Thursday, June 29, 2006

Good Morning!


Do you ever wake up in the morning & realize that it is a lovely morning. That you are really blessed & it's going to be a great day? That's the view out my french doors onto our deck. 12 feet of rail, 22 skeins drying in the warm sun and scented breezes. (It's not even 1/2 of what I've dyed...) It is a beautiful day.

Sometimes I wish I could keep it all - to pile it up & just gaze at all that yarnliness. The pressure of knitting 50+ skeins would ruin the liberal enjoyment of the yarn, but still...

I just placed two ads for the Top Secret Project, one in Knitty and the other in Interweave Knits. Wow. Two of the biggest knitting magazines out there. I'm feeling a little queasy and excited. Must get the new yarn line ready for the fall debut!

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Got a Tiny Tether? Show it off!



If you have a Tiny Tether pic, let me know - I'd love to post it to the blog and show it off. Tell all your friends, too.

Tiny Tethers aren't just for pacifiers you know. They'll tether all sorts of other important things, like your keys, etc.

In other yarn related items, I have slightly recovered from the shock of tangling 10 skeins of yarn. I also have a large order in for more. The good news is that if you're a Yarn Of The Month Club Member I have enough yarn for you. In fact, most of it is dyed. Between yesterday and today, I've dyed 32 skeins. I have 9 more to do tomorrow, and that's cake. Have I mentioned that once I figured out how to do it (and despite my mishap of yesterday), hand painting cotton is really nice because you can skip the heat intesive steaming step. Definitiely a plus. Yay, yarn. Good thing too, because I am totally in charge of all the handpainted cotton in the upcoming yarn line for the Top Secret Project. Yep. At least 2 cotton weights and a luxurious rayon too. Just wait to you get your hands on this stuff - it's like heaven in a fiber.

Monday, June 26, 2006

For the love of God and all that is holy....

do NOT forget and put the lid on your washer down when you have 10 skeins of beautifully dyed cotton yarn in there. Furthermore, letting it run the entire cycle before you notice is not at all the right thing to do. You may end up swearing vociferiously and wanting to kick your washer....also a bad idea - you may have noticed that your washer is made of metal and you are not. A wise observation.

So how was your day?

Monday, June 05, 2006

Memories of the Seaside



I’ve been busy. Developing new colorways and not sleeping. The two really are not related. The latter is due to my 2nd born two year old, and my 6 month old. The new colorways are partly for Yarn of the Month and partly for the new, Top Secret Project and partly for Yarn of the Month. I’m having fun exploring fiber reactive dyes on cotton. They’re very different than dyeing on wool – the colors are hard to pin down in comparison. When I dye, I normally have a very definite idea of the colors that I want to produce. Through trial and error I can now produce (with relative accuracy) the color I want. Not so with the fiber reactive dye, not so. Sure the dye looks like I want it to, but the end result doesn’t resemble the original color much at all. I think it’s got to due with the way the dye fixes on the fiber. It’s not heated and it takes a long time to fix when compared to acid dyes. This causes a lot more color mixing than your usual acid dye. The end result is that my two yarns which started out looking very different but after they were rinsed a million times (another difference between wool and cotton) looked so much the same that my very detail minded husband mistook one for the other. Ack! So out of desperation, I dyed something VERY different. Ok, not so much desperation as exasperation. The fiber reactives and I need to spend some more time communing I think….we’re still a bit wary of each other. So here are the two colorways that I have going for this month. Memories and Seaside.

See Sharon over at Irish Baby Knits for Yarn of the Month Club. We’re currently full up, but are keeping a waiting list for when people don’t renew their subscription. Very beautiful yarns, I might add!

So the T.S.P. (top secret project) is moving along. We picked out colors over the weekend – for the new drool-worthy logo. Identity design is so tricky. You’re forming a new something-or-other and you don’t quite know what it will end up like, but you have a creative vision. Then you have the task of converting and translating that vision into an appropriate medium to be understood by others. It’s a good thing there are professionals to help with this sort of thing, because pretty things give me a distinct inability to choose. I just want them all. Soon, soon I will have more details. We’re hoping for the full roll out in about 4 weeks. Yes, I said we. I am not alone. So ponder this lovely stationary that we chose as part of our identity. What do you think we are?