Author: yarnmama

A New Acquisition and Other Updates

Last week I went to get my oil changed at the dealership and something caught my eye. We ended up making a new acquisition which wasn’t as spontaneous as it sounds. We have loosely been planning to sell or trade our 2014 F-150 while it still has a good market value. When we spied this little number we decided maybe the time was right.

It was the color that claimed our attention. It looks a bit more orange than this picture depicts. The color is called Red Chili Pepper. This one is Jerry’s since I have my new one from last year. I love the wheels on it! They just go with the color perfectly.

Aren’t they a cute pair? We should be set on vehicles for awhile now.

You may notice my trailer is hitched to my truck. I took this photo the night before I left for Lexington, KY. Last weekend was the Kentucky Sheep and Fiber Festival. We had another awesome turn out despite the rainy start on Saturday. The skies cleared out by midday and then Sunday was gorgeous. It was cooler then it usually is too.

I set up our tents and booths under the Pavilion on Friday. When the weather is good, this is a nice spot to be. The natural light accentuates the products. A bonus is having my trailer and truck right next to my location, which is a aid in restocking the booth, as well as making set up and break down more convenient.

I am back home today but I am on the road to Wooster, OH on Thursday. I am setting up on Friday at the Great Lakes Fiber Show. This show is one of the ones I have been attending since our first year of full time festival vending in 2007. It’s one of my favorites. The trailer has been restocked already, including the dye order I did in February for Bare Naked Wools. I will be delivering that to them at the festival.

While I am running around doing the festival end of the business at the moment, Jerry is hard at work at the lathe. He’s been working on new Yarn Bowls for quite a few weeks now.

Here’s a sneak preview of a couple new Yarn Bowls that I will be bringing to the festival.

I am going to close and finishing my packing. Thanks for reading!

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Two Trips to Saint Louis

Since my last post in April I have taken two trips to Saint Louis. I went the first time for the Midwest Fiber Festival and it was fantastic! I already signed up for next year and can’t wait to go back.

One of my customers from the show contacted me about some wood they had if we were interested. She sent some pictures and it looked promising, so we emptied out the trailer and drove it back up to their place just west of Saint Louis. We got there in the early afternoon and spent the next several hours loading up the trailer. We stayed the night in Saint Louis and then headed home. Here is some of the wood after it was unloaded and sorted in the work shop.

It’s hard to tell yet what this will all end up as, but there is for sure quite a bit of usable stuff. It does take a bit of time to process because it’s mostly cut offs, but that works for some of our products. A lot of it was mahogany, with some walnut, oak and a little cherry.

So, once the trailer was emptied again we had the job of reloading and restocking the trailer for our next festival. That is where I am right now, actually. I am near Saint Paul, MN for the Shepherd’s Harvest Festival in Lake Elmo, MN. I will be setting up the booth today. The festival is Saturday and Sunday.

It’s a long haul to come up here every year but it is worth it. A bonus is that I get lots of audio book time while I’m driving. I finished Kristin Hannah’s Firefly Lane and am starting the sequel Fly Away I am also reading Justin Cronin’s newest release The Ferryman. I got hooked on his writing when I read The Passage trilogy. So good!

I also have done a tiny bit of knitting. I haven’t had much down time inwhich I also have the desire to pick up my needles. So, when I do reach for my knitting it has been my sock that gets the action.

It’s almost ready for the toe shaping. I will be switching back to the green for that. With any luck I may get this done over the weekend. I have a couple hours this morning before heading over to set up. Speaking of which, I better get busy. See you soon!

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A Little Bit of Interim Knitting

As I mentioned in my last post, I needed a little bit of interim knitting. The shawl is still coming along but some variety was called for. Here’s where my shawl in progress is at the moment. I am down to the last 30g or so of the second skein of Classic Merino Bamboo. I measured the main section, aside from the edging, and it is about 38-40″ unblocked. The edging adds about 3″ which means it is going to require at least 3 skeins of yarn to be long enough. I should have known that 2 weren’t going to be enough.

