New Gedifra, Debbie Bliss and Rowan yarns now at Yarnmarket.com

We've just added some great new yarns that you're going to want to consider for your autumn and winter projects. Remember, Yarnmarket.com is known for our exceptional in-stock inventory, outstanding customer service and our very competitive prices!

Riana Color Yarn is a subtle self-striper in tone-on-tone shades. Tweedy flecks of contrasting hues plus a tight twist of the single-plied base strand give you a fashionable fiber blend of 50% wool, 45% acrylic & 5% rayon.

Riana Big Color Yarn is a marvelous complement to worsted-weight Riana Color. Available in the same tone-on-tone, auto-striping color combos this super chunky yarn is terrific for large needles & hooks. To coordinate with Rianna Color just match up the last two digits of the color numbers.

Debbie Bliss Fez yarn is a blend of 85% buttery soft merino with 15% exotic camel. It's a superb 2-ply fiber with a tight twist for excellent stitch definition -- especially in Debbie's trademark cable patterns. Inspired by the textiles from a Moroccan marketplace, the stunning color palette ranges from dusky soft neutrals to jewel-toned brights that give you gorgeous options for Fairisle, intarsia, all multi-colored projects.

Rowan Lima yarn has a soft, airy construction and versatile worsted weight gauge. Crafted in Peru of 84% baby alpaca, 8% merino wool & 8% nylon, Lima is designed as a woven, hollow core, chainette yarn so that it has terrific loft without any heaviness. It comes in a palette of heathery, tone-on-tone neutrals and jewel tones.

February Knit 'n Style has arrived!

When you work with monthly magazines, it takes forever to see the results of your labor. This is why I really admire the editors. They slave away, working endless hours to pull together all the articles, concentrating on fashion seasons that are many months away. I guess they do some sort of psychic time travel so they can feel holiday festive in June and Valentine romantic in August.

Today I received my February copy of Knit 'n Style, so I'm thinking of hearts and flowers. And chocolate. Especially chocolate. (Note to Alex: Thanks for that bar of white Belgian chocolate that you left on my desk earlier today. Right now, it's making a wonderful dinner.)

I always get a great kick out of the Knit 'n Style Yarn Salon. It's where they present whatever new yarns they've received from vendors across the country. We love to send our yarns in whenever we can, and we're always so thankful to have them included.

In February's issue, our Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Select Impressionist Collection yarn was featured...and it's gorgeous. This is a really popular yarn and our shoppers just love the exclusive colorways we offer.

In the patterns section of the magazine -- which seems particularly huge this issue -- our own Caledon Hills Cabled Wrap appears. It's an original Yarnmarket creation, and we've now got it proudly displayed in our showroom for our shoppers to see...and for our staff to try on in the hope of getting it when it's no longer needed in the showroom.

One very happy surprise in the February issue is the inclusion of the pattern for the Windy Valley Qiviut Beaded Muffatee. I love Qiviut because it's so amazingly warm. The Beaded Muffatee is a cute little wrist warmer that is perfect for elegant evenings during the cold winter months.

If you haven't gotten your copy of February Knit 'n Style, be sure to get one because I think you'll find lots of great information and patterns you'll love.

Many thanks to Penelope Taylor for including us!

Making a weird Impression.

The other day, while I was out to lunch, I fell victim to Indescriminate Crazed Creativity. When I returned and walked into my office, this is what I saw.

Agghhh!I think it's a YarnMartian.

Pat, Michele and Stefanie were up to their tricks and decided to create a new, improved Deb using some of our new display forms for the Yarnmarket Showroom, a sample sweater that had recently arrived, and one of the wig heads we'd used for a special mailing to editors of knitting magazines. (It was our launch of the Impressionist Collection yarns dyed by Twisted Sisters. We decoupaged the head with pieces of a painting, and then affixed the complementary yarn skein like a French Twist. I tell you, it was a challenge to come up with something that screamed Impressionist painting and Twisted Sisters, but this seemed to do the trick!)

Alex seemed to prefer the new, improved Deb because it's slimmer and more obedient than the old, crabby one. But then he was reminded that it's the old, crabby one who cooks his dinner.

Nice is...ummmm...nice.

