Our Q2 Summer Fiber KAL is right around the corner! We know for some of you, you would happily welcome some warm weather to melt all the snow you’ve gotten recently. The sunshine is heading our way to let’s start planning our summer wardrobes! For this KAL, you can knit any pattern using yarn with a “summery” fiber content: linen, cotton, bamboo, silk, sea cell, or Outlast. To earn the bonus star, choose a yarn with 60% or more summer fiber. Here are some of Jessica’s favorite pattern suggestions paired with yarns she thinks would work up beautifully!

Handmaiden Fine Yarns Flaxen – A luxury for sure, but we can’t resist the beautiful texture and drape that Handmaiden’s Flaxen works up with! This yarn is labeled a sportweight but we love it knit up at a looser gauge for an airy look, but knit it a bit denser and you have the perfect beach cover-up.

BeachCOMBER  A perfect summertime tee! I love the asymmetrical hemline and the delicate eyelet raglan increases.

Waves of Lace  The rows and rows of lace of this top and matching scarf are so mesmerizing!

Boo Humbug  I love how kwuntong adapted Boo Knits’ beautiful Boo Humbug pattern to work with a single skien of Flaxen. With a project at this size, you could easily qualify for the Fun Sized option in our Summer Yarns KAL.

Nerd Girl Yarn Winning – Another silk and linen blend, this customer favorite is simply incredible. Every time I see a new project pop up using this yarn, my heart starts to race!

The Sunlight Shawl for Sad People Pure and simple, we love vwarner6’s Sunlight Shawl for Sad People, and especially knit up with the sunny color Regenerate!

Estuary – Wow, just look at all the beautiful detail, texture, and movement in knittbusiness’ beautiful shawl!

Poetry in Motion –  twitch knit a beautiful cardigan using Winning, and winning it is! The color Windu is the perfect choice for this lightweight summer cardi.

Malabrigo Mora – Pure luxurious mulberry silk spun up at a dense fingering weight, and hand dyed with Malabrigo’s beautiful color palette!

Mora Pearl Cowl  A two-skein project, this cowl simply screams GLAMOUR! A perfect piece for chilly mornings when a heavy scarf may be too much, but you still need a little something-something to give you a bit of warmth.

3 Color Cashmere Cowl Having a hard time choosing just one color? I understand, sometimes you just need all the colors and I love the ones Kirsanth chose for her 3 Color (not quite) Cashmere Cowl!

Silk ‘N’ Scribbles I am so ready to cast this on right now! Several knitters have paired beautiful Mora with bulky weight yarns (I suggest Malabrigo Rasta, Madelinetosh Home, or ASAP) to create this eye-catching shawl.

Shibui Knits Silk Cloud – This fuzzy, fluffy favorite can sometimes be a bit tricky to work with, but the payoff is always so rewarding!

Wisp Such a classic pattern and perfect for lightweight yarns with tons of halo. I especially love JessicaDawn’s Seafoam Wisp using the color Pool.

Mohair Bias Loop  I adore a simple cowl, and McKate’s modification to this pattern is a perfect exaple – these gentle, simple stripes look so delicate with Silk Cloud.

Cirrus This is the sort of garment I want to live in 24/7! The toughest part would be choosing a color but I’m partial to Imperial or Tango.

Juniper Moon Farms Neve – This is no ordinary cotton yarn. Neve is a worsted weight chain ply yarn comes in a beautiful array of solid colors, and if you haven’t worked with a Pima cotton before, you’re in for a treat! Try using needles with blunter tips with this yarn for less ‘splitting’ while working with it.

Topiary  So many knitter’s shy away from knitting with black, but I think they may change their minds with one look at ChristenParzych’s beautiful stole! Just look at that stitch definition – wow!

Sailor  Nothing screams summer like cheerful stripes – sparkley’s Summer Sailor top hits the spot!

Rupert Sweater Vest Perhaps stripes aren’t up your alley as you prefer a more bold pattern. The Rupert Sweater Vest is just for you and is knit using mosaic color work so you only work one color per row, easy-peasy!

