It's coming ...

Knit-in-Public Day is coming soon!

Visit Little Red Mitten on June 18 to participate in some fun and yarny adventures.

We'll be unveiling the first of our Landscape Series yarns: skeins dyed

by Roxanne of Zen Yarn Garden ...with a St. Thomas theme.

Watch for more news and bring along your camera.

If learning something new is good for the brain ...why does my head hurt?!?!?!

I spent the weekend planning cable and lace classes and decided that I would use a charting-for-knitting program that I had played around with briefly. The learning curve was a bit steeper than I had thought, so there went a few hours.

You'd think that I would have learned to "save," considering all the time I've spent in "Word," but apparently not. I really believe that I did "save" ...but that the computer ate my homework. Since my "search" button refuses to work, I guess we'll never know. Yup! That was fun!

Realizing that, in "Word," copied charts just bounce around like bunny rabbits for no apparent reason, my husband introduced me to "Excel" ...once again. Then we hooked up to a larger monitor and he said that pdf's would be more user-friendly. That sounded nice. So, thank you, dear husband, for helping me out with that.

So from now on, I'll be able to point out things on a monitor and move them around with a mouse. That really does beat holding up a piece of paper with cardboard behind it. Gotta love technology.

So when you read cable or lace charts for the first time, you may be learning something new, and your head may hurt, and your eyes may cross ...but the technology really is worth the effort.

They Fit!

Mr. Christie tried on his first pair of "Sunblocker Mitts" last Tuesday.

These are my husband's hands - didn't want to embarrass Mr. Christie with all of the

fame that might come from this blog! ;)

These mitts will keep the sun off of Mr. Christie's 93-year-old hands while he golfs and rides his bike around the neighbourhood.

33 years of battling skin cancer with protection such as this has lead to a long and full lifetime.

This Friday, he'll have some skin-toned mitts.

And someday soon, there will be a pattern available.

You'll have warm and protected hands, and freedom of movement, too.

All proceeds will be donated to either the Canadian Cancer Society or the clinic which has been treating this lovely man for decades.

For more info about Mr. Christie, please check out my blog dated April 29

...and please remember to use sunscreen this summer.

It's Election Time

We hope you'll get out and vote on Monday. But if you aren't thrilled with your choices, maybe for the next election, we can put together our own party - The Knitting Party.

We'll teach everyone to knit, with no age, gender, race or religious discrimination ...because we are, of course, very liberal-minded.

Our choice of knitting patterns will be quite traditional. No knitted bikinis for us because we're just too conservative for that!

We'll promote the knitting of afghans as group projects so that we can work bloc by bloc.

Our stance on the environment will be green, of course: knit a sweater, hat and scarf and turn the heat down low!

We'll be big into charity knitting so that we can share with those less fortunate than ourselves. We might even put all of our New yarns into one giant stash to be shared Democratically amongst everyone. Oh wait ...that might lead to a proroguing of parliament.

With everybody focussed on working and knitting together, our country could be a warmer, "nicer" place. Hey, I really think that this giant coalition could work. Anybody want to throw their (knitted) hat into the ring?

Sentimental

A young gentleman of 93 years walked into our shop this week ...and we were all enchanted.

His wife, Helen, had passed away 6 years ago and he was in need of some new gloves. She had designed and knit them specially for him to protect his hands from the sun because he has been battling skin cancer since 1978. The gloves cover the backs of his hands but leave the palms and fingers bare. What a great design - they feel wonderful while working with your hands.

Andy (remember that he is 93) rides a bike at the velodrome in London every week. An avid golfer, he also cleans up used top quality golf balls to sell for $5.00 a bag - all proceeds go to the clinic where he is treated. If you'd like to support this cause ...or need some golf balls, we'd love to put you in touch with Andy.

The more I talk to Andy, the more connections I discover: both he and my Dad were career Air Force (RCAF) and were stationed in many of the same places, but always at different times. Andy worked in maintenance and my Dad was a sheet metal worker. 5 years apart in age, they were both sent to this area from Toronto. Both were of Scottish heritage: my Dad from Edinburgh and Andy's family from just north in Dunedin. And this morning, I realized why his last name was so familiar to me - it is the same as my great-grandmother's. Hey! Maybe we are related!
Andy will definitely have his new gloves next week.

An Interview ...with me :)

In case you missed it, I did an interview with Torontonian, Robin Hunter, on her blog, "How to Become a Professional Knitter". Although usually she interviews designers (always quite interesting), this one is about how Little Red Mitten came to be.

How to spend a Saturday

In 5 short hours, these three happy ladies learned how to knit a top-down sock. We didn't have to worry about tiny needles and fine yarn - we just cast on with our 3.5 dpns and created these adorable, though slightly unwearable, mini-socks.

Normally, we offer a 6-hour sock class over 3 weeks, but today it was great fun to go from top to toe with no worries about completing the sock to a certain point for the next class. All questions were asked, answered and solved on the spot ...and no terrifying feats of heel turning had to be completed unsupervised.

With "Sock Science" in hand, they are well-prepared to complete their first pair of wonderful hand-knit socks. Welcome to the world of sock knitting, ladies!