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Steve is live from Tent Sale without Kathy! This is a fun show, so enjoy listening.

Guest: Kristin Nicholas, author and owner of Leyden Glen Farm. Kristin was visiting our Fleece Market selling her delicious lamb. Steve and Kristin chat about her farm, her classes at the farm, and how she started.

Steve also previews some of the yarns under the tent. If you’re close and didn’t get a chance to make it on Saturday, there’s still Sunday! Come on down May 20th 10:00pm-4:00pm.

You still have one more day to get 20% off of spinning wheels too (at the store only), so if you’ve been thinking about getting one, come visit!

Karen, our Store Manager, and Pete, our Operations Manager chat with Steve about the prep done for Tent Sale. It’s a great inside peek to how they decide what goes in the sale as well as Karen and Pete’s jobs.

Check out the fun photos from Saturday on our Facebook page here!

This weekend at our store, we have the event everyone looks forward to – our Tent Sale and Fleece Market! It’s a great time with great deals, and one of the rare times we’re open on a Sunday. Come see us Saturday, May 19th 10:00am-5:30pm, or Sunday, May 20th 10:00am-4:00pm (or both days!)

Check out our tents going up for this weekend!

If you’ve never been to our Tent Sale, it’s a pretty spectacular event – both in huge yarn savings and in the amount of fun. We set up a huge tent in front of the store and Steve packs it with incredible yarn savings – amazing prices on full bags of yarn. So, you can get a whole sweater of yarn at a price below even what you find in our closeout section!

As you know, we’re moving our shipping and Customer Service departments just a few miles down the road to Easthampton soon, and we’re not going to want to move all of this yarn, so I have a feeling there are going to be some pretty impressive savings.

There will also be discounted books, patterns, and accessories that are definitely worth a peek!

They’re predicting spectacular weather for this weekend, so if you’re within driving distance, hop in the car and take a trip to enjoy some outdoor (and indoor) yarn shopping!

Not only will you save on yarns in the tent, we also have all of our May Anniversary Sale yarns, so you can shop them in person. Need to stock up on some stash staples? Now’s the perfect time!

There will be registers set up in the tent and in the store, but you don’t have to pay for your purchases separately. Browse the tent, head into the store for Anniversary yarns, and pay in the store, or the other way around. Or, you can pick the shortest line! There will be lots of staff members around to assist you too.

Another helpful tip: If you have reusable shopping bags, they’re super handy for carrying your purchases around. We do have our regular shopping baskets, but they have a tendency to get scooped up, so if you bring your own tote, you can get right to the browsing!

Are you a spinner? Are you looking to get a wheel, some equipment, or some fiber? All of our in-stock spinning wheels, supplies, and fiber will be 20% off for this weekend only (and only in the store).

As if all of this weren’t enough, on Saturday we have our annual Fleece Market! We have 18 vendors coming with fiber, yarn, bags, and more.  This year, joining us we have:

From Fiber to Fashion
Jean Willmann
Red Barn Alpacas
Barberic Farm
Sojourner Design
Foxfire Fiber & Designs
Leyden Glen Lamb (Kristin Nicholas)
Galloping Jester LLC
Brook’s Bend
Tassawassa Ridge Fiber Farm
Artemisia Ink Studio Arts
Rag Hill Farm
Moonshine Design at Keldaby
Whispering Winds Alpaca Farm
Stitched by Jessalu
The Celadon Studio
Kama Suutra Fiber Arts
Winterberry Farm

They’ll be located around our parking lot, so make sure you stop by and check out their amazing products.

We hope that you can join us for this fun, fiber-filled weekend!

Yes, that’s right, 22 days since I blogged.  Where those 22 days went is a mystery.  The store has been busy, we did have the Tent Sale, we celebrated my b’day, we had the photoshoot for the next catalog, the boys’ spring sports schedules (baseball and lacrosse) are in full swing which means most nights there’s at least a game or a practice – sometimes both and neither are in the same town but usually at the same time.

I’ve had plenty of things to share with all of you and I often think, “oh, I need to share that on the blog” and I’ve been filing interesting tidbits in my blog folder as well.  I guess the best thing to do is to just get going again.  I won’t give you the complete update of everything all in one post.  I’ll give you a few select highlights and fit the rest in the coming days.

