Open II

So, yesterday dad put up a neon OPEN sign. A customer came in at 7:00 and commented that they had been waiting for us to open. Seems that you can't be officially open if you don't have an open sign on you're window. Interesting. Thruth be told,jessamy and I were planning on needlepointing the open and closed sign but have only gotten as far as the "ed".

nothing much is going on

It's been very slow at the shop lately. We're hoping it's the heat.

We've got some new yarn in a couple of days ago, there's a black and white bumpy one from Lucci (I'm not sure what the term is for it, but I'm calling it Pom Pom) that I'm thinking of useing with a white encore to make a cow colored purse.

Jessamy is working on a sock puppet dog pattern that we just got in from JudyKits, Judy hand-delivered it herself. It's looking pretty cool so far.

I finished a Dropped Stitch Ribbon shell yesterday, got the pattern from Teen Knitting (no, I'm not a teen, it's just one of the books we're selling). The end stitches are a little funky, but other than that it looks all right. I'll try to take the camera to the store tomorrow. If not, no picture for the blog for a couple of days because me, jessamy and max are going to be going to Gilroy for the Garlic Festival. Yay. I'm looking forward to some Garlic Ice-Cream. I've actually had some before at Stinking Rose. It's amazing - the flavor is subtle but unmistakably Garlicy.

Projects

Here are my last couple of projects:

A devil hat, based on the Stitch 'n Bitch, but only using one ball. Apperantly I wasn't really focusing on the hat when I took this picture.




The hat and scarf my mom requested, the scarf has a hole so that it stay wrapped:



The socks I'm working on:

By the way, I figured out the gusset. I was trying to make it much more complicated than it really is. Unfortunately I have about 10 stitches too many so I'm going to work on a baby one first, then rip this one out and start over again.

Birthday

For my birthday yesterday we went out to eat at a churrascaria in Glendale called Gauchos Village. They had a little buffet type layout where you get your side dishes like potato salad or fruit, then you sit down at your table and guys with skewers of meat come around and ask you if you want any. If you say yes they cut off a piece and put it on your plate. Fortunately I had no idea this was a meat restaurant so I had filled up my plate with the side dishes. I ended up eating 4 pieces of meat anyway. I really should stop thinking of myself as a quasi-vegetarian.

Opening Day Pictures

Ok, so I'm a week late, but here's some pictures from opening day.

Ribbon cutting with oversized scissors:








Knitting lessons:




The cool band:




And despite the fact that it is blury, my favorite picture of opening weekend:

socks and presents

A couple of days ago I tried to make my first sock. Everything went fine until it came time to make the gusset, then I got confused. Fortunately my mother requested a scarf and hat for an early birthday present (she's going to Alaska for a few days) so I have another half a day for my brain to subconsciously decode the pattern. It probably would have been smarter for me to do a small baby sock instead of throwing myself into the size 2 needles Sockotta pattern, but oh well, that's just how I do things. Most of the time it turns out right in the end.

We've got the hook up

I'm on the internet at the store! Finally!

More people came into the store today than expected. We originally guessed that Mondays were going to be a slow day and that we'd eventually close on Mondays. It's time to revisit that guess. Maybe we'll just stay open every day - no days off for us, but that's easy for me to say since Jessamy has been doing all the work lately. But at least it she's enjoying it.

And can I just take the time to mention that I love the PowerBook G4 keyboard much better than the computer we have at home, I'm actually typing at a half way decent speed right now.

We saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Friday, right after we saw the orignial at the store. It was very entertaining but not perfect, and it didn't seem like Tim Burton was trying to make a perfect film. The special effects were a bit lame as well. Johnny Depp was brilliant, as he always is and always will be, which is why we have made July the Johnny Depp movie month at That Yarn Store.

Back to the store .... we've moved around a few things this weekend so now the store doesn't look as desolate but we still haven't had anyone come hang out and knit yet, which is a little dissapointing.

