Open For Business

Wait. First you have to take down the window covers.

Ok, NOW you can come in.

Check out the pottery!

Salt & Pepper Shakers in sheep and alpaca. Each curl on the sheep? Hand made and applied, one at a time.

A little yarn graffiti on the wall o' yarn...

and lots of dyed roving.

And there are handspun yarns, felted bags, purses and hats, Icelandic pelts, hand-carded batts, needles & notions (including The Knit Kit), hand-dyed worsted weight yarns and lace yarns, Tsock Kits by the Tsock Tsarina... and even a place you can pick your own fibers to be blended for you into custom spinning or felting batts.

So, Saturday the 25th we opened and it was a wonderful day. We met lots of invisible friends from Ravelry, and had tons of fun dyeing yarn. We had a couple from as far away as Ohio - Thank you Miss 'Cubed for making the trip, we were glad you made it - and I'm glad you brought Miss Swords with you. (her new hubby made no-bake cookies to take to the party. we love him.)

Special thanks go to Twiggi and Georg for helping out in getting things ready and running on Saturday.

I think all of those who dyed yarn can agree with me on the need for more 'containers' though - and so I've stopped by the dollar store for trusty measuring cups for the next go-round.

Thank you Enigma, Maker-of-Excellent-Beer for the Excellent Beer, Awesome Homeade Ice Cream AND toppings (cherries... chocolate... nomnomnom) and thank you for putting the dye-day idea in our heads.

I leave you with this important and thought-provoking question:

deadlines.

So, I'v spent the day at the store with family, working out where to put everything. Big stuff was easy to figure out, and I felt like progress was being made every few minutes. Looms go there, yarns hang on that wall, kits go over there... easy-peasy.
Then things slowed down a little. Put up pegs, decide in what order to hang the yarn... by color family? by patterns? 'Donkey-on-the-tail' throw it on the wall version? What about the kits? Medium vs large? all the mediums on one side, and the larges on the opposite side? Would the customer understand it? In a couple of days, the basics had been established.
Then the little things. Where does the shelf of soap go? What about the Lavender Tea? Buttons? Does all this stuff have price tags yet? argh. Woven Scarves. Those should go by the looms... no rack by the looms. hmm. Rearrange fixtures... oh look! New fixtures we bought from another store! Swap fixtures, rearrange more... argh again. Where's the drill? Flat head screwdriver? Those are both at home. With the stapler. double-argh.

Anyways, things are progressing, pictures in the next day or so. Tomorrow I'm not at the store, I'll be here with Twiggi getting some multi-tasking dyeing done, so I'll have some pictures of that as well. There are several new yarn colorways ready to go, and tons of roving.

And, if you haven't heard... we're having a party for Ravelers at the store on Saturday the 25th which maks the 23rd my 'deadline' date for being ready to go. If you Ravel, and you'll be in the area of ShoppingTown Mall on April 25th after 2pm, stop in for a visit and say hello!

There have been Rumors...

...and innuendo. I would like to take a moment and give some credence to those rumors. Some fire, with that smoke. Put on something a little more.... revealing.

How does this grab you?

That's the quick & dirty 'Coming Soon' window display in what will be a brand new Fiber Arts Center here in Syracuse, NY at Shoppingtown Mall.
Nora took my picture out in front. You know, she's always said that she wants to have a store next to mine because we're both dyers and that way we can visit each other...
But, it's a pretty big space. We've decided to share.

Monsters vs Aliens

Top movie of the weekend. Did you see it? I didn't get a chance - we were busy working on what will be the next blog post I make when I'm done editing pics & figuring out how best to describe things.
In the meantime, I see it made it to #1 in the box office... I find it serendipitous (fun word to say) that I have yarn called Monster Mash. I think in honor of the movie, we'll put that one on sale 10% off.
Monster Mash was the brainchild of a good friend Twiggi who came over for a dye-day. I gave her color cards and roving, she gave me Monster Mash. More serendipity (still fun to say). Twiggi is also who gave me this 'Knitter's Treasure' box for Christmas. Very cool, with stitch markers, tape measure and ribbon be-decked chart keepers, all color coordinated to the tin (except maybe the tape measure) and she has some on her etsy site for sale. Great bonus gift for swap packages!
Well, I've got to get back to work. Pretty in Pink calleth, and miss woolybrains, that is a very good idea on the Pretty in Pink with the Cafe au Lait. I think we'll give that a go today as well.

