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.

better not pout, I'm telling you why ...

... Stephen West is coming to town. On March 28. There's an open house/trunk show starting at 11:30, and his Shawl Inspirations class, which I'm taking, is later that afternoon. I can't find any info on the workshop, other than what was mailed to me by the store, so it looks like it will be a brand new class. Should be interesting!

I've bought Herbivore for the class:



(The pattern, that is. The man might be an herbivore, I don't know.)

I want to try out shawl shapes other than triangles, and this looks like it will fit the bill nicely. Can't decide what yarn to use, though. I have a new DK BFL that I want to try out:



This was a hard blue to capture with my camera. It's somewhere between turquoise and royal blue. I was actually going for dusty blue, but I used a different black dye than the one I usually use for dusty blue, and it came out quite a different shade than usual. I like it, though.

The yarn *is* DK weight, though. I think I'd like a lighter weight yarn for the spring, like maybe Willow BFL:



Yeah. I think the Larrabee. I'm in the mood to knit something with bright, lighter colors. I do need to still find a pattern for the DK BFL, as I'd really like to put the yarn through its paces.

the red stocking

When I was deciding what to list this month in my store, I decided to organize it by color. This week's theme is red.







Might add a few more this week, depending. Everything goes live on Thursday at noon, Eastern Time.

Blue will be up next time, probably in 2 weeks.

Angee

Ravelympics inspired me to finish a pair of socks that I started in September. Why yes, I have a severe case of second sock syndrome. The other pair I was intending to finish for the Ravelympics was started last winter.



This pair was knitted from a limited edition 8-ply (9-ply? it's been a while) merino yarn. Specs (330 yds, 100g) make it sound like a sport yarn, but it acts more like a fingering. I used U.S. 1.5 needles, but probably U.S. 1 would've been better.

I'm trying not to buy limited-edition yarn any more. I want consistency in my lineup, but sometimes curiosity gets the better of me. At least I have three kilos of this stuff. It knits up into a nice firm fabric, which I really like. Colorway is Copper Patina, a very springtime colorway.