Today we’re celebrating our Ninth Loopy-versary! We can hardly believe that it has been nine years. In August of 2006 we put the website online with a handful of yarn companies represented, and crossed our fingers and said a prayer that it would work.
It sure has been fun to share yarn, fabric, projects, ideas and inspiration with you over the past nine years. YOU ALL are our favorite part of The Loopy Ewe and we love being with you on this adventure. We look forward to many more years of sharing beautiful yarn, fabrics and ideas with you. There are always new things to see, do and share!
For today’s Monday Yarn Update, we have two new Loopy things to share, in celebration of our Loopy-versary.
1. Loopy’s Paintbox Sets – We know you love our Loopy Cake Sets, because we have a hard time keeping them in stock! We took the summer off from winding Loopy Cake Sets in order to focus on Loopy’s Paintbox Sets (available just for our anniversary, while supplies last). These sets come with 9 mini-balls of yarn. Each ball is approx. 50 yards (1/4 of a skein from our Loopy Solid Series yarn), so they are smaller than the balls you get in Loopy Cakes.
We have two different patterns that were designed with these sets in mind, and we’ll email you a copy of both patterns with purchase. The sets come in Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer colors. Shown below: Loopy’s Paintbox Scarf out of 1 1/2 sets of Autumn (shown as scarf, or kitchener the short ends to make an infinity cowl as shown in the last photo). You can also make the Paintbox Scarf/Cowl out of one set – I was just needing to hit the 600 yard mark for my July Camp project, so made it wider! And our SoundWave scarf by Debbie O’Neill, shown below in Winter and Summer colors. Each SoundWave scarf uses one set of Loopy’s Paintbox.
2. Loopy Pattern by Susan B. Anderson – Susan is the best toy-designer we know, and we’ve been working with her for a long time to design a special Loopy toy, just for you! We think it’s her cutest design ever (although we may be a little biased) and we’re excited to share it with you. We have the patterns available for sale now, and we will have kits available soon. The pattern takes one skein each of red and tan and 2 skeins of white in our Loopy Solids Series. We have been waiting on an order of white for oh-so-long, but expect it within the next couple of weeks. Please email us (support@theloopyewe.com) if you’d like us to save you a set of these three skeins to make Loopy. ($48 for just the yarn, or $53 for yarn plus pattern. The pattern is also available on its own.) We are all planning our own little Loopy knitting for the fall. We hope you have fun with him, too!
Loopy-versary Contest: We’re giving away NINE $25 Loopy Ewe Gift Certificates to celebrate our NINE years of being Loopy. (Well, some of us have been loopy a little longer than that, but we don’t count that part.) Leave a comment below and tell us what is the first project you remember knitting, crocheting, quilting or sewing, and we’ll draw the winners next week. The first thing I remember knitting was an ugly yellow sweater when I was in grade school or junior high. I just knit on the front and the back – I don’t remember sleeves, although I think it was supposed to have them ….
Sheri whostillhastroublemakingitallthewaythroughawholesweater
The absolute first thing I knit was a pair of mittens in a learn to knit class. Looking around the shop during the class, I saw a poncho I loved to my second project was an in-the-round poncho for my then young daughter. The beauty of a poncho is she could still wear it as a caplet if she so desired.
My first knitting project was a simple black ribbed scarf knit out of some cheapo acrylic yarn from Walmart. When I was finished with it, the scarf was much longer than me!
Congrats on your anniversary! My grandma taught me to knit and the first project I picked was a sweater. It was striped and blocky so it was still interesting to me, but not too difficult. My grandma surprised me by making a matching sweater for my teddy bear!
I learned to knit so long ago, and I was so young, that I have no idea whatsoever of what my first project was! I was 8, so that was 58 years ago! My grandmother initially taught me, English style, which I was dreadful at because of tension problems (I strangled the needles with my yarn). When I was 10 my next door neighbor taught me the continental style and I have been knitting gang-busters ever since. I suspect my first project was an acrylic scarf, which was shortened to a potholder as I got so bored with the scarf. I completed at least one scarf before venturing into garments in junior high school. Those were not terribly successful initially, but I persisted and in high school actually completed a sweater I was willing to wear in public!
Happy Ninth! I learned to knit when I was 9. One of the girl’s mom in my Brownie troop taught all of us to knit a pair of slippers. It was my first experience knitting and the slippers were my first project.
I honestly can’t remember my first project. But, it would have been crocheted, and probably miles of chain. Then, a doll blanket in single crochet. I know I was under 7 years old.
I knitted my mother a sweater (blue) with a duplicate stitch snowflake (pale grey) on the front. It was sort of a fuzzy yarn, probably acrylic. I was in college in Lubbock and my parents were living in East Texas at the time – not the coldest place in the world.
