Leaving town!

I’m heading out tomorrow morning for a week long road trip! We’ll be at the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair in San Francisco next weekend, so stop by and see us if you’re in the area. We’ll be giving out free packages of heirloom seeds, and I’ll have yarn for sale as well. More soon!

Can’t wait

I found a few more project photos and couldn’t wait to share…  First, another great creation from elfguts on Etsy, a lovely headband:

Sarah from Australia has been making wonderful dolls for her family with the yarn!  I love all of them but I’m coveting the Harry Potter one!

Allie B’s Photography on Etsy made this darling hat and photo:

Normally my yarn is used for Waldorf dolls, but Kim (sew2beunique on Etsy) made these fabulous dolls!  I love them!

Amazing! Inspiring!!  Thank you!!!

Amazing Aunts! Creative Customers!

I posted a few new colorways today, one of which is called “Aunt Dot.” Although I do manage to write more detailed listings than most, I try not to ramble too much on Etsy but my blog is the perfect venue for a wee bit of backstory.

She’s my great-aunt actually, my Grandma’s sister and the youngest of 12.  I named my daughter after another one of her sisters, my aunt Violet.  Aunt Dot and Violet are peachy keen in my book. Aunt Dot looks quite a bit like my Grandma, who died of cancer when I was 20.  Red hair, green eyes, petite and shapely, strong and always productive.  Like all of the sisters in that family (there were originally 9), she is outspoken and fiery. Irish.

She lives on a 40 acre homestead across from the 150+ acre farm on which she was raised,  on top of Signal Mountain in Tennessee.  Aunt Dot has a large rambler style house built by her husband who was a brick mason, a huge yard dotted with oaks, a dozen cattle, barn, creek, chickens…There are muscadine grapes, many berry varieties, fruit trees, and probably a half acre in annual garden space.  Since it’s Tennessee, they can grow all manner of plants that seem downright exotic to those of us from the colder northern regions; okra, yams, and peanuts are among the many I long to cultivate.  Aunt Violet has a house about 35 minutes away in Chattanooga but she has always spent part of her week at her sister’s place.  They run the tiller by themselves, do all of the gardening, food preservation, lawn care, landscaping, animal husbandry…  They put up cases and cases of canned goods and always seem to be busy cleaning, making, doing.  Aunt Dot also happens to be a dandy of a wine maker. A few years ago, I visited after she’s undergone a hip replacement.  I asked about the wine making and she said “Oh honey, you know I had my hip replaced and I just haven’t done hardly much atall with the wine this year, nothing hardly atall.” I peeked in the garage and counted approximately 50 five gallon carboys of wine!  Yeah, hardly much indeed.  She drinks a glass after supper,  gives the wine away as gifts, probably trades it, and I suspect a bit of moonshine here and there.  Actually, one of my favorite Aunt Dot stories starts out with some of her moonshine (the making of which she credits to her “neighbor”).

We were visiting about 5 years ago and both of my Aunts (who were in their mid seventies) were all a-flutter because there was some Victoria Secret fashion show on that evening.  The spoke of it all day, made sure to speed us through supper and even called Aunt Violet’s husband and other kin to remind them to turn on the television. Aunt Dot offered us wine or moonshine (disapproving glance from Aunt Violet who doesn’t drink), and I chose moonshine–she poured about three fingers in a small jelly jar. During that period, Robert and I were in a fairly heavy drinking phase as we performed weekly with our bands or burlesque troupe at bars or clubs–sufficed to say, I felt my tolerance to be quite high at the time.  The program began, and I can honestly say that I was shocked. We haven’t had television since 1994, and although I’d certainly caught a show here or there, I hadn’t realized that thongs were acceptable on major network channels.  Aunt Dot and Violet were mesmerized. I slowly sipped my ever-so-smooth jelly glass of moonshine and attempted to rise after drinking about a half inch of the clear liquid, finding that I could barely move my legs. I sat in silence for the rest of the program, until the last sexpot sashayed down the runway. My Aunt Dot sighed, turned to her 77 year old sister and said “Violet, we were born too soon.”

Dang. I love those women.  This colorway is for Aunt Dot, who loves orange and brown.

I am getting ready to go to ELAW, the environmental law conference held at U of O in Eugene (www.pielc.org). Willow and I attend every year and I’m looking forward to it.  I have quite a few adventures planned for this year-mostly working vacations but I’m of the mind that those are the best sort of vacations.  I’m not exactly the lying on a beach type.  Good grief, the very idea of that makes me tense.   I am in the process of putting together a list of events, festivals, fairs, and conferences for 2012 and will post it soon.

I also want to learn more about what my customers create with Yarnarchy products!  I don’t have time to make much out of my own yarn, and I must live vicariously through my delightful customers.  If you email a Yarnarchy project photo to me, I will send you a coupon code for 10% off of your next order.  Here are some project photos I have received:

Cassie’s great Slouch Hat

Kathryn’s iPad cover. Not having an iPad, I hadn’t even considered such a thing but I love this!

