Whew, it has been crazy around here lately. I’ve done a lot of odds and ends, and the biggest was purging my fiber and yarn stash. I’ll be putting up some grab bags in my Maiden Yarn store later (including some gorgeous alpaca fleece), but for now it’s Anniversary time!
June is LaceweightYarns‘ anniversary month, so I’m running a free shipping sale on U.S. and Canadian orders, starting tomorrow night (Sunday) and lasting one week. Other countries will receive discounted rates.
And blog post wise, well, I have lots to share. Hopefully I can snag an hour or two and get you caught up. Gravel roads, fording creeks, a drum carder that won’t keep its claws to itself, and knitwear idea that morphed into five or six items.
It has been a crazy, crazy last week or two in my little fiber world. Sales practically exploded (hooray!) and I must have had at least an average of one per day.
I loved every minute of it. 
In fact, that’s all the confirmation I need to know that I’m doing what I really want to be doing. Selling fiber and yarn definitely holds enough excitement for me to last as long as God wants me here.
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Or “Extreme Excitement.” Take your pick. Yep, I’ve got an invitation to send some yarns up to a fiber and yarn fair in Winterset, IA this March. I’ve picked out a pile from both my Etsy stores, and hopefully I’ll be able to get them tagged and sent in the next couple days. Meanwhile, if you want to grab something in one of my stores, grab it quick, because I’m hoping no yarns will come back from the fair.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the yarns. I’m just really ready to start dyeing more, and experiment with new yarn bases and all that jazz. (Yep, short interest span. That’s me.) And stuff needs to sell before I buy more yarns. It’s a horrible fact of life.
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I recently came into possession of a large compilation of the works of Lewis Carroll. It’s a big, beautiful “leather” bound copy. Not so good for taking on trips, but excellent for curling up with on a gray afternoon. From my initial perusing of the new material (I’m already very familiar with the two Alice stories) I’ve come to the conclusion that Carrol can be very amusing to read, but he tends to wander off into lengthy dissertations on things in which I have little-to-no interest.
However, to get to the point, one of his shorter writings features tips on writing letters and contains this little gem: “My second Rule is, don’t fill more than a page and a half with apologies for not having written sooner!” And I have taken this to heart. I think it safe to assume that you’re fed up with my apologies for not having blogged sooner, so I will dispense with them forthwith.
I’ve been keeping pretty busy lately with various fiber projects. One of which was a large undertaking. 
Eight ounces of superwash BFL fiber to be handspun and dyed for a Maiden Yarn customer. Oh my goodness – I practically had to fight off my knitting sister to keep the spun yarn. Bluefaced Leicester is rapidly elbowing its soft and lustrous way to the top of the fiber heap, so to speak. It’s simply wonderful stuff.
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Eek! I’m just so excited about this yarn I have to share. I’m now hand-dyeing “Jaggerspun Zephyr” laceweight. (It’s a gorgeous, commercial blend of merino and tussah silk.) Anyway, here’s the first of the bunch. “Frosted Peppermint.”
I launched a new product today (with more coming) and I’m rather excited about them. They’re batt kits for those people lucky enough to own a drum-carder.
Coordinating colors in the nice, small amounts you need for blending a batt. The only trouble is how to go about spreading the word among the drum-carding community.
I also received permission to do something very exciting. Cyan Worlds gave me the green light on creating some Myst-inspired yarns! (Myst is a series of amazing computer games, very heavy on the visual arts side.) I get to make them! Yay!!!! I’d like to have them available in October sometime, but we’ll see what happens. It’s not like I’m creating the official Myst yarns or anything, but I’ll be able to have lots of fun with it, and, maybe, become the official Myst yarn person. I can dream.
And, last but certainly not least, this is the month of the indigo merino. I have almost an entire bobbin of singles done already.
I did it again. I let this poor blog languish. I’m sorry! This is just plain ridiculous. All it seems to take is one instance of “I’ll do that later” and the whole blog avalanches over the precipice and into the dye water.
Speaking of, I’ve been very busy dyeing things since I got back from Colorado earlier this month. I haven’t done this large of a dye batch in a long time. 
It stretched over two or three days. The first day was all sorts of fun, ha ha ha. I dyed four batches of various things, and of the four, none of them came out the color I was aiming for. God was so gracious in that they were still usable. They just weren’t coming out as intended. Rather frustrating at the time. I actually found myself not wanting to dye again. Ever. (Scary thought, no?)
But I took a day off from dyeing and tackled the rest with renewed vim, vigor, and some free choice in regards to colorways. In short: I got to play! Well, play with most of it.
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When I first began dyeing my own yarn and fiber, some people thought I would never “need” to buy colored stuff again. Ha ha ha ha. That’s like saying “You cook, so you won’t ever need to buy food at a restaurant again.”
Or, if you want to get really out there, it’s like saying, “You stand up, why would you ever want to sit down again?”
There’s so much to be said for dyeing your own stuff, but every so often you want a break. And, as it happened this time, I found this gorgeous braid for sale. It’s a merino/mohair mix (a blend I’ve never bought before) and the colors jumped right off the screen and grabbed me. (Yes, it was scary, but a good scary.)
Isn’t it pretty? I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. The thought of a hat or smooshy cowl crossed my mind, or perhaps a little shawlette. I could go for socks, as it’s a four ounce braid, but I don’t particularly feel like spinning sock yarn right now. Ha, well, true, I probably won’t get around to spinning this until later this year. Oh, I bought it at FiberFancy, if you’d care to take a peek at some of the other lovely stuff there.
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I took some time out the other day to dye up a few more rovings for Maiden Yarn. Unfortunately, I didn’t think ahead enough, and I found myself with pre-soaked four ounce bundles of roving, and no foil pans big enough to hold them.
I did have one non-disposable tray left, so I used it for one of the batches: this lovely repeat colorway. (You may recognize the color pattern from way back when. I dyed it first on some of the silver-gray Romney roving I bought at the Yellow Daisy Festival.) The fun thing about the repeats was that it braided up with colors to colors, as you can see. I’m really happy with the way that one turned out.
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My spinning has finally picked up again, and I’ve had a few minor victories that put me well on the road to happy spinning again.
I finished the silk laceweight for my sister.
And, while I was at it, I almost finished up the Willow fingering weight. (That’s due to be finished as soon as possible so I can dive into some lovely merino.)
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