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Stitches South 2013

Well I promised a post from Stitches South in Atlanta and I am here to make good on that. :-)

A rare candid shot of me done by the Stitches press staff. I downloaded it from their Facebook feed. I rather like it. ;-)

We drove down on Wednesday and got the booth set up and then headed over to the hotel to get unpacked and do some grocery shopping. We like to stay in places with a kitchenette and fix our own meals when it’s an affordable option. It’s not a whole lot less expensive as far as food cost, but we eat better. :-) The only con to our accommodations was that our room is on the second floor and there is no elevator. To say we don’t travel light, is a bit of an understatement. Three women and a toddler need a fair amount of “equipment” to be prepared for all emergencies after all. So yeah, it was a production to get unloaded but we managed to get it all in there.

We had a bit of downtime on Thursday since we didn’t need to be in the market until 4pm so we went to the Barnes & Noble in the Cumberland Mall area and hung out for a few hours. It is such a nice place. There were plenty of people hanging out in the many great spaces they provide for that purpose. I has two levels and the children’s area is very cool. Elijah spent most of his time playing with the train play table. I regret forgetting to take a picture. He had the best time. I wish I had the room in my home to build him something like it.

We did a bit of shopping too. Who can resist picking up a few books when you are surrounded by so many choices to tempt you? I got a couple classics for Elijah, The Little Red Caboose, and the Complete Curious George collection. I also picked up a couple book lights for the children to use for their bed time reading. I didn’t gat anything for myself since I do all my reading on my Nook or Nexus 7.

OH! I almost forgot to tell you about the near fiasco on Thursday night. Okay, I got all my gear set up in my booth and went to turn on my credit card terminal and it is giving me this funky message which it is not supposed to be giving me. It is SUPPOSED to boot up and be ready for service. It most certainly did not behave as expected. I freak for a second, then call tech support. This is 5 minutes before the market opens. Did I mention that? Yeah. UGH!

So tech support, to make a long story short, says hardware failure is the problem. They can’t fix it remotely. I need a replacement. What?! I just used it 4 days ago and it was fine. How does that happen? So they say they can expedite me a new one but they can’t guarantee it’s arrival before the weekend. What else could I do? I had to take a shot. BTW, I did ask about a smartphone swiper and use an app. It’s complicated, but we decided the terminal was my best option since I can’t do both and I need the capability at times to store and upload transactions when I am in locations where the cellular service is un-reliable or non-existent. Yes, I know about Square. I don’t want another merchant account. Two accounts is enough. Don’t want another. So anyway, I used my phone as a hotspot for my laptop and used my Authorize.net virtual terminal for Thursday and Friday. It was a bit tedious but it worked.

Hallelujah! My new machine arrived on Friday and worked fine for the rest of the show. I love my technology but it sure can throw you for a loop when it’s not there or not working. My motto is “There’s always a way”. And there almost always is. :-)

The rest of the show has been great! Everyone was very sweet and understanding at our slightly slower checkout and for that I am so grateful. Knitters are awesome!

Here is a shot of the newest Yarn Bowls that Jerry finished right before we left for Atlanta. If any are left when we get home I will add them to the website. I already sold a few of these big ones. My favorite one went first thing yesterday morning before I even got a picture of it.

Posted on April 14, 2013 by yarnmama — 1 Comment

An afternoon off

We have one day at home, so we didn’t really unpack. I did some shopping this morning and washed acouple loads of laundry before sticking the bags back in the truck for the trip to Atlanta in the morning.

I found myself with a few hours this afternoon to sit outside and read while letting Elijah play. Spring is finally making a more encouraging appearance and I thought it wad goood to take advantage of it while we can. We will be inside most of the weekend again.

I imagine I will try to get in another post once we get settled in for Stitches South.

Posted on April 9, 2013 by yarnmama — 2 Comments

Carolina Fiber Festival 2012

I know I have been neglecting you dear blog. I will be honest with you. I am an introvert. As a business owner I can do many things well and efficiently, but being “out there” is a big challenge for me. I was not raised to put myself forward, invite myself, or anything like that. I am of an independent spirit, a self-starter and have a good measure of self-discipline, which are good qualities I think but they aren’t enough in and of themselves as the “face” of a business that must sell to survive.

