2010 Black Sheep Gathering

After a week of late nights (3 a.m. was an early bedtime), it was a relief to get to Eugene. I was ridiculously excited by the prospect of being unable to dye anything, which would allow me to go to bed at a decent hour with no guilt.

Setup went smoothly, thanks to the help of Elizabeth, who demonstrated an amazing ability to construct wire cubes in no time flat. Here's what the booth ended up looking like:





The red sweater in the top right overexposed corner is my Vine Yoke cardigan. It got a lot of attention this weekend; I probably could've sold a hundred copies of the pattern if I'd had it. And deservedly so: it's such a clever, fun design to knit.

The show went swimmingly. I talked to so many interesting people, saw faces I knew from Sock Summit (hi Alexandra!), and generally had a great time. I have to thank Amy for taking pity on me and offering to watch my booth on Saturday so I could grab some lunch. She even stayed around after I got back, hoping to give me some time to actually eat my food (instead of just looking at it longingly out of the corner of my eye), but the stream of customers didn't let up. Which was a problem I was perfectly willing to have.

I also chatted with two women from Lantern Moon for a while. They came back a little later in the day and offered me a pair of LM knitting needles, just because they liked me and my yarn. It was such a kind and sweet offer--I was really touched. I chose a pair of rosewood circulars from their Destiny line, because I used to play oboe, and the finest oboes are made from rosewood. The circs are beautiful and sleek and wonderfully light; I'm really looking forward to using them!

I didn't have time to do much shopping while I was there, so I came home with only a new wooden shawl pin and a tin of hand balm. It's okay though; it's not like I'm going to run out of yarn anytime in the next 200 years.

Thank you, Black Sheep Gathering, for a wonderful weekend! I'll be back next year.

the 15-day countdown

Two weeks from tomorrow, I'm heading to Eugene for Black Sheep Gathering. Eeek. For some reason, I thought I had three weeks left, but I was wrong. I just got back from two weeks in Hawaii and now I am in serious, get-down-to-business mode. I've been dyeing up some BFL/silk top and it is the prettiest stuff ever. Soft and radiant--it makes any colorway look good.

Aside from dyeing, I've been working on pulling together my booth. I figured out that I'll be able to connect my laptop to my non-smart cell phone via Bluetooth so I can do real-time credit card processing. I'd been worried about getting CC approval without a wireless connection, and having to wait till night to process transactions, only to discover that some didn't go through. My $20 Nokia 2760 continues to surprise me with everything that it can do.

Still working on samples. For the life of me, I cannot decide what to do with my Silk & Silver yarn. I've tried two different shawl patterns now (Citron and Queen of the WAves), and neither one was what I wanted. I love this colorway but for some reason, I can't figure out what I want to make with it.

summer cardigan

I've been looking for cardigan patterns for months--since last summer, I believe. It's been surprisingly hard to find patterns that aren't flyaway (buttoned at the top), mostly stockinette, or frumpy.

Lately, the search has become focused on finding something summery. I want light and airy but not fingering weight. Finally, I found one I liked--the one on the cover of the April issue of Knit N Style.



The catch is that it's not the current issue. After cruising through Joann's and Barnes and Noble (good grief, I had no idea there were so many knitting magazines these days, yet neither place carries this one), I went to the one LYS in town that was listed on the magazine's web site. It's my least favorite LYS. I've only been there once and never went back after the rudeness I encountered the first time.

The owner was friendlier this time, but the only copy she had of the issue was severely water-damaged. It looked like it had sat in a puddle of water for a while, and more than half the pages were stuck together. She did not offer a discount. Perhaps I should have asked for one, and certainly I could have refused to buy it, but I really didn't want to order it off the publisher's back list and I didn't feel comfortable asking for a discount. So I sucked it up and paid $7, and resolved not to go back there again, no matter how desperate.

Then yesterday I was walking through Fred Meyer, looking for a kids' magazine. And they, of all places, carry Knit N Style. Not the issue I was looking for, but still. I would never have thought to look there.

