, whether for a class, a purchase, or hanging out with your knitting friends.

Help the Troops Sleep Well

Bluebonnet Yarn shoppe is supporting out military troops currently serving in Iraq by collecting twin-size sheet sets and blankets. Sheets and blankets may be new or comfortably worn.

Bring your contributions to Bluebonnet by Saturday, November 18, and keep our distant sons and daughters warm!

Birthday Celebration and Sale

Greetings from the land of the Wall of Kureyon!

Our biggest news of the week is that Saturday, October 14 is our Beloved Leader (otherwise known as Pat, the kind and beneficent store owner) will celebrate her birthday. She likes to have a lot of people around to share her fun, so to encourage it, she's set up a great SALE! Come to Bluebonnet Yarn Shoppe any time on the 14th and you will get 20% off any yarn purchase! (Sale is on yarn only, not supplies , books or notions). Who knows, there might be cake, or tiaras!

Yarn

Any day of the week there is so much new fall yarn that we can't even begin to describe it. One highlight is the Amaize-ing yarn made out of CORN. That's right, our friend, maize. We are loving its matte texture and deeply saturated colors. It comes in both solids and ombres. A couple of us are eagerly trying it out.

Classes

Your webmaster would be updating the class listings right now, if she weren't writing in the blog, so make sure you check out www.bluebonnetyarn.com to see what is new for November. We will have some new crochet classes and descriptions, plus lots of classes that will help you create holiday gifts such as hats, felted bags, sweaters and felted ornaments. Or learn to knit and make someone special a lovely scarf or dishcloth! We have wonderful new yarns suitable for all thede projects.

Pictures

Another thing we'll have more of is photos on our gallery pages, so do drop by and see what your friends or future friends have made. We will have some great shots.

Join us for Chicks with Sticks any Wednesday (except the one before Thanksgiving), because you never know what bonus surprises will come up on those nights.

Knitting in the News

Check out this interview with Tracy Ullman from NPR this morning:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6159769

She talks about how finding a local yarn shop and seeing all those wonderful yarns got her back knitting to the extent that she became obsessed. Of course it also plugs her new book, but a lot that she says will sound familiar to those of us who haunt yarn shops and are really grateful to yarn shop owners for providing us with a community and a source of the raw materials for our fixation.

Needles, oh so many

The long-awaited huge needle shipment has arrived (at least a good portion of it), and there are lots of Addi Turbo circulars to choose from. There are also new Addi Natura circulars, which are bamboo. The blogmistress says:

"I have tested the Naturas and find them incredibly smooth and with no irritating tendency to form loops in the cable. I hardly notice them, which is a compliment for a knitting needle. They don't click when I knit, stick in any way, make it difficult to form any stitch, or drive me crazy when I try to do a magic loop (I got 40-inchers in my three favorite sizes). If you are a fan of bamboo needles, give these a try!"

We will have samples of the felted Christmas ornaments for the class in October available to look at by about 3 pm today, and by Saturday, a sample of the top-down toddler sweater we will make in the upcoming "My First Sweater" class!

Lots and lots and lots of new fall yarn keeps coming in, too. Some of it is just "to die for" -- like the "Touch Me" chenille. MMMMM, soft.

New Classes, Including Spinning

The webmaster, in a slightly delayed fashion, has posted classes for the rest of September through October on our classes page. We have some fun new classes, as well as old favorites, including:

• Spinning 101 and 102, by popular demand!
• Two hat classes (both beginner, just two different techniques)
• Felted Christmas ornaments
• Amy's socks, featuring a great custom sock pattern by Amy
• Design-a-bag
• Felted Flowers

We will be adding some new projects to our Knitting 1-4 classes--new fair isle and cable projects, for example. You can always re-take a class and make something else.

Are there classes you would like to take? Please let us know by phone (259-4646) or email (info@bluebonnetyarn.com). And, if a class you want isn't being offered, see if the instructor will teach it to you in a private lesson--all our instructors love to share their knowledge!

Thanks for coming to Tiara Tuesdays--we will be sharing photos of the fun that has led to soon! Remember, you get a discount if you come to the shop on a Tuesday in a tiara! (Note that the interpretation of "tiara" is quite loose.)

For those of you who want a printout of our schedule, your wish has come true--we have PDF files of both the September and October schedules now. You'll find links near the top of the classes page.

Cascade, Boxes and Boxes AND...

There are some very exciting things going on in the store right now.

First, as seen in the picture, the wonderful Namaste knitting bags we had all been waiting for finally arrived. Whoo! Get yours soon while there is still a good selection of colors and styles. Rust is a new color, as is "brick red" though it is a more pinkish "brick." We like these bags because there is no velcro so snag your knitting, and they snap shut, not zip, so your yarn doesn't get caught in zippers. The one shown has lots of compartnements, plus a centered zipped one.

Second, on Friday, many immense boxes filled to the brim with Cascade 220 yarn arrived! There are many new colors, including some lovely heathered ones and intriguing neutrals. Plus old favorites, such as LOTS of black. We also got a few skeins of some more rustic Cascade in large skeins, which appears to be naturally sheep colored. Most of the yarn was priced by the end of the day on Saturday, and it will be on the shelves Monday!

Third, your blogger can't remember whether she mentioned the large supply of bag handles that came in a week or so ago. No matter what color your purse or bag, there is now a lovely plastic handle to go with it. I got shiny pink for my entrelac bag. Pat tells us more handles of different kinds are coming, too!

In random notes, we got some beautiful angora/wool yarn and Ella Rae books to go with them--your blogger is already working on a vest from one of them. Cotton is still selling well for summer wear--the Butterfly 10 collection, including the variegated, is getting worked into all sorts of things. We have some new samples to look at, and of course, LOTS of classes! Please drop by, say hi, and show us your projects!