I have had such a good time reading about all of your guilty TV knitting pleasures - I am so glad to know I'm not alone!

If you're stalking new shop updates, we have had a very busy week. Re-stocks of Cherry Tree Hill Supersock, Supersock Solids, and Supersock Select Semi-Solids; Mista Alpaca Hand Paint Lace and Pima Cotton & Silk, Handmaiden Lady Godiva. We've also got new colors going up on Monday in Lady Godiva, and this past week we added a ton of new colors of the lovely Madelinetosh Wren and two Unique Sheep yarns, Tinsel Toes and Sushi Socks. And speaking of The Unique Sheep, I finished my Rusted Root for the Ravelry knit-along this past weekend and I love it.

It is knit out of just slightly more than two skeins of The Unique Sheep Pima Petite in the Wisteria colorway. I used a US 4 needle, which would probably be a US 5 or 6 for most of you, and can I just tell you how thrilled I am with the way this yarn knit up? So unbelievably soft, cool on the skin, breathable but (and this is very important) not at all see-through. And the color is really stunning! Seen from afar, it just looks like, oh, light purple, that's pretty, but up close it is a shimmer-y rainbow of colors.






Also this past week we celebrated my birthday. I like to celebrate with white chocolate mousse cake (this is probably related to the little bit of the third skein I needed for my Rusted Root somehow, but cake sure is worth it). We get this cake from a local bakery, Metrotainment. It was Dan and I's "date" cake, then we made it our wedding cake, and now we get it every year for our anniversary and for my birthday because it is delicious. Doesn't it look amazing?

This year was a little different than most though - my very dear friend has a birthday ten days before mine, and we were admiring my neighbor's moon bounce one day and decided to have our very own carnival birthday party this year. Many thought we wouldn't do it (I think even we thought, on occasion, that we wouldn't really do it), but on Saturday we set up the "Jungle Bounce," the cotton candy machine, a snow cone maker, and some delicious Rita's Ice & Custard and celebrated our birthdays in childish style.

So I looked down from my knitting last night and realized I have definitely been knitting too much when I saw this. It's like knitter's gangrene! Fear not, I have not actually knit my skin into a pulp, but it kind of looks that way. The dye is bleeding off of my current secret project, which is, luckily, not from a yarn we sell in the store or I would be a little worried about selling it in the future.

I have two projects I'm knitting to deadline right now, and there is something about knitting to deadline that leaves me desperate to work on anything else. Which is how I ended up casting on for a wool sweater in June (it's Malabrigo Worsted in Pagoda). I knit on this for an hour, then feel horribly guilty and have to stay up an extra hour to work on my deadline projects.

All of this knitting has me stooping to new lows of television watching. My standards for TV are not particularly high. I have watched every season of the Real World since inception, for example, am an avid fan of America's Next Top Model, am always ready with a random tidbit I learned from the History Channel, and despite having the capability to record four shows at one time in our home frequently find myself rearranging the Tivo schedule because we have too many scheduling conflicts. But still, I have always allowed myself the illusion that I have drawn a line somewhere.

Then on Saturday, I actually taped a marathon of two weeks' worth of "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here," and must now admit that the summer TV seasons and all of the knitting I need to get done have completely erased any ounce I had left of television snobbery. I'm watching Daisy of Love. I watched 40 Most Shocking Celebrity Divorces ... twice. I even watched Swamp Loggers with Dan, just because it was on.

So here is your blog fodder question for the day: what is the most embarassing show you have knit to? Or, if you don't watch TV while knitting, please tell me what you do instead!

When I haven't been packing up your orders or stocking yarn, this is what I've been working on.

It's Zephyr Style's Rusted Root, for the knit-along in the ESK Ravelry group. I'm using Pima Petite in Wisteria and couldn't be more delighted by the yarn, which is extremely soft to knit yet works up into a great fabric that seems like it will hold up over time. I've been most surprised by the color - it looked relatively solid in the skein, but as I admire my knitting, I notice shimmery bits of blues and pinks that really make it special. In short, I'm so glad Tanya decided to have this KAL, without which I may never have found the time to try this pattern!

I also undertook a non-yarn-related project over the weekend - at the urging of a friend, I broke down and tried the henna hair dyes from Lush. I went from this...

To this...

To this! LOVE it, and definitely doing it again. This is the color my hair was when I was a kid, and sadly the red has faded over time.

