Continue reading »]]> I’m getting better.

I’m still coughing, but I’m not coughing as hard as I was yesterday, when I was half expecting to see large solid objects pop out of my mouth as I coughed. Weasels. Alarm clocks. Refrigerators.* So when all I coughed up was a teaspoon of phlegm, I felt kind of cheated. I mean, there wasn’t even a spoon, just the phlegm.

All that hard work, and that’s all I had to show for it?

Anyway, I’m well enough to leave town at early o’clock tomorrow morning to head down to Charlestown, Indiana for the Indiana Fiber & Music Festival. I’m not actually well though, and Rob is under the weather too. Would anyone in the Charlestown area be willing to assist us in setting up and/or tearing down the booth? We’ll be setting up Friday afternoon from ~1-6pm (and will need help mostly at the beginning of that time, as soon as we arrive), and will tear down right after the show ends Sunday at 4pm.

I’d be happy to give you some yarn or fiber in exchange for your help.

And to entice the rest of you to come, here’s a pic of my booth last weekend. Not the best pic since I took it on my phone, but you get the idea. I should actually take my camera with me to these shows, eh?

*I may have watched a lot of cartoons growing up. And also as an adult.

Continue reading »]]> Apparently my body hates April. Last year I couldn’t go to Greencastle because I had pneumonia. I leave for this year’s Fiber Event at Greencastle tomorrow morning. And I have a cold.

So I’m trying to take it easy, or at least as easy as I can the day before a show. But it’s a cold, and not pneumonia, so I am going.

I’ve got a lot of stuff that isn’t on the website yet. Remember the Happy Fuzzy Yarn Local Wool Project? This is some of the wool/alpaca yarn from the project.

I’ve got it in several colorways. This is Alstroemeria. It’s named after a flower commonly used in floral arrangements. You’ve probably seen it, even if you didn’t know what it was called.

I think I had more to say, but I need to have a little lie down. Hope to see you in Greencastle.

Continue reading »]]> Hey, I’ve got lots to tell you. First off, The National NeedleArts Association (TNNA) is asking folks to take a survey about their interest in the needlearts. It takes about 10 minutes, and once you take it, if you’re a US resident you can enter a drawing for a $100 gift certificate. Go to https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TNNAfiber to read more details and to take the survey.

I’ve been dyeing a lot of new yarn and fiber (which will be in the store soon!), and having so much new stuff, I’m running out of bins to store it in, so everything in the clearance section is now 25% off. It’s all perfectly nice yarn, just colorways and base yarns I’ve discontinued. Please help me clear out some space!

Lastly, this weekend is Chicago’s own YarnCon! The last time I was there it was a one day show with a tiny booth space; it’s now a two day show in a roomier location with free parking. I’m in booth #1, which seems like it must mean something good, no? Come say hi!

Continue reading »]]> I have to make this quick! I’m leaving shortly to go set up for tomorrow’s sale, but I figured I’d better take time to actually tell you about it! It’s tomorrow only, in Bowling Green, OH, only one hour south of Ann Arbor, so it’s local for me!

I’m talking about the Black Swamp Spinners Guild Market Day & Fiber Fair. I’ll have lots of yarn and lots of fiber. Like this.

Yum.

Ok, hope to see you there!

Continue reading »]]> Fiber Expo has been around in the fall for several years now, but this weekend it makes its debut as a spring show as well! I’ll be there with a new larger booth, and a lot of new stuff.

How new? Well, some of it is still damp. It should be dry by tomorrow though.

New enough that I’m still labeling, so I don’t have time to write much, and new enough that I don’t have proper photos yet. Here’s a crappy pic from my phone so you have something to look at!

It’s 100% bombyx silk, also known as cultivated silk. I imported it from India and dyed it, and it’s scrumptious.

I’ve also got some new lace weight merino wool yarn (still drying!), some DK weight wool/alpaca blend yarn (100% Michigan made! It’s the yarn from my Local Wool Project, and I’ll write more about that next week when I’m not so crunched for time), wool/alpaca combed top from the same project, and BFL/silk combed top, provided it dries in time!

Ok, back to labeling! Hope to see you there!

Continue reading »]]> Have you all got the cold from hell that I’m just getting over? Dude. For two weeks, all I had the energy to do was sleep and produce snot. Fortunately I’m starting to feel better, so I have the energy to do things like get dressed and write blog posts.

So, now that I can actually form sentences and stuff, I’m having a Valentine’s Day sale in the shop. Use the coupon code VALENTINE to save 14% off your purchase through February 14. No minimum purchase, but club subscriptions, gift certificates and the karma program are excluded. And the coupon is actually good until I get around to turning it off, which will certainly be some time on the 15th, so if you’re sitting there just after midnight lamenting that your coupon expired a few minutes ago, nah. Go ahead and use it.

To get you in the Valentine spirit, here’s some Falkland combed top in the Be Mine colorway.

Also, if you’re local, you’ll want to come to the Spinner’s Flock Winter Fleece Fair this Saturday.

I’ll be there with a bunch of my fellow guild members with our lovely handspun yarn, fibers, tools, books, and all sorts of fibery things to feed your addiction make you happy.

