We have a lot going on as usual – this Saturday is our monthly potluck! I hope you can join us – M1 always provides the main dish; please just bring something to share. It’s just like Knit Night but with more food! Speaking of Knit Night – every Tuesday evening – we have such fun and in the summer, it is so nice to sit with friends in the evening here and chat and knit – a perfect evening! We had one last night, and if you haven’t come, I hope you will soon! We go every Tuesday night, and will do so all through the summer.

The silent auction we have been holding to benefit our friend Tracy, victim of the fire in Irricana, will close at 3 pm on Saturday. If you are the successful bidder, you can pick up your goodie then (or at the potluck) – or just let me know when you will be along. I will be posting the complete list of items today on the ‘Taking Care of Our Own’ group on Ravelry so you can see these lovely donations from terrific people – and maybe be tempted if you haven’t yet bid!

Classes are ongoing – we are just arranging a few things for the summer. Knitting and Spinning 101s will still be taught every month (and June’s Knitting 101 is nearly full) and we will have a lighter slate, what with so many folks away on holidays, but still have lots for you to consider.

May 23rd, we are hosting a paper roses class from a local artist; May 26th, Rachel will be teaching a Moebius cast-on class to get your juices flowing for one of Cat Bordhi’s exciting creations, or for Sivia Harding’s wonderful Harmonia’s Rings. Call soon to register for these!

We are also scheduling a Socks 101 class, and have been asked to do a Mitts/Toque class in June – I’ll post more details as soon as we get them nailed down. If you have an iPad, and the Knit Companion app (which is a great tool for all of us), we will be offering a tutorial in how to use it shortly. (I’m going to have to take it, because I have the app, and I know from comments how great it is, but I’m a little lost in it, because it does so much!).

Hope to see you soon – and have a splendid holiday weekend!

But our Spin-In and the shearing will still be going on!

First of all, Shameless Twist will be travelling to M1 for a trunk show on Saturday, starting about 12.30. I love hosting trunk shows, because it means that you get to see all of the wonderful yarns and bases the dyer has in stock, and you have the best possible range of choices! Jodi will also be introducing a couple of beautiful new bases to us on Saturday – I can’t wait! I know they are delicious!

Saturday is also our regular Spin-In, so whether you are an experienced spinner or just curious about what goes on – come and join us! We offer a quick ‘Learn to Spin on a Spindle’ class every Spin-In, from 1-3, so you can learn and meet people too!

Also on Saturday, but off campus (not at M1, in other words) our friend Tracy,(for whom we are holding the silent auction – bidding is open until Saturday, May 19th at 3 pm at M1) is having a shearing day out where she keeps her sheep. It’s a wonderful trip – only out to Crossfield – and perfect for the little ones! And there are lambs, and you can buy a freshly sheared beautiful fleece. Here are Tracy’s directions:

“We had a last minute cancellation that has freed up this Saturday!!! So Shearing is on again! We also have had our first batch of lambies with more on the way!

We have all sorts of things going on at M1 in May – hope you can share some of them with us! In addition to our regular events – Knit Night every Tuesday evening, Moms and Tots & Knits every Wednesday afternoon, Moms Solo Evening every other Wednesday evening, Spin-In Saturday (second Saturday of the month) and Potluck (third Saturday evening), we have some great classes on offer.

Have you heard good things about our wonderful Fix Your Knits class? (You should have – everybody who’s taken it raves about it!). We are offering it Saturday and Sunday, May 5 & 6, and May 12 & 13 (this is a long class, so all four classes make up the course). It will change your knitting of sweaters forever – no more sloppy, too loose fits, or sweaters way too small for your bust or too big for your waist. Do call this week to register!

On Saturday, May 26, we are offering a Moebius class – the Cat Borhdi style of Moebius – it’s a fascinating knit, and so pretty done up as Sivia’s wonderful Harmonia’s Rings cowl or sweater. (I must say, I have knit it twice, adore it, but confess that both times Jess cast on for me, so I still don’t really understand its magic).

May Knitting 101 is full, so we are booking into June for it now; but we still have two spots left in Spinning 101 for May. We are going  to have another handdyeing class – just scheduling now for late May/early June. There will be a History of Handknitting class (a lecture-style class, no practical) on Saturday, May 19, and there will also be a Twined Knitting tutorial on Friday, May 18.

