Threaded Bliss

Ahhhhhhhh. It's mine . . .

and it's wonderful!

I signed my lease today and will have my keys tomorrow morning. Sigh. This is just awesome.

Tonight I ordered some wonderful ebony and rosewood knitting needles. Sizes 6 and up in 10" straights and sizes 1-7 in double points. They really are quite beautiful. They come from Lantern Moon so you know that by purchasing these wonderful, hand-crafted needles (and their other products as well) you are empowering women in Viet Nam and helping them to support and educate themselves and their families. Helping others is a very important part of Threaded Bliss but I'll get to that at another time.

I'm pretty wiped out - it's been quite a week and I keep waking up at the crack of dawn rarin' to go. So on that note, I'm off to dreamland.

As always, more to come.

What fun!

It's like being

a kid in a candy store

with a Barbie doll

Does yarn mulitply when people aren't looking?

As of yesterday, here is the living room! My dress form arrived as did a couple of boxes of backordered Debbie Bliss yarns. The model on the form is in Noro Kureyon.

Rudy doesn't seem to have realized yet that he will NOT be a shop dog. I'd love it if he could be but even at 2 1/4 years old - he's still pretty much all puppy. He's very obedient and knows a gazillion commands but all of that flies right out the window if there is a distraction, particularly one of the new-to-him human variety. Plus, not everyone likes dogs and I would hate for any customer to be uncomfortable because he is there. Still, he does see himself as the protector of Threaded Bliss North (my living room).

Speaking of Threaded Bliss - back to work for me.

Keep on stitching folks.

"What was I thinking?" Edition

I don't mean that I'm wondering why I want to open a yarn shop - on that score, it's starting to sink in that I have an awesome location now. Not only that, I am utterly thrilled and my feet have yet to touch the ground.

"What was I thinking?" refers 100% to why would I pick "crunch-time" to work on tiny needles, with lace weight yarn and a written pattern that looks like some kind of jigsaw puzzle??

This really is the start of Threaded Bliss CRUNCH TIME and I've been awake and at it since about 5:30 this morning. I just couldn't wait to get started I guess!

If any local readers out there would like to possibly work at Threaded Bliss (teaching and/or sales positions available) please don't hesitate to send me an email. Threaded Bliss will be a happy, comfortable place that nurtures creativity and fosters lifelong passion for the fiber arts.

Back to work.

Did I mention the ample parking?

A real fireplace

more to come later . . . I'm still not quite sure whether it's sunk in yet.

Threaded Bliss has a HOME!

I warned you people that one of these posts I'd just explode and spill the news. Well, it would appear that post is now! I...just...can't...stand....it....any...longer...

My new yarn shop has a home and a slightly modified name

Threaded Bliss will live at 127 Franklin Road in Brentwood, Tennessee.

For those locals who may be reading this, that's the Brentwood House shopping strip where Wild Iris (yum) and the Baskin-Robbins (even yummier) are located. Our space is right next door to the Wild Iris and besides being in a very busy -good busy not bad busy- and convenient location the best thing about it is that it has a FIREPLACE. No kidding, a real, brick fireplace! The previous tenant actually broke off the brick mantle and covered the thing with a slat wall. Can you believe that? But, who'd want a fireplace in a swim shop? A fireplace in a yarn shop is whole other story.

There is a gas line into the fireplace already and if I am going to use it at all, it will be gas, not wood, for the sake of the yarns. The big question at this point though is whether the city will actually let me have a working fireplace in use as a fireplace. I'll keep you posted on that one. Even if I can't have a fire in it, I'm still thrilled to have the fireplace as it lends the shop just the right kind of cozy, comfortable living room feel.

Truthfully, I'm not sure that the complete reality of this news has quite sunk in yet. No matter how many times I pinch myself, I can't be certain whether I am dreaming or not. Maybe when I go out there later with the digicam and bring exterior pictures to post, then it will hit me or maybe it will happen when I meet the builder out there next week or better yet - get my keys and take possesion on April 1. I rather appreciate the irony of an April Fool's Day starting date on the lease. It'll most certainly be an anniversary that I'll never forget.

Time to float* on over to my Mom's house for family brunch.

Have a great early Spring Sunday folks!

*I don't think my feet have actually touched the ground since Thursday when I knew the dream space would be MINE!

If this is a blog about a birth, it's . . . time!

The overnight bag's been by the back door for weeks, months even, and now I'm off to labor and delivery.*

I've got relatives in from out of town this weekend on both sides of my family. I'm thrilled to see them but the timing's off so I could not attend the Nashville Knitting & Crochet Guild weekend retreat at Center Hill Lake. I just know they're having a blast though.

So, when I'm not with the "kinfolk" (as they say down here) I plan to spend a large part of this weekend the way my old buddy from Monterey Bay likes to pass his days. We visited right before I loaded up my car and moved from the Bay Area back to my old home. On that day I took this picture.

After a few extra hours of this I should be good and ready for crunch time!

xoxo folks! Keep on stitching.

*We're talking manual labor and big deliveries of bold, beautiful fiber.

Sometimes it just feels so good to be alive.

No knitting or even Kool-Aid news today. In fact, I hardly even worked a single stitch yet today was just one of those days at the end of which one can't help but to be grateful and feel blessed. It didn't hurt the making of this wonderful day that it was all SPRING today. The temp was in the low 70's, the skies bluer than blue, the redbud and bradford pear trees all full of white and deep pink blossoms and I even saw some buds on my neighbor's dogwood.

In my own backyard.

I observed something else rather nice today too - Travel and Leisure has to be 100% dead-on accurate in their pick of Nashville as the nation's friendliest city. Walking around today with a spring in my step and a non-stop smile on my face, almost everyone I passed smiled back and/or said hello. I never, ever, ever thought I'd say the following words: I am so glad that I live in Nashville, TN, the town where I was born and raised and then left for 20 years. I returned home about two years ago and probably half expected at the time that I'd just be miserable and stay miserable. Phew - sometimes it's just great to be wrong.

Keep checking back to the blog because there is plenty of news to follow, much of it, if not all of it, will be about my blind leap into the world of yarn shop ownership and the day to day adventures of taking a dream and making physical reality out of it. I'm just bursting at the seams with it and one of these posts, I'm just gonna start spilling!

Be happy, enjoy the blue of the skies and keep on knitting, crocheting, spinning, playing with Kool-Aid and food coloring and loving the arts that utilize fiber.

Kool-Aid Is So Kool!

I started with this...

Beige Manos

And then I did this...

After five minutes

After 30 minutes

And in the end, I got this...

Pretty darn KOOL, huh?