In This Edition: Presenting the Natural Stitches Gift Guide! New yarns, new crochet hooks and so much new spinning fiber that your spindle and spinning wheel will weep tears of joy Jenn reviews 60 More Quick Knits A contest from our friend and former coworker, Steven

Presenting the Natural Stitches Gift Guide! Whether you’re looking for gift ideas for a friend or you want to drop subtle hints to family members, let us help! May we suggest printing this out and leaving it around the house? Stocking Stuffers: You Can Never Have Too Many Chibi Dumpling bags from Hiya Hiya Needle gauge Shawl pins Tape measure Scissors Row counter Stitch markers Small bottle of Eucalan Luxury Items Interchangeable needle set; we have many to choose from. Yarn winder and swift; purchase both together and get 10% off! Debra’s Garden needle gauges; beautiful and practical. Spinning wheel; why not? Mountain Colors Weaver’s Wool; a whole sweater’s worth of yarn in one skein! Madelinetosh, and a lot of it Create-a-Kit Spinning Kit: A drop spindle, spinning fiber, and Respect the Spindle book or DVD Sock Kit: Cookie A. book, sock yarn, and small circular needles or DPNs Shawl Kit: A Fickle Knitter pattern, sock yarn, and T-pins Things You Didn’t Know You Lacked: A darning egg, Count Ten, whimsical stitch markers, and a Handi Tool Hat Kit: A hat pattern, a skein of Techno from Blue Sky Alpaca, and a circular needle Cowl Kit: Alpaca yarn, cowl pattern, and a Jul closure Care Kit: A bottle of Soak, a sweater stone, and tapestry needles Books: Build a Reference Library Knitting Rules, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Knitter’s Book of Yarn, Clara Parkes Knitter’s Book of Wool, Clara Parkes Knitter’s Book of Socks, Clara Parkes Any Elizabeth Zimmerman book Any Alice Starmore book Any Barbara Walker book For Kids Potholder loom and loops Pony knitting needles “I Taught Myself to Knit” kit A Kid’s Beginning Knitting or Crochet class at Natural Stitches Knit or crochet some toys; we have patterns for toys and fun foods. Home Décor A sheep mat from Lantern Moon Baskets Madelinetosh; hey, we can dream, right?

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What’s New, What’s Going On We just celebrated our 4th anniversary! Many thanks to our loyal customers; we couldn’t have done it without you! We’ve been participating in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month)! We’ve been taking the weekends off, but join us on our blog on weekdays, where we discuss what we have on our needles, recipes we’ve been cooking, and Zizmo questions us all on the size of our yarn stash. If you’ve been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Addi Swing Crochet Hooks, they’re here! The handles are so comfortable that I’m tempted to try crocheting again, just to play with the new hooks. For the holiday season, we’re carrying handmade soaps! From Ben, one of our customers, we are carrying soaps in Mint, Mulberry, Tea Tree Oil, Cappuccino, Pumpkin Pie, Lavender and Orange Cranberry Spice. From our coworker and everyone’s favorite chemical engineer, Karen, we have soaps in Sweet Pea Eucalyptus, Mint Lavender, Citrus Ginger and Tupelo Honey Almond. They would make great stocking stuffers! Lovely soaps Frabjous Fibers is up and running again after being flooded during Hurricane Irene. We received a huge shipment of fiber last week and it was worth the wait! We have a BFL and silk blend and the Opulence blend (it’s merino, silk, baby camel down and royal baby alpaca!). Frabjous Fibers now produces Hand-dyed Silk Hankies that you can use to knit or spin. Finally, we are proud to carry Vegan Wool from Frabjous Fibers! It’s so soft and we’re very happy to offer a vegan alternative to prospective spinners. This stuff is going FAST! Lots of pretty fibers! So soft! Vegan "wool" These are selling so fast Have you been missing Opal Sock Yarn? It’s back and waiting for you in our sock section! Fresh from Berroco, we now carry Lacey, Vintage Colors and new colors of Comfort DK, Vintage DK and Peruvia! If you missed Jane Austen Knits when it flew off the shelves last month, more copies have just arrived! We’ve also received Interweave Knits, Winter 2011. It’s time for holiday knitting and we just received a huge order of books! Come in and check out our selection, including Knitting Around the World, Knit Local: Celebrating America’s Homegrown Yarn, Exploring Color in Knitting, Ami Ami Dogs 2, Ultimate Mittens, Vogue Knitting: 28 Classic Patterns, and Crocheted Softies. If you’re trying to use up your stash, we have Stashbuster Knits: Tips, Tricks, 21 Beautiful Projects for Using Your Favorite Leftover Yarn, featuring samples by our teacher, Amy!