I apologize for the photo quality. I am currently in another hotel room, this one is in St. Louis, MO. I am going to be setting up the booth this afternoon at the second annual Midwest Fiber Festival. I am excited to be here. It was a great show last year. The staff are wonderful and the enthusiasm of everyone is contagious. I’ll share some pictures from the festival later. For now, let me get back to the bit of interim knitting I teased in my title.

We all have tons of fingering weight/sock yarn in our stashes right? I got an idea recently to pull out some of mine and make myself some summer shorty socks. The first pair on the needles are made with some of my hand dyed Classic Merino Superwash Sock yarn in some discontinued colorways. I have all sorts of remnants from booth samples and such, so I will be combining them in fun ways to keep it interesting. I am just following a basic cuff down sock formula with a 1×1 cuff (2 1/2″) and a slip stitch flap heel. I am using 68 stitches and my US1 (2.25mm) Signature Needle Arts DPNS. I have no affiliation for the link, but I am a fan of their needles. I only have two sets of DPNS and one circular US5, but they are great. I love the stiletto points. They are pricey but the quality is there.

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A Bit of Spring Cleaning and More

I have been doing a bit of spring cleaning in between fiber festivals. I think that we are firmly into spring weather. I hope most of the volatile storms are past and we can enjoy the warmth and sunshine.

Last week when we had a few days that were warm and sunny, I washed all the bedding, cleaned the windows, and then washed both trucks.

Of course by the next day they both had tree pollen and bird poop on them, but at least the inside is still clean.

Jerry is totally responsible for putting in the garden. The smaller bed (up close) has kitchen herbs, peppers and a few tomatoes. The larger bed farther away) has some more tomatoes and veggies that we plant from seeds. I think he put out some peas, green beans, summer squash, corn, and possibly some cucumbers.

I also spent part of a day washing, drying and labeling some more Organic Cotton Worsted to restock our inventory.

This past weekend I was in Greencastle, IN for the Greencastle Wool Show. We are long time vendors there and we thought last year was the end. It was thankfully saved from extinction. The weather was great and there was a nice turn out, especially on Saturday.

I have a weekend at home again this week. The next festival on our schedule is the Midwest Fiber Festival in St. Louis. This will be the second year for this one. It was well attended last year and we are looking forward to going back.

In knitting news, I have made some progress on the shawl but not enough to bother with a new picture. It is a nice stitch pattern that is easily memorized. I also love knitting with the Classic Merino Bamboo. That said though, I am getting to the point where I am ready for a change in my knitting, IYKWIM. I may need to cast on a little something for variety soon. I am trying to push through so I can get it ready for the booth and write up the pattern. We’ll see.

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Good Morning From Ann Arbor, Michigan

I am writing to you this morning from Ann Arbor, Michigan. I am going to be setting up the booth today for the Spring Fiber Expo. This will be the third festival for us this year. The first two, Carolina Fiber Festival and Middle Tennessee Fiber Festival, were fantastic! They met and exceeded our expectations. So, the year is off to a good start.

I wanted to write a post so many times in the last few weeks but you know how it is I am sure. So, here I am with a couple of hours before set up time and finally the energy to get it done. The weeks have been filled with the usual tasks. I have done a bit more dyeing to restock a few popular yarns that were already getting low. We have some more Shawl and Hair Sticks on the website. Thanks to my husband’s diligence and hard work, we have eight different woods available.

I made the drive up to Ann Arbor yesterday. I had a bit of time last night to knit on my shawl. I am into the second skein of yarn now. Here’s a picture I took this morning in the hotel room. It’s gray and rainy at the moment so it’s not a great one.

I need to get my lunch packed and head over to the fairgrounds in about an hour. See you soon!

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It Has Been Quite an Interesting Week

Spring time in middle Tennessee can be volatile and it has been quite an interesting week. It is typical this time of year to be in 70’s or even 80’s but then that can change on a dime and it’s chilly again the next day. We experienced some strong storms with straight line winds over 70 mph on Friday. We lost a few shingles from our work shop and a tree in the back yard. Thankfully that was not near the house. There is a pine tree in the front that was dangerously close to going down which would have taken out the power lines to the house. You could see the ground lifting at the base with the strong gusts. It was very scary, but the winds finally abated and it is still there. For now. It will probably need to come down before the next threat rolls through, just in case.

