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 realized I’ve been leaving you in suspense over my purple sweater! It did get finished, and I literally had to take it to Colorado unblocked and block it in a friend’s washing machine, but it got finished. I wore it a lot and really, really enjoyed it. Several people commented on it (in a good way). Yay! The photo, or rather a piece of the photo, I snagged from a friend’s picture of the trip. We were playing an acting game called Freeze.

Another project I’m really excited over is my latest thick-and-thin yarn. I spun this from two batts carded by my good friend Legossi, and the yarn turned out so wonderful! The batts were all light and springy and the yarn took up that quality and made it a poem. (That’s what you call waxing poetic.)
Here it is undyed -

And here it is post-color –

Interestingly enough, I just dumped the dyes in with the yarn to see what they would do. I wasn’t expecting it to go that dark, but the pops of color shifts are gorgeous! So subtle, and almost shiny.

And, the projects that I haven’t begun yet are very exciting. I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I was scouring Ravelry for hat and cowl patterns. Well, here’s why. I’ve been appointed as assistant director for a Christmas play. And that, to my knitterly mind, means I will be out and about in the cold more than usual. Thus, I will be empowered with the ability to wear more knit items than is conceivably possible. My heart beats wildly at the thought.

This time I’m sending in way more then twenty samples, I’m including fiber, and I’m sending in some from Filigree Willow as well.
I would have liked to have some way to track how much business I get from these (other than asking during the checkout process how they found my store) but I ran out of time and motivation to figure out the ramifications of coupons and such.

The last several days I have been measuring, cutting, twisting, and tagging to beat the band. I think it came out to a total of sixty something samples, all needing little hand-written tags.

I finished them up yesterday afternoon and got them shipped off. Yay! And I’m very excited because, if I send in more than fifty units, I’ll receive a Phat Fiber box for the month! Wha-hoo!

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.

I’m contributing to the September Phat Fiber samples, so some of the fibers needed to be inspired by “Farmers Market.” I actually wound up doing four or five different things I could send in samples from, but one of them is this Blackberry Jam superwash fingering weight.

Gorgeous! I dyed two skeins worth. One for the shop and the other to chop up into little 15-20 yard samples.

A couple of other highlights from the dye run, all alpaca laceweights—

And some more big news, I won a batt! It’s pretty and pink, and I have no clue what I’m going to do with it. I have been stalking Ravelry hat and cowl patterns, though. (I figure they’re something I can knit with stashed stuff, wear often as the weather gets cooler, and they won’t take long to knit!) Perhaps I can spin this up and turn it into a nice tam.

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.

And, along a different train of thought, I paid for not blogging recently. I skeined up this gorgeous single ply laceweight (the one I was spinning on my English wheel) and it turned out to be about thirty-five grams/440 yards. In short, a nice size. It washed up beautifully and bloomed into this amazingly soft fluffy single ply. I was so proud of it. Then I listed it on Etsy and it sold before I could tell you I had even finished it! So, here’s the picture of the now long-gone yarn.

On the home knitting front: Raveling is in the offing. Remember that purple sweater I made? The cowl neck? Well, it was far too big in the body, so about a week or so ago I raveled it clear back to the armpits and commenced re-knitting it in a smaller size. I’m now about six to eight inches from the bottom, and hoping it will somehow finish knitting itself so I can take it along to Colorado in the beginning of August. Things are looking pretty close, but I might just finish in time.

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.

Then, while I was puzzling over how to go about dyeing the other rovings, as my only big-enough pan was full, I played with that thick and thin yarn I spun. Really deep, rich colors. (This particular one sold the very day I listed it! Praise God! That was quite the surprise.) And I discovered that the “fulling” method of setting the twist on a single ply works very nicely.

With a normal yarn you have two or more plies that combine to even out the twist and make the yarn stay straight. In a single ply, you have twist running rampant from one end to the other. The solution? Plunge it into a pot of hot water, then whack it against something for a little bit. This doesn’t “felt” the yarn (if you stop soon enough) but it does help it behave itself.
Now, granted, for this one I didn’t even have to whack it. The pre-soak, hot water, and dyeing process taught it good manners like nothing else would.

I eventually decided to just layer the remaining rovings into my medium sized pots (as the biggest was full of wool locks) and pour in dyes as I went. This created a really cool watercolor effect and produced these two rovings.

The one on the top is called Tempest, and the one below is Dragonfly Wings.

This was my first time using fibers from a new dealer, so the dyeing was a bit of a trial run. The merino (red/gold/green/blue pictured at the top) took up the dye really well and got a pretty good intensity of color, while the other two Corriedale Crosses went a little more middle ground.

I have more of each fiber, so I’m looking forward to giving them another test run. It could be that the Corriedale just didn’t get as intense of a dye solution as the merino. So many factors! It seems like so long ago that I was a beginner, just dumping dye in as I felt like it. The amount of knowledge anyone picks up while learning a new hobby is just amazing. And there’s always something new lurking around the corner!

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.)

And I’ve been simultaneously (well, not quite simultaneously) spinning this gorgeous thick and thin yarn. Again, it was on that super secret device, which was perfect for this kind of yarn. The thick bits wouldn’t fit through any of my wheel orifices, and the Walking Wheel keeps me at arms length from controlling the thick and thin variations.

And big news! The Phat Fiber “sneak peek” videos are now up, and you can see my samples in the first video. Hooray! I’m about the fourth one in on the first video. If you’d care to see it, you can find the Phat Fiber videos here.

Come on over and take a peek. I’m so, so excited!

And, on that note, I am so, so loving custom orders. You probably remember my first custom yarn (Raven’s Wing) and the gorgeous yarn that came out of that. Well, prepare for custom order number two.

Absolutely gorgeous emerald yarn. This green took forever to achieve (no less than three times in the dye pot) but it was so worth it. The yarn practically glows from within. And it’s superwash, which means it is very soft.

I can’t wait for the next custom challenge, whatever it may be.

Angora cobweb fluffy laceweight. Ahhhhhhhh. You cannot believe how soft this yarn is when it’s plied. It’s like the tactile rendition of feeling warm and fuzzy inside!

I’m actually spinning this on a nifty contraption that a friend of mine plans to make available on Etsy. I’m not at liberty to divulge many of the juicy details, but I will say that I could not spin this delicate of a yarn on any of the other tools I have in the house.

The grand Etsy store updates continue! I just listed a couple more yarns, and soon a nice big order of fiber will come in, and I can start all over again. Hooray!

Oh! You heard it here first – I will be participating in Etsy’s Christmas in July sale (July 15th through 25th). I’m running a special on shipping for those of you who want to stock up on Christmas gifts. Pay shipping on only one item in your order. All the other items in the order ship free!

And, while this is not lace, I’ve started knitting a scarf from this lovely, hand dyed pink yarn a good friend gave to me. I’m knitting it on the bias, and then throwing in dropped stitch stripes every so often.