Also while I am a voracious reader and lover of language I am not equally skilled in writing. In starting this blog I wanted to stretch myself and hopefully develop these qualities and skills. I needed a reason to hone my writing skills and try to come out of my shell some. I am not one to blather on about my thoughts, except to myself that is. I have this tendency to feel I must have something more “important” or news-worthy in order to communicate with those outside my family or my own ears. I am working on it, but it remains a challenge. So if I am sporadic in posting this is part of it. Other times I may just not have the time to get to it. You know how that goes, right? What with the online shop, shows, production, bookkeeping, family duties, home education, etc.. Something has to give some days and unfortunately the blog is one of those less essential tasks. I would love to be able to set a higher priority on it but eating tends to take a precedent, LOL!

Anyway, we made it home safely from our last adventure with only a one day delay. We set out yesterday for our current locale of Sanford, NC for the Carolina Fiber Festival. You can find out all the pertinent info by clicking the link so I will reserve my comments to the fact that it is our first year at this show. The organizers are lovely and do their jobs very well so we are sure it is going to be a great show.

We set up the booth this morning and will be returning this evening for the market preview from 4-6pm.

I remembered to take the camera today so for now I will leave you with some shots of our booth.

Posted on April 5, 2013 by yarnmama — 6 Comments

Stranded in Kalamazoo

We were home for two days and then hit the road again for Kalamazoo, MI to vend at the first annual Fiber Arts Symposium. It is in the lovely Radisson Plaza. The vendor hall is very nice and we have a whole corner to ourselves. :-)

Last week when we pulled out of Pittsburgh in the wee hour of the morning on Monday, the wintery mix was starting to fall, so we had a couple of tedious hours of slower going and keeping on eye on the road conditions. Fortunately it didn’t get too bad and by the time we reached the Wheeling area and crossing over into eastern Ohio we didn’t see much more to be concerned about.

We had a couple days at home to wash clothes and repack. There were snow showers predicted for Kalamazoo on Thursday while we were driving up. It was in the 20’s and low 30’s all day and while we saw flurries and snow showers a few times the roads remained clear thankfully.

Friday we set up the booth at the venue and the market was open on Friday and Saturday from 11-6 and today 11-3. Pretty civilized hours in my opinion. :-)

We had planned on driving home first thing Monday morning but low and behold there is a huge winter storm between us and Nashville. The stupid thing even has a name! Virgil. When did we start naming winter storms, btw? Is that new? We have to drive right through north and central Indiana which is expected an insane amount of snow tonight and into tomorrow. The forecast accumulation by Monday is something like 7-10” GAH!

We were able to extend out hotel stay and we are hoping that that the roads will be clear enough by Tuesday. Worst case scenario we stay until Wednesday when surely it will be fine by then. I figure that since they are prepared for this thing, know it’s coming, the chances are decent that Tuesday will be okay, right?

Anyway fortunately I am prepared for the extra down time. I may as well take it in stride and get some stuff done right? I have my wrap I can knit. I have plenty of reading thanks to my Nook and my Nexus tablet. Maybe I will even finish up the Sorrel pattern. Always a silver lining. :-)

Sorry again for the phone pictures. I left my camera in the hotel room.

Posted on March 24, 2013March 24, 2013 by yarnmama — 9 Comments

Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival 2013

Hi all! We are coming to you live from Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival this weekend. We are having a great time even though we left spring behind and ascended into zones where it is still most assuredly winter, LOL!

It was a lovely and balmy 77 degrees back home in Nashville, and very much colder and grayer here. It has been in the 20’s and 30’s and some light snow and flurries have been falling periodically. The cold does not scare off the local fiber enthusiasts though. I guess they must be used to it. ;-) We look forward to this show every year! It is good to get back into the swing after a nice winter break and maybe it’s the same way for the students and shoppers, huh?

