Inside the Actors Studio hosted by James Lipton has always been a fun way to get to know odd things about actors. We thought we would try our hand at this interviewing style to let you in on some quirks and smirks about the ESK kitties! We are definitely a diverse litter but somehow we all balance each other out like a crazy game of Twister!

1. Favorite / Least Favorite Word
2. Sound or Noise you Love / Hate
3. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
4. Unique or Quirky Habits
5. Best Birthday Memory
6. Favorite Soda
7. Going on a road trip, what’s your gas station car snack?
8. Favorite part of the ESK shop
9. Show you can always marathon/Movie you’ve seen 100 times
10. First thing you do when you wake up

1. Lackadaisical / Any word beginning with ‘B’
2. Wind rusting leaves / Screaming babies
3. An astronaut!
4. There has to be a pattern to my candy before I eat it. If I pour out Startbursts, I put them in rainbow order.
5. 30th – I had a Logan’s Run themed party because, in the movie, once you turn 30, they think you are reincarnated.
6. Red Hare Rootbeer
7. Starbursts
8. I tend to squish the big skeins of Blue Moon because they’re a good cuddle size.
9. Firefly / Interstellar
10. Play on my tablet – I check Facebook & Instagram while still laying in bed.

1. Lumens / Moisture
2. Thunderstorms / Crinkling plastic bags unnecessarily
3. UN Interpreter
4. I have to have scrambled eggs & toast for breakfast or I just can’t start my day.
5. My first birthday while working at ESK! The knit nighters threw me a coffee and trivia party!
6. IBC Rootbeer in the glass bottle
7. Haribo gummy bears
8. The indie dyer room that houses WSK, NBK, TIG, Yarn Love, etc.
9. Scrubs / Oceans 11, 12, 13
10. Get up and make scrambled eggs & coffee

1. Ridiculous / Potty
2. The sound of children sleeping / White noise
3. Cognitive Scientist
4. I’m obsessive about alphabetization. I regularly alphabetize my books and, if I’m at a movie or book store, and the order is wrong, I have to fix it!
5. My 8th birthday was particularly memorable because my mom made a cake to look like my Purr-tender kitty named Purry. She used a gingerbread man cake pan, ice cream cones for the ears, and iced him to look like fur!
6. Cherry Coke Zero
7. Cheddar Cheese Pretzel Combos & a Cherry Coke Zero
8. The ottoman in Emily’s office – I curl up on it when we have meetings
9. My So Called Life / Down To You & Playing by Heart
10. Get a Cherry Coke Zero from the fridge, even if I’m carrying a screaming child.

1. Panda / No
2. Woofy noise my dog, Dash, makes while dreaming / Beeping of a truck backing up
3. Field Archaeologist
4. I time myself completing various tasks like folding laundry. I don’t try to beat my best time, I just need to know how long it takes for some reason. And I count my steps!
5. My first day of kindergarten was my 5 birthday so I got to wear a paper crown all day!
6. Orange Crush
7. Honey Roasted Peanuts
8. The Madelinetosh corner that houses TML, Sock, Vintage, and Twist Light
9. The X-Files / Young Frankenstein
10. I wake up to a pair of beady eyes staring at me so I immediately take Dash out.

1. Spelunking / Moist
2. The droning of a box fan / Hearing someones dry mouth on a podcast
3. Medieval Historian
4. I only floss in my car at stop lights & I absolutely cannot sleep without my box fan, a ceiling fan won’t work.
5. I have a July birthday so we spent most of my childhood birthday’s on Sanibel Island with family having a big beach party!
6. Classic Coke
7. Gummies or Corn Nuts
8. I’m fascinated by Dream in Color Jilly and Manos del Uruguay Alegria
9. Vikings / Teen Witch
10. I purposely put my alarm clock across the room so I hobble over to turn it off.

