in a sea of dye

I've started knitting the back of my Rogue. I tried it on and, my, it is form fitting. After I finish the back, I'm going to wash and block what I've got so far. Before I do the cabling around the V-neck, I want to be sure that 1) it's going to fit and 2) the cables don't disappear into mush.

But I haven't had much time to knit lately. I'm doing the final dyeing for my current group order, which I want to get wrapped up before the next group order is placed--probably toward the end of next week, is my guess. Then last night, I was at a hospice fundraiser hosted by Apple Yarns, and the owner talked to me about wanting to place another wholesale order right away. I feel like I'm already squeezing every possible hour out of the day. Eeek.

Still, it's a good problem to have! There's also the possibility that Apple Yarns will host an open house featuring local designers and me in the spring. So I should start thinking about knitting something appropriate for warm weather to wear to this shindig, using one of my yarns that they carry.

I'm feeling more certain about applying to be a vendor at OFFF this year. I had initially thought about doing the Sock Summit also, since it's just down the road in Portland. But the booth fees! I believe it's something like $325 for a 5' x 10' booth, and $650 for a 10' x 10' booth. With such small spaces, there's no chance of sharing with someone else--you couldn't both have enough stock to cover your costs. I don't think the smaller booth would even hold enough inventory for one seller, and with the larger booth, I'd have to net $1000 just to break even on the costs (booth, lodging, mileage, food). Net after the cost of the base yarn at the bare minimum, not gross sales. Heck, to even gross $1000, I'd need to sell 500 skeins. The organizers say that 5000 people have expressed interest--well, even if all of them actually showed up, I would still need to get more than 10% of them to purchase a skein of my yarn. In competition against a zillion other people. I have confidence in my yarn, but the cards would be stacked way against me. This is definitely not a venue for the average independent dyer.