I forgot to bring my good camera so these are passable pictures from my Galaxy S3, which is actually pretty darn good for a phone camera. :-)

We will be heading home tomorrow morning, early if the weather is not too bad to make an early start, that is. There is a possibility of icy roads early but if so they will likely be cleared by late morning. If that happens we will leave a bit later and see how far we can get before dark. I don’t like to drive late into the night so we will play it by ear.

I haven’t had time to finish up the pattern for Sorrel this weekend, but I have done a bit more knitting on the “wrap”. Okay I seriously need a name for it, LOL! I am tired of calling it the wrap. Any suggestions? Scroll down to my last post if you forgot what it looks like. It’s a tiny bit bigger but not worth a new picture. :-)

Posted on March 17, 2013March 17, 2013 by yarnmama — Leave a comment

Sorrel and Festival preparations

I finished the dress a couple of days ago. I am very pleased with it. It came out exactly 20” at the chest as planned and I was envisioning it as a garment that would be roomy on a newborn but would fit for maybe the first six months or so rather than being immediately outgrown. I think I hit the mark on that but after seeing it I wondered if I shouldn’t add two additional sizes; one smaller and one larger. So then there would be a 19”, a 20”, and a 21” chest circumference. The smallest would probably be around a 0-3 months, the medium would be 6-12 months, and the largest about a 12-18 months. These are of course just estimates and I still think the medium would work for 0-12 months really, but it depends on the baby. I figure with size options the knitter can decide which will work best for their recipient. :-)

I spent a good part of the last two afternoons going through my pattern writing notes and doing all the math to add the additional sizes. Then I started the actual pattern writing and making the pattern stitch chart.I am including both a chart and the written directions for the stitch pattern. I am almost done but I have one last tricky math part to write where I divide for the back neck opening. I have decided that it needs to be a bit lower than I made in the prototype to allow a more generous opening.

So I should be done with the pattern in a day or two. I plan to finish up this afternoon, but I may need to hold off on the release until I have the additional sizes test knit for accuracy and yardage requirements. This medium size used exactly 75g of a full 100g skein of Classic Merino Bamboo. I hope the largest will take just about a full skein. Fingers crossed on that one. Oh I decided to call it Sorrel after my new granddaughter. There are lots of designs with that name on Ravelry but eh, so be it. :-)

In addition to pattern writing we have also spent the last day or two getting the trailer restocked for our upcoming trip to Pittsburgh on Wednesday. The Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival has thankfully moved from Valentine’s Day weekend to St. Patrick’s Day weekend. It will be a return to cold weather for us since the forecast is right now calling for 30’s and 40’s for highs with some chances of snow showers. Surely it won’t get worse than that, right?

These are some of the new goodies we will have at the show.

These earrings made from leather and surgical steel posts, are another new creation which we don’t even have on the website yet and will be debuting at the Festival along with the Shawl Pin Rings and mini skeins of Classic Merino Sport.

Here’s another progress shot of the un-named wrap made in the Merino Sport that will start to see some action again now that the dress is done.

Okay that’s it for now. I need to get out the door for church.

Posted on March 10, 2013 by yarnmama — 6 Comments

Design progress and the approach of Spring

So how is March coming in where you live? We have had a milder than usual winter here in middle Tennessee, which is fine by me. We typically have a small snow or two and maybe an ice storm here and there, but we have had virtually none of either this year. We do however tend even in mild year’s to have one last push of winter around the first week of March and this year was in keeping with that tradition. Over the weekend we have a drop in the temperature to some of the coldest we have had this winter, daytime high’s near freezing and overnight low’s in the upper twenties. Along with this we had a dusting of snow and flurries. Fortunately the ground was too warm for it to last even the day. Hopefully that is all there will be of winter weather and March will have “come in like a lion and gone out like a lamb”.