1.  Gorgeous / I can’t even type this word because I hate it so much so here’s an acronym: Touching Uranium Really Delights Sally
2. Church bells / Cats brawling
3. I’d really like to name nail polish colors.
4. The volume in my car or on the TV has to be on an even number.
5. My 4th birthday was a carnival theme so my mom painted animals on pieces of wood, like a seal with his mouth open. Then she filled a tube sock with beans to make “fish” for us to throw in the seals mouth.
6. Cream Soda
7. Bugles and Bull’s Eyes
8. Yarn Love – it’s spectacular and smells SO GOOD!
9. The Office / The Sound of Music
10. I sit up, pet Bianca, and think about how tired I am for about 13 minutes.

1. Fluffy / Squeee!
2. Popping of bubble wrap / Squeee! (again)
3. National Geographic photographer
4. I set my alarms at odd times, never on the half or quarter hour. My morning alarm is at 3:46 AM.
5. I remember we always went ice skating when I was a kid because I have a winter birthday.
6. A&W Rootbeer
7. Sweet & Spicy jerky
8. The indie room because it smells so good!
9. Gilmore Girls / Troop Beverly Hills
10. Turn on the lights and pet my dog, Lexi!

1. Thank You / Overuse of ‘Amazing’
2. My chocolate lab, Charlie, softly snoring on the couch / Mouth noises – chewing, slurping
3. Dog trainer
4. I have to clean the sink every morning after I brush my teeth.
5. One year, my husband got me a lesson to fly a plane!
6. Diet Coke
7. Payday
8. I am drawn to the Northbound Knitting cubes.
9. BBC’s Coupling / The Italian Job
10. Put on my pedometer – gotta count those steps!

Please share your answers in the comment section below! We would love to hear your interesting answers 🙂

Have you ever wondered what we all did before we were knighted as kitties? What were our first jobs in high school? What type of jobs led us or, in some cases, forced us to adorn the fantastic title of an ESK kitty? Follow us as we go from dead end to dream job!

Jenny – From Barbizon modeling to her first job in high school as a Custard Queen at Jeannie’s Custard Palace, our darling Illustrator, Jenny, has had a very interesting journey! Her favorite job was working at the Saint Louis Science center as a Designer & Illustrator where she designed signage, came up with the wall art & color schemes for exhibits, made posters & invitations for events, and started her day at morning meetings with a rousing game of Boggle! She also freelances – designing logos, invitations, etc. for a slew of awesome companies.

Jessica also has a colorful “resume.” She started her working years as a Grocery Clerk at Publix! Then she moved on to become a Preschool teacher where she loved throwing holiday parties for her hilarious 4-5 years olds. After snack time & playgrounds lost their interest, Jess turned her gig as the “door girl” at a nightclub into a position that suited her better – she got to decorate for themed parties & events! Right before she blossomed into our Photographer, Jess worked for an apartment management company doing clerical work.

Still in high school, Emily teamed up with her 2 sisters and manned Guido’s Pizzeria in the heart of 6 Flags where she slung pizza, traded on the “6 Flags Black Market” for lemonade & cotton candy, and made some of her best memories sweating in the summer heat. During college, she worked part-time in an elementary school after school program and had the same fantastic group of kids from Kindergarten until their 4th grade year when she graduated college. Marketing-wise, she worked for a Canadian steel company, then a Realtor, and finally ESK!

Our Maine-native, Tracey, first worked as a waitress in a local diner named Grant’s Family Restaurant. As she describes her time at Grant’s, she says, “I basically just topped off coffee cups for old men.” Once out of the diner business, she got involved in Environmental Consulting as a Marketing Manager where she would write proposals & run trade show booths. In between, she was a Test Knitter and Research Assistant before moving down South to avoid the harsh Maine winters.

Janine – The first job Janine ever accepted was as a Receptionist at a car dealership. She answered phones, crunched some numbers, and met some very interesting people. During college and a little after, she hopped around a few retail positions before finding her true love – working in a research lab. She worked in a Cognitive Neuroscience Research Lab where she measured study participant’s brainwaves as they read different sentences! Janine loves Science almost as much as she loves knitting!

