When I told Christina I wanted to do black and white for the theme of this year’s holiday windows, she wasn’t convinced, but I think that I’ve won her over…

We wrapped empty boxes with newsprint, made giant dahlias out of newsprint and black card stock. Sewed new curtains out of fabric from the shop, and made paper streamers from newsprint. A little gold spray paint added some sparkle. Carnations hanging from the ceiling were from Amazon and the rose trees were from Target. As I usually do, I knit stockings to go with the theme. These are knit from Cascade Magnum and big needles (the only way I like to knit these days.)

We’ve been overhauling Tangle. We’ve been here on Main Street for nearly 5 years, so it was time to change a few things up. The store is rearranged, the windows are new and the class schedule is completely re-deisgned. This doesn’t sound so bad when it’s written down all in one little sentence, but it was an extraordinary amount of work. So thankful to be finished!

Everything for the windows is handmade. The paper clay barnacles, the egg carton seaweed, the clams, the jelly fish and the sea urchins made from knitting needles, skewers and foam. It was so much fun. Also, so much work!

These windows took a whole team of crafters to pull off and even though they seem pretty simple, every single thing in them is handmade.

scraping the lettering from the previous windows was SO much work!

the burlap curtain is my favorite. We handmade the entire thing.

I hand knit the stockings.

We also put together some pretty cute kits.

And got in some really cute bags.

These are my favorite windows, by far!

I started with some sketchy calligraphy which I took to Copy Copy to be blown up. We had to cut out each word and blow it up 588%, which took about 2 hours in total. Then I cut out each word again, taped them inside the windows and painted over them with an oil based paint pen. I couldn’t be happier with how they turned out!!

Basically, at this point, everyone groans when I come up with a new idea for our windows. They seem to be getting more and more labor intensive. But… I kinda think it’s worth it.

We created these giant pinwheels out of knitting magazines. The large took 16 pages and the small took five pages. I also sewed new curtains out of Anna Maria Horner’s newest line.

Big thanks to Carrie for helping me pull the whole thing off.

Last week, we took all the Christmas decor down at Tangle and I did new windows including new curtains. If you look in my room or closet right now you’ll notice that mustard and grey are my favorite colors, especially together. It’s only fitting that the windows at Tangle should match.

Here’s the most recent round of publicity that Tangle has received:

kjct interview
(totally unexpected, of course on a day I was lazy about doing my hair.)

letter to the editor in the Daily Sentinel

Tangle sponsored (and created) Knit on the Corner again this year during our city’s Art and Jazz festival. Art and Jazz has always been my favorite Main Street event and I love that Tangle gets to be such a public part of it now.

Here are some of the photos from the event: (click any to see more)

(This year’s knitting and crocheting was all made by me and Christina.)

So Main Street, where Tangle is located, is under construction right now. The water and sewer pipes were old and just needed replacing. Marketing a business when the road leading to it is under construction is a challenge, but Tangle and our neighbors seem to be holding their own. In fact, Tangle is doing significantly better than we did this time last year.

Our local newspaper published a front page article about a business that is closing on Main Street and blaming it all on the construction. Not only is the owner blaming the construction, but she was making it sound like all of Main Street was going under only no one was talking about it.

That made me mad. It made lots of my neighbors mad too. So I sent an email to the editor of our paper and while I was at it, I copied it to all the other media in town. Little did I know it would start this media frenzy.

I ended up having my letter published in both local newspapers and had interviews on all three tv stations. The newspaper that ran the original article also ran a follow-up article that painted a more fair picture of how Main Street is actually doing.

I was so shocked that it was that easy to get the attention of the local media! But I’m so glad I sent the email. It was good for Tangle to get the extra exposure, but more than anything I just wanted to make sure Main Street was represented fairly.