F5, F5, F5.

I have been hopefully refreshing my Ravelry cart all day, just in case the store opens. I don't know why, but I keep thinking that if only I could buy a Ravelry lapel pin, tote bag, and T-shirt, I could snap out of this funk that I've been in for two days.

Anyway! Enough moping about the lack of retail therapy. I've finally managed to get some good photos of my custom dyeing order. I took some photos yesterday, but I had the not-so-brilliant idea of using a brushed metal tray as the background ... so the yarn got nicely framed by blurry reflections of my face. Whoops. Makes me think of those "accidental" reflections of naked photographers in eBay product photos that were all the rage for a while.

All of these colorways are on bulky Blue-Faced Leicester. I really like this yarn--smooth, silky, and a fast knit.

Copper Patina:


Bloom (really like how this one came out):


Azure:


Decadence:

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.

custom colorway: Funky Giraffe

The lovely Marisa of Funky Giraffe asked me to dye some yarn based on the colors of her store. I've been lacking in boyish inspiration lately, so it was nice to make myself get away from pink and purple for a little while.



There are some subtle changes in blues in this colorway that are hard to see in the reskeined yarn, but I think they'll be more apparent when it's knitted up. Send me a photo please, Marisa!

Flying Fish?

Our next theme for Venus Vanguard is Farmers Market. I was thinking about Pike Place Market, the monster farmers market in Seattle. Its big tourist draw is the guys throwing fish at each other. So I thought maybe a flying fish colorway. Silver, grey, deep teals, with flashes of black and sea green.

I think it has some promise, though I dunno about the name. A few weeks ago, I was reading a book review in People (go ahead, laugh) about a fashionista's pronouncement that nothing named after a fish could possibly be elegant. She was mostly talking about the fishtail dress, which, yeah, ick.

one down, five million to go.

I was pleasantly surprised when I received my 13-lb box of undyed yarn on Saturday instead of Monday. But then I realized that I needed to work on my new colorways on cheap yarn, so I didn't actually dye any of the new yarn till this week.

So far, the week's been a mixed bag. When I was kettle-dyeing my Dusk colorway, I didn't get the dye intensity quite right. Plus I sloshed the yarn around when I took it off the stove, and now it's not Dusk anymore. Very pretty, but not what I was wanting.

I did manage to knock one item off my list--I've dyed up the Eat Your Veggies yarn for my collaboration with Erika. She's going to do an appliqued T-shirt to go with the yarn as part of our Farmers' Market stocking.

As far as knitting goes, I'm taking a break from custom orders because I know I'm going to be crazy busy with the two early-April stockings, and I don't want the stress of a custom right now. So I've picked up my personal Jaywalker sock project again, because my hands feel funny in the evenings if they're not holding knitting needles. I've shortened the gusset by almost an inch from the pattern, because it seemed like it was past time to turn the heel, but the last time I deviated from the pattern I was sorry. I hope I'm not sorry again.

I am torn between dyeing some more yarn tomorrow afternoon, and going with my husband to a sports bar to watch the opening day of March Madness. I'm not sure which option would make me geekier.