We don’t mind…we are staying open! Come in and stitch with us and enjoy a hot cup of tea. Tonight is Stitch in Space. Get your last minute stitching done and learn the tricks for quick blocking. Free workshop starts at 7 pm. We will speed block for you!
Hours today:
10 am – 9 pm

We finally picked the winner of the “Most Creative” tiny holiday sweater, and we even have an honorable mention. The winner is this adorable sheep sweater by Emma, who turns 13 on Thursday:

We also absolutely loved the sweater and hat set that Ruth brought into the shop. She made these for a doll when she was younger. It was so cool to see something vintage that she had found among her things. I wish that I had saved more of my doll things from my childhood…

Congrats to Emma for winning a $50 gift certificate and thank you to everyone who contributed to our awesome window display of tiny sweaters! We are thinking tiny hats for next year…

Kirby sez happy holidays!

The Madelinetosh order is here and it is gorgeous! Tara and Cindy have already accumulated a pile:

This person wants to remain anonymous:

So enjoy 10% off today while it is all still in tubs and boxes. Also enjoy deep discounts on select yarns this weekend! If you missed the black friday sale yesterday, there are still plenty of discounts to catch today.

Followup! As a follow up to this post about the scarf that required no knitting, Cindy and Tara have made their own knitless scarves today from TML and are posing the results here for you. Supplies needed to make these amazing scarves: three 5″ long pieces of register tape, scotch tape, two hanks of tosh merino light.

Black Friday report:

There were around 50 folks in line when we opened the doors at 6 am. (so not everyone got in right away) Two gentlemen had arrived at 4 am to be the first in line! We did hand out free stuffs to the folks in line. We had quite a bit of a wait for most of the early morning too! Overall a super successful sale and hopefully everyone was able to catch a great deal and get a start on their holiday shopping season with some warm fuzzy stuff,

Bitsy Sweater pattern by Daphne Puerto

Kel is plotting our holiday window and is in need of tiny sweaters. I have no idea what she plans to do with them…but she wants them. So we are hosting another contest! (btw, if you knitted a bat, we will be taking those out of the window in the next week)

TO ENTER

Bring us your tiny sweater and fill out our entry card. Entries must be received by November 24th. Each sweater should be around 2″-3″ wide at the chest. You may use any pattern or this free one designed by our very own Daphne and free from Ravelry. Each sweater received will get you one entry for a $50 gift certificate. We will also award a $50 gift certificate to the most creative tiny sweater.  Gift certificates will be awarded Monday, November 29th. So we are awarding two gift certificates – one from a random drawing and one for the most creative.

All tiny sweaters will be returned after the new year.

After much staff debate, we have a winner for the bag contest:

We thought that getting a photo of an actual giraffe appearing to eat out of the space tote, qualified as an incredible feat! AND, she didn’t just go to the local zoo. This was taken during a trip to Kenya. Congrats Stephanie! You get a $50 gift certificate to the shop. It is waiting for you under the register.

On Tuesday, November 2nd, we’re giving everyone a 10% discount in celebration of national voting day! Just stop in all day for our sale.

Discount valid on any product purchases. Discount not valid on services, classes, events, private lessons, etc.

As some of you may already know, my time at fibre space is drawing to a close.
My last day in the shop will be this Friday, October 15th. I will be moving to California next week – my husband was offered his dream job (with Apple) and it’s too good to refuse. So it is with very great sadness that I am going to have to say goodbye. Since last July, I have grown close to an incredible community of knitters and crocheters, families and friends. I have enjoyed helping many of you learn new techniques and skills or just cheering you on to try something new. I am thankful that I have, in some small way, become a part of your lives as well. I will miss everyone.

I want to thank Danielle for letting me, a perfect stranger, come in and be part of her plan from almost the beginning. It has been gratifying to watch hard work turn into the vibrant, colorful, friendly place we all share.

Our dear Kel has taken a big gamble to be here full-time and take my place in the shop day to day. (I will try to make sure she can find everything I’ve hidden!) Please welcome her as the new manager of fibre space. I will miss all the staff: Lesley, Becky, and Sam; and all our teachers. You’ve become the best friends I could have hoped for.  And to everyone else in the fibre space community: I wish you all the very best. You’ve heard me say it before and I’ll say it again: I have nothing  but the greatest confidence in all of you! And don’t worry. I won’t be so far away, thanks to Ravelry and the power of the Internet.

