wholesale order

Brought 50 skeins of Willow sock yarn (80% BFL, 20% nylon) to Apple Yarns today.



Left to right: McIntosh (Apple Yarns exclusive), Snowfall, Limitless, Persimmon, Spruce, Tropical Bloom (top), Inked, and Slate.

McIntosh and Snowfall are restocks of two colorways from late summer that sold out really quickly. If you want 'em, now's the time. :)

Fibers and Beyond, Oct 15-16

My last show of the year is my home show, the Whatcom Weavers Guild's Fibers and Beyond annual sale. It will be this Friday evening (6-9 p.m.) and all day Saturday (9 a.m. - 4 p.m.). It's a lot more than just yarn and spinning fiber--beautiful woven pieces, jewelry, handmade dolls, and gorgeous hand-knitted and crocheted items. Friday evening is usually a madhouse. I really wanted some Christmas ornaments that I spotted at the beginning of the evening, made another pass about half an hour later, and they were gone. Get 'em while you can!

Every year, the show committee does a fantastic job of arranging items and decorating the room. I was a shopper for several years before I became a seller, and I think the show just gets better and better. Plus it's only 10 minutes from my house--after all the miles I've put in this year going to shows, I really appreciate doing one so close!

I've been dyeing a variety of spinning fibers for the show--BFL/silk, superwash merino, untreated BFL, and I think a little alpaca/merino/silk sneaked in there, too. I'll also be bringing sock yarns and a smattering of sport and worsted.

If you're in Bellingham, stop by! Admission and parking are free.

renewing the vow of yarn chastity

I'm done buying yarn. I really mean it this time. I haven't bought that much in the past two years, certainly not as much as I would have liked, so honestly I thought things were pretty much under control. I bought three skeins (and, okay, three sweater lots, but I used two of those lots immediately, and four pounds of merino/silk/cashmere for $100 was an insanely good deal) in 2009, and six skeins plus one sweater lot (also immediately put to use) in 2010. That really doesn't seem too bad in the scheme of things.

Tonight I finally grasped the true state of affairs. I was looking for a skein of undyed Malabrigo that I was pretty sure I had put into my personal stash, so I went on the hunt in my cedar chest.

First I had to remove all the crap on top of it. I know I should post a photo, but it's just too embarrassing, really. There are two big tote bags filled with half-finished projects, odds and ends of skeins, and dyeing disaster skeins that I entertain a feeble hope of salvaging through overdyeing. There is a large wicker basket overflowing with more of the same. There is a flat-rate priority box full of yarn that I got two (three?) years ago and haven't even opened, because I haven't gotten to the project I was going to use it for. There is a box of undyed samples from various yarn companies--okay, I'll give that one a pass. Maybe that actually has a legit reason to stay in the house.

Mind, this is after I pruned all the yarn I was absolutely, positively sure I would never get around to using. I gave some to friends and much more to my child's preschool. They don't care if I had a sudden coughing fit and my hand twitched at the wrong moment and dumped black dye in inappropriate places, or if the spin dryer ate a chunk of a skein and felted it beyond all hope. That was an 18-gallon Rubbermaid tote's worth of fiber that I offloaded last year.

After moving all the crap onto the sofa, I opened the lid of the chest. It was like Pandora's box in reverse--beauty and admiration came spilling out, leaving only broken promises and hopeless dreams behind. I was going to make mittens out of that yarn. Those skeins were supposed to be transformed into longies. That set would make the perfect stripey child's sweater. And those other 20 or 30 or 40 skeins or, um, more--well, when I decided to bring you home, I promised I would love you forever and make something beautiful out of you. I don't know where it all went wrong but I swear, it's me, not you.

It is just criminal to have so much beautiful yarn and to never have time to knit it. Time to face reality--I need to destash. This round is going to be tough; I did all the easy stuff last time, and now there's going to be some pain involved. I'd like to have my living room back, and it won't be easy.

It might be fun to do a Survivor: Scarlet's Stash Edition. I feel a little spark of hope amid the despair after all.

OFFF booth

Luckily, to make up for my lameness in not taking photos of my own, a roving OFFF photographer got a photo of my booth last weekend. As with Black Sheep, my Vine Yoke cardigan (the red sweater in front) got lots of attention.



