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Fall is a special time of year. It means that the KW Knitters Fair is here and we LOVE the Fair. This year was especially exciting because we had Anne Hanson of Knitspot joining us in our booth.

Anne is an amazing designer, knitter and just a really nice person. She brought a selection of her designs to show at the Fair and was available to chat with her fans and the lace-curious. It’s amazing to look at her patterns on her website or to see them in our binders in the shop but to actually see the pieces in person is thrilling.

The Fair was a great day and we were thrilled to show off our exclusive house-line silk – Willow Street Silk. The colours just glow in this silk and we are thrilled to have it. The three samples we have done in the shop are sooo pretty.

The navy shawl is Jarrod Flood’s Rock Island and the gold one is Aestlight Shawl. The Green one on the wall under the skeins of Willow Street is Amy Singer’s Tuscany.

Sunday Anne and I went over to the Aberfoyle Antique Market. This is an outdoor antique market that is open on Sundays during the summer. We had a lovely time and we found a few pieces for the shop. We did a little playing too. Anne really liked the vintage telephone stands.

We were also able to have Anne teach a couple of classes in the week following as well.

We miss Anne already but are already talking to her about when she is coming back next year and what classes we will have her do next. But in the meantime I get to look forward to seeing her at Rhinebeck in October – it’s my turn to go this year:)

Anne has written a lovely review of her time with us. So go on over to Knitspot and have a look and while you’re there you can ponder your next Anne Hanson design.

World Wide Knit in Public Day this year we had the fun of having Kim & Ron from Indigodragonfly join us. They brought a trunk show – which means they brought some of everything and then some samples as well. We got them very nicely set up on the front porch on the Saturday but on Friday night the porch was for Knit & Chat – weather was perfect.

At the end of the weekend we restocked some yarns which was a good thing – we were down to a single skein of sock. It was a very lonesome skein.

This year was a double-header! We had Jacqueline from Soak with us as well on Saturday. She did a couple of blocking demonstrations. And as you can see by the picture – we start our knitters young with proper blocking techniques.

It almost looks like Jacqueline was doing a little “Tom Sawyer fence painting”.

We had some lovely shade or you could sit in the sun.

I think I see a new monster there on the needles of Heather of Joeys House

Tabi is our amazing spinning teacher and she regularly makes her students happy by sharing her spinning knowledge. Students leave her classes feeling totally empowered to go the next step on their wheel or spindle.
Another major aspect of Tabi’s life is her bicycling. She peddles around town, she peddles in races and even travels all over the world to peddle her bike.
So today she comes in grinning from ear to ear and almost dancing. Want to know why?

We now have a bike rack!

Introducing The Closet! This is our first day of our first week of opening the Shall We Knit? closet. Every month we will open the Closet for one week only – generally the third week of the month. We will post the dates in the newsletter every month so you can mark it on the calendar.
This room has end of lines, discontinued colours of current yarns, clearouts and some just realllllly good deals. We are focussing on summer type yarns right now but if it continues like it did today we may have room for some wools before too long.
We had some very happy knitters come out of that room with some very good deals.

How many hands does it take to hang slot wall?

Cari under glass anyone?

Remember our pretty sock room in New Hamburg? This is it after we removed all the shelves and displays and starting piling bags of yarn. Now this doesn’t have the sock yarn in the pile because that had already been moved to the new shop to make room.

and then we added more
It was sad to see it empty. It was hard to leave and sad to see our pretty shop looking like this.

I know! We have been very silent on this blog thing lately. And it’s not an excuse but we’ve been a mite busy. Who knew it could be so much work just moving a little yarn shop? Hmm – yup – lots of work but soooo totally worth it. We love our new home and have been getting a very good response to the move. We really miss New Hamburg and our friends there, and MeMe’s and Arca and UpperCase books and…
Things change but we are happy to say that the shop is the same only better and prettier and we LOVE her!! Over the next little bit I will be posting a series of posts with pictures of the packing and unpacking and changes. I won’t do them all at once cause there are a lot and I know we still have some people with dial up and pictures will really drag.

This is our lace room. This is the room of lusciousness where we have our special Willow Street Silk as well as Indigodragonfly, Tanis, Briar Rose, Alchemy and much more.

When you first walk in the door you are greeted by the library. We love our knitting books! Pull up a chair and peruse to your hearts content.

We get a happy when people walk up the 4 steps into the sock room and moan a little. What kind of sock yarn do you like? Are you a hand-dyer fan? Then how about some Tanis or maybe some of that crazy Indigodragonfly or maybe a little closer to home with Lofty Fibres? Or would you like some Cascade Heritage or Jawoll or Shibui or Lorna’s Laces or Alpaca Sox or…yes we may have a bit of sock yarn.

Next I will show you some pictures of the packing and unpacking – prepare yourself.

471 stitches! That is a long cast on! But this Briar Rose Sea Pearl is so gorgeous to knit with and another pattern by Katherine Matthews – what more could I ask for? This is a test knit for Katherine and she blogs about it over here.
I just did another order of the Sea Pearl too, it seems to be flying off the shelves.

This yarn and these beads just wanted to play together sooooo badly. The yarn is Briar Rose Sea Pearl – 50% Merino and 50% Tencel and 100% scrumptious. We recently got in a new order of Briar Rose and this colour was talking to me and then we got the beads in and all was lost. The beads are a colour that Katherine had told me about and she was right. As soon as I opened the box I started pondering what to use them for.
I was working at the Market on Saturday and started a cast on – more details shortly.

Now doesn’t that sound like a wonderful address for a yarn shop? Because of all of your support over the last nearly 4 years we have gotten to the spot where we need to grow. We love our shop in New Hamburg! We love our neighbours! We love the community! But the timing was right and we were offered an amazing spot to grow into.
Our new location will allow us to have larger classes and more storage. We’ve joked regularly about possibly having to give customers stilts and hanging the yarn from the ceiling! Our storage room slowly seeped into the office to the point that it is more storage than office. And then we started finding spots on the shop floor for our overflow. Our new location has lots of storage which means we won’t need to be putting any of it on the shop floor – and do you know what that means? Room for more beautiful yarns.
We also will have a real porch for Knit & Chats! I love my porch knitting and now we will be able to do it whenever we want.
We have some wonderful class plans coming up and we will be able to accomodate more of you intrepid knitters – always ready to learn something new and exciting. Lucy Neatby this November is just the icing on the cake.
So we will be posting here as our plans are firmed up but stuff is going to be happening quickly. Oh – and in the midst of moving and redesigning the new shop – we are doing the Knitters Frolic in Toronto.