my memory is like a wet paper bag

I miss the pre-baby days, when I had a steel trap for a memory, instead of this thing with huge gaping holes. I was dyeing yarn all last week under the assumption that the yarn had been put up in 8 oz skeins. I couldn't figure out why it was sucking up so much more dye than usual, and why it was impossible to twist it into a pretty-looking skein. Till I weighed one, and realized that they were actually one-pound skeins. Why yes, I felt like a total dork--why do you ask?

I feel like I've been slacking off a lot, but somehow in the past week I've managed to dye six pounds of yarn. I've been trying to figure out how much I can realistically wholesale, so it's nice to know that even taking almost half of my nights off, I can still turn out quite a lot of high-quality yarn.

I've been dissatisfied with some of the aran BFL I've gotten lately, so I'm making plans to order from a new supplier next month. I have been experimenting with a bunch of new base yarns lately, but now I'm thinking that I'll focus on my four favorite worsted and aran yarns for my Hyena Cart store, and look towards stocking sock yarn on Etsy. I have my sportweight yarn picked out already, and just need to decide what to use for my fingering weight.

Trying to stock on May 1, but it's only two days away and I have no photos. I need to stop depending on cooperative weather and good outdoor light. Must get off duff and make light box.

Picnik love

I have an ongoing struggle with photo editing. Lately, the sorest point has been my thumbnails. When I resize them in either Paint Shop Pro or ArcSoft Photo Studio, they pixelate:



It seems like a new problem, as I can't recall having an issue before. Or maybe I'm just crazy.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I noticed that Flickr had a new editing option called Picnik. So today I thought, what the heck, I'll try resizing with it. And glory be! whatever protocol it uses to reduce image size works much better. Not perfect, but much less of that weird sparkly static look:



I also signed up for Adobe's new web version of Photoshop, so there's yet another option to play with. But for now, I think Picnik's the way to go for me.

no knitting, just photo editing

After three hours, I finally managed to get everything uploaded for my guest stocking at Lily Pad Landing tomorrow. I have no idea why it took me so long to edit photos and come up with names.



I did get distracted by the pooling thread on Ravelry. I really hate ugly pooling, and a lot of the photos people posted would certainly have qualified in my book. Though I was fascinated by how one woman deliberately manipulated pooling to create a chevron effect:



I'll have to keep that concept in mind the next time I run into some uncooperative yarn.