Off to TNNA!

Hey there awesome readers! We have been super-busy getting ready for TNNA and now it's here! Jennifer will be doing the show thing all week, but don't worry! I'm still here with my posse to answer any questions and take/get orders out! So whether you're in sunny Long Beach at TNNA or if you're minding the homefront to make sure nothing crazy happens, have a great day!

"Alpaca With A Twist, this is Captain Crunch! How can I help you?"

Surino!

If you were one of the people who saw Surino at TNNA and have been patiently waiting....it's finally here! If not, then I'll give you the stats.

Surino is our brand new yarn! It's a triple-first for us, it's our first Suri alpaca yarn, it's our first sport-weight yarn, and it's our first yarn milled in the US! I know- seriously exciting stuff. Let's see....it's 70% suri alpaca, 30% merino, comes in 7 colors and has 175 yards per 50g skein. The colors, top to bottom: Daffodill, Gray, Sage, Baltic Blue, Plum, Natural, Rose Quartz

My sweater! It's in Gray and with a little luck and a lot of midnight knitting, it should be ready for TNNA in Long Beach. It's soooo soft- I think I might need a bag of Surino in every color.

Anyhoo, that's our little Surino teaser to get you craving some suri-softness. Happy Knitting and have a great day!

Can't Live With Them, Can't Live Without Them

I bet you think I am going to write about men, right? Well in my life it is a computer. I am sitting here typing on a compouter with no "u", a "j" that is about ready to fall off and an "o" that only works when you hit it hard. I sent a whole message to my sister without any "o's" before I realized I had a problem. Believe it or not it isn't this computer I have had the problem with. Just about one month ago my main point of sale computer stopped working in the middle of running a report. Like all of us have done a million times when the computer locked up I turned it off, waited, and turned it back on. Little did I know I would never again see the information on that computer. After countless numbers of hours trying to retrieve all of the 6 years of information it was decided to send the computer to computer heaven. I know everyone is asking how could I not have all of my data backed up? Well my external hard drive stopped working. I bought a new one at the same time as the dyeing disaster. It came with its own software and I never took the time to learn how to use it. Now the computer was also a fancy computer which was supposed to create it's own backup with a mirrored drive system but as luck would have it this also failed. I may not have helped myself but I can't begin to tell you the number of friends, family, and customers that now are backing up their system that didn't a month a ago. Oh yea ours also backs up every file that was changed the day before at midnight. Lesson learned and thank goodness for good old fashioned hard copies.

Join us for Super Scarf Knitting!

We'll be at the Creation Cafe on Wednesday, November 17th from 6-9pm

Address is 337 West 11th Street, Indianapolis IN 46202

Yarn and needles available for $15, knitters handy to get you started! Free wine tasting for those knitting and giveaways and prizes from Creation Cafe and Euphoria. Should be a great time!

Crunch the 3-legged cat has been extra chatty today. She's either telling me that she would like some Gravy Lover's Fancy Feast or that she would like to wish all of our readers a HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

quiet...too quiet

So one of the things we are working on is really connecting with the knitters instead of only yarn store owners. We still love our LYS owners, but we love to talk to EVERYONE. Me especially- I'm quite the chatterbox.

So if you're on Ravelry, we'd love to hear from you. We're got our own group (Alpaca With A Twist) and you can see all sorts of fun things like news, new colors, and now there's a thread of people's projects (mostly just mine so far, but I would really love to see yours!). To make it a little more interesting over there on Ravelry, Jennifer and I have decided to put together a little goodybag for our winners every month. "But Paige!" you say, "how can I win said goodybags?"

It's easy! Go to the "What are you making?" thread and post a picture of your projects with Alpaca With A Twist yarn or fiber. If you're working with our roving, we totally count handspun as a project. Then talk about your project a little bit. Say something along the lines of Hi, I'm blergety-blerg, and I'm making a sweater for my blerg with some Highlander. And then at the end of the month, I'll go through and put all of the people who submitted pictures into a drawing (multiple projects count for multiple chances!) and then I'll pick one name totally at random and then send you a goodybag.

"But Paige!" you ask, "what's in the goodybag?".

I don't know yet, but it will be awesome. Go get your chat on over there at the Alpaca With A Twist group, and let's see what sort of awesome we can dish out. Can't wait to hear from you!

oops

So remember that neon yarn from the last post? We've been slowly rehanking and tidying it up for a while now and you know what- it's not bad. It's actually kinda cool. There are some really awesome skeins in there (one of which may or may not have "Paige Is Awesome" written in to it with blue dye) so we're going to let you guys get some of our new limited-edition colorway called "oops". There's absolutely nothing wrong with it- it just didn't quite match the color we needed it to. Jennifer took it out West last week to a show and a few people got a bunch to sell for October/Breast Cancer Awareness month since it's a little on the pinky side.

So here's our color- which you can buy at the cost of normal, non-handpainted Socrates. But you might want to call quickly- I don't think it will be hanging around very long.