As for my knitting projects, on Friday Mom is going to Alaska with her sister so she requested, for an early birthday present, a hat and a muffler. I'm assuming she ment a muffler for neck, not for her car ... I'm also making a pair of socks for myself, so maybe I can get my parents' camera so I can take a picture of my projects.

Events

Today we finished our schedule of events for July. There was much negotiation and the talk of buying a TV specially for the store's Movie Nights - which some of us objected to, and others were in favor of, but I won't name names because feelings will get hurt, but then of course by the mere mention of the disagreement I've probably hurt someone's feelings. Sigh, family dynamics.

Yesterday (and if everything works out we'll be getting DSL in the store very soon, so hopefully much of my posts won't start off with "yesterday") a woman, I believe her name was Candid, came in and asked "Habla Espanol?," we answered "Un poquito" because Noah and I have taken four years of Spanish in high school, Jessamy has taken a semester of conversational Spanish, and Alex (our cousin who was visiting for the week and just went home today) knows a little Spanish. It took us what felt like five minutes to understand her first question, which we eventually understood as - do just sell yarn or do you also teach lessons? It was Ensenar, to teach, which none of us could understand. It was funny, but mostly in that sad sort of way, because she asked us a few more questions and it was a group effort to come up with a translation and an answer, but she kept asking questions, one of which was on the conversational side, so I guess our answers were decent. Jessamy, who had the least amount of Mexican blood in the room did the most communicating. We're all proud of her. Ohhhh, I just had an idea, we could have an "I wish I could speak better Spanish" knitting group, where we could sit around and knit and practice our Spanish.

The second day

We had two repeat customers! It was very exciting. Angie, who learned how to crochet on Saturday, came back again yesterday. Another woman, whose name I can't remember right now and who also learned how to knit on Saturday, came in with a garter stitch scarf made with green Bigga. It was already a full length but she wanted to make it bigger so she came in and bought more yarn. We were all very excited and actually took a picture of her and her project.

Open

Yesterday went well. Ribbon was cut, yarn was bought, music was played.

The morning was quite frantic, with preparations still going on at 11:00. We took some pictures of the opening, including some of the ribbon cutting so I'll post that as soon as we get it on the computer. It seemed like lots of the customers (who were not family friends) lived only a few blocks from the store, so that was very cool (it's going to be a struggle to learn all of your names). There was three women (a daughter, mother, and grandmother) who stayed at the store for around three hours. Jessamy taught the mother how to crochet and it was amazing how quickly she got into it. The daughter knit (I think) and the grandmother wanted nothing to do with the yarn, much like my grandmother. Several people told us we needed more shelves (we only have three, but right now all our merchandise fits perfectly into those three shelves). The band was amazing. None of us new what to expect, so we were all pleasantly surprised.

And now I'm off to eat Dim Sum. Yum.

Deep breath before the plunge

The past two weeks have been frantic. All of us have been putting things off, coming up with new things to buy, getting mad at each other, and had a brief panic attack about the shelves. Surprisingly, today is turning out to be very mellow - the deep breath before the plunge. We still have shelve problems, some yarn still doesn't have their info sheet made, and we haven't put any yarn on the shelves yet, but it all seems manageable. But the real test is tomorrow, and I promise to post the results.

more yarn

yesterday we met with our third rep. We bought lots of Louet, yarn from the Fibre Company and Claudia Hand Painted Yarns, sweaterkits, pick up sticks, and needles from skacel. Later today we'll be buying the rest of our needles.

I haven't had much time for knitting lately, what with the store opening in two weeks (less than). Sigh.

Shirt and Classes

I just realized I haven't written about my knitting projects in a while. I'm working on a shirt. It's blue and bumpy and beautiful. Ok, maybe not the beautiful part, but it is blue and bumpy. And my camera still doesn't work so I can't show a picture of it. Argh.

I don't think I've mentioned the classes yet ....
We'll be having free beginning knitting and crochet classes on our opening weekend - July 9th and 10th - the website has slightly more details. www.thatyarnstore.

busy busy

Today was once again a busy day. We went to a small business business near our house and talked to someone there about press releases, we worked on our press releases, copied our flyer onto colored paper, ordered business cards with our logo on it, went to the local farmers market and passed around flyers, went to a grand opening of a cowboy store a couple of blocks from our store, worked on the website. All of this for you.

