Knitted Bliss Blog

A pretty exciting week ahead, with our first trip to TNNA in Columbus coming up!  Debuting a new product line (details to follow late week, friends!) AND a special visitor DEBBIE BLISS visiting the shop on Wednesday, June 16th a 9:00 a.m.–mark your calendars!  Please call the shop to r.s.v.p.–we can only hold about 30 or so people.  I look so forward to reporting back to everyone how TNNA goes and all of the new finds that will make Bo~Peep even FINER, if that’s possible!  So, stay tuned for another post later this week on a terrific new product line!  People in the know already love it!

On our Ravelry group page, I semi-recently asked what people are knitting with for the upcoming warmer-weather.  Now, I’m interested in what you’re actually knitting up, with summer literally breathing down our necks. Personally, I always am torn.  While I can’t quit browsing (and buying!) patterns on Ravelry or Patternfish for knitted tees with pleats on the front, or tanks in fabulous slub-cotton yarns,  I’m still always looking ahead to Noro-adorned cardigans and warm wool socks that I’d like to have ready for cooler weather.  Though I’ve put my socks down for the time being, and am still hoarding sweater-quantities of Noro like there’s no tomorrow, I’m forcing myself to work on cotton cardigans and swatch for that tank I really should be knitting. And that’s not a bad thing.  It forces me to be in the present, the NOW of knitting.  And actually, this translates rather nicely into the rest of life.  Don’t wish away today because you’re too busy looking ahead.  That said, I’m truly just LOVING all of the cotton-blended yarns out there. The milk yarns, the bamboo and pearl yarns, the linen and supima cotton, silk and cotton  yarns.  Heaven!  Absolute heaven!!  Pipe up, knitters, and tell us what you’re doing and knitting with.

There seem to be many types of knitters: those who hoard yarn in a few balls of this or a few skeins of that; those that will buy for specific projects and have many sweater or project lots of yarn; and then there are the knitters who have several projects going at one time and either A.) complete them all at various points or B.) fail to complete any of them at any given time and continue acquiring more. As a knitter, I fall somewhere between A. and B. of the latter type. I have many projects going because I knit everywhere; I have one upstairs in my sitting room; I have one downstairs in the living room, I have one in the car, I have another portable project for waiting rooms, etc. and I think I have one at my shop, Bo~Peep, as well. They all eventually get finished at some point or another, but then I always have my eye on a future project, as I think most knitters do. My point is that spring offers so many possibilities for knitting and crochet. You can knit something to wear now and in the warm summer months OR you can get a really big head start on knitting for fall, winter and the holidays, which seriously is not unheard of. It is a misconception that knitters only knit in the winter; real knitters knit year round. While I am finishing up those endless socks for my husband, my eye is already on a BEAUTIFUL Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton pattern–the Montauk Cabled Vest–for summer. It is beautiful, flowy cables done in a very modern, wearable way. Not like traditional cables which tend to add unflattering bulk if overused in a pattern. You can find this fabulous pattern for sale at PATTERNFISH – Montauk Check it out and get knitting. Although, on second thought, you probably already are.

Winter mornings are usually quiet. Silent, really. No birds singing, maybe only a cold wind whipping. Nature is just quiet. These days upon opening the garage door to take my daughter to school early in the morning, the outside is just ALIVE with birds singing, temperate breezes blowing–sounds non-existent during the winter. Speaking of winter, it was a long one and I’m ready for spring. And I think most other knitters (and non-knitters) are, too! I’ve noticed that daily, as new yarns arrive in that dull brown UPS truck (how ironic that those unremarkable brown trucks carry some of the most lovely things that we buy~), I can barely get them out of the box, let alone into the computer, before people are snatching them up and ordering MORE! That is not a bad problem to have. It’s just a sign of our eagerness to move forward to bigger, better projects and most certainly, better weather!