Pro-crastination

At least I'm a pro. :P

Before I get into the why of all this procrastination, one very exciting thing and one fun thing. First off the exciting thing; my yarn was recommended in the Knitcircus Holiday edition gift guide on page 15.  It looks rather lovely with all those other beautiful yarns, I think.  And if you didn't see it when it came out, two of my colorways were used in a gorgeous sock pattern in the Fall 2010 edition, as well (pgs 70-71 and 90-91). They happen to be two of my favorite colorways, too.

Secondly, the fun thing. There's a gallery of pictures from the festival over at MyCentralJersey.com. Most of the shops I purchased from are pictured in some way, at least the fiber shops. Here's a closer-up of the handspun angora plied with beaded silk which I bought. And the two giant vintage buttons that I adore.  The angora shop was pictured, but the button shop was not.


Anyway, on to the procrastination. :P I'm feeling a little attenuated and blocked. It could be post festival blahs, but I think it's mostly because I want to play with the new fiber and my continued lack of netting means I can't. I went to every shop in the area that might have had it, and none of them did. So now I've ordered some and I'm waiting impatiently for it to arrive. Really, I should have got into the car and made the trek to Fabricland. It would have been a drive, but I would have my netting!

ZOMG

So, yes, it's Wednesday and the GSSB festival has been over for days and I haven't said a peep about it until now because ZOMG I feel a little like a hamster in a ball rolling around with So Much To Do!

First things first, the festival. The festival was wonderful. This was my second year vending at it, and it's bigger, better organized, better advertised, and all around a great weekend for me. I met lots of great people and saw some old friends, bought some incredible fiber for the shop, spent far too much money on treats, and sold twice as much as I did last year. To say I was pleased would be an understatement.

This was the morning of the first day when we were all busting our butts to get set up in time. The weather was gorgeous, brisk and clear and not horribly windy.

Better late than

I meant to do this yesterday, but it was the last push to get everything dyed in time to dry for Saturday's festival and I never managed to do so. But I'm here today! (Cannily avoiding inventory and labeling, too.) And I get to announce that Random.org picked cthulhulovesme to win the giveaway of lovely LylianMae Fiber Arts fiber.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I did a quick test of my new booth setup today and this is how my wall o'yarn looks.


It's most but not quite all of the yarn. The laceweight is still drying and there are some odds and ends lurking in a box that I haven't excavated yet.

Those are my giant homemade needles on the table in front of the yarn. I decided that the roving was thin enough to knit with straight and so I'm going to make a scarf with some that got a wee bit felted.

I also have a card table to lay out the samples I've made and such. And since I'm in the booth alone this year I'll be bringing some extra chairs so people can relax. There was a definite lack of indoor seating last year so I think it'll be good. I'm leaving the dress form home this year, though. I didn't dye up any more of the colorway I used in the shawl so I don't feel right displaying it quite so prominently.

Oy, OK it's time for me to catch the rabbit and put him away and then I need to finish this inventory. One more day!

Nocturne, and a giveaway!

It's September already and I'm dyeing up a storm. But I'm taking a break from the dye pots to plug LylianMae Fiber Artistry and offer up some of Emily's lovely hand dyed roving for this month's giveaway.


These are three 25g samples in Falkland/Corriedale cross colorway Quarantine; superwash merino colorway Brown-eyed Girl and Rambouillet colorway Morgaine: Lady of the Lake. With these braids comes a sample of Eucalan grapefruit wool wash, two sushi erasers, and an assortment of teas.

Emily is a spinner and a dyer, and her shop is full of lovely handspun and fiber, as well as these really great lap aprons for spinners who prefer their fiber in their yarn rather than all over their clothes. So please stop by LylianMae Fiber Artistry and find something you like and come back here and tell us all about it any time through Tuesday, Sept 7th. I'll pick someone at random on Sept 8th.

Don't forget to leave a way to reach you, or come back on the 8th to see if you've won. And if you love her handspun, I'm giving away a sampler at my Ravelry group, too.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there are certain things one doesn't wish to see at 3am.

Moon faced and pie eyed.

It's 3am and I should be doing all sorts of other things including work, but I just spent over an hour outside looking up at the sky.  You see, my father received an email a while back talking about the August "Two Moons" effect of Mars and the moon. While the phenomenon is actually not true, what was true is that the sky was clear, the moon was gloriously bright, and there was a bright speck of a planet visible as well.  I think it's actually Jupiter but I'm not sure.