Veronica

Monday is another Federal Holiday – Columbus Day and we are open! We will have our regular hours: 10 am – 7 pm.

We have a reorder of Brooklyn Tweed SHELTER at the shop, so take the day to come out and see us and this new amazing yarn.

In other news, fibre space won the Business of the Year award from the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce at last night’s awards dinner. Thank you so much to all of you for helping our first year to be such a success!

Calling all knitters and crocheters! We love nothing more than a good protest and a protest with needles seems even more interesting!

As you may know, the City of Alexandria recently raised parking meter rates without considering changes to the parking meter infrastructure. Providing alternative means to pay the meters by installing multi-space meters that accept credit cards and paper money should have been done before the new meter rates went into effect. While we understand the budgetary needs for the meter increase, an alternative method of payment should have been offered before this increase went into effect. The empty parking spaces up and down King street are a good sign that this increase has had a tremendous impact on the number of shoppers in town now. Further, the City is planning to extend the hours that meters are in operation from 6pm or 7pm to 10 pm! This will make our evening classes virtually impossible to attend if you travel by car, as you will be unable to leave your car in a spot for more than two hours.

Small businesses and shoppers alike are frustrated by this recent move. I have heard so many of you tell us that you have to run back out because your meter is going to expire. Meanwhile, in neighboring communities like Arlington and DC, you are able to pay by phone or with a credit card at a kiosk. We are asking for people to support our efforts to educate the Mayor and City Council about the economic impact this seemingly minor changes has on our businesses and our community, and to urge the City to reverse this change until the proper infrastructure is installed. Specifically we are asking the Council and Mayor to:

• Roll back parking rates to $1.00/hr during the week until the new multi-space, multi-payment option meters are installed City-wide.  We have heard that there is a concern that employees of the City’s businesses, not shoppers/diners are the ones who are parking in these spots.  As a rule, our employees do not—and will not– take up these spots, and ask that City employees as well will join with us in leaving metered spots for those who have chosen to patronize Old Town businesses.
• Eliminate meter fees on Saturdays, as we approach the holiday season to allow this city’s small businesses a chance to compete with the malls and shopping districts around us that have free and unrestricted parking lots and garages.
• Don’t adopt the proposed extension of the meter hours until 10 pm as it will have a horrible impact on our city’s restaurants, movie theatre and service businesses that offer classes and workshops in the evenings.

PLEASE, I encourage you all to sign this petition.

Then join us for a demonstration at City Hall on Tuesday, October 12, 6:30PM. Bring your needles, hooks and pitchforks. We will be making signs at the shop on Monday and Tuesday, so feel free to stop by and borrow some posterboard, some markers and make protest signs! I totally missed the 60s, having not been born for twenty more years, so this is a lot of fun!

Then, send an e-mail to the City of Alexandria’s Mayor and City Council through this handy online form. Whether you are a resident or not, you have a voice. You are all vital to our local economy!

If you aren’t a member of our monthly fibre girl club, no worries. The package from last month’s shipment is now available online and in our shop. While the club is now closed, we will have extras of next month’s package as well and then our next club will launch in February 2011. More info soon!

About this package

We are excited to share with you a naturally hand dyed Blue Faced Leicester yarn from The Natural Dye Studio in Suffolk. Their BFL is entirely farmed in the UK. (see our inspiration page for more info on this breed) They use only plant materials to make their amazing colors. The colorway enclosed in this monthʼs package was made just for the fibre girl club and contains two hanks!

Our project bag harkens back to World War II, when Britons were encouraged to “Keep calm and carry on”. Thankfully times aren’t so hard now, so enjoy the whimsy as you tote your new project. Warm up with a traditional English tea from our neighbors at Spice and Tea Exchange of Alexandria, which just opened in April. They have also enclosed an amazing English roast rub – a classic northern European rub for all types of roasts.

the newest addition to the fibre space™ line up of indie fibres – SHELTER by Brooklyn Tweed! We are absolutely honored to have been selected as a flagship store for this yarn – which will be available on Jared’s website and in only a few shops nationally! This makes our local knitting community rather lucky to have this so close and so easy to snatch up.  The yarn comes with a pattern line as well – also exclusive to the flagship stores and available at fibre space™.

