Thursday, March 13, 2008

Lament.

I am waiting on 20 pounds of undyed yarn right now. Half of it is coming from a wholesaler who was supposed to have shipped last Friday, but somehow misunderstood my e-mail that said I didn't want to wait for the backordered yarn that just arrived today. The other half is from a co-op, and part of my order won't arrive till next week so it will be another week before I get it.

Normally it's no big deal. My usual problem is trying to get through all the yarn that I've got in the house. But right now, thanks to my increased financial discipline for business-related spending this year, all I've got is bulky BFL and I'm needing some aran/worsted weight yarn to dye up for early April knitting projects. Bah, I knew this budgeting thing was a bad idea.

A little list of what I've got in mind for projects:

For my guest stocking at Lily Pad Landing, I'm planning to dye my Daydream and Spring Skies colorways. Got Daydream dyed up today on my last skein of Gaia organic merino, but I'm a little uncertain about how it turned out and will have to see what it looks like dry. I also want to do a skirt with my flowering plum embellishment:



but I haven't figured out what I want my base colorway to be. I'd also like to do a boyish knitted item, or maybe a felted purse ... not sure yet.

Then my own congo, Venus Vanguard is doing a Farmers' Market theme around the same time. I need to dye up Eat Your Veggies for a collaboration with Erika of Ramie Baby Designs. I have a Honeycrisp apple colorway in mind, for which I should probably do some experimental dyeing on cheap yarn this weekend. And I want to come up with another colorway, too. Maybe a sweet pea one?

After several months, I'm still thinking about approaching a local yarn store about carrying my yarns. Because they tend to take a significant percentage, I would probably need to raise my prices across the board, which I'm reluctant to do. I feel like I'm at a pretty good price point for my main target audience. But the thought of not spending hours taking photographs and struggling with color correction is awfully appealing.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Heya,

I'm a new new dyer and am going cross eyed from all the reading up I've been doing about undyed yarn suppliers. Can I ask who you get your undyed from? Your blog is good reading, thanks for the inspiration!

Unknown said...

I use Paton's classic merino for my experimental dyeing--I buy it when it goes on sale for less than $4. Other sources of undyed yarns are wool2dye4.com, catnipyarns.com, 100purewool.com, cestariltd.com (site has been down for a couple of weeks), and blackberry-ridge.com.

Hope this helps!