The last two weeks, I've had total Knitter's ADD, casting on for a new project almost as soon as I'm done casting on for the last. I have four active projects right now, none of which are much past the cast-on stage, and that's a generous count as I'm ignoring the WIPs that have been hanging out in my guest room for a month or two untouched. I did actually finish something though, which I wanted to share just to document that yes I do still knit.

Pattern: Cloud Bolero (ravel it)
Needles: US 10.5
Yarn: Sundara Yarn Aran Silky Merino

When I bought this yarn, I was going to make a scarf, but when it arrived, I realized I should have bought more! So I picked this shrug pattern to see how much shrug I could get out of one skein, and I'm thrilled with the results. If you follow me on Ravelry, you probably know that in addition to all the lovely yarns we carry, I have a soft spot in my stash for Sundara Yarn, which no, is not available at Eat.Sleep.Knit, but it is really lovely yarn dyed by a lovely lady, and you should check it out if you haven't had the pleasure. Alternatively, if you wanted to make this project, you could also use a skein of Madelinetosh Pastoral, which is very similar in base and equally gorgeous (bonus: it's a Power Boost yarn right now!).

And look, I really am still knitting, I just can't seem to stick with a single project. Currently, I've got Jaywalkers in Tosh Sock Home, Lace Nightie from Interweave Knits in Elizabeth Bennet Peacock, the June Malabrigo Club project, a cropped sweater I'm knitting out of Sundara sock yarn all going, and I'll probably cast-on for the Rusted Root KAL in the Ravelry group tonight!

Somebody needs to put me in time out and force me to finish a few of these.

Just very little time to blog! The last two weeks have been a total whirlwind of yarn arriving, yarn departing, catching up on all of the administrative items that fell by the wayside during the big sale, and, oh yeah, the great Office-Cleaning-and-Reorganization of 2009. Which I wish I had a better picture of, but then you would have to see the "before" version. My dear friend, the lovely Lisa, actually postponed her travel plans and sacrificed an entire Saturday to help me get the office into shape, and we did an amazing job! All of the yarn is put away and organized neatly by vendor and colorway (in alphabetical order mostly, because I am a little Type A about alphabetical order). Dan filled up his entire pick-up truck bed with cardboard boxes for the recycling center (yes, we try to be environmentally-conscious - it's hard not to with all that cardboard). I assembled even more IKEA shelving, and we finally found homes for all of the extras - patterns, notions, Yarn Lotto and Yarnathon goodies, even our prized label printer. After two months of kind of "making it work" amidst the chaos, I am still a bit giddy every morning when I unlock the door and admire our handiwork.

In the mean time, there has been so much yarn arriving that only a week later, I think we could fill up the truck with cardboard boxes all over again. If you haven't gotten the newsletter or checked the in-stock thread on Ravelry, we've re-stocked: Dream In Color Classy, Malabrigo, Lorna's Laces, Fleece Artist, Pagewood Farm, ShibuiKnits,
and Madelinetosh Tosh Worsted. And yes, we have the newest new colors (still in-stock as of this posting):



Now you can follow us on Twitter too, and I'll tweet whenever new yarn comes in or something mildly interesting is going on.


Knitting has been slow too, but of course there has to be something on the needles. I have two projects in the works - over the weekend, I cast on for the Lace Nightie in Yarn Love Elizabeth Bennet in Peacock, and I'll be joining the Rusted Root KAL in our Ravelry group on Monday! We have had a few e-mails about this, so let me just say that yes, there absolutely is still time to order yarn for this - you should have any yarn you order this week by Monday in the domestic U.S. We've got a ton of great new colors of Pima Petite that are perfect for this project, or knit it in a worsted weight for colder weather!

At times this has felt like the project that would never be, but it's here, it's blocked, the straps are attached, the ends are woven in, and I've got my new favorite summer top. As you might remember from my distraught post a few weeks back, I actually knit this top twice before getting it right. The good news is that the second time around has been perfect, and if you only knit it once, it's a pretty quick knit!

The details:
Yarn: Claudia Handpainted Yarn Linen held doubled (3.5 skeins for a 34" bust)
Needles: US 3 (yeah, my gauge was wonky)
Pattern: Karma Tank from Custom Knits (ravel it!)

The real reason I've been so excited to post about this project is to share my infatuation with this linen yarn with all of you. I was really skeptical the first time I felt this yarn - I am a tactile knitter, so I tend towards superfine merinos, silks, bamboos, baby alpaca - anything that feels like you are lying in a field of baby kittens, basically. Linen yarn, in the skein, is not soft. It's not even average. It's rough and tough and looks and feels almost exactly like, well, twine. I've never been fond of twine.