We can’t wait to see your summery projects! You can cast-on starting April 1st but feel free to plan and swatch your project now. You can pair a summer fiber yarn with any other yarn but we will base your award-yardage on the amount of summer yarn you use.

We have had a few customers ask how we do it when it comes to our Black Friday Sale. Well, over the years, we have gotten it down to a science. A sweaty, tiring, and fast-paced science but a science, nonetheless. The kitties look like little worker bees for 2 days straight. Everyone knows their task so we turn up the music, pull thousands of skeins of yarn off the shelves, and ship hundreds of orders.

For those of you who don’t know, we sometimes have a Black Friday Sale. It’s a random sale so you don’t know how much of a discount you will receive until you place your order. The percentage-off ranges from 15% – 100%. That’s right, your order could be free! The sale lasts from 9 AM – 4 PM, with a 10K preview starting at 8 AM. To give you perspective, we received 1,651 orders on November 25, 2016.

Now, here are our very general procedures. As the day goes on, it can become a free for all where all hands are on deck & we do whatever needs to get done so we can go enjoy some left-over turkey. Let’s start with a map of the shop.

Preparation

Lindsay is the queen of getting prepared. She starts pre-making and stock piling boxes in August. The warehouse slowly begins to fill up with piles of USPS boxes which we try really hard not to knock over. Lindsay’s learned a few things over her 8 years of Black Fridays. She makes the self-sealing boxes last – the glue releases when the warehouse gets hot in summer. While Lindsay makes boxes, Janine & Tracey make prize packs until their arms hurt. They make at least 100 welcome packets per team and as many yarn lotto bags as they possibly can.
Day 1
Lindsay arrives super early to ship the orders from Wednesday & Thursday to get those out of the way. Then Erin & Dan come in to start the sale and the rest of the kitties arrive at 8. Erin adds the Black Friday rules/information to the main page & then turns the sale on at 8 for 10K Clubbers. I bet that’s the best feeling – like starting trading on Wall Street or pressing the button in Willy Wonka’s glass elevator.
We have a team huddle around 8:30 where Erin assigns us to our stations. We split into pulling, checking, and shipping groups. Erin is in charge of the customer service e-mail, sorting orders into box sizes, and putting out fires like mismatched yarn.
The pullers are generally Jessica, Janine, Tracey, and Jenny. Once Erin sorts the orders into their box sizes, the pullers grab buckets and start zooming around the store & warehouse. By lunch, the shelves have absolutely exploded! It’s so hard to find that one last skein of Candombe on Sock that we have to clear a whole cube and lay out the skeins on the floor. You’d be surprised how skeins can hide!

Emily, Amy, and Kinsey check and pack orders. They put three tables into the Sorting/Packing area to serve as packing stations with tissue paper, lotto cards, and big cups of coffee. We try to designate each table to a different box size because that’s how we pull orders, by size, starting with the largest box size. Once we’ve checked each order for accuracy, added top tissue paper, and made sure any prizes earned are included, the checkers move the boxes into Shipping.

Dan sets up an extra shipping station and mans the shipping office with Lindsay. Dan likes to listen to classic 90s music so he can ship to the beat. Lindsay is an absolute beast on Black Friday. All we hear is shipping labels being continuously printed and her mighty tape gun! Once Dan & Lindsay fill up one cart with orders ready to ship, they start the pile in the back of the warehouse by Bay 1 where your orders await USPS.

At Noon, we break for lunch. Erin buys the kitties pizza from their favorite joint and we all sit in the Knit Night area to chat about anything but yarn! Our feet are killing us by now and, according to a few pedometers, we’ve already taken over 12,000 steps. Then, it’s back to the action! We work our way through the box sizes until the first USPS pick up of the day. We arrange for multiple pick ups in the biggest truck they have!

