Knitting with Company

Announcing our Fourth Annual Cruisette.   A two and a half hour mini cruisette up the Fox River on a Paddle Wheel River Boat! Leaving from Pottawatomi Park in St Charles at 4:00pm on Sunday, September 12th, we will serve wine, drinks and desserts, and you can enjoy the lovely scenery and company of your fellow knitters and crocheters.

All levels of knitter and crocheter (and non-knitter / crocheter) are welcome.   You’ll be able to walk to the jetty from our new store! Sign Up Today!

We are thrilled to be hosting Amy Swensen (Indigirl) who is coming to do a workshop for her fabulous Cloudchaser Vest – a Ravelry favorite. The workshop will run for 3 hours on the morning of Saturday, September 18th and for 3 hours on the afternoon of Sunday, September 19th with all that knitting time in between. The cost for the workshop is $55 which includes the amazing pattern. Space is very, very limited, so please get your name on the list ASAP. We will be giving the information on homework and yarn selections etc. after we have moved.

Save the date: The crawl starts next Friday, August 13 (yes, that’s correct, Friday, the 13th) and continues through Sunday, August 22. Welcome to the first Chicago Area Yarn Crawl. About 20 stores are participating in this exciting event. Come and pick up your passport on, or after August 13th.

Each participating store will have a gift basket worth at least $100 to raffle off. Stop in and get your passport (available at all stores) stamped and enter your name for a chance to win the store’s gift basket. Each store will also be offering a discount for purchases along with a free exclusive store pattern.

If you visit at 10 stores, you’ll get a chance to participate in the grand raffle prize – a gift basket with items worth over $500. There are additional raffle tickets for visiting one store in each 5 regions and also for visiting fifteen stores. So there are opportunities to get three raffle tickets for the grand prize.

Would you like to participate in a Knitting-in-Public event at a Kane County Cougars game? Many of the professional baseball teams, including the Chicago White Sox, offer a Stitch and Pitch game each year, and now we can start one locally at a Cougars’ game right here in Kane County.

The game is Saturday, August 14th at 6 p.m. against the Peoria Chiefs, the CUBS farm team. This is a fireworks night at the ballpark. The Cougars play in Geneva at 34W002 Cherry Lane.

If we have 20 or more people attending (includes family members and non-knitting friends, too!), we can get a discount on the tickets. The Saturday night group discounted tickets will cost $12 each. We can sit and knit and enjoy the game. There may be goodies and door prizes to make the evening even more fun, and Wool and Company will have some great coupons and giveaways too.

Please email Gretl gkramer@foxvalley.net if you and your family and friends would like to go, and tell her how many tickets you want to purchase. Gretl will make arrangements to collect the money, and she’ll purchase the group tickets.

Thanks, and batter up!

Good Afternoon Wool and Company Customers:

I am dropping you a quick note to let you know that we received your donation of 86 Helmetliners, 39 Neck Gators and 38 Stocking Caps on July 16, 2010. This brings your year to date total to 419 Helmetliners, 13 Scarves, 153 Neck Gators, 25 Cards, 1 Cardigan and 52 Stocking Caps.

We appreciate your generosity because without volunteers like you this wouldn’t be possible.

Thank you for supporting our troops.

Kandy Scribner
Administrative Coordinator
Citizen SAM

www.citizensam.org

Citizen Support for America’s Military is a 501 (c)3 charitable organization.

Want to learn more about how you are supporting our troops?

Come on Wednesday July 7th at 2:30 pm to meet Dani Cortez. She will be visiting us on her Craft Culture Summer Tour and she wants to meet as many knitters as she can to talk about crafting across America.

Have you ever wondered what it is about the crafting world (and crafters) that seems to give us common threads (no pun intended) across large swaths of time and distance? What holds us together, even in different regions? What are the differences between a punk rock stitch & bitch in Seattle versus a small prayer shawl ministry in the heart of the south?

