Showing posts with label stitches west. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stitches west. Show all posts

Stitches West!

by : MarinadeDesigns
I know it’s been a little over a week since we returned from Stitches West, but whew it’s been busy!  I finally feel like things have calmed enough around here to catch you up on the fun time we had there.  Thanks so much to all of you who visited our Stitch Red booth at Stitches.  It was so fun to see all of your faces and meet you in person!





Our main goal for this booth was to get the word out about our Stitch Red campaign and wow, did we ever!  Our booth looked as if the color red had exploded everywhere—it was so great!  We arrived and unpacked and set up our booth in now time at all, and it went surprisingly smoothly.


 


 We were selling tons of great Stitch Red Products like the Shibui Silk Cloud, Artyarns Rhapsody Light Glitter, Lantern Moon Heart Stitch Markers, Jade Sapphire Silk Cashmere 2 ply, Classic Elite Magnolia, Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Worsted, and so much more—all in the Stitch Red colors. 





We also brought with us whole bunch of the Mini Red Dress Kits which feature Classic Elite yarns, a pin to sew on, and the pattern which is bonus pattern from our Knit Red book that is due out in June.  They are so cute and fun to make too! In fact, Diana bought one and knit it while we were there.  It was such a fast knit!




Thanks to the Stitches event planners (XRX) who graciously donated the booth to us for the Stitch Red campaign.  It was so much fun to be able to go to the event and promote something we all care about so much.





It was my first time at Stitches and I definitely came away with some awesome new yarns to play with including: Bijou Basin Ranch’s Bliss yarn (a blend of Cormo and Yak fibers), A Verb for Keeping Warm’s Floating in "Magic Bean" and Even Tinier Annapurna in "The French Monks Finest", Ranch of the Oaks’ Icelandic Lamb, some gorgeous sparkly sock yarn from the Chicken Boots booth (I think the skein was hand dyed at a shop in Humboldt, CA called "Yarn- A Sweet Shop for Yarn Addicts", and Knitted Wit’s Bulkan in "Peacock."  I am flat out in LOVE with all of these skeins and am busy plotting projects. 






I bought a copy of “What Would Madame Defarge Knit?” after one of the designers, Erica Hernandez stopped by the booth and introduced herself.  She was just the nicest person and I was so inspired by the book (which comprised of knits based on characters from classic literature) that I had to get a copy for myself!  She is working on some other collections based on similar ideas including a Shakespearean themed one.  I am so excited to see what’s next from her!










I also bought Ysolda’s newest book: Whimsical Little Knits 3 (which I believe we should be getting in the shop very soon) and got to meet her and have her sign it for me!  It was so awesome to meet one of my long time knitting idols in person.  I’ve followed her blog for years…since she first started designing, and it’s true what everyone says, she really is one of the sweetest gals around!  I even got my picture taken with her in her little photo booth.  So much fun!

We all had such a great time-- thanks so much to Jimmy for letting us be a part of this year’s Stitches West!  Hope you all have a great rest of your week and happy knitting!

Kristen




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Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, it's off to Stitches we go!

by : MarinadeDesigns
Happy Friday! I hope all of you out there are staying warm and toasty this week! It's starting to feel a little bit more like winter, here in the high desert, with chilly winds blowing and a bit of snow falling this past week. I'm sure it's nothing compared to the huge storms that have recently been hitting the Midwest and East Coast...but it's chilly nonetheless!

Lately, we've been hard at work preparing for Stitches West which is this upcoming weekend (starting today, actually)! For this year at Stitches, we will be sponsored by Coats and Clark, one of our biggest yarn manufacturers. We will be carrying and showing off their beautiful yarns, some of which I'm sure you've heard of-from Rowan and Regia to Nashua and Red Heart (like Stitch Nation). If you are planning on being at Stitches this weekend, be sure to visit our booths to see what's been new and exciting here in the shop - booths' #1017, #1019, and #1021! Also, for the first time ever at Stitches, we will be offering an entire Wool Watcher sale section, as well as giving away a free WW tote or t-shirt with every $100 purchase. Come on by and and say hello! We'd love to meet you!


