Yarn List Updated

Our new yarns have been updated in our Webshots photo album. The new colors are (in alphabetical order):

Arabian Night 1407
Atomic 1149
Baby Teal 1360
Black 1390
Black Forest 324
Blue Diamond 1418
Coppelia 1406
Easter Star 394
Everglade 134
Fandango 1409
Fur 314
Gray Dawn 338
Holly Berry 1408
Ivy 1140
La Folie 1412
Lucinda 1410
Malibu 335
Marley 1377
Merlot 1357
Nitro 1417
Nut Cracker 1416
Outlaw 400
Peach Sherbet 405
Prairie Rose 354
Rachel Royal 1415
Rain Storm 1358
Robin Hood 1389
Singin' the Blues 1356

They will be updated on the onliine ordering tool through Shopatron this week.

Greetings from Long Beach

Hello everybody!
We are at the Winter Trade Show for The National Needlearts Association in Long Beach California. We flew in on Thursday to set up our booth and look at the results!

For the first time we have two booths. So this is 10 feet wide and 20 feet deep. Janice Rosema, the lady in the first picture, brought some of her display materials like the 'girls' above to help us show off our wares.

Wish us good luck and hope to see you here.

New Knit Knit book features Ozark Handspun

We're in a book! Ozark Handspun is featured in the new book from KnitKnit magazine, KnitKnit: Profiles + Projects from Knitting's New Wave.

KnitKnit's one of our all-time favorites. We love it so much we donated yarn for the magazine's fifth issue last year, which artist Josh Faught used to crochet sashes for each copy.

KnitKnit founder Sabrina Gschwandtner (whose name is even harder to spell than ours) and photographer Kiriko Shirobayashi traveled from New York to visit us and see the Ozark Handspun shop where we make what Sabrina describes as "riotously colorful, wildly textured handspun yarn."

"David and Terri run their company out of the same two-story, red brick home in Jefferson City that David purchased after he sold the sheep farm... Periodically peering out the window to enjoy the impressive view, David listens to the Beatles, the Who, Johnny Cash, and the Rolling Stones while he spins, leaving a fine dust of colored fiber on his jeans..."

"A skein of Ozark Handspun, with all its texture, shape, and color is almost like an object that's already been knitted. With it, David hopes to inspire a whole new crop of knitters and all new types of knitted objects."

Sabrina also talked with our friend and designer Sarah Kohl, who contributed a pattern to the book — one of her fabulous and popular handbags.

Buy the book, it's fantastic! If you haven't seen the magazine before, check out KnitKnit's website.

Ozark Marriage

These fibers are 100 percent organic and are a very renewable resource. However, just like the lambs these beautiful locks come from, after two weeks we were very glad to have them removed. We can only imagine how the little lambs feel at the end of a year.

Happy Summer from Dave and Terri.

Email Woes

Update (May 15): The issues with our email has been resolved. If you sent us email recently and didn't hear from us, we apologize! Please, please give us a call or email again, and we'll get back to you, we promise!

Hello potential communicators,

My ISP is having difficulty determining the difference between spam and legitimate email messages. If you have been trying to contact either Dave or myself, please try one of these alternate addresses instead: (deleted to reduce spam).

I sincerely apologize for any returned messages you may have received. These shenanigans have been going on for about three weeks now. They said they fixed it once, but people who send correspondence to my normal email address, (deleted to reduce spam), have had their mail returned. I have called, complained, yelled, threatened and am ready to cancel if they do not get their act together. Unfortunately, my ISP uses a third party to handle their spam filtering and this slows down the process considerably.

So, if your email has been returned you can forward it to one or both of the alternates listed above or you can call 573-644-8736.

Again I am sorry for all the inconvenience, frustration, anger and cussing this has caused. Breathe deep, count to 10 (I had to do this several times) and try again.

Have a Great Day and Knit Loose!

Terri & Dave

And We're Off!

Off to see the wizard? No, not quite. We are, however, going to a comparable Emerald City. Dave and I belong to The National Needlearts Association (TNNA). They host two trade shows each year. The first this year is in sunny San Diego. We leave this afternoon and will return late Tuesday evening. We will be checking phone messages and email on a regular basis while we are away but will probably wait until next Wednesday before answering most messages.

Thanks so much!

Terri and Dave Gentzsch

Innaugural post

Welcome to our new blog, where we'll post news about the latest Ozark Handspun colors, updates of new stores where you can buy our yarns, and more.

We'll also occasionally post pictures! Here's a photo of Ozark Handspun founder Dave Gentzsch and his daughter Velma working in the basement shop.