Just a quick blog today to remind you to leave your RAK (Random Acts of Kindness) comments from last week. Remember, we’re all trying to make December our month to go out of our way to pass on kindnesses (or “Pass the Cheer” as Starbucks advises.) I’ll announce the contest winner (drawn from all of today’s comments) on next Monday’s blog if I don’t blog again before then. I’ll have lots to tell you about when I get back!
I want to wish every one of you a blessed holiday season, with lots of special times with your families. (And a Merry Christmas!) We’ll have a whopping Sneak Up for you when things get back to normal after the holidays. (Probably the first full week of January.) The new Dream in Color colors arrived in Classy, as well as all of the Dream in Color Baby Lace. 🙂 Plus, the Cherry Tree Hill DK weight one-of-a-kind colorways that we’ll have on sale for you, Romi’s gorgeous earrings and pins, Mountain Colors Bearfoot, and all of the things I listed in the last blog. Ohhh, it’s gonna be fun!
We did get 8″ of snow this weekend! It was so pretty falling on Saturday. Knitting Daughter and WH were working, so College Guy and I went shopping in the snow. Still not done with Christmas shopping, but I’m getting closer. I also spent some time spinning and knitting. These Noro socks are really fun to knit. In fact, I was having so much fun watching for the next colorway to emerge that I probably made the cuff of these socks too long. Oh well. I am knitting these on size 0’s and getting 9 st. to the inch. I got 8 st. to the inch on 1’s, but it felt like the knit material was a little too loose. I like it done on the 0’s, better. This is color S185. We have lots in stock and more due in any day, so you ought to be in good shape for getting it here as soon as we get it put up for you! (Added later: Noro is up – go see!)
These RAKs have been so interesting to read. I find that I’m frequently saying, “Oh my gosh.” As in, “That’s a great idea!” or “What an amazing and giving person she/he is.” or “I need to be doing that, too.” And I have loved all of your blog comments, but also all of your emails as well. It has alao been fun to help many of you do some yarn-y type things anonymously. 🙂 I had one email last week and she wanted me to share this with you. I do agree with her that giving sacrificially is a really nice thing to do and kind of the “next step up” in RAKs. Read and see what I mean:
“Hi Sheri- have been thoroughly enjoying the RAK challenge on your blog- you’ve inspired me to sacrificial giving- and I’d like to put out a challenge to others- to do the same… RAKs can be big or small…. but what’s really changing me in practicing this– is by making them sacrificial… not just giving out of abundance- but giving as a sacrifice.
Recently a knitter on ravelry had his entire stash raided and stolen…. (long story). I knew I’d be sending out yarn.
First, I looked through my stash to see what I could spare— then I saw my gorgeous skein of Wollmeise. Wollmeise has to be a healing balm in any situation- don’t ya think? (Of course I bought it from The Loopy Ewe) I already pkged it up- It’s shipping to him in the morning.
I know- I know it’s just yarn- but I cannot tell you how good it feels to know he’ll be delighted- (oh man- I hope so) and that this little sacrifice might bring a little Christmas cheer into his life.) I’d love to anonymously challenge others to step up their RAKS to something that is a bit of a sacrifice…. and see how wonderful that feels!”
I know that many of you have already been doing RAKs that stretched you. Remember that giving sacrificially doesn’t have to involve money – it might also mean sacrificing some of your TIME to help someone else out. It’s a whole different level of feeling great about helping others, isn’t it? Keep up the great work! You all just inspire the heck out of me. Leave your comments today on the RAKs that you’ve worked on this past week. Again, on Wednesday, I’ll use the random number generator to pick a winner of this week’s Loopy Loot gift package. I know that’s not why you do RAKs, but it’s meant to encourage you to share your RAKs and ideas with all of us so that we can do them, too!
I’ve been doing some spinning, too. Not too much, because of the volume of knitting that needs to be done. But here is my latest and I love this colorway. I have a spinning area set up in the basement (actually, the very first Loopy Room space – I’ll have to photo it for you.) I’m hoping to do more spinning over the holidays, as I have a long way to go in order to get good! But I’m working on it. Are there any St. Louis spinners out there? I’m thinking of doing a monthly evening “Spin In” here at Loopy Central.
