Tag: handdyedyarn

We are Wrapping Up the Summer Break Time

Yarn Dyeing

It’s the end of July and that means we are wrapping up the summer break time. The yarn is all dyed, labeled and in it’s storage bins. About 2/3 of the yarn is in the trailer and the remainder is stowed in the work room as back up to restock the trailer during the late summer and fall show season.

Yarn Bowls

In addition to yarn dyeing, we have some new Yarn Bowls in the works. We will be bringing a selection of these to the festivals and adding them to the website. There are a large variety of woods and sizes, so the best way to see them is in person. The woods used include oak, cherry, walnut, and mahogany. We ended up with so many different sizes that we will have a range of prices to fit most budgets and uses. They will vary from $40 to $70.

Fiber Festivals

I will be heading off to Charlotte, NC on August 9th for the Southern Comforts Fiber Market. The festival will be at the Oasis Shriner’s Auditorium on August 11-12, 2023. We have a full schedule after that, so hopefully you can make it out to one. I would love to see you!

Knitting

I have been working on my new shawl design when I can. I would love to have this finished and ready for displaying in the booth soon. You may recall that I am using my Classic Merino Bamboo yarn for this shawl. The pattern will be forth coming as soon as I decide on a stopping point.

At this point I could work one more repeat of the lace pattern and still have enough yarn left for the edging. I am currently on the the third skein. The shawl measures around 65″ long unblocked. If I add another section and the edging, it will add around 7″. That’s 72″ before blocking. I think I may want it about a foot longer. That’s my indecision at this point. Do I stop at a 3 skein project? Or continue on and use some of a 4th skein?

Is bigger better in this case? ;-)

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A Peek Inside My New Office

In early May our youngest daughter moved out. A few weeks ago we finally got around to turning her room into my new office. I have been putting it to good use ever since then. It’s nice to have a work space where I can leave stuff out if/when I get interrupted from a task in progress. In the past I would have to do most work from the dining table. Having my own office has been a wish that is at last fulfilled.

my desk and sitting area in my new office

I love that I also have this set up as my order filling/shipping station. Everything is at hand which is so wonderful! No more searching for the scissors, tape, packing material, etc.

office and shipping supplies in my new office

This weekend I am working on yarn labels. It’s quite a large batch (1,940 to be exact!) to print, cut and then color label. It is inevitable that I will not get this all done in one sitting so it’s nice to be able to walk away without moving it all to another location.

yarn labels awaiting color name stickers

I hope to get the labels ready to attach to the yarn by Monday. My work room is filled to overflowing at the moment with the yarn that we dyed Thursday, Saturday and Monday.

lots of sorted hand dyed yarn awaiting labels

It took three days of prep work before the first dye day. We also had one prep day in between each of the other two dye days.

soaking yarn for a days work and dye mix buckets
four dye pots set up with tables for sorting and rinsing

We had some rain on Saturday afternoon through Sunday evening. That caused a delay in getting some of the yarn dry but Monday through Wednesday were sunny, so all of the last two days of dyeing were dry by Tuesday evening.

That covers a good bit of what’s been happening around here. I better get busy on those yarn labels. Thanks for reading!

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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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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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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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One More to Go and Other News

In my last post, I was in Asheville for SAFF. We had a local show the next weekend, Fiber in the Boro. Both shows went very well and we now have only one more to go, the East Texas Fiber Festival. I am looking forward to returning to this one since I haven’t been there since 2019. The festival was cancelled in 2020 and 2021. It was on the way to the festival in 2019 that my trailer broke down. One of the wheel bearings blew and I was never more glad that I have a tandem axle. It could have been much worse if it had happened with a single axle. I was very fortunate that I was less than a mile from a trailer parts supply store who was able to give me a number of a mobile mechanic who was able to get me back on my way in a few hours. After returning home safely, we replaced all the hubs and brakes on the trailer.

Anyway, on to other news. I have been enjoying the two week break from travels. We have been getting some work done, such as restocking some yarns and making more Nostepinnes and Darning Eggs.