The first thing I crocheted was a scarf in 2009. I didn’t quite have a mastery of gauge, so it started out super loose and ended up really tight. I junked it and called it a learning experience.
The first “real” project I knit was a scarf. During the Christmas break when I was 10 my sister and I had chicken pox. I had been shown how to knit the previous summer and one afternoon my Uncle brought me a skein of yarn and needles and started me on my first project. It was a knit 2, purl 2 scarf. It took me about a year to complete and I did not knit again until I was in graduate school over 10 years later and then I knit only intermittently between other fiber crafts. For the past 12 years or so, I have been only knitting, primarily due to the ease of obtaining materials from the Loopy Ewe. Happy Anniversary!
the first item I knit was a potholder. It was lumpy and bumpy and vaguely trapezoidal but my sweet grandmother hung it next to her stove and used it for years. I was so proud.
The very first project I remember was crochet, when I coaxed my mother into teaching me what she knew of it (nobody I knew at the time knew how to knit, and Mom only knew two crochet stitches, LOL). It was kind of a shawl sort of thing (too wide and thick to be a scarf), and given that I grew up in Hawaii, that wasn’t the most useful thing to make ever 😛
My grandma taught me to knit. The first thing I remember making is a brown stockinette jumper for my little sister. It had a ladybird patch pocket on it.
Well…I think my first completed knitting project was a doll dress for my sister’s Barbies – my parents wouldn’t buy me knitting needles so I used pick-up sticks and scraps of yarn I found around the house – but I’m not sure about that. I do recall my first completed crocheted project, and that was a turquoise mesh poncho with a matching floppy hat. It was the 70’s, you know.
My first project was a stockinette scarf for my mother. It rolled on the edges and I put the needles down in frustration for many years. Now I know how to keep it from rolling!
I remember knitting garter stitch headbands when I was 9. I loved them….that was 50 years ago!
my first project was a bulky wool scarf, in stripes of lime green and dark blue.
The first thing I knitted was a scarf – using either thick & thin Collinette wool, or ribbon and mohair held together!
i have no trouble remembering since I learned to knit in college: it was The Obligatory Scarf. It was white and Aqua large stripes, a zillion feet long, and acrylic.
Happy Anniversary!!! My first project was a knitted shell that I made in a class in high school.
I remember knitting wash cloths for our family Christmas boutique and then a scarf from the Martha Stewart magazine!
The first project I remember was making squares for a blanket when I was about 10!
My first project that I remember was a black sweater with red fair isle design on the bottom of the body and sleeves.
I designed it myself (because that seemed easier than trying to decipher a patter), and knew nothing of clothing construction, so it was a big rectangle for the back, smaller rectangles for the fronts, and two rectangles for the sleeves.
I found the fair isle chart in a book (simple XO pattern), and from the same book learned how to mattress seam. I put button holes but never got around to putting buttons.
Looking back on it, that thing feels like armor! I had very tight gauge then.
I knitted an over the shoulder red purse.
My first knitting project was a pink baby sweater with a bit of lace trim on the sleeves. First sewing project was a ruffled jumper with darts in the bodice – of all things! :o)
Knitting? Creme mittens, age 7. Taught to knit by Elsie, my elderly neighbor 4 doors up, using a magazine pattern and metal needles, makes me smile to remember her. Crochet? Age 9, a hot pink and white granny square afghan with daisies separating the blocks, made with my grandma that took about a year — we lived 2 hours away and we’d write each other about the progress being made in between visits — still have the afghan as a middle-ager. First Loopy purchase? At your then site in St. Louis while visiting family. Congrats on 9 years!
A woman I helped at a summer job was horrified I didn’t know how to knit or crochet. She and a friend spent lunch time teaching me how to make hairpin lace. After lots of brown and orange acrylic strips, I put them together into an afghan. I loved it. And have never been without a project since!
Congratulations on your anniversary! The first thing I think I crocheted is granny squares for a blanket, but mostly I remember the lace doilies and snowflakes that I made. 🙂
My first project was granny squares – which is appropriate because my Granny was teaching me how to crochet. 10 yrs later I learned to knit in a Home Ec class.
A pair of argyle socks in high school. What a crazy first project! Haven’t knit another pair since.
The first large project that sticks in my mind was a raspberry coloured crocheted skirt – using the shell pattern. I lined it with raspberry fabric and just loved it. It was all the rage with my high school friends at the time.
i didn’t learn to knit until I was an adult.