After our stay in Avignon (plus side trips to abbeys and churches and the Pont du Gard), Alex and I drove to Nice. And, best of all, I instructed him to make a wrong turn only once...but the early turn-off provided me with a good perspective on where we actually were so I could more easily figure out how to get us where we wanted to be without taking us someplace else beforehand.

I'd been on a very quick trip to Nice a few years ago, for a business meeting, so I had a bit of an advantage.

Alex and I don't usually go to beach towns because I get sunstroke if I so much as look out a window, so this was a real treat for us. We weren't staying there long -- about 36 hours -- so we were pretty rushed for time. Our trip back to the US was to begin at 6:20 a.m. which meant we had one day to see things, then get to bed really early so we could be up at 4:00 a.m. to hurry to the airport.

Still, we managed to check out the Anny Blatt store window to see what they were selling on The Riviera, and then we took one of those bus tours of the town.

Boy, if I ever get really rich...like when David Bowie finally realizes that he can have me if he's willing to leave Iman...I'm going to move to the south of France. I picked up some real estate brochures and found a lovely romantic hideaway for just over 2 million Euros. I'm pretty sure he'd like it.

David Bowie is interested in Templars and Saracens and Gnosticism so he'd appreciate living in the area so steeped in history related to those topics. Don't you think so? Then, he could invite his friends, like Eileen Pagels, to come to see us and we'd talk all about the good old days of medieval religious wars and torture and treachery...and, now that I think of it, maybe the good old days weren't so good after all.

But then I could go shopping at the Anny Blatt store near the Promenade des Anglais and knit him some nice sweaters to wear. And I'd knit some for Alex, too, because I can't imagine moving to Nice and not taking him with me. I'd just tell David he's our electrician, navigator and tax filer.

Our Visit to Anny Blatt/Bouton D'Or

When our good friend Jean-Christophe at Anny Blatt learned of our trip to France, he was kind enough to set up meetings for us at the store in Paris and the factory in Avignon. Wasn't that nice? He even sent me some gorgeous Anny Blatt sweaters to wear on the trip! (That reminds me, I have to return them. He's probably got a trunk show that missing a couple of important samples.)

We took the train to one of the more elegant parts of Paris -- as if there are any less elegant parts!-- and we found our way to the shop. There, we were greeted by Madame Fabienne Gosse and one of her staff. With Alex's broken French and my almost non-existent French we managed to have a delightful conversation about which of the yarns are most popular, which colors do well, and which patterns are a big hit this season.

The Anny Blatt and Bouton d'Or patterns are all very sophisticated, and fairly complicated, so they appeal to the experienced knitter with exquisite taste.

Madame Gosse told us she recently hosted a group knitting trip to Russia and is planning one to the US. She's really active with her carriage trade clientele and regularly holds events at one of the nearby hotels. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll happen to be in Paris someday when she's having one. Of course, the other ladies will be chatting away happily in French and I'll be sitting there looking like a deer in the headlights while catching only every third or fourth word they utter.

I've promised Alex I'll contact the local language school so I can improve my skills. The odd thing is that Alex has a fairly extensive vocabulary, but I'm better with pronunciation and sentence structure. But I won't speak it. He's brave enough to cobble together sentences while I just stand there like a dope whispering that "billet" is pronounced "biyay" and "merci" isn't pronounced like "mercy" but some very difficult way that I couldn't even begin to convey in writing. If you've ever heard Steve Martin's jokes about French, you'll understand.

MARTIN: That man is choking! Oh, wait...no he isn't. He's speaking French.

If we could do a Vulcan mind meld with the little bit of information each of us knows, plus Alex's bravado, we might have one single individual who could actually communicate.

Anyway, we had a really nice visit with Madame Gosse who spent quite a bit of time with us and then took us across the street to Tiboodoo, the store that sells ready-knit Anny Blatt and Bouton d'Or patterns. Boy, were the clothes ever cute! We really love the European children's wear because it's actually children's wear rather than miniaturized adult clothing. Maybe I'm turning into an old geezer, but I'd rather see little kids dressed like little kids. The sparkly, Las Vegas Showgirl styles for 7 year olds don't appeal to me. Check out the infants' and kids' patterns from Anny Blatt and Bouton d'Or and you'll see what I mean.