Found the camera...

Cafe au lait - 2 shades of a rich brown, knits up in stripes (I still like the stripes)

Monster Mash (Nora approved this one but is not the dyer - she says it looks just like 'Sully' in Monster's Inc.) Random bold 'spots' of bright green and briliant violet.

Also, not a new color but it makes me think of spring, and so it's 10% off right now until I get tired of dyeing it. It's sweet, simple, and spring in shades of pink tulips.
Pretty in Pink:

Go buy some! I'll wait here.

random list.

20 skeins of bacon: check. (Faith! Incoming!)
dyed roving: check.
plum shadows in new bamboo to test: check. (Pat! Incoming!)
1 scarf woven, 2nd scarf started: check.
22 skeins of Claret: check.
36 skeins of cuff for 9 Tailors Kits: check.
150 bars of soap including 48 frogs in 2 shades of green and 6 dragonfly bars: check.
New colorway (picture as soon as I find the camera) designed by guest artist and approved by Nora, called Monster Mash: check.
Began sorting Yarn Fairy skeinletts (picture of some of the yarn somewhere on this post) into 4oz grab-bags to post on website: check.
1 out of 3 rugs felted: check.
2 loads of laundry: check.
today's 'to do' list written including Roxie, more roving, and felting 2nd rug): check.

sleep:
sleep:
hello, sleep? hmm. I knew I forgot something.
snore.

I've been busy, how 'bout you?

Tsock #1 has left the building (ok, this announcement is a few days late, but better than no notice at all...)

There are actually still a few spaces left in the club. How do I know? I dyed some extra. Once those are gone, the spaces are full. Here's tsock #1 to intice you:

The shepherd had a birthday recently. When he asked me to pick up beer at the store, I couldn't help but laugh when I found these:

I am particularly fond of the one on the right - black wensleydale. Now if only they came with a 4 oz ball of roving.... guess you can't have everything perfect.

Roxie Breaks Out!

Last Kit from the 2007 Tsock Club is finally on the loose!

Roxie: The jazz-baby with the smoking gun. The beauty of the cell-block. The sweet-faced little flapper you wanted to take home to mother - if only you could bust her out of the clink.
Yeah.
That Roxie.

• Diagonal Mesh 'stockings' worked opposite directions to mirror each other.
• Beaded 'skirts'.
• Picot edged hem on her 'waistband'

She's in stock now, ready to go! This kit uses our Bamboo-Ewe sock yarn - a blend of merino, bamboo, and nylon at our regular 8st/inch guage. It is not superwash, so... just as you'd handle Roxie herself -- with plenty of care, we suggest you hand-wash these babies.

I smell Bacon!

It took some time. It took some trials. There are skeins that didn't make the grade. Bacon has marbling. The fat runs through the meat and vice versa. I have quite a bit of bacon in the freezer from our own pastured porkers, so I have plenty of samples to compare against. (nomnomnom) Each skein is an individual, slightly different from all the others, just like packages of bacon.


So.... what do you think? Do you smell Bacon?

If so, you may now purchase your very own grass-fed bacon yarn here.

(**Disclaimer: Not responsible for drool in keyboards, cholesterol increases, or greasy yarn.)

Yarn Fairy Bliss

Sometimes, things get very focused around here. (I like to think this makes us more productive. Don't ruin it for me.) Club kit to get ready, orders to fill etc. This was the last kit for the 2008 club (wow, that year went fast). and I almost feel like I can see a minute of free time coming... nope, sorry. that was just a dust bunny blocking my view. Don't like dust bunnies anyways - I'd only want to dye yarn if I had 'free time'...