On to the knitting progress. I have been working exclusively on the Merino Bamboo baby dress since my last post and have completed the body portion already. I am planning to get the sleeves done and start the yoke today. I am not sure if I will get enough knitting time to get that much done, but I am hopeful since the sleeves will be short and shouldn’t take long at all.

For a change, my gauge has stayed spot on to what I was getting in the swatch so it is measuring exactly what it should for the stitch counts I calculated. Cool! Love that. :-)

Sorry for the picture quality today. The color is actually a bit more green than gray but it is rainy this morning and I was too lazy to drag out the light box.

Okay I am going to cut this post short today so I can get some more knitting done. I am really hoping to get this finished and the pattern written up before we leave for the Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival on the 13th. If I am really lucky I can get the wrap done too. I might need another set of arms to accomplish that though. :-)

Posted on March 5, 2013March 5, 2013 by yarnmama — Leave a comment

More design fun and some book reviews

Since last time I have made a bit more progress on the blue wrap design. I have made a decision at this point to work this in two parts. I have a couple of reasons for that.

to insure there will be adequate yarn to finish edge pattern
to made the transition between stitch patterns consistent
for ease of knitting; it’s hard to knit a big bulky piece reaching 5+ feet long.

My thinking on the first point is that if I knit it all in one piece with such a deep border it is hard to tell when to start and be sure the yarn lasts. I am certain if I use all the yardage it will be about the right length but this way seems easiest to accomplish that goal. I took the yarn and equally divided it all in half. The plan is to knit the first half until it’s gone, or nearly since I need to end at a specific point in the pattern stitch, and then knit the other half and graft them together.The stitch pattern is such that there is a perfect point at which to do this and have the pattern remain seamless.

On the second point; since one stitch pattern begins with a right side row and the other a wrong side row it works better when the way I worked it and will not match exactly in the reverse order. It would require on additional row and while it would be barely noticeable it would be slightly different and would bug me. :-)

And the third point is what swung the vote since I could possibly have lived with the extra row but since it would be easier in general to work with the smaller pieces it seems the way to go.

In addition to this I also got around to swatching for another design that starting knocking about in my brain.

It will be a baby garment in honor of my impending new granddaughter due in May. Since she will be born in late spring a sweater seemed less needed so I started seeing a little casual everyday dress. Also since it’s warm weather a light weight and all weather yarn would be best and the Classic Merino Bamboo fir that bill perfectly.

I envisioned a seamless top down raglan at first with a little bit of eyelet lace in the yoke and edging. I couldn’t find the right thing when looking through all my stitch volumes. Finally this welted leaf border struck my fancy and after swatching it my plans began to reformulate and solidify.

I got out my calculator and started making a rough first draft, an outline really, of how this would go to be sure I would have the correct number of stitches in place at the points where I want to add the stitch pattern, and also to make dimension plans and work out decrease rates. I realized too that it would be better to do this bottom up with a circular yoke. At this point I am planning little cap sleeves with the stitch pattern placed as you see above at the bottom hem and again in the yoke. The sleeves will probably just be a garter edging. I will decide when I get there whether to leave a Henley type opening on the back with ties or a button for closure.

I also did a little fun dyeing this week for myself. I have my eye on Antler cardigan for some time and thought it would be fun to dye some yarn up for it.

I have no idea when I am going to get to this since I feel I must finish my designs on the needles first. I will save it as selfish knitting that I get to start when I complete them. ;-)

I have read/listened to several good books while working and knitting this week. I finished Clockwork Angels and it was pretty good. I valued it more for the additional dimension it added to the album which was it’s intent, so it did accomplish it’s goal. The character was a little shallow but I think it was meant to convey the concepts rather than be a story like a novel. I think a fairytale is really a better way to describe it. I saw that on someone else’s review on Goodreads and it is accurate so I will echo it here. I gave it 4 stars.

I then read In the Tall Grass and I will copy from my review here: This one was creepy but to me lacking in some way. I started out the story liking the character build up but I lost it towards the end. The style of the writing shifted and got more vague and sparse. I think I just really hated what happened to Becky in there too. I gave it 3 stars which is not typical for me with a Stephen King book.