And of course, we can always schedule a private lesson or class for anything we can find teachers for at a time that works for you or your group!

Come see us soon!

If you’re already an old hand at beading your projects, you know how lovely the B-dekk beads are. And if you haven’t ventured into beaded knitting yet, we can offer you a quick tutorial, using an easy, simple method that doesn’t require you to use a crochet hook or string all the beads on first!

One of the fun things with beading a project is the ways you can chose to go – you can bead like mad, and have a stunner of a project, with a really different drape and glitz, or just pop a few beads onto a straightforward project to give it a little zazz. And anywhere in between.

I know you’ll enjoy checking out the wonders Petronella is bringing to M1 – see you Saturday!

This Saturday we will also have a display up at M1 of all the generous donations to raise funds for Tracy (our friend, the shearer, who lost so much stuff in that fire in Irricana, including four thousand pounds of fleece from rare breeds she had shorn herself). You’ll be able to start the bidding on them – we want to get this going and wrap it up on the May long weekend. Items available for bid include a Jordana Paige bag, an Ott light, an amazing amount of mohair, and lots more.

We have some wonderful new stitch markers in from a local artist. They are perfect for the most delicate lace project, won’t catch on any fuzzy yarn, and are so pretty – she uses semi-precious stones and beads and we’ll have a set of sterling silver ones on the weekend!

We got our delicious Tanis order yesterday – all sorts of gorgeous lace and sock yarns in her wonderful tonals, including velvet, seabreeze, teal, deep sea, garnet… We always sell out of Tanis so quickly!

We have scheduled our famous Fit Your Knits class for the first two weekends in May, both Saturday and Sunday, the 5th and 6th and the 12th and 13th, from 1 to 4. It’s a very intensive class and will really change how you knit. As you know, we like to keep our classes small, so register soon.

We’re also offering a Moebius class one of the Saturdays in May; just deciding which one – and this will be for the true Moebius as used in Sivia Harding’s lovely Harmonia’s Rings cowl and sweater – a great chance to up your skills!

And we have more lovely kits from Yummy Yarn Studio – socks and shawls and the beautiful Elan sweater. And have great fun with the newest hand-dyer, Feathered Fish Fibers, for delightful and very spinnable fibres! (and our May Spinning 101 is nearly full, so you might want to call soon!). We also have new spindles from Danware – they’re fabulous and just spin and spin and spin….

See ya soon!

We are very excited to announce that on Saturday we will be introducing another fine local handdyer; she is a talented spinner herself, and is dyeing some beautiful braids of fibre for you to spin with! She has also most generous donated two of her handdyed braids to our raffle/silent auction to raise funds for our friend Tracy (whom we told you about in the last email).

Included in the lovely fibres our newest dyer is producing are: BFL, Shetland, Argentinian, alpaca (you should see this alpaca – wow!) and a great superwash blend for spinning great socks! I can’t wait for you to meet her! Please join us Saturday!

Our last Tapas Club kit – the charming doubleknit sheep mitts in alpaca/cashmere/silk you may have seen on Ravelry – are selling quickly, and will be sold out soon. Don’t forget we only did 30 of each kit! We are offering an intensive four-hour workshop on Sunday, April 29th for you to learn this skill if it is not in your arsenal, but as with all our classes, we want to keep it small, and it is filling up fast.

Our May Knitting 101 class is now full, and we are booking into June. There is still room in our Spinning 101 for May, however, and I would like to suggest this as a great way for you as a knitter or crocheter to have a deeper understanding of the yarns you use. (And no, you don’t have to buy a spinning wheel to take the class, or indeed to be a spinner). In the four-week course, we cover spinning on a handspindle, fibre preparation methods, (carding, combing, flicking), types of fleece and other fibres, plying, setting the twist, and more.

Also in May, we will be offering our fabulous Fit Your Knits class – learn how to knit a sweater that suits you, fits you, and flatters you – it will change how you look at your knitting, and may even turn you into a devoted sweater knitter even if you’ve always been convinced it’s not for you!