Anyways! Part of the club membership includes yarn from the Yarn Fairy. When club members join, they get the chance to give me their top 3 favorite colors so the Yarn Fairy has a clue - because life is too short for ugly yarn. So, I had some Yarn Fairy deliveries to go out with this last kit. Some folks were very specific, some told me to pick for them, others chose not to answer at all. I went through the lists, checked them twice, and began 'assigning' yarn. Then I spent some quality time with my dye pots because I was itching to focus on some Yarn.

Now, I took about a dozen pictures similar to this during the packing process. Piles of a variety of yarns for the Yarn Fairy deliveries. Piles of complete one-of-a-kinders... Just lovely stuff. However, I might have had on about a dozen caffeine patches because these were the only 2 pictures that I could apparently stop the twitching long enough to make the camera take a clear picture.

I loved doing the dye days for these. LOVED. I decided I spend quite a bit of time 'focused' and not enough time 'unfocused'. I'd like to say that at least one day a week from here on out there will be similar 'unfocused' dye days (please remind me) because I enjoy being creative like this, and I hope you'll enjoy the yarns coming out of these days. (And also? These are totally the yarns Lisa is NOT supposed to look at. Lisa? Move along. Nothing to see. Go knit a sock or something.)

In the pictures above, all of the shades of purple come from extra dye from a batch of Neo, and one racy shade of red. (Here's Neo pictured below.)

• All of the light green and all of the light blue skeins? Also from the left-over Neo.
• The super-dark green? Cleopatra exhaust. (I like that one soooo much, I've named it 'Evergreen' and you can haz more, I just added it to the sockyarn page.)
• The orange/red on the far left? Exhaust pot from 'Crimson Rioja' (Kitri) & a little spike of yellow.
• The one on the far right? Pink & brown? Ya, the self-striping notion continues to entertain me. This one is called 'Chocolate Cherries' in honor of Valentine's Day approaching, and is also now available.

Glenna & I were talking about the approaching holiday, and got to thinking about some new colors to go with 'Chocolate Cherries'. We decided we needed something 'anti-valentine' and so have 'Bruised Ego' in black & blue painted (mostly) random in black and then overdyed in blue:

Then I decided we needed a little less pink in the world (shhh, don't tell Nora). Something closer to... 'Goth Valentine' painted in geometric designs with black, purple, and blue:

So, there are several new colors available, and I've done some upkeep work on the sock-yarn page, go look - I'll wait here. I hope this makes things a little easier to navigate (and shop).

In fact, let's have a sale on postage. A Valentine's Day Sale. Spend $60.00 and I'll refund your domestic postage, or half of your international postage. Sale applies to all of the yarn and kits, and runs through February 14th.
(HINT: If you are a club member, this means you get the postage sale AND the club discount refunded to you...)

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In Club news, for 2009 there are still spaces left, and joining now gets you entered in a drawing for a skein of yarn in your choice of colorway.

I'll be sending out an email to the folks who signed up prior to Jan 15th to get your colorway choice bonus skein for signing up early. That email will go out in the next day or so.

2008 Tsock #6 kits did indeed ship yesterday. (Waldmaus- commence with the stalking.) The post office here announced that I owe them brownies on Monday for all the extra work. Usually we can apply postage at our leisure here and drop off finished packages to them, because they are all in groups by same weight or international. This time around, every kit had to be weighed for differences because of Yarn Fairy yarns and bars of Sheep's Milk & Lanolin Soap etc. It made me a little homesick for Dave-the-Postmaster and our stamp system when we lived at the farm, sniff. I suppose it completed a circle though, since we began this year's club standing in the post office applying postage to each kit individually, cancelling each package, and packing in canvas postal bags. It was very deja-vu-ish. Especially when you consider I'm about to dye a bunch of yarn for not only the upcoming release of Roxie, Tsock 6 from 2007... but also a bunch of Hellfire skeins for the pending release of Tsock 1 from 2008 - Firebird.


