Like bubbles in a fish tank

Little thoughts keep rising to the surface. I'm a bit scattered, I've got a festival on Saturday and I'm behind schedule!

*bubble*
If you happen to be in the Montgomery NJ area on November 13th, swing by Montgomery Made by Hand at the high school (1016 Route 601, Skillman, NJ). 10am-3pm, it's a holiday craft fair hosted by the honors society, and there will be 45 vendors in attendance.  Free admission!  Raffles!

*bubble*
One of my yarns was in an Etsy front page Treasury last night. That was a very pleasant bump in views and hearts. Statsy screenshot. I really like the coy little bird print in the top row.

*bubble*
Someone asked a question on the Rav forums yesterday about whether garter stitch or seed stitch uses less yarn.  My gut reaction is to say seed stitch, both from experience and from considering the mechanics of both stitches.  But in a bit of procrastinatory rebellion I also decided to swatch.

Cast on with the backwards loop co, slipped the first stitch of every row, and bound off in pattern. The total number of rows included the co and bo. Each swatch was made with exactly the same length of yarn on the same needles.  Tension differences are sure to influence this, of course.

Now if I can just avoid getting sucked in to figuring out how to adjust for giant holes in one's knitting, like those Swiss cheese holes at the start of the hemlock ring.  For some reason these puzzles are always more interesting to me when I've got a massive pile of other things to do.

*bubble*
In another bit of procrastinatory rebellion, I put together a clip for This Is Handmade.  If you haven't heard about this blog, it collects tedium.  Specifically it collects the tedium of handcrafting (an explanation of the project).  So here is slightly more than 5min of me making stitch markers last night.  It's not a tutorial and it's hard to see exactly what I'm doing, and it's quite dull. But that's kind of the point. YouTube link


*bubble*
And now for something completely different. Some ruminating about cake after the jump.

Through the roof

Last night was full of moment. There was a lot of not getting enough work done (which is why my next shop update starts tomorrow come hell or high water), mangoes with coconut rice, and a mystery. The mangoes with coconut rice will be at the end of this post because I'd like to talk about the mystery. If you just want the recipe, click through the jump cut and page down until you see the food picture. :)

So, the mystery has to do with visitors to my shop and shop hearts. I check Craftcult several times a day to see my shop hearts. I know that hearts don't equal sales, but I think of it as a general barometer of how appealing my shop is. And really, it just makes me feel good. It's a bit of harmless affirmation.

Last night, the number jumped. It jumped so much that I thought it was a glitch and wondered if Craftcult was having problems. There was more than a page of new hearts. That is not typical for my shop! So I went to Craftopolis to see if it also had the anomalous hearts.


Look at the visitors, views and hearts for Aug 9. 821 unique visitors, 2611 page views, and 44 new shop hearts. I was gobsmacked. And I still thought it might be a glitch.

Keep in mind that in May a skein of my yarn was in an Etsy front page Treasury. That day I netted 300+ unique visitors and 26 shop hearts. This blew that day away.

I was still skeptical so I checked and everything kept saying it was real, so I started hunting for the source. I googled my shop, I checked for any more front page treasuries, I checked treasuries in general, I checked Ravelry, I even checked Etsy finds on the slim chance. I came up blank everywhere. There was nothing to explain why people had suddenly decided to heart my shop right and left starting 8:48pm last night.

I waited for midnight so I could check my analytics, and there was the completely unexpected source. Facebook.

Doughnuts, only not. And putting my stamp on things

I have two things today! First up is the hand carved rubber stamp I purchased from Brown Pigeon on Etsy. It's a representation of my logo in a 4in square stamp and I love it.


Mynah insisted on joining the picture.

Meagan does great work and I received the stamp a mere 12 days after I initiated conversation about the design and what would be possible.

It's a big, beautiful stamp that I intend to use on my shopping bags for festivals. I still need to decide on what kind of pigment ink stamp pad to get. I'm thinking that rainbow might be the most fun but it will depend on how expensive the pads are and how visible the finished image will be on the brown paper of the bags.

The other half of today's post is Doughnut Muffins. Or, in my case, Doughnut Hole Muffins. Picture, recipe and chitchat after the jump.

A video (p3tog combined)

So, someone asked a Combined knitting question over in the Ravelry forums. I put together a quick little video and decided to put it here, too.

I don't know how helpful it will be, but I think of Combined knitting as a constant state of mind, so this will show some of the process I go through when deciding how to work a pattern written for Western oriented stitches. And if you don't know what Combined knitting is, well this will demonstrate that, too.


I also made my first Etsy Treasury. It's full of fibery goodness from other Phatfiber contributors: Kubla Khan. It was fun but time consuming. I can really see getting sucked into making Treasuries.

Fiber Co-op

I'm busy busy busy trying to get things done in the ridiculously sweltering heat, but I'm very excited about something so I'm dashing in to post. What is it, you say? It's The Fiber Cooperative, which will go live in July.