We did lose power, along with over 115,000 other Nashvillians. There were downed trees, power lines, and poles everywhere. Our electricity was out for about 13 hours. We were fortunate that it wasn’t worse. A little cleaning up is all we had to worry about. There is still the tree to deal with because it is hung in some other trees making it a possible hazard but it is at the back of the property where it’s less of a priority.

So, after all the excitement from the weather was over, it was back to the tasks associated with getting ready for the first festival coming up. Last week I was getting all the new yarn labelled. Then it all needed stored, some went in the trailer and the rest in our work room storage bins. There are also new Darning Eggs, Nostepinnes, and Shawl/Hair Sticks to be tagged/packaged and stored. Like the yarn, some go straight in the trailer with restock in the work room storage.

Yesterday I got the oil changed in my truck. I took along my computer and got some inventory updating done while I was waiting. We did some grocery shopping in the afternoon. Today has mainly been packing for my trip. I will drive to Raleigh, NC in the morning and set up the booth on Thursday at the Carolina Fiber Festival. I have a full schedule on my website, if you’d be interested to see what we have booked this year. If all goes as planned, we will be vending at 21 events this year.

I have made progress on my knitting project but will post a picture of that next time since it’s too dark at the moment to get a good one. I didn’t get started on this post until near dark. So, I’ll sign off for now. It’s almost time to start rummaging in the kitchen for some supper.

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What a Great Week for Dyeing

With the exception of Saturday, we had a great week for dyeing. What is even more exceptional is that it is still only February. The daffodils are in full bloom too. Of course it’s in the upper 40’s today, after a high of 84 degrees yesterday. Yep, that is totally normal for middle Tennessee.

Saturday morning had a very chilly start of 24 degrees, but work must be done. So, we got out there early and got the largest batch of yarn dyed. I forgot to get pictures while it was drying so here’s the buckets after taking them off the lines. The colors were the warm greens, purples, greys, pinks and teals.

We took a day off between batches to allow for drying time and to prep for the next one. Monday was much warmer and we got the second large batch done. The colors we did were cool greens, black, yellows, oranges, reds and neutrals. We took a day off again to let the yarn dry and prep for the last day’s work.

Wednesday was blues day and the weather was even better.

I am very pleased with how great they came out. I am also so glad to put away the dye pots for awhile. LOL!

I am working on labels today while Jerry is back at work in the shop on some new Shawl and Hair Sticks. We are adding back some exotic woods like Purple Heart and Mahogany, as well as restocking the domestic woods.

I have been working on my new design when I can, which is not as much as I would like. Progress has been made though. I completed the edging on the cast on end and have knitted 4 and one half repeats on the main body. The edging will look much better after blocking.

I apologize for the time between posts and for the brevity in this one, but labels await my attention. See you soon!

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It Has Been a Good Week

It has been a good week. Last Saturday, I was at The Yarn Patch in Crossville, TN doing a trunk show. It is a very lovely shop. You should definitely stop in and shop if you are in the area. There’s a bit of my Classic Merino DK there now too. I had a great time meeting knitters and crocheters, helping them select yarn for their projects, and knitting a bit on my latest design. I will get to that in a minute.

On Monday, the weather was finally improved enough to get back out to the dye pots. We dyed the remaining color for the order I showed you last time. It was even dry by the end of the day. That is a bonus this time of year. Once again the color looks a little bit distorted here. It’s actually much greyer in person.

I mentioned above about a new knitting design. I did some preliminary calculations and planning and then cast on with the Classic Merino Bamboo in Ironstone.

The shape is a stole knit from end to end with knitted on edging at each short edge. I began with a provisional cast-on onto a spare circular needle. I dislike this process but it was necessary in order to have live stitches for the edging later. I find it less tedious using a spare needle than using waste yarn when need to use those live stitches later. It saves the effort of putting them onto a needle, which is tedious to me.

