60% off, last day will be June 15th

We've decided on a last day, and that will be June 15th, and increased the discount to 60% on everything in stock.

Thanks for everything!

45% off & Website Woes

We've increased the discount to 45% off everything in stock, and I sent out an email to announce that, and the response has overwhelmed our server again (and again and again).  I'm VERY sorry about that...  as you might imagine, I'm not keen on spending more money for more space at this time (especially since the next level is a big $jump$, I'm just trying to make it through...)    I split the email list into 3 separate mailings, hoping that would help and maybe it did - but not enough, clearly.  I can't apologize enough... 

In case you were wondering and can't make it on the site - there are no more spinning wheels.  There are no floor looms, table looms, or rigid heddle looms.  There is not much fiber.  There is a LOT of knitting yarn, a fair amount of weaving yarn, a LOT of patterns, a lot of books, needles & other gadgets. 

If you're local, we are still open our regular hours of Mon-Sat 8:30 - 4pm, and that's when we answer the phone too, if you'd rather call to place an order or check on availability. 

Thanks for your patience!  (anybody else getting tired of hearing that?  yeah, I thought so...  I'd like it to just WORK too...)

Deeper discount - save 35% off

We're catching up at last after a phenomenal response to the sale (thank you, thank you!), so now it's time to increase the discount, so you can now save 35% off anything in stock.  Use the coupon code Going - but if for some reason it doesn't work or you forget to enter the code, don't worry,  we're taking 35% off everything when we process the order no matter what. 

Thank you so much for everything.  I wish I had the words to express what you have meant to us, sharing your passion for all things fibery, sharing your joys, your sorrows, everything.  It's meant the world to us.  

Of Websites & Discounts

I am really sorry that our website keeps misbehaving.  2 of the 3 big crashes I can explain, today's I have no idea.  Why is our website a plain white screen?  I don't know.  I wish I did.  We're trying to get it fixed.  It's making me nuts, and I really don't need any help with that. 

When the website IS working, please know that we're applying the 25% discount on all orders, regardless of whether the code was applied or worked when you typed it in or not.  You will get the 25% off. 

Thank you so much for all your many kind words, hugs, and tears.  We're all very sorry this is happening and wish (WISH) it could be otherwise. 

Going out of business

Woodland Woolworks is going out of business. 

Those words leave me with a dead space in my heart, but unfortunately it’s true.  Like so very many knitters & fiber people, working in this industry – owning a yarn store – had been a dream for many years.  There had even been a couple of false starts, negotiations to buy other yarn businesses, thoughts of starting from scratch, and then the dream came true when I was able to buy this business.  I met so many wonderful people, I learned so much.  I have so many treasured memories, and I thank you all for those.  

But the world has changed since 2005 when I bought the business, as it always does.  Changes we should have seen, changes we could not have seen, competition in more forms than we could imagine (digital downloads, anyone?).  I tried to ride out the economic storm, I tried a lot of changes internally.  But it’s not working, so the time has come. 

I want to thank all of our loyal and wonderful customers, the fabulous vendors and yarn reps we’ve worked with, and most of all, my employees who’ve been such a joy to work with.  That’s the hardest part of all, having to let them go.  Please, I know you will be patient and kind with them as we go through this transition; it’s really hard for them too.

If you use the coupon code Going, you’ll get 25% off your order – even 25% off stuff that’s already on sale.  In stock items only, of course.  If you have a back-order with us, we will not be able to fill that order and we will be contacting you about it as soon as possible. 

Free Scarf Pattern from Classic Elite

Classic Elite sends out a terrific email every week that includes a free pattern in one of their lovely yarns.  A while back, there was a terrific lace scarf that Alice Halbeisen designed using Silky Alpaca Lace. 

There's a link on the page to download the directions for the scarf.  It looks fabulous!  I'm trying to resist casting it on, since I AM trying to finish up a few other things.  It's pretty tough to resist!  

Housecleaning

Do you know about the Spinners' & Weavers' Housecleaning pages?  You should.  It's a terrific place to look for used equipment of all sorts - spinning wheels, looms, books, fleeces, carders...  and also to put up ads for your own equipment to sell, or if you're looking for something in particular.  There are even some fiber animals on there, under Grandpa's Barn... 

We're always passing along this gem of a site, and thought maybe we could share it with a few more folks this way. 

Happy looking! 