I just love saying "I have to go make Hellfire now".

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Have Stitch Marker, Will Travel.

So I've cast on (for the 3rd time) a mobius (in colorway Neo, with 3 strands together on size 11 needles). I finished casting on and was all set to start the first row when I realized I was without a stitch marker. Now, I was not at home but sitting in a waiting room of sorts without my knitting bag - it was in the car, it was a billion below zero (ok, it was 14F), and I am basically lazy.
Amazingly, I could not find any different colored string, piece of plastic anything, twist-tie... nothing. I did however, have my car keys. I could NOT however, get the blasted key off the ring, so I did this instead:

Now, this worked perfectly, until it was time to leave:
Get in car.
Look at knitting.
Look at steering column.
Look at knitting...
Drive home:

(I prefer to think of this as pure genius rather than any desperate attempt on my part to sit on a cold chair in a drafty room without knitting.)

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In other news, You missed the January 15th Deadline!! Woe to you, my friend. You missed the guaranteed free skein of yarn in the colorway of your choice for signing up for the TsockFlock Sock Club 2009 before Jan. 15th.

Bummed out? How about a chance at a skein of yarn anyways? There's still room in the ol' database of names for 2009 so if you sign up now, I'll have a drawing from the sign-ups (from the 15th until the club is full) for that free skein of yarn in your choice of colorway. No guarantees, but there's a good chance at 400 yds of free sock yarn just for signing up. I'll wait right here, you go take a look.

Recap

So from the looks of things, my psychic link to the blog is STILL not functioning. That would explain the lack of 'real' posts verses all my obviously imaginary ones during the past month... sigh.

Well, I hope you all had a great holiday, we had a lovely one here.

Our first Gingerbread construction project ever. I think we did ok, considering the frosting hardens faster than crazy glue-!

What do you get the Pixie who has everything? Silk People (or in this case, styrofoam heads).
I worried a bit about what to get Glenna for christmas. I mean, I knew what her favorite colors were & all, but there isn't a fiber she hasn't tried or a spindle I could get her... and so I went the tricksie path instead. Asked her what fiber in my stash was the nicest. Since I had no cashmere roving anywhere about, she opted that the silk was the nicest. As I started pulling out silk, I found some silk bells/caps. "Caps?" She says, suddenly paying a ton more attention... ("ah-hah, says I...") And so I started babbling about a dye project request for someone else who's colors I didn't know, and the technical aspects of dyeing silk etc, and got her involved & making helpful suggestions cuz she loves her some silk... Finally asked her for color suggestions, feigned busy doing other projects and let her go at it on the silk.
Oh I checked on her now & then with a few tips & pointers, but this dye job was all hers. When she was finished, we pronounced it pretty good and she felt safe that she wasn't going to be fired for ruining the silk. Liked it pretty well, in fact. And so after it was steamed & rinsed, I turned it over to her as her Christmas present. I am so teh subtle. I'm pretty sure she didn't know it was hers... at least, she lets me think I got away with it ;-) (I would like to point out that the color inspiration was my tea-cup/mug. Hand thrown pottery from an artist in Portland OR I got several years ago. Those for the record, are Miss Pixie's favorite colors on record.)

Stand by for photo onslaught:

I think we did a pretty good job of matching colors and she did an excellent job of painting them!

Let's see, what else has been going on. Well, we made some soap. Ok, we made a LOT of soap. Ok, we made more than 240 bars of soap. Sheep's milk & Lanolin.

And just for the record? If you work at a hardware or plumbing supply store and someone calls looking for Lye, please verify the spelling.

1. We are not looking for Lime for the garden. I'm fairly certain that a 25lb bag for $4.75 is not granular LYE, it's granular L I M E, trust me.
2. No, lye is not illegal.
3. No, it is not going to 'damage the environment' or single-handidly destroy the earth or the ozone if I use it.
4. Yes, they still use it for things other than decomposing a body in a 55 gallon drum (??)
5. No, you do not have to report a purchase of Lye to any authority, and I can purchase it at any age.
6. Yes, people still make soap at home.