That freestanding wire cube tower has my new silk/merino fingering yarn in the top cube, and the remnants of the Silk & Silver skeins in the second cube. Most of the Silk & Silver went in the first three hours of the show; the sunlight sparkling on my Annis shawlette (which is knitted with Silk & Silver) was pretty eye-catching. That's the one hanging to the left of the sweater.

Oregon Flock & Fiber

I'm back from an awesome weekend in Canby. It was amazing! On Saturday, the weather was glorious. You could tell people were happy to be there--lots of old friends greeting each other, and smiling faces all around. Customers from Sock Summit and Black Sheep came by to say hi, which was all sorts of cool. Today was rather soggy, even by PNW standards, so it was pretty quiet for the lawn vendors, but I still got to see a number of people that I've met through other shows.

I have these serial obsessions (bicycling, dog agility ...) and whenever I start getting into something, I discover a previously unknown subculture with its own world, complete with jargon and events and inhabitants who obviously live and breathe it. It makes me wonder how so many people could be so into something, and without my ever suspecting that it even existed. With the particular rabbit hole that I've fallen into this time, I'm surprised at how quickly I'm feeling at home. I only made my "debut" into yarn/fiber society a year ago, not counting the safe and cozy confines of HC, yet already I can go to an event and get hugs from people and feel like I've known them forever. I think part of it is that so many fiber people are eager to share what they know about techniques or materials, not in a show-off way, but from a real desire to exchange knowledge. I think it's very cool.

Back to OFFF. I was quite busy in my booth and didn't have much of a chance to shop, myself. Well, I guess I should count my order of 20 pounds of roving that Jill and Jim of Ashland Bay dropped off for me. I'm excited to start dyeing these up--BFL, BFL/silk, mixed BFL/silk, merino/tencel, and one I'm especially itching to try out, alpaca/merino/silk.

I did take a quick walk through the buildings before the show officially opened on Sunday morning, and saw a pin with the line, "It's a brand new day and the sun is high"--a reference to the movie Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. I listen to the soundtrack a lot while dyeing (my obsessiveness also extends to music), and I even have a colorway named for a song from the DVD commentary, Better Than Neil. The booth vendor wasn't around, and I'm regretting a bit that I didn't have a chance to check back later to get the pin.

I also saw some customers come into my booth with patterns from Blue Moon, so I took a couple of minutes to run over there and pick up two, Moonstruck and Ogee. Though the pattern that I really fell in love with was Skuld (this is a link to one made with some of my yarn). I've been looking for a project to make with my new silk/merino fingering, and I think this is it.

Tomorrow I plan to sleep in, then continue dyeing my current wholesale order for Apple Yarns. Also in the game plan for the week are my October yarn club selections and doing a real balance sheet for my business. Just one more step toward making this dyeing gig a real honest-to-goodness livelihood. Exciting!

going to OFFF!

I wasn't expecting to go to OFFF this year. I didn't apply to be a vendor until after I came back from Black Sheep, and there were too many other vendors ahead of me.

But yesterday, I got word that another vendor had pulled out, and did I still want a booth? I had to think about it a bit, since I haven't been dyeing for the show, and I wanted to be sure I could pull off a good booth. But I decided to go for it, got the time off from my day job, and have been dyeing madly ever since. The aforementioned day job will prevent me from doing much more dyeing before I leave, but I was really productive today and I think I'll make a creditable showing at OFFF.

So hurray! I went as a shopper a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it, so I'm looking forward to being a vendor this year.

It does mean that I'll miss out on Northwest Needle Market and Foolscap (and meeting Emma Bull, whose novel Territory was the inspiration for my colorway of the same name). I was excited to go to both of those events on Saturday, so I admit I'm a little disappointed that I can't clone myself and go to everything this weekend. Hopefully I'll get to go to both of those events another year.

See you in Canby!

stitch markers

I'm quite picky about stitch markers. I like them to have no joins, to start with. Anything with a jump ring is out; they always get caught on my yarn or knitting, and I'd rather just use stray bits of yarn tied into loops. Split rings are okay, as they have a lesser tendency to snag. But my preference for both aesthetics and performance are markers with wires that have been twisted into a loop. Ones that look like gorgeous earrings are a bonus.

They're surprisingly hard to find. Maybe I just don't use the right search keywords or something. But I did find some pretty ones at this Etsy shop, Tiger Eyess. After a series of pleasant and professional convos, she made me these custom markers as goodies for my yarn club:



Sue does beautiful work and is a lovely person to boot. Highly recommended!