One of my most favorite things in the world is to learn....I could keep on taking classes about random topics and be happy for quite an indefinite period of time. I am a student of Shannon Oakey and Meghan Englemann of Stitch Cleveland when it comes to the word "Indie". I search out those two whenever I become fixated on a concrete definition of the "Indie crowd" or "Indie yarns". I am sure that if I had only listened to one of Lime & Violet's podcasts the words would be more clear to me. I understand the concept of independent yarn dyers but aren't they all....I mean Koigu does not have a big production mill....Prism does not either.....are they producing Indie yarns? does it have to do with the age of the company? whether they do wholesale work?.....a number of the "indie yarn dyers" that I reasearched do wholesale work. I am so confused..... Because I am a person of action however, I did order some "indie yarns" for our store...hopefully by the time they arrive I will better understand and explain to you what I have learned!

For the lovely, lovely, mermaid gloves I decide to swatch out a lovely, lovely light blue sport weight Blue Sky Alpaca. I am thinking that I can get the gauge with the size 1 needles......I will have to see if the material becomes too rigid. The other yarn I am going to try is the variegated Koigu ppm. I am wondering if the varigation will distract from the patterning of the stitches. The only way I know how to find out is swatching. We received the fall issue of Knitscene yesterday and of course I saw a number of projects in there to whip out as well. The longest day of the year was yesterday....darn how am I going to find more time in the day!.

Oh my, every so often you see something and you have to make it!...the mermaid fingerless gloves have done that for me. I was just checking out the sample site for the beta online community Ravelry and saw the picture of the mermaid fingerless gloves. I am in love!!! I can't wait to be invited to be a part of the Ravelry community based on the fact that it just exposed me to those gloves... I did google them and you can visit the original site yourself...my job today is to figure out what yarn I am going to make them out of....all projects on hold immediately- Mermqaid fingerless gloves full speed ahead!!!

We saw some of the most wonderful buttons at the TNNA show last Saturday. The fun thing is that many of them are coming to the store for you to see as well. We were scouting out VERY LARGE BUTTONS and little kids buttons. *I am happy to say that many of them will be in the store the week of June 17th. I received a phone call that they will be shipping soon!

One of the things I love most about our current location is that we have been able to cultivate a flower garden at our main entrance. We planted some of the plants...some of them were here before we were. Well one of the existing plants is this massive June blooming thistle....not the weed kind, not prickly, but serrated leaves and knock out flowers. Well here we are, in our fourth year waiting for the big June bloom....all of the sudden the very large plant starts to be nibbled at....then it becomes a very small plant.....first I speculate "deer", then I catch sight of a ground hog.....so yesterday I buy organic groundhog repellent and spray the wonderful plant( the repellent actually smells very good..kind of like mint). My mom and I proceed to plant some other things and out of the corner of my eye I notice two ground hogs watching me. I point them out to my mom and realize that they are actually baby ground hogs that are not the least bit afraid. I try to lecture these ground hogs hoping that a little reasoning will help me get the big blue blooms this June. They apparently like blue, because I came in this morning and the new blue saliva I planted is now gone....so much for ground hog repellent and so much for lecturing and reasoning with these very cute animals. I think I will have to try lavender....maybe that smell will repell them and I will get some blue flowers!

It is amazing to me how precious a little bit of uncluttered work space can be. I relocated my office and computer and I was feeling totally unsettled because of all the things around me. I repositioned a couple things and now I feel happy....don't get me wrong there is still plenty of clutter around me. The big difference is that the things that matter to me are now reachable and very soon I will be able to stop blogging about organizing and will be able to start writing about some of the fun knitting, crocheting and beading projects I am working on(maybe I will learn how to post pictures soon).

We are so excited about the number of you that have said you will be coming to the International Knit in Public Day this upcoming Saturday!! If you have not yet heard about it make sure you bring a chair and join us outside River Colors anytime after 11am. Our new neighbors Stitch Cleveland will have their space open for you to tour if you want to. They have been busy painting and making it look wonderful. Oh yeah, the other thing that is going on is our summer sale....it starts this Tuesday with a storewide 30 % off(exluding Koigu, beads and jewlry). We also have some great tables with 50% off yarn and bags......it will be a great time! Please if you can let your friends know about all of this!!! NEW SUMMER HOURS: Sun& Mon closed,
Tuesday1-7, Wed-Fri. 12-5, Sat 12-4(but we will be there for Knit in Public this Saturday.)