There was also finally enough time in my schedule to get some house cleaning done that I have had on my To Do list. Jerry does a great job of keeping the place clean when I am gone, but there were a few jobs that no one had gotten around to for awhile. One of those was the cleaning the windows and curtains. I washed them all on Monday since the weather was still warm and dry. We are getting some rain today and the temperatures are supposed to drop starting tonight. No more open window days for us for awhile. I am glad I could get that task off my list before the cool spell hit. I like when the windows are all clean, especially going into the darker days of winter. It helps brighten up the indoors a bit.

There has been time in the evenings for some knitting too. I have made progress on my Cables and Lace Blanket. The second ball of yarn has been added and I have completed four pattern repeats. That means I am around 25% complete since I plan to do sixteen repeats. I weighed the current ball before beginning the 5th repeat to gauge how much yarn is used per repeat. It weighed 57g.

You may remember that in my last post I was planning to make a new pair of Shapely Mitts with a partial skein of a hand paint from my business stash? The yarn is my Classic Merino Superwash Sock yarn, but the colorway is discontinued.

I have knit one and have started the second. I normally refer tonal solids, but the occasional variegated skein is fun too.

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A Silver Lining and a New Pair of Socks

As I reported in my last post, Hurricane Ian led to a festival cancellation, but there is always a silver lining if you are willing to look for one. If the festival had gone on as planned that would have been great, but only if it wasn’t a wash out. If that had happened though I would have been extremely challenged to get this amount of work done in the two days home I would have had. As it turned out I had four extra days, which was not totally a bad thing after all. What would make it even better is if I managed to make up those lost earnings from the one show in the five remaining, right? One can hope and I am ever hopeful.

So, I have been making good use of those extra days! We got some yarn dyed in some bases and colors that were getting a bit low on stock. In addition to that I also restocked the trailer with more yarn, swifts, darning eggs, and nostepinnes.

I got the dyeing done for New Era Fiber, which would have been put on the back burner for sure if I had only had two days home.

I also hate to get behind in book keeping chores. I am very fortunate that I was able to get all that caught up, including all my quarterly sales tax filings. I almost forgot that I needed to get the oil changed in the truck. I got that done on Monday while I was restocking the trailer. Then on Tuesday I got the groceries and even had time to wash the truck again.

The one thing I haven’t been back to work on yet is my Gansey sweater pattern. I got about 2/3’s of the directions written in the hotel last week for the size I knit. I still have a long way to go so I can see it being maybe next year before it is all written, charted, and tested. I do think I am going to start working on a test knit for one of the smaller sizes I am planning to include, but more on that next time I think.

For now, I do have a finished pair of socks to report. I have already worn them once and I love them! I did run out of yarn but I found a scrap ball from another project in a comparable color. Believe it or not it took all but about two yards even of that yarn, but I made it! The color is a little off here but as you can see the toe on the left sock is close enough don’t you think? I mean when they are in your shoes who sees the toes, right?

I am heading off to Ann Arbor tomorrow for the Fall Fiber Expo. It is supposed to be pretty chilly so all the better to wear all the hand knits!

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Guess What’s Coming to Wisconsin With Me?

I arrived home safely from Pittsburgh last Sunday. It has been enjoyable spending the last week at home. After three weekends in a row, it is a nice break. I’m packing up the truck again tomorrow and leaving Wednesday for the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival. Can you guess one of the things I will be packing? Do you give up? It’s my newest booth sample, Bensusan.

I took this picture before I put it in the sink for a soak. I used almost all of the three skeins of Classic Merino Superwash DK in Cypress. I came close to running out of yarn. I weighed the finished shawl and it is 297g. I finished the last bit and bound it off last night while Jerry and I were relaxing on Sunday and watching a couple movies.

It is blocking at the moment. It took every one of my Knit Blockers, and I have three boxes. I used a half dozen or so T-pins in addition, to get it all pinned down. I didn’t measure it yet to see if it’s the same size as the one in the pattern for the large directions. It is written for worsted weight yarn and size 8US needles, and I substituted DK weight yarn and size 7US needles.

Now that this project is done I don’t have anything on the needles for my trip. I have the second Gridiron sock that I can start. Maybe that is what I will do.

Tomorrow is a busy day of packing. I plan to get some pictures of my shawl done then. I will be driving all day Wednesday. It’s a 560 mile drive, but at least I stay in my own time zone. Thursday is booth setup day. If I have time in the afternoon or evening, I will write a blog post with a few pictures of Bensusan in the booth. See you soon!

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