The Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair is October 24-26 at the WNC Ag Center. We’ve been super busy making new stuff to bring to the show!

It’s fall, which means time for some fun new yarns! Want a cloudlike colorful soft single-ball project? For $30, one skein of Pouffe will make a scarf, or a hat and mitts, or whatever else you want to dream up. Using an N hook or US 11 needle, the 295 yards will go a long way. I want an extra ball just to hug!

Sorry it took so long, but we finally have the Colorwork Carousel up on the site for sale. I use this thing constantly and it is so much easier and more fun than the old gravity method.

And if you are a real masochist and working with 6 colors at a time isn’t mad enough for you, you can contact [email protected] for the 12-color expansion!

https://youtu.be/JYDz3D9YRyI?si=Iai5OlkexS5i5IaS

This video is very informative.

We’ve noticed Berroco has raised prices multiple times since being bought by a big Wall Street firm. Of course everyone has raised prices, but most companies have said they are doing all they can to keep costs down. We’ve generally used Berroco as a source of inexpensive staple yarns, but it might be worth investigating other options. We want to do right by our customers!

It’s hard to believe we’ve been running Purl’s for fifteen years! And the store has been around for 20 years now, so this week we’re giving everyone 20% off all purchases! Come see us in person or check your email for a coupon you can use online.

We try to keep yarns in stock at a variety of price points. There’s no shame in being budget conscious, and we want good yarn to be available to everyone. There are brands we avoid (cough cough Lang) simply because we feel like they are priced too high for what they are.

But we are dependent on our suppliers, and when their prices go up, there’s not much we can do. We try to stock up before price hikes go into effect and put off price increases as long as we can. But tariffs that are all about feeding one man’s ego are going to affect us all. We’re sorry this is happening. We would give out free yarn if we could.

We do have a big sale coming up, but don’t be tempted to hoard yarn you won’t use. Lean on that monthly coupon and the Go Local card. Share stash yarn with your friends. And find ways to subvert capitalism whenever you can.

There’s another grafting stitch! It’s called the Finchley Stitch and it’s done from the wrong side, but it’s a little less complicated. I’m going to give it a try next time I have to graft stitches together.

Raising a kid in the 2000s meant I lost track of adult music for a while, so I kind of missed out on Paramore at the time. But Hayley Williams just released a slew of new songs (not an album, for whatever reason, but very album-like), and I am here for it all!

Not all masculinity is toxic. Especially in the fiber arts community I have met lots of men, both trans and cis, who remind me that just being male is not the problem. The problem is trying to navigate entrenched male gender roles in our society. I was raised in a time when “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche” was a bestseller. It was written as a satire, but it reflected real attitudes. I lived through the era of “metrosexual” derision: those big-city men and their feminized ways. And of course it hasn’t gone away. The MAGA movement is largely a backlash to the real progress I’ve seen over the decades with women and queer folks being more visible and more visibly in charge. The young people I meet have much more awareness and much healthier attitudes toward gender issues than my generation (although there’s a worrisome trend around young male incels who haven’t adopted those messages).

The fiber arts community is largely a really great place to be a man, as long as you are willing to listen and contribute but not take over. When I first got into this business 15 years ago, it seemed like an overly large percentage of celebrated designers were men. That’s less and less true. It can be disorienting for some guys to be part of something where they are a curiosity and sometimes attract the kind of attention they don’t want. (Sometimes there’s an assumption that male crafters are less proficient, or an assumption about their sexuality. Sometimes there’s even objectification. It can be real weird, but it can also be truly educational in understanding what women have to go through every day.) There are some great men’s knitting retreats around the country that foster good fun and support. I like to think of crochet and knitting as green flags–I’ve met a couple of problematic male crafters over the years, but compared to the general population? Stitching men are actively working against ingrained gender expectations, and that’s a good thing.

One reason I like knitting in public is that it shows the world a different side of masculinity. And, by the way, I love quiche too.