SHELTER is 140 yards at 50 grams of 100% American sourced wool. It is the result of Jared’s quest to fill the gap in our industry of entirely American sourced and milled yarns for hand knitting. It comes in 17 absolutely stunning heathers, resulting from the blending of 3 to 5 solid colors. While Ravelry might list SHELTER as a light worsted weight yarn, it can be knitted at several gauges from 17 to 21 stitches per four inches on US#9 to US#6 needles. It is perfect for fair isle projects and classic knitted textures.

About the wool

The wool in SHELTER is from the Targhee-Columbia cross breed, bringing the softness of Targhee to the durability of the Columbia wool. (The Imperial Stock Ranch yarns available at our shop are made from the Columbia Sheep). The wool is sourced entirely from US farmers in Wyoming. The fleece is dyed in the wool and then spun in Harrisville, NH at a family owned and operated mill, Harrisville Designs. The mill at Harrisville was designated a national historic landmark in 1977, having been in operation for over 200 years.

read more >>

We finally did our bat drawing and the winner is……

Kristina Z.!

Congrats! You win a $50 gift certificate for the shop. Thank you to everyone who submitted bats.

If you haven’t visited the bat window yet, do stop by. It will be there through the end of the month and into early November.

There were two “runnings of the knitters” this weekend. The first was the race to the Babs yarn. More pictures for your amusement:

knitters sit on chairs and wait in line to get in on Friday

yowza mayhem!

CHEESE!

It's Babs!

Knitters are happy after they have scored the Babs yarn

The other “running of the knitters” was the first ever Woodrow Wilson Bridge Half Marathon, which was Sunday morning. Kathy, Suni, Nicole, Jennifer and I were up really really early! Everyone finished the race!!! Suni had a PR! There was much swearing, some Elevation Burgers were eaten and today there is lots of limping around. Good times were had by all. Yay team fibre space!

Pretend that all of our team is in this photo...it was hard to herd the team members for photos

Our coral reef window display has gone away. [sad] It is being picked up this evening by the Smithsonian. If you have pieces that you want sent along, please bring them in today. If you made a critter for the window, please stop by the shop to pick him up. They are only taking coral and some of these critters are rather amazing, so they should really go back to their owners!

Our new window is creepy…that’s all there is to it. I came in this morning and I should have grabbed coffee. If you thought that the mannequin was creepy before, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

And the window needs BATS! Since I simply can not knit enough bats for the window, I am sending out a call for bats.  I can’t promise that these will be on display at the Smithsonian but I can entice you with a contest. Make a bat that has a 4 inch or wider wingspan and be entered into a drawing for a $50 gift certificate. Bats must be submitted before Thursday, September 16th at 9 pm. (that is little over a week!) Bats may be knitted, crocheted or felted and you may enter more than once. Make ten bats and be entered ten times. Bats will be returned to their owners the first week of November. Here are some bats to inspire you:

UPDATE: Daphne has created an adorable free pattern available here or on Ravelry here.

Flippy the bat seen here in Mochi Plus

Boo the Bat pattern available for download from Mochimochi Land (be sure to check out the other amazing things on her site or stop by to see her new book, which is available at the shop!)

Photo courtesy of Mochimochi land

Vladimir, the Bat from Deliciouscrochet and available as a download from her Etsy shop.

Photo courtesy of Deliciouscrochet

Felted Halloween Bat by Lion Brand yarn – free download from their site, although you will need to register to use their site.

Photo courtesy of Lion Brand Yarn

Bat and Jack O’ Lantern patterns from Barbara Prime and available here. If you don’t know about Barbara’s Fuzzymitten collection of adorable toys, check it out.

Photo courtesy of Barbara Prime

The bag contest for summer travel has ended and I have on more post of photos to put on the site before voting begins. We will open another travel contest starting now that will end after the New Year, to include all of your holiday travels. So take your fibre space tote on your travels and send us your photos!

As many of you already know, we don’t tend to close for silly things like federal holidays, so we will see you all weekend! Our hours are completely unchanged from the norm:

Friday: 10 am – 7 pm

Saturday: 10 am – 7 pm

Sunday: 11 am – 6 pm

Monday: 10 am – 7 pm

We even hear tale that designer extraordinaire Wendy Johnson will be here on Monday along with the Knit Girllls, who are visiting from out of town.

It is also the last weekend to see our amazing coral reef window display before it heads off to the Smithsonian!