The night was so clear, not a cloud, and the moon was bright enough to not need a flashlight. So we took the big telescope outside to take a closer look.  I took some truly awful pictures with my little point and shoot.

 
In the second picture, that smudge of light to the right is the light bouncing off the edge of the roof. I kept this picture to give an idea of how bright it actually was.

 
And these were taken through the telescope.  There were what looked like 4 visible satellites to the planet, which is why I think it's Jupiter, all in a little string of 3 with a 4th further out and not visible in the picture.  Since I don't have a bracket to attach the camera to the telescope, nor a motor to allow it to track, my pictures are never very good.

While I find internet hoaxes and false excitement over non-existent phenomena annoying, I was glad for the reason to look at the sky tonight. It was fun, and the weather is perfect for it, and the moon was absolutely lovely despite not being full. We really don't use the telescope enough. It's a terrific 114mm Newtonian Celestron telescope and perfect for looking at near space. I bought it for my father when I was still earning a fat paycheck and it's been gathering a lot of dust.

I enjoy the sense of wonder that comes from looking at the craters and shadows on the face of the moon or seeing the pinpricks of light spring into visibility around the glowing speck of a planet. And since our spotting scope is out of alignment there's also a sense of victory when we can actually find anything!

Ice cream social III - the end of summer draws nigh

Summer is coming to a close here and the weather has turned cool and drippy. We'll no doubt get another blast of heat to remind us that it's not done with us quite yet but it's almost time for apple picking and pumpkin pie again.

This picture isn't indicative of the weather at all. I took it earlier this summer, when I wanted to melt. But ice cream is always appropriate. So here's another ice cream giveaway.


This time I'd like people to talk about what fibery, crafty goodness they're starting up. It's not the end of summer everywhere, but a change of seasons is creeping ever closer and that tends to shake things up a bit.

Just comment here any time through Sunday, August 29th, and you'll be entered in the random drawing. Please leave a way to get back in touch with you, or check back here on Monday, August 30th to see if you've won. On September 1st, I'll have another fun giveaway with some lovely items from LylianMae Fiber Artistry.

Once again, this coupon expires in 2011 and is only good in the US.But don't let that stop you if you're outside the US. If you win, I'll send a little surprise instead.

And as another reminder, my Help Pakistan fundraiser box auction is here. The value of the contents of the boxes go up as the bids increase, and at this point the boxes will be fantastic

Meanwhile, back at the ranch I'm very busy indeed. I have a festival in less than 3 weeks and it's gotten to the "eep!" point where I need to get too many things done at the same time.  Once I finish a bunch of really important tasks this week, I'm going to go into a solid week of dyeing yarn just for the festival. Then the last week before will be full of labeling and inventory, and bajillions of little tasks that always fall by the wayside until the last moment.  Fingers crossed I do well there this year. I'm by myself this time, so it's a lot of space to fill with little ol'  me!

And somewhere in all of this, I need to prepare and ship out my Phatfiber samples.  I will get another update in the shop done this week however, hell or high water. I want to give everyone a good chance at the skeins of Arctic Hare I have dyed up already, before I take everything to the festival. 

Bleat (and a tiny video tutorial)

I'm working on lots of things to gear up for the festival next month, and this one keeps cracking me up so I have to share. But before I get into that I just want to remind everyone that I have two yarny fibery swap boxes up for auction at the Help Pakistan LiveJournal community.

Now, on to the thing that's been amusing me for days. See, I like to hand out free patterns when I do a craft show. Ideally they're made out of my own yarn and I can display the finished product around the booth. It draws interest and is a great ice breaker.

So I wanted something new this year. This time I decided to make a sheep mug cozy based on a discussion in the Ravelry forums. I had intended to do something rather different at the start but the idea grew and evolved and... well, this is what happened:


One sheep mug cozy on a standard mug, before blocking.

A plug for Help_Pakistan

So, I know a lot of people are cash poor, I certainly am. I also know that there are a lot of people who want to help when simply awful things happen, like the flooding in Pakistan.

Sometimes people come together and make a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Help Haiti did that. It raised over $115,000 in just a few weeks. All by matching up people with goods or services they could donate and people who wanted to buy them.

Help Pakistan is trying to do this. It's a new LiveJournal community hosting an auction for flood relief efforts. No money ever changes hands between offerer and winning bidder. Everything goes directly to the aid organizations which can be selected off a master list.

