The New Spooktacular Halloween Activity!

Our children have been so desensitized to the horror of Halloween that commonplace handcrafts apparently scare the jeepers out of them!

My son and I headed to my mother's house for Trick-Or-Treating and helping pass out candy. She didn't have the house all decked out this year (owing to her recent skin cancer surgery) and neither of us had on costumes. My son (who is 8) was a blue ninja. Nothing scary there, right?

Wrong!

Everything was fine for this pair of little ones that came up for their candy, until they turned and saw me knitting. I have never witnessed such an abrupt change of mood. They both paused for a second, staring as if transfixed...then starting crying and wailing like some monster just stole their favorite toy away or something. They then dived behind their parents legs, continued to cry, and peek out at my knitting again.

How do I know it was the knitting and not some horrid fashion faux pas on my part? Well, when I tucked the "uber-scary" green striped dishcloth and needles away in my bag...they stopped freaking out! I was even able to coax them over for extra goodies (to make up for the "trauma"). They gave the bag with "the evil" in it a wide berth, but didn't seem opposed to more treats. The parents were confused and apologizing, to which I assured them it was no big deal. They left with only an occasional glance at "the bag with the scary stuff in it".

Who knew that a plain old, striped green dishcloth being knitted would be the epitome of horror this holiday? As a Mom, I was horrified that something I love so dearly could cause a child such distress, but on the other hand...it was so freaking strange that it caused a secret snicker deep inside.

Skeletons, Zombies, Murderers, and Monsters beware! Us Knitters own on Halloween!

Summer Is (Almost) Here

Three more days of schools for the mini Outlaws. THREE! I am so happy about this. I love having my kids (and their friends) around me all summer. I love planning outings with them where I can go do some Outlaw Knitting while they enjoy whatever it is they do. I think we'll find some caves to explore again this summer, and maybe go to a few baseball games. And I think I'll make Bobbi and her little Outlaws go to the park with us and maybe the zoo in Peoria. We can watch the tigers and knit socks or something.

And Bobbi and I need to dye many yarns for our Etsy shop, Wooly Booger Yarns. If any of y'all have a shop you'd like to list on the sidebar, let me know. I'd be happy to list it for you.

bad news

just want to let you all know that dearest heather my wife the crafty momma has passed away at the age of thirty two so that you all will not write and get no reply. her hubby john p,s thank you all for
being their

What's the craziest thing you have ever done for yarn?

I know we have all done some crazy things in our lives. But what is the craziest thing you have ever done for yarn? I think I have gone over the top on this one. After having heard so much about Wollmeise Sock yarn, I decided that I needed to get some. The problem? It's very hard to get your hands on some of those beautiful skeins. The yarn is done by an indie dyer in Germany and she can't make it fast enough. You can order from her website, but you have to be there right when it goes up, because it will sell out fast. Within minutes.

Here in the U.S. the yarn is sold by my favorite yarn store, The Loopy Ewe. http://www.theloopyewe.com/ For those of you not familiar with this wonderful store, it is a sock knitter's heaven. She carries other yarns as well, but no one has the selection of sock yarn she does--anywhere. Sheri, the shop's owner, does what she calls "Sneak Ups" each week. If you are a regular Loopy Ewe customer, (this means you have placed six orders) she will send you an email when a certain yarn has been restocked. If you read her blog, she will tell you what will be in each week's "Sneak Up." The Sneak Ups can happen at anytime, day or night.

Here is where my quest for this hard to attain sock yarn begins. A few weeks ago we were told on The Loopy Ewe Blog there would be a Woolmeise Sneak Up sometime that week. On Ravelry in the groups is a Loopy Ewe group, and several of us began congregating on a specific thread waiting for it to happen. Monday came and went. Sheri took pity on us in the afternoon and told us there would be no Sneak Up that day. We all breathed a sigh of relief and left our computers to spend time with our families or go back to work. Someone in the group had requested that she not do it on Friday because it was her Anniversary and her husband would divorce her if she wouldn't go out because she might miss the Sneak Up. So Sheri agreed not to make on Friday. That meant it would be Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.