But then last summer, I found the Versailles Shell pattern, and since we carried the yarn it called for, I decided to give this whole linen thing a fair shot. It was instant love, as I found out that, for one thing, the yarn is actually not all that rough as you're knitting with it (it's no baby alpaca, of course), and the fabric it made as it was knit up was actually almost soft. Drape-y, and pretty. And when it was done, I read the care instructions and found out that this yarn wants to be machine-washed. It loves to be dried in the dryer. The harder you are on this yarn, the softer and pretty it gets. I don't mind hand-washing and drying flat, but it really is a treat to have a handknit that you don't have to remain ever-vigilant about to keep it in peak condition.

And then there is the part about working with what works for you. Sure, baby alpaca is amazing, but it's also really, really hot. I live in Georgia, where summer starts in April and runs through October, and an alpaca sweater gets worn for two months all year and the occasional trip north. My very first project when I started knitting was a tank top I saw on Knitty Gritty. I went to my LYS and picked out a gorgeous soft pastel pink worsted-weight wool and coordinating ribbon yarn for the I-cord straps. The top is actually pretty cute, when you consider it was my first project, but it is completely unwearable because it is just too warm for any weather where a tank top is appropriate. The linen yarn breathes, and whether you wear it alone or with a tank underneath, I've never been too hot for my linen garments even in an Atlanta August!

Aside from my gauge issues, the only two things I changed about this pattern were to add more bust decreases after the short-rows to keep the front from gapping and giving people a little show, and to substitute a more substantial strap for the I-cord strap in the pattern. This tank actually fits so well that I could have gone with the I-cord, but I loved the look of the braided I-cord! To do these, you just make three I-cords instead of one about twice as long as you actually want, then braid and whipstitch together. A little extra knitting, but totally worth it!

I thought it would be done tonight, but my Karma Tank is still drying on the blocking board - it turns out that two layers of doubled linen takes a really long time to dry inside of a pillow case in the dryer! I've been checking it every ten minutes because I really can't wait to wear it, and tell you all about it.

In the mean time, I got all of my hair chopped off! I'm still a little freaked out as this is the shortest it's been since I was 7, but I think it's really cute!

But still I wanted to share some photos with all of you, especially those of you who have so patiently waited for your orders and sent such kind get well messages and been understanding about the order hiccups on Monday! Because if you didn't already know, this past Thursday, the famous Stitches made its southern debut at the Cobb Galleria, just ten minutes away from my house (and the store, which is about two minutes away from my house though in a different zip code). Sally and I have been gearing up for this since we heard about it more than six months ago, and the plane tickets were booked back in January along with our classes.

We somewhat foolishly thought this would be the perfect weekend for the Do-Over Sale - it was right at the time Dan estimated he could finish the new website, and we'd have extra hands in town to help with packing. What we failed to think about was how insanely busy Stitches would keep us, so we get some packing done, but not as much as we'd hoped. Still, Friday morning before we hit Stitches, it took me more than six hours just to sort your orders so we could start packing them. Really! We were floored by your response. Truly amazed. And thrilled beyond belief at how well the new website worked - not only was there no crashing and no oversold yarn, but truth be told, where you all were able to take down the old server instantly, the new version was never more than 10% occupied, even when dozens of orders were being placed simultaneously. Here I am sorting orders, and I like to pretend the look on my face is in disbelief that we went through more than two reams of paper (and an hour) just printing invoices, but in reality I was probably either mocking someone or being mocked...



As some of you have noticed (it's not usually so obvious as typically all orders go out the same day they're placed), we don't just send orders out in the order received. In an ideal world we could, but since it is usually just me and maybe on a good day one other person, all the orders are sorted by box size and then we do all the orders in each box size at once. In a case like this, the orders actually have to be sorted twice - the first time alphabetically just to make as certain as possible that we've combined all multiple orders. The winner for most orders placed during the sale was five!

Saturday was Stitches all day - we had classes starting at 8:30 AM (Spinning for Knitting! Sally is a spinning superstar!), then Latvian Wristers for me and Intarsia for Sally in the afternoon. Saturday night we attended an amazingly cool event organized by the Knit Witch at my favorite local Italian restaurant, Scalini's. There were 120 knitters there, including Miss Babs and Gryphon of Sanguine Gryphon!