Dani Cortez, the host of the Craft Culture podcast will be visiting Wool and Company on July 7 on the first leg of a cross-country tour and would love to talk with YOU about your crafty lives and groups! This leg of what will eventually be a worldwide tour is focused primarily on knitting and spinning, and Dani plans to visit with local yarn stores, stitch & bitches, knit nights, prayer shawl ministries, and knitters on the street (among others). That means YOU could be a part of this tour!

She’ll be blogging her progress as she travels from pristine Anchorage, Alaska to Greensboro, North Carolina, as well as doing videos and podcasts highlighting her adventures. And it’s all for a good cause — the data she collects will be used for either a section of an upcoming book or a book in its entirety about the sociological and cultural impact of modern handcrafts. We’ve always known, as crafters, that what we do can impact and change both ourselves and the world around us, and now, Dani’s looking to document it firsthand.

We will have refreshments, and a couple of drawings for some cool crafty things … so make sure you come.

Those of you who are local know that this week is The Granddaddy of Festivals - Swedish Days in Geneva. It is really a huge festival and celebrates the town’s Swedish Heritage in a big way. Because staycations are the order of the day right now, it is a lovely time to come and spend with your family and friends, enjoying great bargains, good food, crafts, carnivals and all kinds of other activities. Don’t miss it.

Mid-Summer Madness Savings: Starting tomorrow, Tuesday, and running until Sunday we will offer everything in our Chicken wire bins at yet another 50% off – that means you will be saving at least 75% on the regular price of these yarns.

Watch your email and check our website during this week for other announcements of Swedish Days Specials.

To start with – all Marie Osmond purses and accessories will be 30% off and all gifts and jewelry will be 20% off. We will also have a good selection of hand knitted models available for you to snap up at great prices. And as if that is not enough we have lots of great bargains on our sidewalk tables so come early and come often for the best selection.

If you can’t make it to the store the savings on Marie Osmond are also available online for the duration of Swedish Days, subject to availability.

We will be open later in the evenings this week. So come, enjoy a stroll around Geneva, sample the great food, listen to the music, and come shop with us.

Did you know we love to have Guilds come and visit?

We have had a couple in the past few weeks and it is always fun to meet new knitters from other areas.

Here is a great photo of the Hyde Park Knitting Guild posing outside the store.

Ladies of the Hyde Park Knitting Guild

Some of these ladies have been customers since we opened, and for others it was their first visit, and we enjoyed having them.

If you’d like to arrange a group visit please contact us.

Join us for a Knitalong and win a fabulous gift basket that is worth at least $200.

Win a Gift Basket Value $200

Simply purchase a pattern book and yarn at our store from the Classic Elite Summer Collection between May 20th and July 31st; complete a project using one these fabulous yarns that we stock by July 31, 2010 provide pictures (you can upload the pictures here) of your completed item along with proof of purchase and we’ll enter your name into a drawing for the basket.  You will get one entry into the drawing for every ball of yarn that you purchase.

Choose a Pattern Book

Think that you might need some support and encouragement?  Then come along and join in one of our knitalong support sessions:

• Wednesday afternoons from 1:30 – 3:00PM on June 9th, 16th, 23rd and July 7th; and / or
• Sunday afternoons  from 3:30 – 5:30PM on June 13th, 27th, July 11th and 18th.

The Yarns

Firefly this warm-weather yarn has a subtle sheen and wonderful hand. A super blend of line and viscose.

Allegoro is part of Classic Elite’s eco-friendly Verde collection. A blend of organic cotton and linen that is soft with great stitch definition. Linen is a great warm weather fiber; it’s cool to wear. Because it takes up moisture rapidly, it wicks away dampness from your skin, and as the moisture evaporates from the fabric, it cools you.

Fresco is a smooth and even 3-ply sport weight yarn. The plies are twisted together tightly enough to make a firm, springy yarn, but not so tightly that the yarn looses its lofty, soft hand. The fiber blend – wool (for warmth and strength), alpaca (for loft and sheen), and a bit of angora (to provide a soft halo) – makes a yarn that’s warm, soft, and slightly fuzzy.