Lastly, you are probably aware that the USPS is in financial trouble. Many people are not aware, however, that in 2006, Congress enacted and President GW Bush signed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which requires the Post Office to pre-fund, within 10 years, 75 years of employee retirement and health care. They’re required to do this without passing on the costs to postal customers.

Why am I bringing this up? Because if the USPS goes under, I will have to ship all packages via FedEx or UPS. I already ship heavier packages (over 5 lbs) by FedEx because it’s cheaper. But most of you aren’t ordering 5 lbs of yarn at a time. If you’re ordering 2 or 3 skeins, USPS is much cheaper than FedEx.

If you order yarn or fiber from me or from anyone else, it’s in your best interest to keep the USPS in business. So what can you do? Sign this petition.

And of course, buy more yarn…like you needed an excuse!

Continue reading »]]> It’s time for the first show of the year. Tomorrow is the Winter Wine & Wool Festival at Sandhill Crane Vineyards in Jackson, MI. It’s a charming setting. There’s a café, and you can sample the wines made right there at the vineyards, and of course you can buy yarn and fiber!

I’ll have some new batts I carded.

I carded a lot of batts last night. I even have a carding injury on my finger to prove it. (Nothing severe. I just wore some of the skin off.)

I hope you can come if you’re in the area!

Continue reading »]]> Long time readers may know that I took over the maintenance of my dear friend Ken Kifer’s website after he was killed by a drunk driver in 2003. Unfortunately if you go to his site now, it isn’t his site. It’s a Japanese WordPress site.

I contacted Joe Gardner, who actually takes care of the hosting, and who is much wiser in the ways of IT than I am.

No, the domain did not expire. It’s paid through the end of 2014.

No, we did not take the site down.

Apparently someone in Tokyo hacked into the DNS service and stole the domain. Joe and some other IT guys are working on getting it back.

I’ll post another update when I know more.

Continue reading »]]> Yes, I meant to write this post about two weeks ago, but time passed. But time passing is kind of what this post is all about, so hey, it’s appropriate.

2012 was a pretty good year. It was the first full calendar year of my being completely self-employed, and I still have a roof over my head and my bills are paid, so woohoo! My migraines have subsided enough that I’ve been able to resume eating chocolate, as long as I don’t overdo it, which makes me very happy indeed. Not only is it as delicious as I remembered, it gives me a boost of energy so I can get more work done!

The happiest plant in the world

2012 was the year of the Happy Fuzzy Yarn Local Wool Project, which still isn’t finished, but it was the year I washed more fleeces than I’ve ever washed in my life. Everything is at the mill now, and while things aren’t going quite according to plan (sigh…more on that in a bit), I think things will turn out nice.

Now that I’m done washing 47,389 fleeces, more or less (ok, it just seemed like that many. In actuality I completely lost count), I’m working on a couple of other large behind the scenes projects.

1. I am reorganizing my studio. I am making it more efficient, more usable, and more ergonomic. I am making it possible to do more dyeing in a day. (Pics when I’m done. It’s still kind of…upheaved).

2. I am setting up a new store online which will replace the old one when it’s finished. It will be more functional, and integrate with some other software I’m also setting up, so once everything is in place, it will save me a lot of time and aggravation.

Soon the mill should be ready with my stuff, and then I can start dyeing that. If you contributed to the project, you should have received an email about it already. In a nutshell, though the mill says they can produce a 3-ply fingering weight yarn, their definition of 3-ply fingering weight yarn is “spin a fingering weight singles, then ply it.” No, I don’t know anyone else who defines it that way either.

And though they said they could produce a wool/silk blend combed top, and wrote up the order saying they would, later they called me and said they no longer do. They said the wool and silk don’t stretch the same so it doesn’t make a nice top. No, I don’t know why they can’t get it to work when other mills can.

So it’ll be a DK weight yarn instead of fingering weight, and 100% wool top and 100% silk top. I haven’t heard anything about the wool/alpaca blend combed top yet, so I’m hoping they can handle that.

I’ll also be buying an imported 75% BFL/25% silk combed top to add to my line along with the others, so if you wanted the blend, I’ll have it. It just won’t be local wool, because the local mill can’t manage to do what several mills  elsewhere can do just fine.

But I need to stop thinking about it, because it makes me cranky. Unfortunately I’m out of chocolate. Must have tea. And breakfast. And then back to work.

Continue reading »]]> It took me two weeks. After my open house, I figured since I had everything out, it would be a good time to take photos of the huge backlog of stuff that needed to go into the online shop. So I took pictures for three days. And then spent the next week and a half editing photos and uploading them to the shop.

Hand dyed yarn? Up to date.

Handspun yarn? Up to date.

Hand dyed combed top? Up to date.

Carded art batts? Up to date.

I even added all the bracelets I thought I had added about a year ago but somehow hadn’t.

I also made a clearance section for yarns I’m discontinuing (colorways and/or base yarns). The discontinued yarns are all 10% off. Please help me make room for new yarn!

I can finally cross updating the shop off my to do list! For now…

Next task: clean the studio so I can walk through it.