1.  One cool piece of news that is actually pretty current is that we FINALLY launched our new podcast blog.  You can check it out at http://readysetknit.yarn.com/ .  I’m pretty tickled about this.  I despised our old page.  When we relaunched the website it was one of the last pieces to be finished.  For anyone who has ever built a house or undergone a major renovation you can relate – the podcast page was our landscaping.  It’s common in a house build that by the time it’s all done and the landscaping is all that is left, folks tend to run out of steam or money or both.  We were out of steam and needed to launch the site and although we weren’t out of money, we had spent enough.  You always say “oh, we’ll get back to that project and finish it up” and the WOOOSH – a bunch of time passes and what was once a not so big project turns into a huge one – like migrating 170+ podcast episodes and show notes, etc.   It’s got a few kinks we need to deal with.  The Disqus comment software needs to be added and there are a few other things but all in all, it’s done and I’m really pleased with it.  Be sure to check it out!

2.  Our home computer has been dying a slow, painful death.  I can honestly say that it contributed to my lack-o-blogging.  It was sooooo sloooow and froze often and was just a big royal pain to deal with.  I hit the wall with it while Steve was at Stitches South.  I emailed IT and said “I don’t care what you get me, it just needs to be fast, smokin’ fast, lightening fast – fast, fast, fast”.  I have no idea of the technical specs, nor do I care.  It’s fast.  REALLY fast.  I am happy.

3.  My new super fast computer does not have any ports in the front for my camera cards (but it’s fast and I bet when those get added my pictures will load really fast).  I finally found my thumb drive thing that works with my card so I can now upload pictures again.  Which means I can talk about the Tent Sale!

4.  Tent Sale was awesome.  The weather was picture perfect!  We kicked off Saturday with our traditional live broadcast of Ready, Set, Knit!  It’s the only “live” show we do all year and when I say live, I mean it.  Our show originates as a radio broadcast on WHMP so from 9:00am-9:30am on the Saturday morning of Tent Sale we are 100% broadcasting live.  It’s always a great show.  Be sure to check it out at http://readysetknit.yarn.com/ – it’s show #176.

Saturday of Tent Sale also features our annual Fleece Market.  I think we had a total of 14 or 15 vendors this year.  We sorely missed our dear friend Barb from Foxfire Fibers.  She was dealing with a serious health issue with one of her beloved dogs and a joint infection in one of her lambs.  The good news is Mishka and Mistral are both doing better which is a huge relief.

We had great crowds all weekend and at times on Saturday we were walking a very fine line between control and chaos.  Thanks to everyone who came out to shop!  A big thanks to our amazing staff who were simply awesome!

Don’t let this shot fool you.  We have a 10 x 2o and a 10 x10 tent side by side set-up.

Thanks for your patience in my absence!  Did you make it to the Tent Sale?  Let me know in the comments what your experience was like!

Kathy

Thanks to everyone who joined us this weekend for our 7th Annual Tent Sale and Fleece Market.  What a grand time we had!

Saturday was just a perfect day – partly sunny, warm, but not too warm.  As the Fleece Market vendors were arriving and setting up, Steve and I did our weekly radio show live!  Once we got on the air, it when smoothly, but our poor producer Jaz and AE Julia were a bit frazzled up until the very last second with a malfunctioning tent (which we didn’t need anyways) and one plug that wasn’t plugged.

The thrill (and fear) of a live broadcast is you never no what’s going to happen.  I mean, who could’ve predicted we’d see these beautiful alpacas literally hopping out of the back of a Suburban?

Before going on air, Jonathan informed me we had baby alpacas and asked me to walk over to visit them with him.  They were adorable:

Seriously adorable:

They made the sweetest baby alpaca sounds.  I just loved them:

Once the show was over, the parking lot was filling and the shoppers were completely disregarding our 10 am official start.  We love that about our customers – no fear!

That’s the last of the pictures I took for the day.  I didn’t move from my register at the tent except to run and inhale on piece of pizza.  I think it was around 1pm and I seriously could not navigate my way across the store to the kitchen.  It was that crazy.

