Denise's NeedleWorks

Denise's Needleworks

Name:
Location: Ames, Iowa, United States

I am wife to Jeff, homeschool mom to 8, a knit and crochet teacher and totally addicted to knitting, crocheting and other fiber arts. After knitting, crocheting and sewing my own clothing from the age of 10 on, I studied textiles & clothing in college. That lead me to 25 years of custom dressmaking and alterations work, while sewing, knitting and crocheting for my growing children. I have worked in the yarn industry for the past 3 years and have been designing my own knitting patterns. Visit my web site at http://www.denisesneedleworks.com Find me as DeniseInIowa on Ravelry.com

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Knitting Retreat & Shop


Arnhild's Knitting Studio Retreat 2008

Rauma Retreat Shop hosted by

Denise's
Needleworks


Knitting retreat was fabulous!

We had a pampered weekend full of knitting, classes, excellent food and fun. Well, I didn't get to attend any of the classes but I still had a lot of fun.


We set up this beautiful store on Friday and started the weekend with soup, salads and lots of shopping.

Saturday there were classes in entrelac, needle felting, recycling your felted wool sweaters and a clinic with Arnhild, an expert in Norwegian knitting.

Sunday there was more time to work on projects or learn a new technique.

I met so many wonderful people! I am looking forward to next year's retreat!

Would you like to make one of the beautiful items shown here? You can now order any of the Rauma yarns and patterns and the Arnhild's Knitting Studio patterns at my web site: Denise's Needleworks.



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Thursday, February 21, 2008

Finished sweaters

I got the striped sweater finished earlier this week. It is in the tub ready to go to Arnhild's Knitting Retreat tomorrow. It is made of Vamsegarn, a worsted weight yarn from Rauma of Norway. It is a cute sweater but there were sooooo many yarn ends to weave in!

Carl says that he would like it if it didn't have the pink in it. He is okay with the purple though.

I also finished the little pink and blue Baby Surprise Jacket. This one is going with me to the retreat too. It is made of Rauma's Babygarn. Babygarn is so soft you can hardly believe it is 100% wool! It is washable too which is really nice for a baby garment.

We are all packed up for the retreat. We go set up tomorrow morning. It will be a busy weekend!

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Thursday, February 14, 2008

Things have been hectic!

Wow, time has been flying by! The weather here hasn't improved though. I was really hoping for a few warm days so we could thaw out a bit. The temperature seems to hover around zero far too much right now. It is sort of scary when you go out knowing that it is only 20 degrees and it feels WARM!

My kids have been keeping me busy with activities like basketball, music lessons and concerts. I am also teaching 2 homeschool classes how to knit. That has been fun!

But lots of my time is going into working with Arnhild. We are preparing for the retreat that is only about a week away now. We have everything arranged with the conference center and we are gathering up the supplies and samples we will need. There are so many details! I will be running the store at the retreat so I have my own list of details too.

In the midst of planning the retreat we are also trying to implement new inventory and accounting software. I am re-learning a lot of things that I thought were long gone from my days in college. Some of the accounting information is coming back to me from classes my freshman year but it has been slow. I wish I could still learn as easily as my kids do!

I hope you all have a great week!

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