Day 2
Back at it again! We can usually get through majority of the bigger boxes on the first day so Day 2 is for our “little boxes” and padded envelopes. The padded envelopes are our favorite for 2 reasons: 1. They usually only contain 1-2 skeins so we pull them very quickly 2. We can sit on the floor to pack these since we don’t have to look down into a box to pack them.
We can only get 1 pick up from USPS on Saturday so, whatever we have ready to ship after around 11 AM, Dan has to take to the post office in his big truck. We have to play Tetris to fit as many packages as possible in his truck bed – we even fill up his passenger seat that sometimes has Levi or Molly’s car seat strapped in. Those packages are extra safe!

Then we rest. We go home, pull out our knitting, and couch camp on Sunday only to come back on Monday to try to put the store back together. Once everything is said and done, we only remember how hard we worked and how great it feels to have such an awesome team. We cheer each other on, Erin dances around the store to pep us up, and we all know we can depend on one another to help with anything that needs to be done. We are just a big family!

Fun Facts
In 2016, Erin planned games to keep the kitties on their toes during the sale. She made BINGO cards with spaces like “Mismatched Yarn” and “Packed a Finisher’s Prize,” she hid small trinkets (nail polishes & flashing rings) in random places around the store for the kitties to find, and even did a raffle!

In 2015, we forgot to give USPS the scan sheets which create the tracking numbers for your packages. We had to drive to the post office and track down the truck!

During the very first Black Friday Sale when Erin was still working out of just her bedroom closet, she ran out of tissue paper! She called her Mom hysterically crying because didn’t think she would get more than 40 orders – WRONG!

2016 was the first year that Levi and/or Molly didn’t “attend” the Black Friday Sale. Levi was a great manager at age 2 so he definitely has a future in business!

Dan wear gloves while he ships. The kitties don’t exactly know why but we like it.

Woolstok from Blue Sky Fibers gives you the appearance of a trendy tweed yarn with the sheepy feel of 100% Fine Highland Wool. This plied DK weight comes in a variety of simple neutrals and subtle pops which make it great for fun hats or sweaters. You will love working with Woolstok and creating warm durable garments & accessories for the whole family!

Conversationlist by Plucky Knitter Design is just that – a conversation starter. For the body of this hat, you can choose to use the brighter colors like Spun Gold and Pressed Grapes or go neutral with Storm Cloud and Cast Iron. Then comes the real decision, what will you do with the over-sized pom pom? We think it would be fun to add a contrasting color to the neutral hat like Rusted Roof. It’s all up to you – try different color combinations with our Color Picker to see what works best for you. And, heck, Conversationlist knits up so quickly, make a few to give as gifts!

Andrea Mowry has taken the knitting world by storm with her Find Your Fade shawl so here is another one of her amazing patterns. Om Shawl is a cozy knit that can be worn in so many different ways. The strategically placed buttons allow it to be worn as a wrap, bandanna scarf, slouchy jacket, or even a poncho! Blue Sky Fibers colors lend perfectly to this versatile accessory.

#20 Striped Cowl by Courtney Cedarholm is a great unisex pattern that can be knit up for that hunk or honey in your life. This pattern was written for Woolstok as a tri-colored cowl using Storm Cloud, October Sky, and Midnight Sea but feel free to kick it up a notch with as many colors as you’d like! You know we would love to see a rainbow version of this – everything is better with a little Roy G Biv!

This cowl is knit as a flat rectangle and then sewn together at the cast-on and bind-off edges. Quick and easy ribbing will make this knit fly by but still create an eye-catching accessory.

Lastly, we chose this stunner of a cardigan, Migration by Stacey Gerbman. We can’t say enough about how much we adore this pattern so we will leave it up to the designer. “Gull stitch cables, welts, and ladders stamp this handsome unisex cardigan with bold textures. Set-in sleeves and strong vertical lines make for a flattering fit despite the over-sized styling.”

The body of this cardigan is knit flat, as well as the sleeves, and are sewn in before picking up the stitches for your button bands and double rib collar. Once you finish Migration, you will have the best time picking out buttons and showing this bad boy off around town or at your local Knit Night!