Brenda Bush Photography on Etsy sent me a photo of a darling baby hat:

Molly Jones from Ravelry made this doll!

She also made this hat:

Melanie2 from Ravelry made this mitts:

And this headband for her daughter:

Elfguts on Ravelry and Etsy made this hat:

And this pullover:

And Julie from FeeVertelaine on Etsy makes wonderful dolls too! Her shop is at http://www.etsy.com/shop/FeeVertelaine, but here’s a doll she made with some of my yarn last summer:

I love my customers!  They never cease to amaze me! Such creativity…it’s an honor to create supplies for their creative endeavors.

Wait! One more thing! To cure your winter blues, to encourage the coming of spring, and in celebration of all things Irish (St. Patrick’s Day on the 17^th and my own birthday on the 19^th!), I will offer a fantastic March sale. All of my green toned colorways will be offered at 10% off the normal price for the entire month of March.

Hermione is my hero?

“Over Achiever Syndrome is serious, and can lead to emotional and physical burnout, and in extreme cases, early death.”  Being a DIY hypochondriac, I sort of like that quote because it implies that being an overachiever can result in real, physical problems.  Everyone knows it leads to emotional and social issues but they’re mostly about becoming an insufferable know it all and having your neighbors puke in their mouth every time you bring them a plateful of Martha Stewart-esque cookies and offhandedly mention how to improve their garden soil, remove the moss from their roof, and get that spot from their collar.  Ahem. There is more than one reason Hermione Granger is my favorite Hogwarts character.

The Germans have a word, Besserwisser, to describe such a person, and I’m pretty sure I’m one of them.  I recently read that the sin of gluttony also can be applied to overachievers or workaholics who are more concerned with the consumption or production of work/goods than one actually requires.  Hmmmm…  So it’s not enough to be an annoying prig, I’ve also got a cardinal sin to deal with.

And the thing is, I love my life. I love being busy, I love all of the things I do, and if I only had the ability to live for a few hundred years, perhaps I would feel that I could slow the pace or take breaks more often. I am trying to cram lifetimes of projects into this one because I like living.  There are just so many things to learn and I don’t want to miss a single one.  I am trying to get better at taking breaks especially as I can feel my body changing as I get closer to 40, and I am trying to get better at keeping my mouth shut. As Anthony Shaftesbury said “Giving advice is sometimes only showing our wisdom at the expense of others.” Ugh. I don’t want to be THAT girl.

But this blog…maybe this would be a better outlet than advising my long suffering friends and family.  I think, I hope, people read this because they want to know about the different things that people do, and how they live, and maybe they even want to know why.   Or I could just become a vampire, or some other immortal being, and live forever. That would be cool too.

Today is Thursday, and my only day in an empty house. Robert brings the girls to opera lessons a couple of hours away and I seem to have the house to myself for a glorious 6 or 7 hours!  Bliss!  Of course I have a massive to-do list, but I’m also going to listen to a brain numbing, embarrassingly compelling, lusty, and addicting audiobook about vampires.  I managed to finish both of the owl sweaters for my girls, no photos for Violet yet but here is Willow in her sweater (no button eyes sewn on as of yet):

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Sock yarns and Wild Flyers!

So many projects, so little time!  Sometimes it helps to have ADHD tendencies (although I normally prefer the hunter vs farmer theory that ADHD is an expected evolutionary adaptation to hunting lifestyles) and sometimes it doesn’t.  I need to finish the first of two owl sweaters (have most of the body and one arm done), finish the lace scarf I was actually trying to make for myself, re-organize my studio and add the new inventory of yarns, pre-draft and spin the remainder of 9 new colorways plus 2 colorways from the previous dye day that I haven’t even touched yet, and start playing with my new Majacraft Wild Flyer. And that’s just some of the fiber stuff and nothing to do with my mundane life, which at the moment is begging for tax filings, housecleanings, homeschooling, bill paying, schedule making, annual report writing, and gawd knows what else.

First though, I have to say that I’m particularly pleased with the latest round of sock yarns. I ordered a Colonial wool superwash/nylon blend and I think I possibly like it better than the Merino/Bamboo/Nylon that I used last time around. I was worried that the Colonial would be too coarse but it’s really quite lovely, sort of a soft Corriedale wool feel. I think it will knit up beautifully and wear well. Here’s what I made:

I have two of each dyelot, 100 gram skeins with approximately 385 yards each. You can find them here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/Yarnarchy?section_id=7455721

I have been giving this whole handpainted but commercially spun concept a lot of thought lately. While my heart definitely lies with handspun, I can’t deny that I do love handpainting the commercial yarns.  It’s a totally different thing. Idealistically, I prefer handspun over commercially prepared yarns but what can I say? I’m a Luddite at heart. I am thinking about expanding my product line to include a lot more of the handpainted yarns and marketing to wholesalers.  One thing that production spinning has taught me is that I cannot expect to do it forever.  I am wearing out my joints faster than my wheels.  I can choose to farm out some of my spinning, either as a business owner or open Yarnarchy up as a collective, or I can pace myself a bit more. I may do both.  Regardless, I love the handpainted yarns and after doing research on electric skein winders… I know, King Lud (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Ludd) is rolling in his grave… I think I must have one. My birthday is right around the corner!