My current read is another Gillian Flynn book, Sharp Objects. I have the Audible and the eBook versions of this one and am switching back and forth, so will probably get through it pretty fast. I started it yesterday and am already 38% into it. I like it at this point, but I suspect I am in for some game changers and surprises if it is anything like Gone Girl. I like that. :-)

Posted on February 27, 2013February 27, 2013 by yarnmama — Leave a comment

New Pattern – Pillars

I finally got around to writing up the pattern for my infinity scarf this week. It also has a name too, Pillars. I have it for sale on Ravelry and on my website for $5.00.

I have only knit it up in this striped version, but it would be great in a single color too. The stitch pattern is fun, easy, and has a nice stretchy texture.

Here’s another little fun thing I set up to go along with the pattern release. I was originally envisioning doing this design as a kit. I was going to pick 6-8 color combinations and package appropriate amounts of yarn with the pattern so that you can make the scarf in stripes without the need of purchasing full skeins when you only need 20-25g of a color (you need 40-50g of the main color, but more on that in a minute), but I came up with what I think will be even better.

Build your own kits! I have made these adorable mini skeins of the Classic Merino Sport and you can buy what ever combination you want. If you want it the way I made mine with a main color and two contrasts, you will need one ball each of the contrasts and two of the main color. For a single color scarf you one 100g skein. Fun, huh?

This is just a few of the colors, but aren’t they the cutest things?

If you visit the link you will see that there are two skein size options there; 100g and 25g. Pick a color and a size and there you are. Then go put the pattern in the cart and you are ready to go. We will see how it goes and if people like it we may even expand the idea to other yarns. Oh, this would be a fun for my Classic Baby Cardigan too.

Okay enough with the self promotion stuff, LOL! I have some more progress on the wrap I am working on. It doesn’t look any different, just bigger, but I took a new picture anyway. I am close to the end of the first skein and have almost 20”, so my prediction of it coming out at somewhere between 60 – 64” for 3 skeins seem pretty good.

I haven’t talked much about my reading lately, but that’s not for lack of it. I have actually made good progress on my TBR list. I finished my re-read of the Lord of the Rings and it was a pleasure to read as it always is. I swear it just gets better every time I read it if that is possible. I was listening to the new unabridged Audible version as I think I mentioned before, and I will reiterate that is is very well done. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

As soon as I finished that I started on Gone Girl, because my number came up on the Overdrive list for the eBook. I can’t remember the last time, not counting books I listen to while on the road, that I have finished book in 2 1/2 days. Wow. It was very interesting and just pulled me in and didn’t let go. I was going back and forth between reading and listening to the Audible version, so that helped, but honestly I just could not put this down. I listened to it while I was churning out those mini skeins you see up there, LOL! If you are one of the few people who haven’t read this one I encourage you to do it. I am not usually one to read something just because it’s popular, but I think this time there is a good reason for it.

So after I finished Gone Girl I started Clockwork Angels because I am a total Rush geek and I simply have to read it for that reason. So far so good. I just started it last night.

Okay that’s all for today! Happy knitting and reading!

Posted on February 21, 2013 by yarnmama — Leave a comment

Quick knitting update

Here’s my progress on the new wrap I am working on.

I decided to go with my original plan. It is working up with a nice squishy texture that I was going for.

I also realize at this point that to make it around 60″ long which is about as small as I would want it, it is certain to take three skeins. I was aiming for two and if I gone with an openwork design, that probably would have been enough. With this more solid structure, not so much. I have 12″ which is one fifth of the total and have used half of the first skein.

Okay I am writing from my phone and so will keep this update brief. More later. :-)

Posted on February 15, 2013February 15, 2013 by yarnmama — Leave a comment

Stitches South 2013

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An afternoon off

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Carolina Fiber Festival 2012

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Stranded in Kalamazoo

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Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival 2013

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Sorrel and Festival preparations

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Design progress and the approach of Spring

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More design fun and some book reviews

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New Pattern – Pillars

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Quick knitting update

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