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Book Review: 60 More Quick Knits by Jenn Holiday crafting time is here and if you’re looking for the perfect knitted item to give to a special person in your life, 60 More Quick Knits has a lot to offer. The patterns in this book fall into 3 categories: hats, scarves, and mittens. To me, these are useful items. How many “quick” projects have we seen that are knitted bowls, baskets, or mug/cup cozies? Winter is coming, people will be cold. Who wouldn’t appreciate a hat, scarf, or mittens? 60 More Quick Knits features a wide variety of techniques, such as Fair Isle, cables, lace, bobbles, and the Latvian Braid. This would be a great way to learn a new skill before committing to a larger project. Knit the Cabled Beanie or the Cable-Accent Fingerless Mitts and you’ll be ready to knit an Aran sweater in no time! I really liked that the projects cover many skill levels. There are no plain stockinette hats or garter stitch scarves here. While there are easier patterns in the book, most of the listed skill levels trend towards intermediate and advanced levels. Be not afraid; you can knit these patterns! While you would think that a book of quick knits would use chunky or bulky weight, every pattern in 60 More Quick Knits uses Cascade 220 Sport. Natural Stitches does not carry this yarn, but we carry Cascade 220 Superwash Sport and many other sportweight yarns that would make excellent substitutions. If you are looking for ideas for holiday gifts and you can’t stand the idea of knitting one more boring scarf or hat, consider 60 More Quick Knits. With so many options to choose from, you really can’t go wrong.

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A Blog Contest for the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force By Steven, our friend and former coworker While I only lived in Pittsburgh for two years, I still consider it to be a home to me. People I love live there, and while blood might not connect us, we're family. Maybe that's why one week ago, at approximately 3 AM, after what had to have been a twenty hour day, I had the uncontrollable urge to raise money for the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force. Generally speaking, I have a rule about ideas I get after midnight; I try not to entertain them, and I definitely try not to send emails about them. (Any of you who remember the Great Lace Debate of 2010 will understand why.) But World AIDS Day is only a week away, and since I still thought the idea was sound five hours later when I woke up, I decided to pursue it. The last time I did a giveaway on my blog, I only had a lonely skein of my amateur hand spun yarn as an incentive for people to donate, and with the help of the knitters of the world, we raised over $500 for both PATF and other local HIV testing centers. This time, I wanted to go bigger, so I put out some feelers to see if any people in the fiber world might be willing to donate something to help me raise money. And boy, did they ever! The list of sponsors for the Bitches Get Stitches World AIDS Day project includes: SpillyJane, Jane Richmond, Fiber Optic Yarns, Into the Whirled, Blue Moon Fiber Arts, Yokoo Scarves & Accessories, Yarn Superhero LLC, The Grinning Gargoyle, Hilary Smith Calls, The Spinning Loft, Natalie Servant Designs, Designs by Romi, Craftivore, Yarny Old Kim, KnitNat, PAKnitWit, Knitspot, French Press Knits, and of course, Natural Stitches. Zen Yarn Garden Serenity 20 in the Go Pittsburgh! colorway. Bunny nugget not included. I actually had to turn away offers for donations because there's only so much one blogger can handle by himself with only one week to prepare. But with seventeen prizes from some of the knitting world’s most talented folks, I'm hoping to raise a heck of a lot more cash. Getting an HIV test is perhaps one of the scariest things I've ever done, but the people at the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force are incredible. Testing is free, and in twenty minutes, you know your status. I just feel like people don't talk about HIV and AIDS anymore, and yet it's still a pandemic. Maybe that's the problem; we think of HIV and AIDS as something happening elsewhere in the world. Maybe we don't want to acknowledge all the people in our own communities from all walks of life living with HIV and AIDS. Yes, there are lots of medications that people can take so that contracting HIV doesn't mean he or she will die, but finding out your status and getting treatment is dependent on places like the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force staying open so that they can provide free anonymous services to the community. They provide services that are often completely unavailable anywhere else. I just feel very passionately about getting people to look outside the hardships of their own lives and realize that with very little effort, there is so much we can do to help the people around us. The giveaway itself with detailed prize descriptions, rules, and how to donate will be posted on my blog on World AIDS Day (December 1). I hope to see you all there. Thanks to Natural Stitches for helping me to get the word out. It will always be my local yarn shop.

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