We caught up with Stacy Charles (of Tahki Stacy Charles) and asked him to tell us all about his holiday travel traditions for the collection. His contribution this year is through two collaborations one with TSCArtyarns and the other with Andi Javori of Javori designs. We can't wait to show you their contribution to the holiday collection (coming out tomorrow in a special edition of our Newsletter) but in the meantime, here are Stacy (and Andi's) holiday travel tradition stories for you to enjoy!  Stacy: I am fortunate enough to live in two places. It is not that uncommon for residents of NYC. We have a hectic-paced city life during the week - and retreat to a second home, either in the mountains upstate or on the ocean, for a weekend or holiday escape.  My weekend home is...

Saremy, the owner and designer behind Chicken Boots and creator of the two largest bags (the Double Double, and a specially created for JBW slightly larger version) we are featuring in our 2013 Holiday Collection shared with us her holiday traditions story below. She and her family try not to travel during the holidays so that they can spend the day in the comfort of their home. We love her traditions, and how cute are her chickens!?!?! "There is always something special about the time between November and January-whether you celebrate Christmas, another holiday or none. My family is quite small with only me, my husband and our daughter, Cricket, who is 11. We tend to stay at home during Christmas. Occasionally we have ventured to see our families but typically we always try and...

We asked Felicia Lo from Sweet Georgia yarns to share with us her travel story and the inspiration for her yarn for our 2013 Holiday Collection and here is what she had to say:   "While Vancouver inspires my deepest devotion during the sunny and green spring and summer seasons, when November rolls around, I am desperately clamoring for some more sunshine. Before our honeymoon two years ago, I had never actually been to Hawaii but I had always thought vacationing in Hawaii was a bit cheesy. It was probably the distorted image I got from watching too much television, but it just seemed to me to be all cliché surf themes, flowers in drinks, and of course the large print Hawaiian shirts. But our trip to the smaller, quieter island of Kaua’i was simply beautiful. The...

We spoke with Jane Saffir of Jade Sapphire yarns about her color inspiration for the 2013 Holiday Collection, and here is what she had to say: "Truthfully, I was agonizing about it.  We already had the colorway "Rockaway Beach," the name of the beach vacation place of my childhood.  We already had "Tahitian Garden" (although I've never been to Tahiti, just fantasized about it!).  We already had "Caribbean Mist," which covers a lot of territory for fantasy vacations.  My family kept teasing me, saying that my favorite vacation destination is my own house, if I could be "allowed" to just stay home and play with all my toys (all fiber related)! Anyway, we just got back a few days ago from...

We asked Taiu what her holiday travel traditions were and how they inspired her 2013 Holiday Collection color. Here is what she told us:  "Where do you go on holidays? That's a good question, and to that I ask ‘whats a holiday’? When you run your own business and have a daughter that has a crazy extracurricular life (that would be me), holidays are very rare. I dance right through the year and by the time a holiday comes all I want to do is sleep. When we do travel it’s for business, and I'm grateful for being able to travel with my mother across most of the United States, and most recently I was able to travel to Koln (aka. Cologne), Germany for a trade show. Going to Koln was my first trip overseas, and out of everywhere in Europe I'm glad it was Germany. ...

Beth Casey from Lorna's Laces recently shared with us her inspiration for the color she created for our 2013 Holiday Collection. Her's is the first of many stories we'll be sharing with you over the next couple of weeks. Here is what Beth had to say about her holiday travel traditions: “How do I celebrate the holidays? Well, my husband's birthday is December 25th. My birthday has always been special to me and I wanted to make sure his didn't get lost in the holiday craziness. So we decided early on that we'd spend Thanksgiving with family and travel as often as we could for Christmas. Sometimes it's been exotic like Paris or Istanbul. Other times it's been simpler, like Portland or Door County. One year we just got a hotel room...

Beers, brats, badgers and basements? It’s Christmas in Wisconsin! For the last 15 years, Doug and I have spent every other Christmas at Doug’s parents’ house in Middleton, Wisconsin. And for the last 15 years, I’ve had to remember to pack a bundle of rubber bands in my suitcase. You see, after a few days of drinking beer, eating brats, and watching the Badgers play hockey on the basement TV, I have to call upon these rubber bands to help keep my pants up. (Remember the pregnancy trick? Yeah, well, only in this case, my “expanding belly” isn’t the result of a growing baby… it’s the result of blissful gluttony!) Oh – and did I mention that Doug’s mom is famous for her Christmas baking? She makes hundreds (yes hundreds!) of cookies each season. Sigh. I’m drooling (and happily expanding!) already!!...

Over the weekend, Laura decided to take a stab at sewing the Gumdrop Pillow by Amy Butler for the Huckster. She had been eyeing the Rebekah Ginda Robotic Fabric from Birch Organics, so she grabbed enough on her way out the door and got started. Luckily, with Huck being the super-helper that he is, this turned out to be a pretty fun project for everyone! Laura looked to Amy Butler's Creativebug.com class to make the Gumdrop Pillow for easy step by step instructions with videos. You can download the PDF of the pattern from the Amy Butler website and print out all of the pattern pieces you need at home, or if you prefer a pre-printed version, you can order it from us here. Be sure to check out all of our great sale fabric while you are at it. (Never said I wasn't an enabler.) Next...

On Saturday our newsletter debuted my design for the Luxury Holiday Garland. The reason it's considered "luxury" is because it uses every yarn in our new Luxury Fiber Sampler to create twelve beautiful stars joined together by a linen/cotton blend garland strand. The result is classically beautiful in neutral shades that emulate a wintery wonderland. Our version uses the sampler, but I know many if you, if you're at all like me, have tons of wee scraps lying in your stash. This is the perfect stash busting project as you only need about 15-20 yards for each star. The gauge is ideal for anything from a Fingering to a DK weight yarn but you could easily adapt this pattern for larger weights if you wanted. I am thinking about doing some in a chunky weight to hang in my front window. That's...

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a great week! I just wanted to pop in and announce the winner of the Cozy Knits Giveaway! Thanks to random.org, our winner is....Commenter #22 who wrote: "quiltmt said... That Make Mine Mocha poncho is for me! I love to wrap up in a generous hand knit,; but tea for me, please, not coffee!" Thanks everyone for participating! Quiltmt, please e-mail me at: kristen (at) jimmybeanswool (dot) com, with your mailing address so I can ship your book! Congrats, yay! I'll give the winner until Friday, November 8th to claim their prize and if I've not received an e-mail, I'll choose a new winner -- you'd be surprised at how many people we've had not claim their prizes from giveaways! I mean, who doesn't want free stuff, right?!?! :) If you are sad about not...