It was Christmas break 1993. I was in grad school in Illinois and my mother was in grad school in Wisconsin. She had gone in for surgery for what they thought was going to be fibroids but which turned out to be cancer. I went up to stay with her while she recovered from surgery and started chemo.
She decided that she wanted to knit some mittens so we stopped by a nice yarn shop in Madison and she got yarn for her mittens and also treated me to yarn, needles and a book so we would both be working on something. She got me started on a scarf- which I still have.
Happy anniversary Loopy! The first thing I remember knitting was the intarsia sweater with a world map on it from Vogue Knitting. It was a fun project to knit, but a bit much to wear!
My very first knit project was a scarf with nicely eyelash yarn (not a good choice for a beginner!). I’ve learned how to select my yarns a little better since!
I knit a garter stitch scarf in an ugly acrylic 70’s variegated from Redheart when I was a child. I remember that my Nana had to cast it on for me, and that it had a few holes…..
My first project back into knitting as an adult was a hat, and then a sock.
Ah….the memories. Congrats on 9 great years!
I knit a dishcloth featuring a dog using green Lion Brand Kitchen Cotton (so not a favorite). And I knit a fair isle hat! It’s the Pittsburgh Steelers hat pattern in Cascade 220.
I knit a very ugly grey and green scarf that I still have. Although I started it, I believe my mother finished it.
The first thing I crocheted was a chevron baby blanket, which I made when my grandmother was no longer able to crochet blankets for the babies in our family. For knitting, I have two unfinished pieces of knitting, one a pillow cover started the summer after high school when the sisters in my German host family first taught me to knit; the second is the start of a sweater from when I took a knitting class about six years later. The first knitted project I finished, about three years later, is a single-skein crest of the wave scarf in Cascade 220, which is just long enough to fill in the neck of a coat, and I still wear it.
The first thing I knit was supposed to be a scarf. But I started with about 3x more stitches than I needed. And I kept forgetting what it was I was supposed to be doing so I was knitting needles backwards twisted stitches for a ways. It ended up being a muffler that I folded the uneven ends on over and stitched down because it grew and shrank a lot. I don’t think there were more than 3 rows hat were consistently sized.
My first project attempt was a pair of lopi mittens….which were frogged so I could use the yarn for something else since I found DPNs too fiddly at age 12. First completed project was a shawl with umpteen dropped stitches and a bindoff in an entirely different weight, yarn type and color yarn!
I remember working on a potholder…I think I finished it, but don’t remember what happened to it. But I still have the sweater my mother knitted for me when I was about 8.
The first thing I truly remember making was an A line skirt for myself at the age of 11, I think. I remember cutting it out and Mama going to lie down to rest. I would sew a seam and then go back to her bedroom and ask “what next?” She would tell me and then I would sew and be back asking again. Mama didn’t get much rest that night.
I jumped right into sewing when I was 11 years old by making a skirt. I can still picture it and that was 48 years ago!
My first project was a yellow thing…. I knit an entire skein of bright yellow red heart yarn into a garter stitch thing about 10 stitches wide. I was proud that it was as long as the hallway of my childhood house. I can still picture it. Did I mention I was just 4 or 5 years old? I wonder what happened to it.
I crocheted granny squares to make a blanket. Not sure where that ended up in all the moves…
My first project when i was young was a granny square blanket that I learn to do while visiting my gram. I would work on it when I visited her!
I taught myself to knit by making a sweater. I was in high school, I had a Mary Maxim pattern for a worsted wool cardigan and away I went. I remember sitting cross-legged on my bed and knitting and tinking…
My first knitted project was a scarf for my high school boyfriend. I asked my grandma to teach me to knit so I could make him the scarf for Christmas. She taught me to knit, but she didn’t teach me to purl. I didn’t like the lumpy look of the fabric (garter stitch) and figured out how to knit backwards to get a smoother fabric (stockinette). I remember the scarf was on a small gauge needle that seemed to be crazy long – like 2′! I started the scarf in the summer and finally finished it by Christmas. I didn’t know about a selvage edge or anything and the scarf wound up curling like crazy! My boyfriend wore it despite the curling. Young love will make you do crazy things!
My first project was at age 14 and was a a very long scarf that was the product of me learning to knit. My next door neighbor taught me to both knit and crochet. She was left handed and I was right so it took some extra attention on my part to learn.
My first knitting project was a triangular head kerchief type thing – got to practice increases and decreases right away!
My first project was a baby blanket for a friend. I walked into a yarn store and said I needed a beginner level pattern that was still going to turn out very nice–and they fixed me right up. I re-taught myself (my mother had shown me the basics when I was a little kid) from a book, and I used beautiful Brittaney Birch needles that I still treasure.