Moving on.


One word: Bacon! No, it's not breakfast time (not here anyways). There's this group of people out there (you know who you are) who for some reason (best not thought about), want Bacon yarn. Not bacon FLAVORED yarn (the majority anyways), but color/theme. And they've been clammoring for this for some time now. There would not be distracted, no "Look! Something Shiney! Over there!" ploy seemed to work on this mob. Heaven help me, I began thinking about bacon themed yarn. Now mind you, this is not the final product but I think I'm getting close to it.
Let's see, what else? Oh I know, Gift Certificates! Those are new! They're on the home page, and you can get $10.00, $20.00 or $50.00 and they do not require the recipient to use paypal to cash it in. You purchase the amount you want, and I get the details from you in a confirmation email. You can even do anonymous gifts for folks, which comes in handy for knitting group gift swaps etc.


The only other note of interest aroud here, is that the 15th of January is the last day to sign up for the 2009 TsockFlock Sock Club and get a free skein of yarn your choice of colorway as a bonus. Sign-ups will continue after that, but you'll miss out on the free skein. There has been talk of a drawing for a skein from the names of the late-comers after that, but do you really want to miss out on the guaranteed yarn? 6 kits, a visit from the yarn fairy AND a free 400 yard skein in your favorite colorway from the website? Basically a $20.00 bonus... hmm. Not to mention the other goodies. Tempus Fugit, my friend. Tick Tock. First kit goes out in February, and the database o' names doth fill quickly.

Snow Day...

So.. my laptop hath bit the dust. Again. Data retrieved and on a cd, and now I am working on Nora's laptop (see: very old, outdated software and arguing over who's turn it is to either play elementary games or get some work done).

Look! Wintergreen Candy Cane Yarn, self-striping! (please excuse the photo quality. we're working on it but it's a different laptop... did I mention?) I'll get it on the website as soon as it's my turn with the laptop later today...

So it's a snow day today! You know, when we lived in the back of beyond, 4 inches of snow was no big deal. Plow trucks came by at the crack o' dawn and the bus was on time and the kids went to school as usual. Here? 4 inches and every school district gives up and stays home. Had to plow out our own road to get husband off to work, and still haven't seen a city plow truck. So, we're having a snow day. Now, if you'll excuse me, Nora & I have to go shovel some snow, look into building a snowman, and then watch 'Horton Hears a Who'.

...P.S. On a club update note, we're just about ready to ship out the 5th kit of the TsockFlock Tsock Club. Most kits this year have averaged at least 3 skeins of yarn (or skeinlets etc) giving me about 600 things to put in the pot, somehow or another. Somehow, we've wrangled this one into roughly 1400 skeins to go out this ol' round-up. (Love the cowboy-ish references or what?)

Holiday knitting progress:

The answer to my Christmas knitting list: Get the recipients to knit (or crochet) and give them yarn for Christmas. 2 down, 17 to go.

Random-esque and Denial

Before I forget, and before those of you who asked for it THINK I forgot, here's the latest in self-striping colorway yarns. Let's call this one 'Promise', and it's already on the website here for you.

And also before I forget, Angie S., come on down! Your the next contestant - no wait, wrong game show. But Angie does win! She was the first correct answer in an email contest for the club members. The most recent Tsock being all Margarita-ish, I asked for the correct origin of 'the worm' in the bottle. Angie was first with the most complete answer, "...Technically, the worm originated in mescal, not tequila, and it is an agave worm. However, mescal can mean anything made with the agave plant including tequila. In 1950, Mexico City entrepreneur Jacobo Lozano Paez hit on the idea of putting a worm in each bottle as a marketing gimmick...."