We’re ready for preliminary signups for Loopy’s Spring Fling Knitting Retreat! We’re leaving them open until Friday morning. We’ll get back to you by Friday of this week to confirm your spot. (Why not just take the first 60 signups? I didn’t want you to have to stay glued to the website and battle for a spot!) Your deposit isn’t due until January 15th, and we’ll send you a bill for that. Go check it out. We have Wendy and Cookie coming to teach classes, and lots more fun things planned. We can’t wait to have you here!
Yesterday at lunch, Knitting Daughter (aka Starbucks Barista) was telling us about a lady who comes through the drive-through line for her coffee and frequently pays for the person behind her, too. Now wouldn’t it be fun to drive up to the window and hear, “Yours is free today – the lady ahead of you took care of it.”? Since I frequent Starbucks quite a bit once in awhile, I decided that I’d do that on occasion, too. Not all the time. But maybe once a week. Which got me to thinking about other Random Acts of Kindness that I could be doing during this season of giving. And then I started thinking about how fun it would be if we all did that from now until the end of December! So we going to sponsor “Random Acts of Kindness Month” here at The Loopy Ewe. Each Monday, we’d love to have you leave a comment about a random act of kindness that you did during the past week. Some people like to do this anonymously (like me), but rest assured that the people you are being kind to probably have never heard of this blog, so you’re safe in sharing it with us. Not only will you enter yourself into a weekly drawing here, but you will inspire all of the rest of us with your ideas and kindness. (And really – inspiring others to random acts is, in itself, an act of kindness, right?) Since you’ve had no warning for today’s contest, I think it’d be great if you’d leave a comment about a RAK (Random Act of Kindness) that someone has done for you. That will give all of us some great new ideas. (Or if you do one today, enter it today.) The prizes? Each week we’ll pull one name from the list (and if you do more than one act, leave more than one comment – you can be entered more than once) and we’re going to send you a fun Loopy Loot package worth at least $75. (Hey all of you book authors that are Loopy customers – and there are a lot of you! – if you’d like to donate an autographed copy of one of your books to put into one of these 6 drawings, we’d love that! Ditto to all of our Loopy indie dyers and Loopy indie artisans. I’m not going to email you and solicit products – we are happy to stuff the packages right from inventory here, too, but if you want to contribute, it could be your RAK for the week!) We will ship all winners at the same time – on January 2nd. That way we can make sure that all 6 packages are of equal value. We’ll do drawings for the next six Monday posts (including today and ending 12/31. We’ll draw on Tuesdays, so that all of the Monday comments will be included.)
I did go through the drive through today and I did pay for the person behind me. I was hoping that someone who really needed a free coffee would pull up behind me. Instead, a guy in a fancy sports car pulled up. What to do? Because of course I was making judgements about him and his fancy car and the fact that he could well afford his own coffee I wondered if he’d appreciate it? Then I stopped myself. I decided he must need a kindness today, so I went ahead and paid for him and then sped off as fast as I could so I would stay anonymous! And, unbelievably, on the back of my Starbucks cup today, I noticed that it says: “Pass the Cheer. A good way to pass the cheer when you’re on the road is to pay the toll for the car behind you. Do this and you might start to look at stoplights as holiday lights instead. Red means to stop and be thankful for a moment. Green means to out and do nice things.” What a coincidence! But you don’t have to spend money to show a RAK. How about letting the person behind you in the grocery line go first? Or go to the manager of the next store you shop at to tell him or her something nice about the person who checked you out. Or …. well, you get the idea. Share your other ideas with us.
Speaking of winning things, I totally forgot to announce the winner of our November Blog Contest last Friday. I think I was too involved with getting my holiday rules down (and you all added some very good ones to the list – thank you.) The winner of the November blog contest is: Genny. Genny has a fun Loopy credit in her account to spend on her next order. Thank you again for all of your great musical suggestions!
Lastly, we have more fun yarn coming from Cherry Tree Hill. We’ll be getting some very special Supersock, at a really good price (a savings which of course we pass right along to you.) More details when they arrive! We also just got a large shipment of Lorna’s Laces today, which we’ll be putting up. And we’re still working on this week’s Sneak Up for you. It’ll be a good one.
Just a quick blog today to remind you to leave your RAK (Random Acts of Kindness) comments from last week. Remember, we’re all trying to make December our month to go out of our way to pass on kindnesses (or “Pass the Cheer” as Starbucks advises.) I’ll announce the contest winner (drawn from all of today’s comments) on next Monday’s blog if I don’t blog again before then. I’ll have lots to tell you about when I get back!