I recorded the weight before and after knitting the first two repeats of the body lace chart. That let’s me know how much yardage it will take for a given size shawl. Then, as you can see, I joined a new skein to knit the edging. I want to know how much yardage will be used to knit each edge. I weighed the skein before starting here too. It is a little fiddly with two skeins attached, but it won’t take too long and it is worth it for the information gained. I am happy with how this looks and lace knitting is my happy place!

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A Lot of Dyeing Going On Here

I have knitting to report but before I get to that, here’s what else I’ve been doing. There has been a lot of dyeing going on around here. We will be dyeing our own yarn next month, which is what some of those boxes contain in the back ground. At the moment, however, we are working on a custom dye order for Anne Hanson of Knitspot Designs and Bare Naked Wools.

Before we proceeded with the order, I skeined some of their base to dye samples of the colors they want.

These are the results I sent. The bottom samples are actually less violet in person than they look in the picture. It is actually a silver color. After they approved which colors to use, we spent a couple days getting the dyes mixed and the yarn prepped. We also added a fourth dye pot and propane burner to gain efficiency.

We planned to dye the larger portion, the blue, first. Monday was chilly and damp but was better than Tuesday, so we got the blue yarn dyed before the bad weather started. It will be awhile before we get this fully dry though. We had to bring this all in Monday night. We’ll put it back out ASAP. The silver will get dyed later this week, if possible, but Tuesday was too cold. It makes it difficult to heat the pots and rinse when it below 40 degrees.

It would be great to get the second half of the order dyed by Thursday, if possible, because I am going to The Yarn Patch in Crossville, TN on Friday afternoon. They are hosting a trunk show with our yarns on Saturday, February, 4. I am really excited to be invited. That brings me to the knitting portion of this post. I need some knitting on the needles for the weekend because I will be hanging out all day Saturday at the shop and will want something to knit, right?

If you remember, I worked on a few ideas for shawl designs. I haven’t totally pitched the idea for the triangle one but I am not ready to commit to it yet either. So, I needed something to knit. My son expressed a desire for gloves when I was knitting the ones for Christmas gifts. This began my interim knitting project with some stashed Cascade 220.

This was a quick knit and my needles are once again empty. So, now what to knit? I decided to move on to the other idea I swatched instead. Do you remember this?

My plan is to begin this idea. I am going to knit this design in my Classic Merino Bamboo yarn. I narrowed my color choice down to these three colors: Ironstone on the left, Garnet in the middle, and Fern on the right. I am leaning towards Ironstone. What do you think?

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Am I Just Wasting My Time Here?

The big question in my mind at the moment is am I just wasting my time here? I am still knitting little swatches, poring over stitch patterns, and charting them to see how they will work together. I am not sure if I have a winner yet.

This is my latest attempt. I hoped to accomplish a couple of things here. The first thing is to see how the elements I had tested in my first swatch would work out with the shaping I plan to use. This is to get the visual effect of the stitch patterns when they occur next to each other. The second thing is to figure out how the charting would work with the increases.

Here is my first swatch I knit to get a feel for the three patterns. You notice in this sample, I tried knitting garter ridges between the patterns. I didn’t like that for a couple of reasons, but mainly, it was awkward to do because all the stitch patterns begin on wrong side rows. It is more complicated to get the garter to work nicely when I change colors on the wrong side rows.

There is a theme going on with all three of the patterns I picked out. They all have slipped stitches and begin on the wrong side. I like the idea of that but it is a bit of a bugger to chart. I wonder at this point if it is worth pursuing or am I headed back to the drawing board? I have already invested quite a lot of time to get to this point and I am still not sure if I love it. I have two other rough ideas I want to explore. One will be the bottom stitch pattern from the above picture with a cable element. The other is the lace pattern from my last post.

In other news, I have finished the Cables and Lace Blanket. I wasn’t able to make it quite as large as I wanted because I ran short on yarn. It is a nice size despite that and I have been enjoying it on the chilly mornings while doing my reading with my coffee.

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