Basically, it's like an online fiber festival, with yarnies and other such folk presenting their "vendor tables" with the best and most representative of their wares each month. It's not a shopping venue, but rather a browsing venue. If you see something you like or are intrigued by the shop, you can click through to the shop and browse everything the shop has to offer.

It should be fun and informative and full of eye candy all collected handily into one location.

It actually reminds me a little bit of the Etsy Promotional Tool someone posted about on the Etsy forums last week, but on a much grander scale.  The EPT is a simple tool that collects the 5 most recent items in one's shop (or the top of one's 'featured' list) and displays them linked back to the shop.  It's very new and very simple as of yet, but it's fun to scroll through.

And in something completely unrelated, I leave you with a YouTube video gleaned from my cousin. Lenny Kravitz crashed a choir performing one of his songs (none of them minded!). It's a delight. Can you imagine being one of those kids? Event of a lifetime, truly.  It goes a little out of sync by the end, but it's still eminently watchable.


Now I've got to go back to editing yarn pictures. I'm planning a big shop update starting tomorrow since it's too hot to dye. Mostly Jackalope (merino/nylon sock yarn) and March Hare (light worsted superwash merino).

Treats for you and me

It took me a while to code everything, but now that I have I can post who won the drawing for this skein of yarn.

Congratulations, AbsoluteGillian!  Email me to confirm your address, please, and I'll get this in the mail for you on Monday.

Thanks for playing, everyone!  You all left a fantastic list of really wonderful and varied Etsy shops. So I've included the list after the jump. Please do go visit and ogle the lovelies!  I hope you'll be back again soon. I have lots of plans for fun giveaways in the future. :)

Meanwhile, I'm going to the Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn tomorrow to see what it's like. If it's yarnie friendly, I might try and get a table next year. Here's hoping it's cooler and doesn't rain on us all!  And next week I'll be dyeing up more yarn. :)

Before the list of fabulous shops, I shall leave you with a "sample" of what I'm treating myself to tonight - Chocolate pudding, frozen in my Donvier ice cream maker, sprinkled with toasted pecans. So easy and decadently delicious!

June 1 - What a year! And a giveaway.

A year ago today, I officially opened my Etsy shop and tried to make a real go of this yarn dyeing business. And in the last year I've learned so much and done so much that my head it buzzing with all of it still. I vended my first festival, I made my first ad banners, I sent my work out there and people came back for more.

When I think about where I was a year ago and where I am now, I'm glad and hopeful and grateful. I came to this out of near desperation and it's giving back more than I can express. And I have so many people to be grateful to as well, good friends and family who've put up with this thing eating my brain and my time and my patience, and gone well above the call of duty helping out.

So thank you to everyone who has participated in this whirlwind of a year. I have so much still to learn and do to grow this business right, and I hope you're all with me through the next year as well. :)

And to celebrate all this and to launch this blog officially with something fun, the giveaway! Specifically, this skein of yarn:

Three Hares, colorway: Colonial Day, hanging out in the persimmon tree

Details of this giveaway and more pictures after the jump-

FP

Wishing everyone a great Memorial Day. It's hot but beautiful today, so I'm doing my best to keep cool.

Keeping cool is not something I'm actually suited for today, however, because yesterday I was on the front page of Etsy for an hour, in the citruscitrus Treasury.  *flails quietly*




I had my doubts about the front page being all that influential in the grand scheme of things. But... *flails*

It's not. It's really, really not. The front page is brilliant and incredible. That one skein of yarn had a jump of over 200 views in that hour, and then sold within a few minutes of the Treasury switching over to the next one.

Heartfelt thanks for everyone who puts Treasuries together. I know they're hard work, because I've contemplated assembling one and been totally stalled by the sheer scale of the task. But OMG, it's been a very OMG kind of weekend to end a very OMG kind of year. 

OK, back to the knitting. I have a baby hat and some ice cream cozies to make before I can do anything else.  And when it cools down, I have to wind some yarn. :)

Wind wind wind print print print

I'm completely off schedule due to the great zombie invasion. But I managed to dye up some yarn yesterday and I'm pretty satisfied with the new offerings. Today and the weekend is all about getting my samples for May's Phatfiber box ready, since I'm a week behind schedule. I'm also trying to get 2mos done instead of just one. We'll see how sleep deprived I am by the end of it.


Left to Right: Colonial Day; Kobol; Titania; Peasblossom; Bottom

Given that I have a scarf to finish knitting by Sunday, I'm a little frazzled.

Meanwhile, Etsy appears to be back to functioning. *crosses fingers* It was messed up for days for people in the Northeast US, not even counting how many of the hacks that I rely on being broken. But it appears to be working again. Which means after I get this lot of samples done, I really need to get my April yarn up in the shop.