Northern Loops featured in August Newsletter

Thanks to UK Handknitting Association (www.ukhandknitting.com) for featuring us in their August newsletter.

You can also find us listed on their groups page--Northern Loops puts Caithness on the map in a variety of ways!

UK Hand knitting association is very active in supporting and promoting knitting (and crochet). Their web site is a wealth of information from patterns and groups to competitions, including some sponsored in partnership with WI.

Of particular interest to me for Northern Loops are these three things: national effort to establish knit clubs in every school, celebrations of Wool week (September 5-11), and volunteers to teach knitting at events such as SECC in Glasgow through their Knit 1 program.

As we often find, news and events cluster more often down south than up here, we have already shown that we have the talent and the crafters to put Caithness on the map!

Check out our logo!

Lisa Poulsen created this logo for us. Lisa is a graphic artist who recently started her own graphic arts business, Inspired By Caithness, http://www.inspiredbycaithness.com

Let me know what you think. Once everyone has had a look-see and offered comments, we'll begin to incorporate it into labels for our shawls and all our communications.

Thanks, Lisa. Caithness is full of talented folks. I'm chuffed to have Lisa help us out and look forward to seeing her business prosper.

If not for knitting.....

I am back from a fortnight in Norway, where the scenery is stunning and the people are very friendly.

On the way to Bergen, however, we were fogged in at Shetland. Flybe was very accommodating. They arranged transport to and from the airport to a nice hotel in Lerwick and a voucher for dinner and breakfast. We arrived in Lerwick in time for a little walk through the centre. For me, this meant a bookstore and a trip to one of knitland's treasured sites--one of the Jamieson wool shops, which specialises, not surprisingly, in Shetland wool. Fortunately I had just a short time before they closed, so I had to stay focused and came out with just one small ball of wool.

I had planned to travel light and with all the hassle about knit needles on airplanes, only at the last minute decided to tuck in a small pair of circular needles and a pattern for wee hearts from one of those freebies included in a knit magazine. It turned out to be one of the best things to go into my bag.

When we checked in the day after our fogbound night, the weather did not look very promising. I had the foresight to ask about taking my wee needles in my hand luggage and was told, they were OK.

And then began the long wait. Maybe the flight would go; maybe not, and this not knowing lingered all day. I lost myself in the heart pattern. By the time we finally heard that the flight was taking off, I had nearly a half dozen little hearts.

A woman on the flight later commented, "You were always knitting" and that led to two things: a discussion of Northern Loops and my realisation that without my knitting I don't know how well I would have endured nine hours in a very small airport. That set me wondering about other folks' stories.

Was there a time when knitting helped you cope with a difficult situation or led to a conversation with a new person? I'd like to hear your stories.

Thanks!

We've received another donation of wool for Northern Loops which is much appreciated. We had actually begun to run low. Thanks to the generosity of so many folks I did not think that would ever happen, but we have been knitting hard and fast.

I'm taking a little holiday but wanted to say thanks and to let folks know that I do not know why their comments are not showing up here on the blog. I was surprised to discover that lots of folks have been visiting and leaving comments. For some reason they have been put in techno- limbo. If anyone reading this can tell me how to fix that, I'd be much obliged.