Quote from the waitress: "everyone's ... knitting!" Sally won these delightful project bag in the raffle...



And even with all the Stitches fun, we did this:



And this:



And this:

And this, my favorite "exhausted" face:

Hi all! We want to thank everyone for the enthusiastic response to the do-over sale! We're a little bit buried in boxes right now, but we did manage to fill-up the entire mail truck this morning with boxes (yes, those are all from us!) And there are still yet many more boxes and orders to be filled! So if you haven't received a shipping notice yet don't worry, we're working as fast as we can to get them all out to you! And with that, it's time to get back to it, but we wanted to post a little teaser here - more later!

It's official - The Do-over Sale will take place on Thursday, April 23rd, between 5 PM and 10 PM Eastern time. There will be a one hour pre-sale beginning at 4 PM for 10K club members only, so if you are in the 10K club (or if you get there before the sale), you will have an hour head-start to grab your favorite yarns.

For those you wondering, "what the heck is a do-over sale," we attempted to have a special sale on Black Friday of last year, and it was such an astounding success that the website actually crashed, and became mostly unusable even by us for the remainder of the day. We promised those who were unable to access the site that once we had made sure our new server could handle it, we'd have a "do-over" to give everyone a fair shot.

How it works: Starting at 5 PM ET, visit the store and fill up your cart. You’ll go through the checkout process as usual, enter your billing information, and click on “Complete Order.” Your order confirmation page will then display your personal surprise discount and your order total will be adjusted accordingly! All orders will receive a discount of at least 10%, all the way up to 100% (that means your order could be free!). You could win half off, 30% off, 75% off, but no matter what, you will receive at least 10% off, and the odds of getting more are quite good! The sale ends at 10 PM, and all orders transmitted after that time will be charged at regular prices. Because of the response we are anticipating to this event, it may take us until Monday or Tuesday to get all of the orders out, Yarn Marathon prizes earned will most likely be shipped separately, and we can not offer yarn winding for any yarn sold during the sale.

We thought you all might like to know a little more about the man behind the magic of Eat.Sleep.Knit, my husband, Dan. In addition to being an engineer by day and my lifelong partner-in-crime, he stepped out to the plate to help out with ESK from that fateful night I finally came up with a name. He's moved on from making up boxes and packing up orders to administrator of our entire website (a very important job!). So, we put him through a little interview and he kindly obliged.

ESK: I keep hearing about the "new website," but it looks exactly the same to me. What's changed? And why did it take so long?
Dan: It may look the same as the old one, but the new website was completely redesigned to handle the kind of stupendous server load generated by you guys whenever we have a sale. Erin keeps telling me I shouldn't underestimate the yarn folk, but I'm still shocked at how fast you guys can make a purchase. The revision took a long time because there are about 10,000 lines of code in the website, and I rewrote the entire thing from scratch. The new website is written in C, a programming language which has been around since the 70's, but I think is still the fastest thing going. We are also using memcache, new technology developed by LiveJournal and currently used by Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia and Twitter, amongst others.

ESK: How long have you been developing websites? Is this your first e-commerce project?
Dan: Its a little embarassing, but this is the first serious website I've ever worked on. Don't get too concerned though because I have a fair amount of non-web programming experience. My day job is building robots for Georgia Tech. So I guess the new website is coded up like it was one of our robotics projects. Like a giant yarn robot. Hmm...

ESK: What has been the biggest surprise with the Eat.Sleep.Knit website? Did you realize when you started that the knitters would try to take down your site?
Dan: Erin warned me the knitters were good at the internet, but you guys hit our old server like a ton of bricks. All the knitting must help you click faster or something. Superhuman click speed.

ESK: What was it like when Eat.Sleep.Knit was running out of your house? Was there a lot of yarn?
Dan: So, as a non-knitter, I must admit its a little strange to live in a house completely filled to the rafters with yarn. My parents visited back when we were running the business out of our house, and they were just bewildered. I kind of like it though. They told me I liked to play with rope as a kid, so maybe its in my blood.

ESK: What's your favorite Eat.Sleep.Knit yarn?
Dan: Erin made me a pair of socks out of something I really like, but I don't know the name. [Editor's Note: It was Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock!] Its hard to pick a favorite, but I like the green colors. Maybe jade Madelinetosh.

ESK: That is a gorgeous color. Thanks for typing with us, and making sure knitters worldwide can enjoy some yarn shopping today!