Tuesday morning found us back on the same thread in the Ravelry forum, constantly refreshing The Loopy Ewe's website page in between talking to each other. Since I work at a computer all day long, it wasn't hard for me to keep my eye on things while I got very little work done. Part way through the day on Tuesday, Sheri came on and told us the Sneak Up wouldn't be today, and so we could rest easy.

Wednesday morning came, and the group was at a fever pitch. We were so sure the Sneak Up would be today. I learned a lot listening to the other people in the group who were very experienced at these Sneak Ups. I figured out what my first choice of color was. I decided I was only going to try to get two skeins of that one color. They told stories of how stuff disappeared out of your cart before you could check out if you tried to get too much. So, I had my plan, now I just had to make sure I was online at the computer when the Sneak Up came. As the day progressed we became more and more frantic. I had become obessesed with getting that yarn. At one point there was thirteen hundred people in the Loopy Ewe Group, I believe they were all waiting for this yarn. Around dinner time, Sheri came on and told us to go have dinner with our families and basically to go away. There would be no Sneak Up tonight. But having listened to the more experienced people, I knew that meant only up until midnight. After midnight it was fair game.

So around midnight, Loopy Ewe time, we all began to congregate around the Loopy Ewe forum again. And we waited up all night. I'm not sure when I just decided to hang in there. I think somewhere around 3:00 am I realized that I'd already invested so much time into it, plus, I was having such a good time, that I was just going to stay with it. Remember being young and staying up all night camped out in front of some theatre for concert tickets? Or staying up all night for a slumber party? That's what this was like. It was fun, it was silly, we were laughing and just having a good time. And so the night progressed. My husband thought I had completely lost it. He had gone to bed at 11:00 just shaking his head at me. I didn't know what he'd think when he found out I had stayed up all night.

At 7:30 am Thursday morning, we were rewarded. The yarn suddenly appeared on a refresh of The Loopy Ewe site. My heart was pounding so hard I thought I was going to have a heart attack. It was exhilarating, scary, heart-pounding shopping. The yarn sold out within about two or three minutes. Every skein of it. I did exactly what I had planned. Found my color, put two skeins in my cart, and checked out. Here is a picture of the yarn:

Was it worth it? You bet. Now I know what everyone is talking about. The coloration is absolutely beautiful. I haven't knit with it yet, so I can't attest to how it knits up, but it does have an interesting feel to it for an 80% Wool, 20% nylon yarn. Here is the thing, though. I felt kind of bad, too. Huge amounts of people weren't able to get any. People who had been trying to get some for a year. I had gotten lucky. I don't know if I'll be lucky enough to get more, but there sure are many other colors I'd like to get my hands on.

I'm planning on knitting Cookie A.'s Monkey socks with it, only as knee socks. That's why I needed a second skein.

So, what's the craziest thing you have ever done for yarn? I'd love to hear about it. I can't be the only one this crazy for yarn.

late introduction

I totally forgot that I can participate to this blog, seems like I have been too busy lately...

I'm a single mom of a lovely 3 year old boy - finally in a great relationship with an awesome man - and we live in Dortmund, Germany. Right now, I'm in a part-time education during the mornings where I can sometimes knit during classes or in the breaks. The afternoons are all for my son after he came back from Kindergarten, sometimes I can squeeze in a few minutes of simple knitting like stockinette or ribbing in socks and in the evenings, I either knit while watching TV or create things for my etsy store as stitchmarkers, handdyed yarns and knit or crochet things.

You can find more about me on my blog and I'm at Ravelry too with the name of Selana

Outlaw Workout

What I wore to the gym today.

New year, new skills?

Hi everyone, it's Bobbi again. Has anyone made any decisions to learn any new knitting skills this year? I'm going to make socks! I also want to make some lace projects and learn to cable. Of course, I'll be KIPing as much as possible and trying to encourage others to learn.
Happy New Year!!