Playing with double knitting

 
I love color (who doesn't?), and I love things with lots of colors and things going on.  I like to get lost in patterns and color.  Noodling around on Ravelry, I saw a bunch of interesting patterns that were double knit.  If you don't know what that is, it's basically making a double-faced item, with colors reversed on front & back.  Here's a Rainbow Scarf on Ravelry by Eline Sanders that is just gorgeous, knit using Kauni Effektgarn.  I wasn't ready to jump in on the whole scarf, so I took some Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride and Plymouth Boku that I had left over from a hat I knit, and decided to make a hot pad to learn the technique. 

 It's tough to photograph black, the reverse side shows up better!

I'm knitting it on big needles (10.5), and I'll throw it in the washer to full it once I'm finished.  If you look closely at the needle, you'll notice that every other stitch is black (except where the color changes).  Basically what you do is a knit 1, purl1 sequence, with the colors alternating.  All the knits show up on the "front" side, and all the purls show up on the other side - looking like stockinette on both sides.  This is the coolest thing!  It's VERY fun.  You slip the 1st two stitches on every row, then knit 1, move BOTH strands to the front, purl 1, move BOTH strands to the back, knit 1 and keep going.  Eline's instructions for the scarf explain it very nicely.  It's addictive.  Doesn't hurt that I adore the Boku with its sexy color changes.  Yum.  Just look at that color blending, mmm mmmm mmmm.  :)   Good eye candy.

Plus, depending on how you twist the 2 strands during the more solid portions, you actually get 2 layers of cloth.  Sort of a mind bender.  I haven't done it, but maybe this is like those magic mittens that people knit, one inside the other, knit at the same time - finish knitting and pull out the inside mitten!  A great magic trick.  Double knitting is great for scarves and hats - double warmth, and I can see making a reversible vest and oh, all sorts of things!  Imagine doing a hat or mittens with the inside layer as cashmere or angora for super soft, super warm. What decadence! 

There are socks!

I finished up a pair of Monkey Socks last week.  Love 'em!  Like a lot of things, these took a while.  I found a picture I took of the 1st sock taken before the heel turn.  The picture was taken in the fall of 2008.  Yowch.  How did that happen?  Somehow it took me 2 1/2 years to knit 1 sock and about a month to knit the 2nd.  Ah well.

 I tend not to do any patterning over the top of my foot - sometimes that's kind of uncomfortable, so I just skip it and do plain feet.  The patterning didn't show up all that much in this yarn anyway...  It's a fun knit though. 

And I started another pair of socks.  Here's hoping these don't take over 2 years!! 

 They're called Spring Forward, and they're from the Summer 2008 Knitty.  The yarn is a wonderful merino/cashmere/nylon blend that I dyed a while ago. (I'm sensing a theme here...  things just need to percolate for a while maybe). 

The cashmere makes this yarn so incredibly soft.  I'm really loving it so far!  Can't wait to see how it looks as it goes along.  Can't wait to get it on my feet. 

It's going to take a while

Back in December, I mentioned wanting to spin enough yarn for one of the sweaters in A Fine Fleece.  I have to preface this by saying I'm not a technical spinner, and spinning to a standard that isn't my normal mindless spinning just sounds way too hard.  I know, I know, I should be a better person and learn to do this and I would learn a lot in the process and improve my spinning and all that.  To do this properly I should spin up some samples and knit samples and do lots of math (shudder).  Yeah, that all sounds like a lot of work.  Plus I worry that I wouldn't have enough fiber if I have to dedicate who-knows-how-much-of-it to sampling, and then where would I be?  A bunch of samples and I couldn't make the sweater anyway.  So I decided that I would spin all the fiber as a 3-ply.  The yarns used in the book for the patterns I like were all worsted weight, and my usual 2-ply would be too fine.  I AM trying to spin a bit fatter, cause I'm not sure that a 3-ply would be the right weight either, but again - in a not-too-technical way.  Mostly I'm going to wing it and hope for the best.  This is supposed to be fun, so I'm just not going to go and try to make it hard!

The fiber I'm spinning is a blend of unknown wools with maybe a touch of mohair in it too - it's random stuff I dyed over the years and when I took it in for blending/carding, I meant to keep all the info about the fleeces with it, but it didn't happen.  It's really pretty though!  I love the tweedy look to it, with lots of different blues.

 

There are 4 of these little mini-bumps of fiber to spin up, totaling  close to 2 lbs I think.