July 9th!

We've picked an opening day! It's very, very soon. Very, very scary too. We figure at least for the first day we'll offer free beginning classes if a ball of yarn is purchased. I think we should offer free beginning classes all the time, but that still has to be decided.

We went to pick up another couch today, it's green. Unfortunately we had to rent a u-haul because we don't have a flat bed truck so it's an expensive couch now.

Lets see ... we still have to get a sign, dad's meeting with someone tomorrow, and we still need shelves, dad has taken it upon himself to build them.

What would you do if you had a yarn store?

website!

Our website is up - thatyarnstore.com

Check it out!

Poor blog

Poor blog, I've neglected thee.

Lots of exciting store developments have happened in the past few days. On Saturday the family picked out a couch, an almost matching comfy chair, and some groovy lamps for the store. We also bought some nice chairs for the table that dad will be making (it's going to be a big table for people to sit at, with enough space to spread out your projects). On Sunday some of us cleaned up the floor and applied varnish to half of the store.

And ... today we bought yarn! How exciting! We actually went to a distributor's house and spent three hours looking through binders which contained small examples of yarns by the manufacturers he works with. We bought some Debbie Bliss, some Sirdar, lots of novelty yarns by Knitting Fever. I think we had a nice first purchace.

Another exciting develpment is that we now have a logo. woohoo.

I'm back

The family just went to Oberlin to see F graduate from college. But now we're back ... While on the plane I knit M a scarf, it was done in a moss stitch (k,p on an odd number of stitches). I knit three colors together and alternated between 5 yarns, with a rowan polar yarn being used throughout the scarf. Unfortunately my camera is out of batteries and I don't have access to the camera's software so I can't post a picture of it. Oh well.

Hat!

I finished my hat. It's not perfect, but oh well. I had the hardest time picking a trim pattern. I didn't like the trim they featured in the book (Hip to Crochet) so I tried a bunch of versions, decided to go with a double crochet, got about half way through, and then decided to see if a half double crochet with (I think) three chains would work. It turned out it looked better, but then I had to undo all the trim so I could start over. Anyway, after it took me forever to undo the half-double three chain thing I decided I had spent enough time on the trim thank you very much and continued with the double crochet. The flower was equally as annoying. After about 45 minutes of trying different chain lengths and patterns I decided to hell with it and went with the one you see in the picture. Arg. The book called for Bulky yarn and a size H/8 hook. I used the Lions Brand mohair and a size 6 hook (and I crochet pretty tight, too). So, if you start this project I suggest you use a sport-weight yarn or a smaller hook. Also, I had to increase more times than they called for. If I had gone with the actual directions in the book then even a small-headed lemur couldn't have fit into that hat. Just had an idea, maybe the publisher has a note online about corrections ... Nope, no corrections on the hat. Hmmm, maybe it's just me? Anyway I did two more increases on the seventh row ( in the frontish) and an increase on the eight( in front and in back) then one on both sides on the 11th row and I think one or two more increases but I can't seem to find them and I didn't write it down cuz I'm cool like that ... Basically I was just putting the hat, on saying oh my that's two tight, then frogging at least half a row and putting an increase.

Moving right along

So things are moving along with the store. S has picked color, light blue. We have a start date, July 9th (I think?), and D has already contacted yarn manufacturers. We obviously already have a store front picked out too, but I won't divulge the actual address, yet.

The knitting projects are also moving along too, it's not just a crochet hook anymore. Unfortunately I'm not 90% happy with my hat, but more about that when I actually finish the thing.

So why on earth am I referring to everyone my their first name initial? I'm not quite sure, and I do agree it's a little weird, ok maybe it's more than a little weird. I suppose it's just a precaution against using full names because I will eventually not be content with our actual names and will then go back to all the postings and refer to myself as Crescendo, and all the rest of my family as Ubermeister, Crepe, and LaFawnduh.