Thanks to everyone for their patience in line and waiting for help and especially to our incredible staff.  They were absolutely amazing and we are truly grateful.

Our Anniversary Sale continues through next Monday, 5/25 (Memorial Day).  You won’t see savings and deals like the ones we’re offering for another year!

I know many, many posts were made on Ravelry, but if you were at the sale, I’d love to know how the day was for you!  If you blogged about it, be sure to share your link!

I also have some video of our live broadcast that I will be posting later – just need to see how good of a videographer the fabulous Miss Julia is!

Kathy

That’s right folks!  It’s the third weekend in May and it can only mean one thing – it’s time for our 7th Annual Tent Sale and Fleece Market! 

This is one of the craziest sales of the year and it’s what we call an “all hands on deck” weekend.  Tomorrow – everyone is required to work (unless they are graduating from college, getting married, etc.) 

Oh – don’t worry, there will be yarn under the tent in the morning – it’s all being staged and prepped:

Saturday is super special because (a) we broadcast our weekly radio show live from the tent and (b) the Fleece Market will be in full swing – more on that in a minute.

I know you are all dying to know about yarns – what’s on sale, what’s under the tent.  Let me give you a few highlights.  Sorry, no linkage because the tent sale prices are only available at the tent!

Kureyon Discontinued Colors – $47.50/bag of 10.  Folks – that works out to $4.75 per skein and it normally retails for $8.95!  Steve has obviously lost his mind.

Adrienne Vittadini – $27.50/bag of 10 (you can do the math) – normally $8.95.

Dive Zenith (great worsted wt superwash yarn) – $25.00/bag

Rowan Bamboo Tape – $35.00/bag

Fiesta Kokopelli – $7.49/skein – that’s crazy!

Oh – here’s something super special.  Steve bought a HUGE lot of closeouts from Universal.  All 100% wool, all 100 GRAM BALLS – $30.00/bag.

We have an amazing selection of accessories and bags at an ADDITIONAL 25% off (now’s the time to be thinking about gifts for teachers, holiday gifts, birthdays, etc).

We have a great selection of larger size Colonial Rosewood needles at $9.99 – savings of 75%!!

Now, this last tidbit is what really makes me think Steve has gone off the deep end.  He’s GIVING AWAY YARN.  That’s right folks – we’ll have free yarn.  It is not junk, it’s not leftovers, it’s not a big tangled mess you need to deal with.  It’s some really decent yarn from a yarn company YOU KNOW AND LOVE.  Please – don’t let your eyes be bigger than your belly as my mom used to say.  Share the free yarn love.

Okay – onto the Fleece Market.  Fleece Market only runs on Saturday.  This is one of our favorite aspects of this weekend.  We invite local shepherds to bring their fleeces, handspun and hand-dyed yarns and it’s like our own mini-festival.  We are so privileged to be here in Western Mass among an incredibly rich fiber community.  We love being able to give these folks yet another opportunity to share their passion.  We’ve been told there  will be Llamas and we are also confident about Alpacas (I’m really hoping they bring them this year).  Buddy the herding dog will be with us again – we love Buddy.

You can check out a complete list of the vendors here.  Also, Barb Parry of Foxfire Fiber will be vending again this year an in addition to her beautiful yarns, she will also be selling and signing copies of her new book Teach Yourself Visually Hand-Dyeing.

Finally – don’t forget WEBS – America’s Bead Store!  They are participating in the festivities and will have their own tent full of great bargains and specials throughout the store!  Our Store Manager Barbara is just back from a show and we have tons of new pearls!

Now – a few tips:

We will have someone directing traffic and we have access to a large amount of parking.  Do not get discouraged.

We will have SIX registers running – 4 in the store and 2 in the tent.  Our strongest ringers are on register (including Steve & I) and every register has a dedicated bagger.  Trust me – no matter how long the lines, we will move them along.

Pictures are welcome.