In other news, we've been hard at work these past few months making some great changes to our retail shop! For those of you who have only shopped online with us, we do have a retail store right here in Reno, NV (which is also where all of your yarn goodies ship from, as well). Although our retail shop can only hold about 1/5th of our entire inventory, we try our best to hand-pick a nice variety of yarns and colors to put on display for our local customers. We thought some of you might like to see what our lovely shop looks like post-reorganizing...

I give you--Jimmy Beans Wool-the Biggest Little Yarn Shop in the Biggest Little City!


(As you probably know, that's not really our slogan...I just thought it sounded fun since Reno is "the Biggest Little City in the World")!

Anyway, on with the shop! Here is our new Blue Sky Alpacas display... so lovely!:


Koigu or Malabrigo anyone? Yes please!:


The Madelinetosh section- it calls to me:


What yarn shop would be complete without a little Berroco or Cascade?:


These are only a few of the changes we've made! We also re-organized the books, added a superwash and baby yarns section, re-vamped the sock yarns, and included a full wall of Misti Alpacas yarn! Of course, we kept the classics and all-time favorites around (how could we not?), such as Rowan, Lorna's Laces, Crystal Palace, and all of the needles and notions that you could possibly handle!

Whew! It was a lot of work to "refurbish" everything but it looks great! Hopefully, all of our local customers are enjoying the changes, as well. To all of you non-locals out there, you're more than welcome to come and see the shop for yourself!

Happy knitting everyone and have a great weekend!

Kristen
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Snow, knitting and more snow...

by : Jimmy Beans Wool
We have had some more snow down here in our little valley nestled below the Sierra Nevada mountains. My son measured it Sunday morning and it topped off at 18 inches and the schools here were delayed 2 hours on Monday.

Of course it is always funny that Incline Village (lake tahoe) is never closed due to snow, so it just makes me think we are a bunch of sissies down here in the valley, ha ha! At any rate this was the nicest weekend here at my house and it included the snow, the Olympics, knitting and family! How much better can it get??

Sandy and I have started the Hydrangea socks from Janel Laidman's book The Eclectic Sole, but it took me a little bit to find the right yarn for this one. I finally settled on the new Hand Maiden Merino 2/6 yarn and WOW is what I have to say about this yarn! It is so beautiful and I chose the color Fleur for my sock, which is making me giddy as I work it up.

I have also finally gotten the pattern together for the Let's Cha Cha scarf that you have all been asking me for, sorry to have taken so long, blush, blush!

I made it a free pattern from 2 Askew Designs and hope you all enjoy it! We also filmed a how to video on the Cha Cha by Trendsetter in case you need a little bit of help.

Of course the count down for our final push to leave for Stitches West starts today, but I think we will have a great show with all the planning that has been put into it. We are getting excited to get moving and hope to see you all there! We will have new products, samples, kits, yarn, bags, and of course fun waiting for you!!

As always happy knitting and crocheting! Jeanne












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Birthdays, yarn and Stitches West....

by : Jimmy Beans Wool
Well I love birthdays especially when they are mine and yesterday was my birthday! ALL the little beans came to surprise me and feed me pizza, cake and shower me with gifts, WOW! THANKS YOU FABULOUS Beans and Amber for organizing the whole thing and Sandy for the yummy, yummy cake! They got me a pedicure too and now my tootsies are smooth and pretty! I even wore my birthday crown all day!! Thanks really it was so neat to have you all go to such trouble for me, blush, blush!

Ok, ok enough mush onto more important things like yarn, knitting and getting ready for Stitches West! Yep, you read that right we are going to be at Stitches West in full force and we are all getting very excited with all the planning.

We will be taking so much neat stuff and will also have new stuff too, like the Noro Aya yarn which is absolutely amazing! I am particularly in love with color 09 and am trying to figure out what to work up with it.

Of course we are adding some of Louisa Harding's yarns to our line up and she is one of my favorite designers. Her charming designs are feminine and creative.

Of course her yarns go right along with that idea of softness and elegance. Like her Thistle yarn which is so soft and rich, with 2 fabulously soft fibers; merino wool and suri alpaca! It doesn't get a whole lot better than this.

I am a green girl and the color Bracken, 06 is one of my favorites.

So I could just go on and on about all this yummy stuff, but I better stop or as usual I am going to swoon, phew.

As always happy knitting & crocheting! Jeanne









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