The cardigan is going swimmingly. I'm knitting it out of merino/bamboo in my Sea to Sky colorway, and so far the combination is everything I was hoping for. Hurray!

buttons

I'm almost finished with my Vine Yoke cardigan (such a fun knit! Fast, uses less than 4 skeins, and really interesting construction. Plus I'm really liking my new worsted superwash BFL) and I'm on the hunt for buttons. I don't know if I'm just too picky, but I'm having a devil of a time finding round, dark brown, wooden buttons that are 1.5" wide. Sounds so simple, right? Apparently boring, classic buttons are not currently in style.

I saw some cool reclaimed wood buttons at Madrona, but decided not to buy them because I didn't have a project in mind and I have way too much clutter in my life as it is. Well, never again; from now on, I am an official button hoarder.

I've been to the yarn shops in town, I've been to Joann's, and I've been through dozens of pages on Etsy. Finally (and I should have tried this first, of course), I search Ravelry, which produced a couple of options:

* Woodturner's Etsy shop, for custom wooden buttons. But I need 9 of them, and of course I want them by the time the sweater is blocked and dry (the end of the week), so not my first choice. I want to wear this sweater pronto.

* Maiwa. I've been hearing cool things about their workshops for a couple of years now, and looking at the photo on their buttons page is bringing out all sorts of covetousness. It wouldn't be too crazy to drive an hour and brave the spring weekend traffic on Granville Island just to shop for buttons, which might or might not be what I want, would it?

In other news, I have been officially confirmed as a vendor for Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene, OR and Midwest Fiber and Folk in Grayslake, IL. I've calculated that I need to dye about eight skeins a night from now till BSG to boost my inventory. So what am I doing tonight? Shopping for buttons, of course.

Rock Candy

I'm stocking a few skeins of Rock Candy on Thursday at noon ET:

http://huckleberryknits.com

taxes

Doing federal taxes. Torn between wanting to lose more money so that our tax bill won't be so high, and being horrified that I didn't make more profit for all that work. If I'm really going to make a living from this, I need a much better profit than I'm currently showing.

It seems like every year is always a "building" year. Last year I had to buy tons of undyed yarn and display stuff for the booth. This year, I'm going to overhaul the look of the booth (those little wire cubes take WAY too long to put together) so some of those sunk costs are not going to be amortized.

But something definitely needs to change this year. Either I need to enjoy my day job more (and scale way back on the dyeing) or I need to quit the day job and focus just on dyeing. Huckleberry Knits is currently a tax liability--jacks up our tax bill way too much--yet doesn't provide enough profit to support me in the lifestyle to which I've become accustomed, as they say. It's certainly not a lavish lifestyle by any means. Our bills are only the essentials--no cable TV, and just a $20 prepaid cell phone. No consumer debt.

Yet I still have a mortgage to pay, and a child whose interests and talents I want to nurture. I'm looking into piano lessons for him now, and unless I find a teacher who would like yarn for payment, that's probably about $20/week. There's a monthly sports class for him (this month it's swimming), and once he hits school-age, sports costs are going to skyrocket.

I just don't know. I always do this soul-searching at tax time, and never come to any conclusions.

blue is beautiful

In between yarn club orders, I decided to use up some odds and ends of dye solutions that have been accumulating on my dye table. It's about time, since I botched a batch of yarn last night by confusing my purple and black dye bottles. Oops. They're pretty, but not what my customers are expecting to get.

I had a lot of blue and green solutions around. So I dyed a few skeins of Joy, a big skein of Colleen, and some random blue/green colorways. It's nice to just pour some dye in a pot and see what happens, instead of trying to match a stock photo.

It was a warm (for March) day, so I hung them outside to dry. I liked how they looked, so I snapped a photo. It looked better in real life, I'm sorry to say, since the sun came out just in time to wash out the colors. You can't see the interesting variations in shading in the Colleen (the semi-solid green skein) or the two sea-blue skeins at the other end of the line.



My husband rigged this clothesline for me last year. I like it because it's under the eaves of the roof. Maybe I'm the only paranoid dyer out there, but whenever I see photos of people hanging dozens of skeins outside to dry, I always think about bird poop. I've got drying racks that I put out in the driveway during warm weather, but I know that my little feathered friends like to perch on the phone lines right over them, so the clothesline is my first choice for hanging yarn. It also catches the breeze a bit better up there, and during the summer, the bricks radiate additional warmth.