Dear Friends,

It’s an exciting time around here, what with wheat harvest going strong and a wedding coming up on Saturday.  And just to make things more interesting, we have fires all around.  One evening’s storm last week produced more than 5,000 lightning strikes east of the Cascade Mountains.  Those translate into fires.  Night before last must have done pretty well too, although I haven’t seen any statistics.  What a show!  And what a mess it made!  So we’ve had all our equipment and crew out on fires. 

Somehow we managed to get the cows moved into their next pasture rotation, and we are preparing to move the ewes (sheep) this Sunday to “flush” them as we turn the rams in for breeding season.  Things are humming along in the yarn shop as we prepare and ship out fall orders to yarn shops around the country.  We are more bonded to the rest of the country than we ever used to be, with all our wonderful friends in the fiber and needle arts community.  It’s made tornadoes in the south and hurricanes in the east all the more real to us as we share their concerns and challenges.

I love living out like we do, far from towns, with just the quiet and peace of the landscape.  In fact, according to the definition of wilderness in the Wilderness Act of 1964, we qualify as one.  But it can feel pretty lonesome at times like this, when the wind is whipping range fires over the ground and they seem unstoppable.  Thank God for neighbors.  We appreciate our community. And we appreciate our greater community of partners who have joined our family in carrying Imperial Yarn. Thank you.

Warm Regards,

Jeanne

Join us for our first official year-long Knit-A-Long!
Starting September 15, we'll choose one Imperial Yarn pattern every other month to knit together as a group. Those who knit all six projects by next September can enter to win 6 hanks of our beautiful Columbia yarn in the color of their choice! That's over 1300 yards of yarn! The winner will be drawn September 15, 2012 after submitting photos of all their projects. Our first project will be the warm and cozy Retro Thrum Slippers. To join our KAL, you must join our group on Ravelry here . If your LYS doesn't carry our patterns, you can find them online here.

Happy knitting! See you at the KAL!

Tanis

We are thrilled to announce that we will show our first in-house hand knitwear collection of patterns –THE IMPERIAL KNITS COLLECTION– on the runway at Portland Fashion Week  on October 6th, 2011 and we invite you to attend!! The collection was designed by internationally recognized sustainable designer and creative director, Anna Cohen, with technical interpretation by Simona Merchant-Dest and Faina Goberstein. Guest designs by Chrissy Gardiner and Edie Eckman.

It is very rare for a hand knit collection of patterns to be featured on a ready-to-wear runway. The partnership between Imperial Yarn and Anna Cohen has been developing into a leading story of bridging urban and rural, fashion and craft, and bringing audiences and discerning consumers along on a journey back to the source, and the very roots of fashion. This presentation is made possible through the partnership of Imperial Stock Ranch and Iberdrola Renewables, working together toward a cleaner energy future and building local community.

The fashion show will be followed by a trunk show and personal appearances by Jeanne Carver and Anna Cohen at Twisted in Portland, Oregon on Friday, October 7th from 4:00-6:00pm.

Hope to see you there.