I'm going to award an Honorary Mention to Waldmaus for her smarty-pants answer: "...I’ll tell you where the worm in the mescal originates. It hatches from an egg, because it is not a worm at all, but a caterpillar, and caterpillars hatch from eggs..."

There were so many of you that sent in an answer on this one, I'll draw a couple of names from the entries as winners as well. Thanks for playing!

---

So... did you all have a good Holiday (for those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving...)? We actually went to visit family and had a lovely time, and Nora & I had a wonderful head cold which we succeeded in sharing with family. Feel the Love. (Zicam, anyone?)

I would like to say here and now that I took a suitcase of knitting projects - or potential projects, along with a spinning wheel and even fiber. I am thrilled to report that I do indeed remember how to spin (it's been months), and that I can even manage to put sticks & strings together on occasion... though more often than not it's followed by much ripping and cussing. Actually, I've matured. I've grown past the cussing, and now ripp in subdued and sullen silence... oh well.

Take this for example. An exercise in simple cables, because lately it was as if my knitting had become just a way to get to ripping, as if the ripping was the intended purpose all along. Very frustrating. Anyhoo, I began casting on hats. Simple, basic, add a cable... still going ok, getting bored now... the urge to cast on for an aran sweater or something was getting to me but that way just leads to more ripping and so I cast on one more hat allowing myself 'more' cables to keep the boredom at bay. (And while we're at it, let's change the yarn, the guage, and needle size, eh?)

Now up until now, we had a nice run of hats with no ripping - a novelty around here and I was starting to breath a sigh of relief. I mean if baseball curses can be broken... anything could happen and I might break the run of ripping I'd been doing. (though sometimes denial wins and instead of ripping it would get felted as if another felted bowl was the intention all along...)

Denial is a strong thing. I have cast this hat off. It is complete. It has not a single error (we won't speak of the 2 cables I had to fix in row 3 cuz they are fixed now). It is technically, a hat. It does not fit. I knew it was 'snug' at the 1/2 way point. (That's what I called it. Snug.) My grandmother loved the color and kept telling me it was hers. I finished it and handed it over. She tried it on, I guess to see how it looked with her denial as well. Eventually, even she had to admit it did not fit. And so, I will rip it. Perhaps tomorrow, maybe the next day. I find it interesting to note that the yarn I used will indeed felt... oh well. (Does anyone need a felted bowl or three?)

I took a moment at home to show my grandmother the scarves that Stephanie was working on, and she thought that was a pretty good project... and so off to the yarn store we went. On the way home, we actually had to call the house and have someone dig through the stash for needles just in case we had to stop elsewhere - the yarn store was out of straights in that size and she prefers straights. I love that the overwhelming desire to cast on a new project immediately does not fade with age. Here's what she had later in the evening:

My mother was also 'knitting' with us, except she crochets. One minute she's digging through a bag looking for a hook, and then everything gets blurry for a while...

...and the next thing you know, this happens (or something similar anyways. She makes amazing felted purses, one-of-a-kinders):

Anyways, that's what I did on my vacation ;-) How 'bout you?

New, New, New.

Sale! Let's have a postage sale, wanna? Any order over $60.00 placed by Friday night midnight EST (Nov 21st) I'll refund 100% of stateside postage - and up to $4.00 off (refunded) on all int'l postage. So, now's your chance for gift-shopping for other knitters, or to drop a huge hint to your family about your wish-list.

New Colors (finally) listed:

For Georg (Nora dyed this for Georg as a custom request - pics of the socks she made me are below.)

Burnt Orange - One of the Colors in the Change-Ringing colorwork in The Nine Tailors Tsock.

Key Lime - a 2-tone colorway that will self-stripe. Believe it or not, this color was an exhaust re-mix after dyeing the cuff for the Margarita club sock!

Getting in the Holiday Spirit? Try 'Candy Canes'! Self-striping yarn just for you and Santa.

Wanna make some Candy Canes decorations? We can help with that as well!

All of the new stuff can be found on the FlockSock Sock Yarn page here.