The best thing about them is that they're not only timeless, they're made with a really high quality fiber, so they're going to last and can be handed from child to child to child. (Maybe with our worsening economy the idea of quality, timeless children's clothes that can be handed down for a couple of generations will catch on.)

Our next stop on the Anny Blatt Tour de France was the factory in Avignon. More to come on that in another posting.

Visit to TexWorld in Paris

TexWorld took place in Paris from September 22 to September 25 and Alex and I had the pleasure of going there to see all the new styles and colors for the Winter 2009/2010 Season.

Let me start out by saying that I love Paris. I love the architecture. I love the food. I love the museums. I love the ambiance. And I even love the French people who are always so kind and accommodating as Alex and I butcher their language. (We can't understand why some people think they're arrogant when we've had nothing but wonderful experiences on our visits to France.)

We were really excited to have the opportunity to travel there to attend TexWorld and then to meet with many lovely people at Anny Blatt.

The conference itself was held at Le Bourget which is on the outskirts of Paris. We had our plans all figured out -- take that train to the Le Bourget station, catch a shuttle bus, and we'd have no problem getting to the trade show. Imagine our surprise when our train stopped a few stations earlier and we were asked to get out because it was not going any further. A "disturbance" had forced the cancellation of trains to our station.

Now, if you live in France you know that these disturbances happen all the time. I was once working at an office there (in my previous corporate life) when the city came to a standstill because farmers were staging a protest and shut down the streets. This is pretty common, and it doesn't faze the French at all. They improvise. But we very perplexed about what we'd do next in order to reach our destination.

Much to our relief, we soon saw was a young lady holding up a big sign that said, "TexWorld" so we approached her. She pointed us up an escalator when another young lady holding a sign pointed us toward yet another sign. Sure enough, they had people directing us toward buses awaiting confused TexWorld attendees. That bus took us right to the door of the conference. Alex and I were impressed with how quickly the TexWorld folks had responded to what must have been an early morning crisis for them.

Anyway, we got to TexWorld and were astounded by the enormity of the show. I mean, this was massive...and perhaps even larger than the shows in Florence. There were companies from all over the world proudly displaying their fabrics and fibers and I was almost overwhelmed with the desire to start grabbing the stuff and shoving it into my bag. These were fashion items you wouldn't even see for another year, and they were gorgeous!

After taking a couple of shots we learned that cameras were not permitted on the floor -- except by the media -- so I'll have to be sure to register myself as journalist for Shear Bagatelle next year.

We were amazed by the heavy representation of companies from China, Pakistan, India and many of the Eastern European countries. I'm afraid we didn't see any manufacturers from the US or Canada, which was disappointing, but there were a lot of people who'd traveled from North America to see the show.

We spent quite a while looking at the booths, gathering brochures, examining the colors (black and purple again, ladies) and lusting after all the fashions on display. The mills have become so sophisticated that there's really no limit to the variety and complexity of the products they produce.

It was a fascinating experience and we're really delighted that we had the opportunity to attend. Now we can start planning for 2009/2010 Winter Season with a better idea of what our knitters are going to want to make and which yarns we ought to make sure we're offering.

Oh, yeah...to reduce costs (because we're well traveled but cheap) we rented an apartment rather than stay at a hotel. That way, we could make some of our own meals, too. Well, we went out and bought some ham from a butcher, cheese from a cheese shop and bread from a boulangerie and for the first three days all we ate were ham sandwiches. I swear, they were so delicious that we didn't want anything else! There's something about the food there. Maybe it's fresher and not filled with preservatives. Of course, we did go to Alex's favorite place for lunch: Les Deux Magots. It's where philosophers like Sartre used to hang out. I had a cup of hot chocolate there that is quite possibly is the best hot chocolate on the planet.

Alex took the shot of the Eiffel Tower at the top of this posting. It was blue to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the EU. Every hour, on the hour, it bursts into a zillion sparkling lights, much to the delight of tourists who stand in awe of such a beautiful sight.

If you're like me and you're probably only going to get one life on this planet, don't you wish you could live that one life in Paris? Yeah...me, too.