And the Winner Is...

The winner of our first yarn giveaway is TopHat, who said, "I love the Debbie Bliss Cashmerino in purple. I would make mittens for my daughter!"

I will be contacting you for an address to get your Noro Silk Garden yarn sent out to you as soon as possible. Congratulations to TopHat.

Be sure to check back for future giveaways!

*First Free Yarn Giveaway!* A Few of My Favorite Things...Yarn and Giveaways

I have decided to combine two of my favorite things--yarn and giveaways! For those of you who know me, you know how much I love giveaways and getting free stuff in the mail.

Well, I have decided to share the love. One lucky winner will receive a skein of the beautiful and luxurious Noro Silk Garden in color 293. It is self-striping and makes any project special.

To enter, go to www.needlesandewe.com and find your favorite yarn and color. Then add a comment to this post with 1) your favorite yarn and color on www.needlesandewe.com and 2) what you would make with that yarn. On June 8th I will chose a winner at random using the True Random Number Generator at www.random.org. In order to give everyone an equal opportunity, please only leave one comment. I look forward to hearing about everyone's favorites!

Yarn! Yarn! Yarn!

I realize I really don't need an "accountability partner" for getting things done...posting them on a blog is very effective! I had an enormously productive weekend. I updated my Ravelry projects AND finished my brown shrug (which I love!). Add in a trip to the craft store, a sample sale (yay for cute clothes!), and beautiful spring sunlight, and it's a wonderful weekend.

Today I added more yarn to my Etsy store, http://www.etsy.com/shop/NeedlesAndEwe, and I have confirmed that I DO love yarn! I think it is something only a quilter or knitter or other crafter can understand, but just looking at yarn makes me a little giddy. I don't even have to touch it (though that is great, too)--looking at it is enough for me. When I got my first shipment of yarn in, everyone could tell by how happy I was...though I confess they also knew because I couldn't help but share the information ;) And, although they enjoyed a smiling me, they all reminded me (a little cruelly, I thought), "Now you know you don't get to keep all this yarn for yourself, right?"

Yes...I did know that. But, unless someone wants to buy a huge shipment of yarn (if that's you, let me know!), I only have to part with it a little at a time!

Welcome to Needles and Ewe!

OK, so I am notoriously bad at consistently writing journals, e-mails, and letters. My Ravelry page spent a long time with no project pictures...crying the whole time, I'm sure. My great idea was to add the care instructions for each yarn to my project page so I would not forget, but yeah, that hasn't happened yet. (Note to self: I think that will be on my to-do list this weekend, along with my brown shrug.) ...and that is why it takes me so long: I can't seem to avoid tangents! But back to the point, I have decided to use Julie/Julia as my inspiration and commit to a blog for one year. Since I do know myself, I am going to go for one post a week, cheer for myself, and count any extra posts as, well, extra.

I love crafts of all sorts. They usually fall into the category of crafts I've done, crafts I'm going to try soon, and crafts I will keep in reserve to try in a few years or so. The current obsession is knitting, which I have been doing for about a year and a half, though crochet, sewing, quilting, rubber stamps, ceramics and so many others would make the crafts list. One thing on the list of future things to learn would be stained glass...ahh, so many crafts and not enough time!

Speaking of time...that's it for my first post. I have considered going back and changing it from three posts to one per week (though I didn't) and I considered staying up past midnight tonight to add a second one tonight (but I decided that would be cheating), so for now I bid you adieu!