Bring your coffe and be sure to eat breakfast.  I suggest bringing a snack too 🙂  If nothing else, we’ll appreciate it 🙂

Play nicely and if you have questions we have PLENTY of staff on to help.  Everyone has an assigned area/job.  Even if you think the nice young man in the warehouse can’t answer your question -ask.  Even if he can’t, he’ll get you to the right person.

Spinning Wheels, equipment and fiber are on sale at 20% off throughout the weekend.  In stock items only, no special orders.

Saturday and Sunday 10-5:30.  Come early either day and we’re unlikely to turn you away – show up at 5:15 on Saturday, well, as much as we love you, we’ll be dead on our feet.  We’re going to do our best to bring the lights down at 5:30.  Sunday – we tend to wrap up between 4 and 5pm. 

Smith parents of graduating seniors – if we think you are going to miss graduation, we will send you on your merry way and hold your purchase.  Trust me – we know who you are – you’re the best dressed customers we have all weekend 🙂  Congratulations to you and your graduate!

Speaking of graduates – a special CONGRATULATIONS to our own Elisabeth who works in the store! Yay Elisabeth!  She’s graduating and coming on board full-time!

Steve will be running one of the registers in the store, I’ll be on a register in the tent so be sure to stop by and say hi!

Okay folks – here we go!  Tent Sale & Fleece Market 2009 is almost here!!

Kathy

Whew!  The blog has been a hopping place recently!  Thanks for the continued feedback on the videos – more to come there and I’ll continue to work to improve their quality. 

Steve and I are headed west this week – to Stitches West to be exact and I’ve got several loose ends that I haven’t had the chance to blog about over the past couple of weeks, so I’m going to toss them all together here in this post.  Let’s jump right in!

1.  Aussie Wildfires – I cannot imagine anyone who has not heard of the devastating wildfires that have rampaged in Australia.  We have many, many customers in Australia, one of my favorite podcasts, Sticks and Strings, is based in Australia and hosted by David Reidy and our warehouse manager Nick is originally from down under.   It has been a very worrisome time.  There are many efforts going on, most of which have been neatly summarized here on Ravelry and also here by the lovely Suzanne.  Times are tight all around so if any of the initiatives suit you, I encourage you to help out.  If not, just send some good thoughts and vibes Down Under as I am sure they will be appreciated too.

2.  Knitting in the news – a report via the BBC came out this past week that indicates that knitting, along with other activities such as quilting and reading can help delay the onset of memory loss.  So, just like keeping ourselves moving at any age, exercising our brains can have a positive, long-term affect!  Are any of us surprised?  No, but it’s nice to have the validation.

3.  Interweave Press announced a new on-line community for hand-spinners earlier this month.  I am not a spinner and I will honestly tell you I haven’t spent much time on the site.  If you are a hand-spinner or fan of Spin-Off magazine, I encourage you to take the time and check out the new site and community.  I’d love for folks to report back in the comments their thoughts!

4.  Just a reminder, there are a few days left on the contest we are sponsorign on KnitPurlGurl’s site!  If you haven’t visited her site, please do so!  Also, her blog post today is very interesting and I’d love for you all to give some feedback! 

5.  I never did give much of a TNNA recap, other than the weather reports.  Sorry!  I’m sure most of you have read accounts of the show on other blogs, so I’ll refrain from rehashing.  I did want to share this photo with you.  Steve & I saw this on our first day and it just made us giggle:

The car wasn’t parked in a spot that would make us think this was a vendor – which is even funnier from a yarn point of view 🙂

Then there’s the beauty of Malabrigo:

6.  For those of you who listen to the podcast, Steve has been lamenting about the size of the snow piles in our parking lot.  He wanted to share this with you:

Looks like this:

It has been a tough, tough winter.

