This season has been explosive and pleasantly relaxed all at once for me. As the season draws closer to New Years, we Bewilderknitters show up with our booth at every Roadrunner Farmers Market on Saturdays. It's really a joy being there. Early mornings allow me to bundle up in feather down and gloves and experience winter. We have been running the booth for so long that set-up and break-down is easy. I know just what booth to go to first thing to get my morning Toddy coffee, and then I go to Bill's booth at Kissed by Fire, where he has awesome breakfast burritos with his terrific salsa! And I'd be remiss to not also mention the Wei of Chocolate booth, which has flower essence infused chocolates, need I say more?


The farmers market is sponsored by Chipotle, which is swiggity-sweet. Also, did you know that Roadrunner Park Farmers Market has won New Times Best of Phoenix for their produce? Cora did, and she bought practically enough kale to fill my entire van last week, then promptly went home to spend six hours juicing it on Sunday!


This season is our first of having actual displays of yarn for sale. Yep, we've hinted at it in previous blog posts and mentioned it in passing on our Facebook page: in addition to our handspun yarns, we now offer the yarn we use for sale at our booth. We carry what we use in our products, which now allows us to share another side of our experience with other knitters and crocheters.

We even put together knit kits with patterns and the huge needles we like to use are in the kits too. Along with some cute felted Bewilderknitty mushroom charms! If you're a knitter, do swing by to see what colors we have in stock. The Knit Kits help projects knit up quick and also make a good gift by themselves.


The yarn moves pretty quickly, so follow us on Facebook to get an update every time we get in a new shipment.

Cora's boyfriend Dan comes to the events on Saturdays and brings his pugs, which Karen's kids are abundantly happy about. The pugs look pretty pleased, too. Pleased Pugs.

We also get to wear knitted hats ourselves at these chilly events. Lately the temps have been around a high of 65! Karen wore her striped ribbed hat.

And I tried on one of my magic hats.

Here's Cora beside her spinning felted jewelry stand.

And here's some general photos of the booth last week. I didn't have my fancypants camera, but "the perfect is the enemy of the good," so here goes nothing:

Finally, here is a photo of a very lovely customer who bought my magic hat and scarflette set called "Star Child." She looked so lovely and the whole look really suited her. I was so glad to get a photo before they left the booth!

I want to thank all the lovely shoppers at Roadrunner Park along with all of the terrific vendors who keep coming out with their delicious products. I'm so glad we have a culture like this to participate in in Phoenix!

As mentioned in our last blog, we are building Bewilderknit Kits with yarn, custom needles, darning needles & stitch patterns. Our yarn is always chunky and we use it for our knitting, too! We recently placed a big, exciting order, and these pictures sum up the Bewilderknitters' deluge of consummate joy at the arrival of our Herculean Malabrigo shipment!

Shay emptied the box's contents onto a big sheet on our couch (to protect the yarn from cat fur or dust) and we sat around the pile in a circle with big bags. 

 

Every one of us wanted every skein we saw. Too much is never enough when you knit in all your spare time, and when you're confronted with some of the Best Yarn in the World.

We split up the yarn between us by going round-robin, starting with Karen. We each picked out a color we wanted and put it in our bag until our next turn. It was a smorgasbord, a lavish harvest, a cornucopia of yarny deliciousness!

Even Sebastian was happy to stake his claim on the big box of wool.

Knitters, don't bother trying to rob my house. I managed to knit eleven finished items in four days. There's nary a full, untapped skein to be had.

However, don't be dismayed! We did manage to set ten skeins aside for Bewilderknits Kits!!

Check our Events Calendar on Bewilderknits.com to find out where we'll be next and share a piece of the Malabrigo Pie with us!

In the outdoor market community we came across many other knitters and fiber artists who kept asking us what yarn we use to create our one of a kind items. So, in response to their inquiries, we decided to start offering it up for sale at events, as well as launch an online shop. Not only are we now offering our favorite fluffy yarns for individual sale, but we're also developing knit kits!

Made for knitters and do-it yourselfers, the Bewilderknits Kit contains everything needed to make your own magnificent knitted project. We've included fluffy yarn, big wood needles, a darning needle and stitch patterns that we use in our own Bewilderknits designs. Suitable even for beginners, this kit makes a marvelous gift for knitters, either keep it yourself or give it away!

We had a wonderful idea for personalizing the needles and carrying over our Bewilderknits branding: molding little mushrooms and snails and such on the ends of the needles. It was just an idea for many many months. Then along came my dear friend Dan from Better Than New Fine Furniture Repair. It was he who made our idea into a reality. After snagging a pair of my needles just a day earlier, he presented me with beautiful mushroom adorned needles.

Now that we had a fantastic prototype, it was time for mass production. So Dan took me down to his shop to teach me how to make our Bewilderknits needles.

Below are photos of my adventure...

After prepping the needles with sandpaper and a razor blade, you have 7 minutes to mold a mushroom onto the needle before it starts to harden up...

Once they've dried, you paint them red!

Then, I got to wear a snazzy mask to spray some sort of sealant on them....

Then it was time for the white dots...

And don't forget the undersides!

One final spray of sealant and it was time to let them dry overnight.

Tada!!! The Bewilderknits Kit Knitting Needles all ready to go!

Keep an eye out for our knitting kits and skeins of yarn for sale online and at events. :)

- Cora