I'm offering up two "swap" boxes of fibery goodness. I did one for Help Haiti and it went over well so I decided to offer them again, this time with the option of spinning fiber. It's all the fun of getting a swap with no risk. My listing can be seen here: Yarny Fibery Swap/Mystery Boxes

This was my Help Haiti swap box (less a knitted tea cozy that was still drying when I took the picture).

The recipient and I overlapped in Harry Potter interest, so I was able to add lots of little doodads to the box to give it character.

Help Pakistan is taking listings starting today, and on Monday the 23rd it opens up for bidding. People can still list new offerings once the bidding has started, the few days lead time is just so the offerings can build up a bit. ETA: They've opened bidding early. Listing new things will be open through the 27th, and bidding ends the 28th. Delivery of offerings is expected by Oct. 1. end ETA

I hope you'll take a look. These auctions are usually lots of fun to browse; the scope of the offerings can be astounding. And please do spread the word if you can. It takes a critical mass of interest both in offering and in bidding to get these things really rolling.

There are a lot of disasters right now. The flooding and landslides in China come to mind, too. It's not on the same scale as Pakistan, but it's still horrible. It's hard to say "I can't help." I have a roof over my head and all the comforts of home, but my reality is that I can't spare the cash. But I can spare the stash, and the effort, and some base yarn or fiber to dye up something custom. So, this is what I'm doing.

Thank you!

Stuff!

I'm a bit swamped right now but I wanted to pop up a post to say that KnittinK and I were accepted to the Boston Bazaar Bizarre in Boston for their Winter Fair.

I'm very excited about this. It's the first festival of its sort that I'll have done, and it's supposed to have great vendors and amazing attendance. This also means I get to go up to Boston and see friends! And, since I poked around with setup today, I realized I can get everything I need into my little car with the gps. So I won't get lost! For me, not getting incurably lost is a requirement for having a good time.

So we will be in Boston on Dec 5th between noon at 7pm at the Cyclorama with much yarn and fibery goodness. If you're in the area, stop by and say 'hello'! :D

Meanwhile, I'm still in the throes of a big update. It's going very slowly as I've proved to be extremely distractable. Also, I took the pictures for these listings over the course of 5 days, so sometimes finding the correct one takes a bit of doing. I realized I had 4 whole colorways (12sk of yarn) that I'd completely neglected to do because I thought I'd already done them *facepalm* So yeah, I'm working on it.

Here are two of my unexpected favorite colorways from July, though. I liked them out of the pot, but they've really grown on me as I've looked at them more and more.


These are Coffee Cup and Asphalt Jungle.

The lighter color on Coffee Cup isn't white. It's actually the palest of pale minty blue. And Asphalt Jungle reminds me of the colors of the movie posters for The Asphalt Jungle. But aside from matching those black and white with splashes of color posters really well, I think it will work up beautifully in a project, with the predominance of the grey.

OK, off back to the Gimp mines. I have something like 43sk of yarn with pictures still to edit. *facepalm* Gimp waits for no one! Or, well it waits, but it doesn't do anything while it's waiting, more's the pity!

Shop update and a note on prices.

The number of times I have to retake pictures because the color temperature is off is really starting to annoy me. I have to retake some pictures this weekend, while I try to finally get all the skeins I dyed in July listed. This, so I can dye up more this week and then list them. I have a lot to dye up before the Garden State Sheep Breeders festival in September (Sept 11 & 12, in Ringoes, NJ).

Additionally, I wanted to give everyone a heads up that my prices are changing. My yarn costs went up considerably in March and sadly, absorbing the difference has become impossible. So a month from now, on Sept 13, I'm going to raise all my yarn prices 6%. For example, Jackalope and March Hare are both going from $18.80 up to $19.95.

I'll be taking all the yarn to the festival in September and vending there with the old prices. The shop will be empty of yarn for the weekend. Then, all the stock returned to the etsy shop on Sept 13, the Monday, will have the new prices. Meanwhile, I do intend to stock the shop as full as I can before the festival so there will be plenty of selection at the current prices.

Please do ask any questions you may have. It's always an uncomfortable sort of thing to have to raise prices, but I'd rather not spring it on people unannounced. This way, it's like a long sale.


Phatfiber colorways, clockwise from the upper left: Red Desert, lapis lazuli and brass widgets, Agate, and Papyrus.  Image links to the shop.

The theme this month was Africa, and these were some of what I contributed.