Come See us at the Carolina Fiber Fest this weekend!

The Unique Sheep will have a booth at the Carolina Fiber Fest in Raleigh this weekend, May 20-22. This is our first year doing this festival and they have a great line up of vendors, teachers and speakers. We will have lots of Gradiance yarns, of course, and may even pull out our Serendipity basket with odds and ends of our yarns at deep discounts. Laura will be driving all the way from her new home in Kentucky for the event so come out and say hello! This will be our last event before our Retreat in August so don't miss it!

Extra Yarn

Many of our customers have been knitting Susan Pandorf's In Dreams shawl using one of our Gradiance sets. Unfortunately Susan has announced that if they ordered 4oz they may run short near the end. Susan has posted alternate instructions for completing the shawl with the original 4oz on her website. This is the recommended strategy if you fear you are going to run out of yarn. If you'd like to continue with the original pattern, however, and order an additional 1oz skein of yarn to add to your 4oz Gradiance you can order these extra skeins for Eos or for Marici on our website. When you order, please let us know which end of the colorway you want your extra skein added to. Handdyed yarn is, by its nature, unique and varies significantly from batch to batch. Because of this we cannot guarantee that the extra skein we dye will match your original set. For that reason we suggest that you use the alternate instructions and stick with the original 4 oz, but we are leaving that decision up to you!

The Phoenix and The Carpet Mystery KAL

We are excited to announce our next mystery lace KAL- The Phoenix and the Carpet! Find out more on our website.

Yarn for Susan Pandorf's Lothlorien Cape

Susan Pandorf just revealed her stunning Lothlorien Cape pattern and guess what? She used Unique Sheep's Wild Thing yarn for it! Wild Thing is a really nice yarn that doesn't get much attention because its DK and DK yarns just don't seem to be that popular right now. But if you've been drowning in miles of laceweight and fingering weight yarn you'll welcome the extra heft of this soft, smooth silk/merino blend. Its a great choice for cables because it has great stitch definition and the thickness of the yarn makes the cables nice and plump.

We collaborated with Susan to create the Nature Walk Gradiance colorway just for this pattern, but I'm sure it would look lovely in other colors as well. Because it calls for an unusual amount of yarn we have set up a special listing on the website to make sure you get exactly what you need for this project!

The Unique Sheep at Juniper Moon Fiber Farm

For the last month Kelly and I have been going nuts keeping a secret from you guys and finally we get to spill the beans! You can now find exclusive colorways and base yarns by The Unique Sheep available only through Juniper Moon (previously Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm). The Spring 2011 collection has just been posted in their online yarn shop. The colors in the Spring collection are exclusive to Juniper Moon and will only be available this spring. Once summer arrives we will be replacing them with summer colors so make sure to stock up now!

We are dying to order, just like we do on our own website, so you can order as much as you want and we will dye everything you order in the same dye lot. I.E. if you need to order 6 skeins for a sweater, we'll dye them together to make sure they match. Usually it can be hard to find a sweater's worth of hand dyed yarn from the same batch.

Make Custom Gifts at CafePress

Amani Children's Foundation

Every three months we send in a donation to Amani Children's Foundation based on sales of our Amani colorway and sock pattern. And after they receive our check they always send us a thank-you note with an update on how the kids are doing and pictures. I always look forward to these letters and when one arrive this weekend I thought you might enjoy it too!

Thank you so much for your gift to care for children at New Life Home! Hooray for Unique Sheep, your beautiful wool, and your thoughtful spirit. What a difference your gift will make for a child as he waits for his new Kenyan parents this coming year!

We've just received word from the social workers at New Life Home that they completed their 100th adoption from New Life Home for the year during the week before Christmas. I'm attaching a picture of Fidel, one of the little boys whose adoption was completed during the last week of last year, as well as Arthur, his buddy who is still awaiting adoption in the Nairobi home.

Your gift will go to care for Arthur and the other 46 toddler boys in the 4 baby homes across the country. Little girls are usually adopted within their first year of life, so in this coming year, the social workers and advocates at New Life Home will be hard at work to find new parents for them--as your gift is hard at work caring for them until they are found.

You'll receive a hard copy receipt and letter in the mail, but I wanted you to know that your hard earned and faithful gift is already at work

Thank you!

Jane Stephens