And in June we’ll be at Olds Fibre Week in the merchants’ hall! We are the proud sponsors of the Master Spinners programme, and will have some wonderful, different things to show you – a demo of 3D printed spindles, for example, and unique yarn bowls and buttons made by local potters, yarns and kits from local dyers – and more! We love going to Olds and look for to seeing you there!

And we encourage you to enter the Western Showcase at the Calgary Stampede with your handwork – there are so many categories, and it’s such an important part of our craft lives to support! See the Stampede website for details:  http://westernshowcase.com/importantdates.html

See you soon! Knit. Be Happy.

Friday, noon to 4; Saturday, 10-5; Sunday AND Holiday Monday, noon to 4. Have a lovely time with family and friends!

The bad news is that one of our own is hurting. Our good friend, Tracy, (vikingmaid on Rav), lost everything she had been storing at the shop in the fire. She is a shearer – one of the few female shearers in the Prairies, and one of the few that will shear small folks of less than 50 animals. She is the most hard-working person I have ever known, and the most dedicated handcrafter too – she actually was given a flock of sheep while living in an apartment, and found a way to keep them. She is a spinner, knitter, weaver, handsewer, woodworker, embroiderer – and more.

Tracy is a dedicated historical reenactor, and attends the Gimli Icelandic Festival regularly as a completely authentic ‘Viking maid’. So many important things were  lost in the fire – all of Tracy’s books – a lot of textile history and reference works (they were being stored as Tracy and her husband are renovating their basement), many of which are out of print, and all of her science fiction collection of thirty years, including many signed copies and first editions; all her woodworking tools, and her drill press; all her medieval camping gear, including several canvas tents and items of camping furniture Tracy had researched, designed, and then built herself; two trailers; all her Christmas decorations – and of course there’s always so much sentimental value there. And this is just what she knows is gone in the first shock. Nothing was covered by insurance, and since much of what was lost was built by Tracy herself, it is irreplaceable in any case.

One of the most upsetting losses, however, was her fleece. She had over 4,000 (yes, four thousand) pounds of rare and unusual breed fleeces, most of which she had shorn herself, and much of which came from her own sheep. There was the Clun Forest she was saving up for a mill run of yarn, and the Cotswold she was preparing for roving at the mills; all of her own Icelandic and Shetland fleeces, and specialities such as Cormo, BFL, Columbia, Red California, and more – all now gone.If you have attended one of her fleece sales here, you know some of the variety, and all about the high quality, of the fleeces Tracy provides. She will be shearing this weekend…

We are hoping to raise a little money for Tracy so that she can replace at least some of her books and equipment when she can; unfortunately, because she lost the place she was storing things in, it isn’t practical for her to receive gifts in kind. We are organizing a Ravelry group to give you information about items available for a silent auction, and to allow you to donate things for the auction if you are so inclined. Please contact us on our Ravelry group (Make One Yarnies) for information about the fund-raising, or call me here and I will give you the information. We will close the auction on the May long weekend, so we have about six weeks from now – please help if you can.

The first two kits – the Sangria Socks, designed by Jessica Theodor, and the Escalope shawl, designed by Kourtney Robinson, have sold out long ago, and the lovely third kit, the Dolmades wristwarmers, designed by Kathleen Long, is nearly sold out.

The fourth kit is just as special, and in this case, it was designed by the dyer of all these kits – Sam of Yummy Yarn Studio. As with the other kits, you will receive the lovely hand-dyed yarn, the pattern (exclusive to the kit), and a locally made project bag and stitch marker. The bags are made by Shelley Hunter, and the stitch markers by local author Leslie Carmichael. And of course, as with all our kits, they are very limited in number – only thirty. I will tell you that there is a charming sheepy theme to this kit…

These kits were a true labour of love, and I’d like to thank everyone involved with the production – the designers, Jess, Kourtney, Kathleen, and Sam, for sharing their visions and creativity; Sam for her amazing talent and hard work as a most inspiring hand-dyer, and someone whose colour sense always thrills me; Rob and Jess for their outstanding work making our layouts work and look so striking – and a special thank you to Rob for his design for our posters – I love each of the individual designs as well as the overall look; to Shelley and Terri for the project bags which just pulled each project together; and to Leslie for all the whimsical and entertaining stitch markers.

And to all our customers for their support of this special project – we are a community and I am so grateful to you all for being a part of it!

Hope to see you Friday!