Our oldest kitty, Lindsay, has a fairly short work history – she is a very dedicated employee as you all can tell by our super fast shipping. Her first job in high school was at her local Piggly Wiggly as a cashier. Once she graduated, she accepted a position at a Marriott hotel where she did laundry, made breakfast, helped at the front desk, managed the housekeepers, and even drove the Marriott van. She says, “I housed tons of baseball teams, plunged a lot of toilets, but I loved the variety! No two days were alike and I never knew what I was going to find in a room!”

Lindsay’s loyal shipping assistant, Amy, took her first job at a neighbor’s catering company. She spent her after school hours decorating cake, cookies, and hand-dipping confections in chocolate. Amy then helped at Kitchen Affair, the same neighbor’s store front, where she helped prepare for cooking classes. She ran copies of recipes & helped with clean up. After graduating college, she worked & eventually retired from Commercial Real Estate as a Director of Project Management. She managed renovations at resorts from Hawaii to the Caribbean and everywhere in between. Though she spent 45 weeks out of the year traveling, she says, “They don’t build resorts in ugly places!”

Erin – Our head kitty started her journey at Hoit Cinema taking movie tickets for a mere $5.20/hr! She then moved up and spent the rest of high school as an Express lane cashier at Shaw’s Grocery. She loved competing with herself to check people out quickly which is no big surprise. After graduating college, she took a position as Copywriter. It was so terrible that she left for her lunch break and never came back! Her most recent, pre-ESK job was VP of Products & Services at a small company where she mastered search engine optimization and user conversion. After 4 years there, she started ESK, and actually remained working for another 2 years before she finally got up the courage to take on ESK full time.

We all started somewhere and were molded in different ways but ultimately, we ended up together..amongst these piles of yarn!

The first quarter is always an absolute madhouse of excitement! There are so many new things that it is somewhat hard to take in. As things settled and you got to know your new teams, the competition was seriously on! You all earned tons, and we mean TONS, of Booster Club badges, blasted through the Yarniverse, and gathered so many stars for your teams. We hope to continue the fun so read on to see what’s new in Q2!

Knit-a-longs

We are not starting any new KALs in April but we will continue working on our Space Shawls and Carson Throws. If you haven’t started, feel free to join any time! We have seen some amazing progress and look forward to awarding more store credit in the show off threads for the Carson Throw and shawl voting thread which will open at the end of April.

We will start our Freestyle KAL in May which is going to be tons of fun! We know what happens when we let you guys loose – you produce some inventive & beautiful work. As the name states, this is not a pattern-specific KAL but you must choose between 2 yardage brackets: 300-599 yard projects earn 250 yards & .5 star; 600+ yard projects earn 500 yards & 1 star.

In June, the Space Socks KAL begins. For this KAL, you must knit a pair of adult sized socks (this Ravelry search may be helpful) using any weight of our exclusive space colorways. You may choose any sock pattern and the minimum yardage requirement is 350 yards. If you complete your socks, you will earn 500 yards and 1 star for your team!

Booster Club

We know you all have been anxiously awaiting the new set of badges but wait no more! We have 6 new badges for you to earn in 2016. See what you can, will, or maybe even have already earned:

Walk Like An Estonian (20 points)
To Wear Not to Wear (20 points)
New School (10 points)
I’m So Indie (10 points)
Steeking Streaker (5 points)
Double Dutch (5 points)

New Puzzle

In lieu of trivia, we will be starting a new puzzle series on April 4th called Yarnatron 5000! If you can correctly solve the puzzle each week, you will earn 50 yards towards your Yarnathon total. That means you can earn 500 extra yards this quarter just by playing along & not buying a single thing. The puzzle will be posted each Monday on our Google doc and is due by Friday at Midnight EST, just like trivia. For the full explanation on how to solve Yarnatron’s puzzles, click here.