7.  We have a cool new event that we’ve added to the schedule.  I will blog in more detail about this, but I wanted to get it out to everyone in the area.  Barb Parry, owner of Foxfire Fibers and the most pampered flock I’ve ever known will be at WEBS on Saturday, March 21 from 10:30-5:00 with a trunk show of her yarns and garments.  She does several regional sheep & wool festivals (including Rhinebeck) and sells her yarns on her website.  For the first time, she’ll be at WEBS with many of her yarns available for sale.  You can talk to Barb directly about her process, the sheep and more!   What makes this event even more special is that she’ll be hosting a slide presentation at 11:00am about the Adventures in Yarn Farming – a peek at the secret life of sheep and the lengths to which a shepherd will go – all for the love of yarn!  Special prize give-aways.  I didn’t even realize there would be special give-aways!  Awesome!  Barb is a dear friend and her yarns are just spectacular.  I encourage you to make some time on 3/21 to come in and visit with her!  If the date simply doesn’t work, Barb will be a vendor at our annual Fleece Market on Saturday, May 16th.  You can check her yarns out at www.foxfirefibers.com and keep up with life on the farm with her Sheep Gal Blog.  Just wait – we’re only weeks away from the Lamb Cam!

8.  Two of our dearest customers were in the other day and as they were visiting in the back offices (yeah – I mean it when I say they are dear to us – they get free hall passes) I noticed they were each carrying armloads of a new closeout Poems.  They stoppped by our office to chat and I asked what they had going on and the lovely Mary showed me this:

Are you gasping?  You all better be gasping at the beauty that is this bud of a project.  Just look at what Mary is turning this yarn into!!  Just a basic crocheted hexagon recipe, finish each hexagon leaving a long end and join each finished hex as you go.  Not necessary if you prefer the finishing all at once.  Mary is a pro and opts to join them as each is finished.  Poems is a lovely yarn – we have some discontinued colors for $3.99 a skein.  I have no idea how much an afghan will take, but I’ll keep you posted (and maybe even do a little math for you all as well and give you an estimate).  For those of you thinking “Bah, crochet, I don’t crochet”, well you could if you wanted to but if you still resist, there are many a knit square options or even a Log Cabin with a couple of complimentary colorways. .  . now I’ve got you thinking, don’t I?

There.  Done.  Ends woven in. Blog Post finished.  Thoughts, questions, comments?  Better yet, what are your loose ends this week?

I’ve got a Stitches preview coming tomorrow!  I’ll also be doing my best to update from the show.  Plus – just wait until next week – we’ll be ruffling our chicken feathers in a big way!

Kathy

Yes – it’s that time again! That crazy wonderful, let’s clear out as much yarn as possible time of year! The WEBS Annual Tent Sale! Our two day extravaganza kicks off tomorrow at 10am and runs until 5:30pm. We’ll be back open on Sunday at 10am for Tent Part Deux! Steve has put together some incredible deals and steals under the tent, we’ll have garments for sale, many books marked down 30% PLUS all of the anniversary sale yarns are still on sale!

Tomorrow has some extra fun excitement built in. First, we’ll be recording our weekly radio show/podcast, Ready, Set, Knit! LIVE from the tent!! This will be the second time we’ve done a live show. If you live in the area or are on your way to the sale, tune into WHMP 1400 or 1240 at 9am! We’ll also be interviewing a SUPER special guest! We’ve got a knitting rock star in the house this weekend!

We have our entire WEBS team working tomorrow – we’ll have SEVEN registers running (5 in the store and 2 in the tent). In the store, the three regular registers will be running, plus three more in front of the windows. There will be ONE FEEDER LINE FOR ALL FIVE REGISTERS. Every register will have one person ringing and one person bagging. We should be able to keep up pretty well. We have staff on the store floor, in the tent and in the warehouse. We have a team of folks dedicated to just restocking the tent and the store.

In addition to the sale itself, Saturday always features our Annual Fleece Market! We have 12 local farmers/shepherds coming this year and they will be selling their fleeces, yarns, etc. I think we may even have a couple of alpacas in the house! I love alpacas, so this would particularly thrill me 🙂

WEBS Beads will also be participating at their location down the street. They have their own tent with special deals. Plus, we have a ton of new inventory! Alison and I attended a show last Saturday and brought back so many new items – more pearls, more semi-precious, more faceted semi-precious strands, wood, bone and porcelain. We also just added gorgeous lampwork beads from World Peas. We have beads and larger focal beads PLUS some goddesses! Be sure to stop into the bead store if you come by this weekend! They will be open both days as well.

We look forward to seeing everyone this weekend!

Kathy