March is the snowiest month here in Fort Collins, and we have had some beautiful snowfalls already this month. I am a big snow person and love waking up and finding everything covered in pretty white! Of course the sun is so warm at this altitude that even if things are snow-covered, it usually only lasts on the ground for a day or two before melting away in all of the spots except for the shady areas. Last weekend they predicted a blizzard with heavy snowfall, and we ended up with about 4″. Oh well. Paul (WH) went out photographing after one of our recent snows and caught some pretty deer photos. I thought you might enjoy them.
Hello cuties!
There seems to be an enticing bit of food somewhere up there.
No doubt hoping that the photographer leaves soon so that they can get back to eating with no interruptions….
It’s almost Christmas! We are closed today through Wednesday, so I wanted to take this time to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas. This is a photo of the old post office in downtown Fort Collins and it seemed a pretty, peaceful photo to share for the season. They put up the most beautiful lights in downtown Fort Collins during the holidays, and this photo that Paul took shares a little bit of that with you. (Click on the photo to make it bigger and enjoy it even more!)
Turn up the holiday lights, make yourself a cup of hot cocoa, and enjoy time with your family and friends this week. We’ll be back in the shop on Thursday (come to Knit Night if you’re in town!) and I’ll be back with you on Friday here on the blog. Merry Christmas!
Sheri and The Loopy Ewe Crew
P.S. Congratulations to the RAK contest winners from last Friday’s blog. We’re sending a skein of The Loopy Ewe Seasoning Series to Kay (who gave away a Turn A Square hat to a new knitter in their knitting group) and Rachel (who stopped by to visit her grandmother at her nursing home on a cold, rainy, busy day this week.) Rachel and Kay – please email me so that we can get your color choices! I hope you all had time to read the comments on our RAK blogs the first three Fridays of December. You’ve been up to some wonderful things!
October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and we are partnering up with an organization here in Fort Collins called Hope Lives, to provide handmade items to those in need. Hope Lives provides free holistic wellness and lifestyle support services to women in northern Colorado who are battling breast cancer.
If you’d like to participate in this, we are collecting knit or crocheted shawls, lap blankets, fingerless gloves, socks and slippers for the women going through treatment. We have a collection basket here at The Loopy Ewe and we plan to keep the collection going through December. You can knit with any yarn that you have handy and want to work with. Thank you in advance for anything you can knit/crochet to help!
Of course there are many wonderful agencies that would be happy to have items like this year-round, so if your time is tight this fall, we hope you’ll consider making something at another time of the year, to share with groups around you. I know many of you do this on a regular basis and are happy to be able to do it. Thank you for having such a generous spirit!
This month we’re celebrating our Sixth Loopy Anniversary! We officially opened our virtual doors on August 1, 2006. We’ve shared a few of these photos before, but celebrations are all about pulling out the scrapbooks and fondly reminiscing, right? Here is a peek at our Loopy (virtual) scrapbook.
The shop started in a tiny corner of our basement, not much bigger than what you can see in this photo – about 90 sq. feet. This was our first group of in-store shoppers. This corner worked well for the first couple of months, and then someone (that might be me …) just kept ordering more yarn and we needed more space.
We decided “who needs a basement?” and expanded from the little corner, into the rest of the finished area that we had.
We had to stack boxes on our front porch and in our front hallway, waiting for the mailman each day. Some days, there were a lot of boxes!
After a year at home, we made the move to office/retail space a few blocks away, and that was our Loopy home for the next 4+ years. After our first year there, we doubled the space by knocking down the walls and taking the offices next door. That was fun, although it made for a bit of an interesting (weird) floor layout.
Last December, we put everything on two large moving trucks, and moved to our current location here in Fort Collins, CO, about an hour north of Denver.
With 4500 sq. ft. here, I’m hoping we will have enough room to put off any other moves for the time being. You all need to come visit so that you can walk in here and look around that corner. It goes down a long way, and every bit of it is filled with yarn! (Here’s a peek down one of our four long aisles.)
Of course none of this would be here without YOU and your incredible support. We love hearing from you, we love pulling and packing orders for you, and we love seeing what you have made when you finish your projects. So often, our yarn companies and indie artisans tell us, “You guys have the BEST customers!” and we totally agree. You are the best. We sure appreciate you.
In celebration of our six years, we will be doing a few different blog contests this month, in addition to a couple of other things. This week’s blog contest question is: How long have you been with us at The Loopy Ewe? I know we have six year Loopy veterans who ordered that very first week, and one day Loopy newbies, who discovered us today when they saw the sign on the building and popped up to see us, hoping “The Loopy Ewe” had something to do with yarn. Leave your answer in the comments below, and we’ll do a random drawing next week for some Wollmeise Lace, that I saved just for our anniversary contests. 🙂
March is the snowiest month here in Fort Collins, and we have had some beautiful snowfalls already this month. I am a big snow person and love waking up and finding everything covered in pretty white! Of course the sun is so warm at this altitude that even if things are snow-covered, it usually only lasts on the ground for a day or two before melting away in all of the spots except for the shady areas. Last weekend they predicted a blizzard with heavy snowfall, and we ended up with about 4″. Oh well. Paul (WH) went out photographing after one of our recent snows and caught some pretty deer photos. I thought you might enjoy them.
