Ellen Graves

Today's exercise has been getting K2TOG's blogs to connect to Facebook, Twitter, LinkdIn, etc. This all started because Kimberly and I had 15 minutes yesterday to chat. This is always dangerous. It turns out (hopefully) to be within my skill set for you to now see updates to my blog on the K2TOG facebook page. More will be revealed as I turn myself into a writer.

On April 22, we will be celebrating Earth Day, which began in 1970. My first memory of Earth Day involves creating a poster that was put up on the wall of my elementary school auditorium. I can still remember my poster, of which I was so proud. It contained three sections: past: a beautiful tree; present: tree with trash all around it; and future: an empty, barren space.

As I think about Earth Day, I can't help but picture in my mind's eye the beautiful photo of the earth from space. I have difficulty imagining not having that image.

I've finally signed on the dotted line and we are officially moving to 1325 Solano Ave!! I'm incredibly excited and already exhausted thinking about moving the shop just 4 blocks up the street.

The new space is 2/3 bigger than the current shop, so there will be lots of space for new yarns and a much less crowded classroom. The space has interior rooms, so I'm thinking about different ways to arrange the yarns, needles, notions, etc. If you have suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

For those of you who have the time and inclination, I'm recruiting for move help.

I'm learning to think 6 months to a year out into the future - something that isn't really natural to me. That means that while I am knitting samples for the Retreat in April, I have been talking with our NEW travel agent, Deborah Kropp, about the Knitting Cruise in the Fall (October 2-8).

I am so excited about the number of group activities that are on the K2TOG calendar. It's amazing to me that we have something going on every day of the week now!

Check out this great article about our own Karen King. She has been working out at the Ice Chamber here in Albany for a year now and is an inspiration to us all.

Karen King and I are just back from TNNA (The National Needlarts Association) Tradeshow which was in Long Beach, California January 9-12. We flew down on Saturday morning and returned on Sunday evening, giving us about 36 hours of concentrated shopping for K2TOG.

So what did we find?

We found a new organic cotton line from Ecobutterfly, a company that matches beautifully to the K2TOG mission. These beautiful, organic, natural cotton yarns will be a treat to knit this summer.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by the shop on July 5th. We had more than 75 people stop by and wish us a happy birthday. I hope everyone who received a birthday bag enjoyed it's contents.

Kristen Hanley-Cardozo took pictures of people with their projects that they made recently. Thanks to everyone who brought in their projects to show off.