The handspun is coming along too…I dyed 9 colorways and here is the first:

But the biggest news is that my Majacraft Wild Flyer arrived!  I haven’t played with yet, because I’m trying to be responsible and get through some of the fiber mountain in my living room before I get caught up in coils, tufts, and beehives.

I am also trying to make my schedule of events for the year, picking and choosing which festivals or markets would be the best for Yarnarchy to attend.  Any suggestions?

PS-Get free US shipping during the month of Feb using the coupon code: bemine

Romance!

I am embarrassingly interested in holidays. Even though I’m not religious, even though they’re made up or co-opted or just plain ridiculous. I like Valentine’s Day, even though it is probably a rip off of Lupercalia. I love it for all of the sappy romance, the beauty and sentimentality of antique Valentine’s Day cards, love it for the rows of pink and red in every department store. This year I am planning to bake some beautiful heart shaped confections and deliver packages of them to the local businesses I frequent. I am also going to have special sales on Etsy! The first week will feature the pinkest colorway I make, Cotton Candy, at 20% off….get a skein for a paltry $16! The next week I think I’ll feature Bronte, which I absolutely love.

Because, of course, I had to order that Interweave magazine special “Jane Austen Knits.” It’s a visual feast. Speaking of visual feasts, I have been indulging in a ton of fiber and knitting porn lately. I want this:

A four yard motorized skein winder from Nancy’s KnitKnacks. Only a wee bit over a grand, I’ll have to try Santa next year. I also watched this lady:

Fastest knitter in the world. She holds her yarn in a much different manner than I do, doesn’t pop her left index finger upwards at all. I can see how it would make pick knitting even faster….

Also, I watched the fastest crocheter in the world. There’s no way to be subtle here, so I’m just going to toot my own horn and say that I am very very fast at crochet. Quite. When I saw the video with Lisa Gentry, I was surprised to find that it didn’t seem that fast to me. I took her “challenge” and I did worse than I thought I would! She uses triple crochet which is the stitch I use least often (of the common stitches that is). I just found a site for crochet competition that gives a certain number of points per stitch type (4 for dbl crochet, 3 for turning stitch) and I think I’m going to give it another whirl.

So…yeah…fiber porn. Must be the winter.

Owls!

Here goes…I’m just about to start making matching owl sweaters for my girls. I bought the pattern on Ravelry here http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/owls-2 and I also bought the child version. Although the adult version seems a bit more complex with the shaping, I think I will make Violet an adult version since she’s just about too big for the kiddo size.

Violet is growing up. She was always stick thin, underweight as a toddler and child even though she was a whopping 10 1/2 pounds at birth. During the last year or so, she started putting on weight as is normal for a girl getting ready to start puberty. Although she definitely has some unhealthy food preferences (what kid doesn’t like the white food group?) we eat 99% organic, and she’s gluten and dairy free so it’s not like she’s eating a bunch of junk. We went shopping yesterday to spend her holiday gift cards and I saw a very familiar look on her face as she tried on clothing in front of the three sided mirror. As a child I was always a bit round and it caused me serious grief, especially as my parents didn’t really know how to deal with it. I started officially dieting in the 2nd grade, and shopping trips for school clothes were always stressful-often resulting in a bunch of outfits purchased a size below what I actually wore. This was to “encourage” me to lose weight before school started. Ugh. Anyway, our household is very body positive and my kids have access to all manner of healthy food. Thankfully, because all we really have to do is to remind her to make good food choices and encourage physical activity instead of making some kind of massive change in household food or worse, singling her out and making her eat something different than everyone else (been there). We have been talking to her a lot about growing, puberty…how the round tummy will morph into round breast and booty, how she doesn’t need to lose weight but rather just pay attention to how she’s eating so that she maintains her weight as she’s still growing. Sufficed to say, I do not want to knit a sweater and wind up with something ill-fitting or tight. I am determined to raise my girls to have the resources to eat in a healthful manner and to love their bodies throughout all of the phases, changes, and conditions we find ourselves in.

So..matching sweaters. Owl sweaters! I want one! I actually ordered yarn for these projects and bought a pattern, so this had better be good. I didn’t want to use handspun (I may have already mentioned that Violet LOST her last handspun sweater) and I found a good deal so it wasn’t going to save that much to order ecru yarn wholesale and dye it myself. If all goes well, I’ll post photos along the way.

I am doing more spinning but the weather has been so dreadful that I can’t even take photos! I had to miss my knitting machine lesson and first club meeting because the snow was still keeping us in the driveway. Now all we have is rain, slush, mini-icebergs, and mud. Lots of that.

I want to find some local (Seattle-B’ham) knitters who want to host a yarn party. I love doing yarn parties (think Tupperware but with yarn!) and I think they’re my very favorite way to peddle my wares. Any takers? Host(ess) gets 10% of party sales in shopping credit! I bring games and prizes!