A huge part of what I do in my yarn and fiber business revolves around coming up with names. Names for yarn bases. Names for colorways. Names for special coupon codes or snazzy sales. This in itself can be exhausting (I can’t imagine what Adam went through – naming all those animals) but when you add in the fact that the name should be somewhat appealing, descriptive, and easy to remember and spell, you have a recipe for a lot of hyperactive tension.

For instance, shall we look at a sample?

This might look familiar. It’s that beautiful fluffy green roving I mentioned a couple posts ago.
Now, how to go about coming up with a name for it. First up, the first few things that pop into my head. Lemongrass. Leaf bud. (Which tangents into Twigs and Twiggy.) Cucumber. Silver veil.

What on . . . .? Where did silver come from? I think it snuck in there because of the softness of the green. Rather like dew drops.

Well, I already have a lemongrasss in my store, and it’s a much yellower green than this, so that’s out. Leaf bud just doesn’t have a nice, aesthetic sound to it to me. (Everyone has a different opinion on this, which is what makes names so personality-filled.) But I do like the idea of a leaf bud. Some other ideas coming from that might be “tender.” Now, I like tender. We’ll just file that away and keep skimming.

Twig sounds cute, but could create issues with people visualizing vegetable matter in the roving. Otherwise I’d go with something like “Tender Twig.” But “Tender Cucumber” just sounds weird.

Leaves. . .Tender. . . Spring. Spring is a good word, and we’re getting close to Spring, but to me “Spring” is a much lighter green than this roving. (Maybe it I just wasn’t so picky we’d have this figured out by now.) Rain! Rain makes things darker and carries a sort of silvery conotation to it.

The final name? (After several days of not thinking about it.) “Spring.” Although now that I’m thinking about it again, “Spring Rain” would be a nice one, but that would call for blue. Or even “Budding Leaves.” But! It’s named, and we’re going to leave it. (For the sake of my sanity.)

I finally got this braid, and a couple others up in my store, so take a look and let me know what you think.

I’m excited.

After a long hiatus, and after an even longer stint of not knowing what to blog about, it suddenly struck me that you probably haven’t seen my craftroom before. Well, not just my craftroom. The craftroom I share with another business and all my family members.

This is the half that is still more craftroom than storage room. Yes, it’s usually that messy. With four people sharing it, and lots of lovely stashed-away items, it gets like that. I’ve also added some snazzy new shelves (which you can’t see yet) for storing Maiden Yarn supplies.

Craft-wise, I’ve been working on some Christmas ornaments. I felted wool and bamboo threads (basically rayon) around some clear glass ornaments, and it turned into something I wouldn’t personally like to hang on my tree. Or any where else. Unless it was a giant Q-Tip advertisement. . . but I digress. I plan to sew some lovely red glass beads onto them, and we’ll see what that does. Glitter may be used extensively, and if I can find tiny bits of pinecone. . .well, who knows? I’ll keep you updated.

It’s also been present wrapping season for me. As you may have guessed from the first photo in this post, this year my little mini-trend was paper snowflakes.

I’ve got lots of other things to catch you up on, so stay tuned!

And, due to being asked, here is a picture of the quilt.

My Quilt

I stood on the threshold of a new world and drooled. Colors and fibers danced around me in everything from a slow tango to a highland fling. And then we went home. And for a while I forgot the possibilities and filled my time with other things. Then one day, out of curiosity, I looked online to see how much a drop spindle cost. My mistake. I spent hours online looking at different spinning sites, beginner kits, fibers, spindles, everything! Soon I had made my selection. I was all set to buy a Schacht high-low spindle and eight ounces of fiber, then I started talking about it with my dad. Next thing I knew I was off to Hobby Lobby to buy a wooden dowel rod and some wooden wheels.

The only problem? I had no fiber to spin. I had ordered eight ounces of carded Corridale sliver and another eight ounces of heathered Corridale top (Agate Beach) from Pacific Wool and Fiber, but I had no idea how long that would take to get to me. Praise the Lord, while we were at Hobby Lobby I looked for a pair of double-pointed knitting needles for my sister. I couldn’t find any the right size, so I peeked around the corner to see if there were more in the next aisle and, hey presto! a bag labeled “Wool Roving” caught my eye. Several bags. In all sorts of colors. Turned out they were marketed for felters, but they were wool, and they were roving, and they were pretty. I bought the four-ounce package for $8 and brought it home.

My First Drop Spindle

Thanks to some online tutorials I had a basic concept of drafting, yarn thickness, and how to keep the spindle spinning. I figured that a thicker yarn would be easier to start with, but I wanted to try out a top whorl first, so I tried to spin a thick yarn on the top whorl. I found out very quickly that doesn’t work so well. I inverted the spindle and things moved along much more smoothly.

Here are the first . . . um . . . novelty yarns I made. The purple and brown were not even close to being candidates for first-time plying, so they were stuffed away in my closet. Next I spun the yellow and the blue and turned them into a sort of worsted weight two-ply. That was rather interesting because my lazy kate consisted of an upside-down shoebox with pens stuck through it to hold up the old thread spools of yarn.

Anyway, I spent two days on those three skeins. (That’s something I’ve wondered about. Does “skein” refer to a specific amount of yarn, or just the way the yarn is configured?) Then I moved on to the red and green. I had big plans for this yarn! I pulled the rovings apart and drafted them very carefully so I would get a striped effect. This was before I knew how much the colors can slide. I was envisioning perfect red and green stripes in random lengths. I spun the singles on top whorl and eagerly plyed them together. But wait! What happened to my lovely stripes? The first red stripe had a green single in it, and it went downhill from there.

It still made a rather nice yarn, but it wasn’t what I had planned. After I set the twist (in hot water) I crocheted it into a little potholder—mainly so I could try out a new crochet stitch that I liked—and here it is.

I was out of roving, and out of breath, but very happy. And then a package from Pacific Wool and Fiber arrived.