A place for lace.

I got my Ravelry invite this week! Wahooooo! In case you haven't heard of Ravelry yet, put down your needles, pick up the mouse and hie thyself on over to sign up. It may take a couple of months to get your invite...but it shall come! And it is so worth it!

Ravelry is a free, online community. It was begun out of necessity and genius. The founder was frustrated that, whenever she wanted to knit a project, she would go online looking for others who had done the same project (to make sure it was worthy before casting on) - but the process would take hours of useless googling. (Of course, she could have tried the Shop by Project section of the Loops site with tried-and-true hot projects - but maybe she didn't know about us yet ;-). So she came up with Ravelry, where everyone posts all the projects they're working on, and you can instantly search and find zillions of people all over the country, making the Exact Same Thing.

(The apparent exception is my black lace silk dress. No one else is crazy enough to be making that!)

Anyhoo, while I was waiting for my invite, Loretta was kind (& trusting) enough to let me use her access to check it out. I found a group called "loopalicious" where they actually talk about stuff happening at our store. How cool is that? One of the topics is "What I wish Loops would carry" and one person said she wished we would carry more lace, that our lace supply often looks sad and forgotten. This was so true! Fortunately, I had ordered a bunch of lace in for fall...and today I gave our lace yarns their very own section, "The Lace Place."

Really, when I started pulling it together, I realized we have quite a nice lace selection. Left to right, top to bottom: The quintessential Lorna's Helen's Lace (with the handy, beautiful pie wedge shawl pattern right on the label), Karabella 100% Lace Weight Cashmere (hard to find and luscious!), Cashwool (great price for high-yardage merino), Claudia 100% silk lace, and a little Schaefer 100% silk.

We also support our lace lovers with Kendall's weekly (free) Lace Club, every Monday night from 6-8pm. And we have some great 100% alpaca lace on the way...plus I'm gonna work to pull some patterns & books into this area. If lace scares you, be brave! It's really just knitting and yarn overs. A great first lace project is the Slanted Eyelet pattern from Alchemy, which uses just a single skein of Silk Purse or Bamboo.

And of course, we have lots of other yarns throughout the store that are great for lace, like Rowan Kidsilk Haze.

So thanks for the suggestions, Ravelry Loopy Groupies! Keep 'em comin'!

- Shelley
shop online at loopsknitting.com