 

And here is what it's looking like on the bobbin - it's spinning up with a bit of texture, as well as the mix of color.  I think I'm going to like the finished yarn!

 So far I've filled 2 bobbins and have maybe 1/2 of the 3rd one.  So, yeah, it's going to take a while.  I'm not even through the first bump, although it is one of the larger weight ones, if that's any consolation.  I wonder if I'll even get it all spun this year?  Let alone get started knitting...  This is definitely a long-term project.  I so admire those people that get lots of spinning & knitting done!! 

And then if this blue one isn't enough, I have a touch more of this purple blend.  It's not as tweedy looking, but it has some silk noil in it for interest, and it feels like a higher mohair content.  I adore mohair.  But it's REALLY going to be a while if this blue stuff doesn't work out, and I opt to go with the purple!!

Maybe I should consider this a 5-year plan.  So far so good!  :)

New yarn, new colors

We recently received a new yarn from Classic Elite - this is Cricket, which is a 60% cotton, 40% linen blend DK weight yarn.  I think this will make some great spring & summer tops.  The pattern booklets for spring weren't available yet, so I can't show you the designs they've come out with just yet. 

 There were some new colors in Firefly as well - yummy jewel tones.  That red is HOT!  A friend of mine used to say that every woman should have a red sweater.  He may be right. 

 And a new lovely shade of Silky Alpaca Lace.  It's called Beach Glass, which seems appropriate for this dreamy muted shade of green.

Plying options

Saturday when Anita came in to teach the beginning spinning class, she tossed me a hank of heaven.  She brings in lots of examples of hand spun to show her students, and this was a new one.  She plied a strand of hand spun wool with a some Rowan Kidsilk Aura.  It was exquisite!  I wish my photos had feel-o-vision so you could touch this too.  She said it's VERY loosely plied - you're basically throwing the plies together onto the wheel. I seem to always forget about the possibility of plying your hand spun with a commercial yarn.

The brushed mohair of the Kidsilk Aura lends a bit of halo that gets tempered by the smooth ply.  I really liked it!

Thanks for sharing, Anita!

Finishing things

An eon ago, I started a quick little cowl out of Classic Elite's Fresco, using a pattern they sent in their e-newsletter.  I got pretty far along on it, and then for who-knows-what-reason, or no reason at all, it was set aside and languished.  I even had a hard time finding it when I decided to work on it again.  Entirely too many projects sitting around all over the place.  Do you ever have that problem? 

Well, I finally found it and sat down and finished it.  There were something like 3 rows left to do.  THREE ROWS.  This is ridiculous.  But there you have it.  I absolutely adore this yarn.  There's a smidge of angora (the bunny) in it that gives it just a little bit of halo and soft soft soft.  PERFECT for a cowl.  I'd love it as a pair of fingerless mitts too.  Oh, hey, a sweater would be terrific too.  Yum.  You can't go wrong with this yarn. 

Looking a little pale, is my styrofoam head.  But that's life in winter in Oregon. I could have made this longer, but I think I was afraid I'd put it down for another year.  I'll probably just wear it around my neck, instead of over my head - long hair does weird things with cowls (and hoodies). 

And for a closer-up (not close up, but closer):

Restoring Henry VIII Tapestries

A friend passed along a link to a story about restoring the original colors to tapestries that were made for King Henry VIII nearly 500 years ago.  Here is another site where you can see something of the size of this tapestry. It boggles my mind to think of the work that went into making these amazing tapestries, and to think of them lasting so long.  Do we make much these days that will last so long? 

In an interesting bit of synchronicity, I recently finished reading a book called The Children of Henry VIII by Alison Weir, and my friend didn't know that.  Funny how the world brings such things together.  Thanks Cheryl!

Woodworks?

What's in a name? 

Last week I happened to be outside getting something from my car in the side parking lot when I heard someone pull up in front and SCREECH to a halt.  I came back in and a nice couple were in looking around.  The gentleman had been driving, and saw our sign, but he thought it said "Woodland Woodworks", and was excited to think he'd found a place for folks who like to do wood working.  We had a laugh, and he admired the spinning wheels.  His wife happens to be a knitter though, so she didn't mind the stop in the least! 

Speaking of names, we've had several people read our new town as "Yarn hill" instead of YAMHILL.  It would be great if we were in Yarnhill!  Somebody even asked if we'd had the town's name changed just for us.  Hmmm, now there's a thought!