Worn Out

Hey Everyone

It has been non stop busy since I came home from the show. Adam and i had to finish moving all of our stuff to the new house then the 8 boxes from Stitches arrived (yay)! Then all the patterns and custom orders from CTH. Then barn roof that had be hanging on by one last post finally decided it was going to have to be repaired. So for 3 days I stopped dyeing and started digging post holes. 2 ft by 2 ft by 2 ft. We had a contractor come today and do the carpentry bit, but Adam and I dug the holes and laid the first round of concrete. For some reason my phone is STILL no work so if you have been trying to call me, I am very sorry but for now you will have to email me. I can't even begin to tell you about how many troubles I have had with the phone.

But it's starting to come together I have a whole room just for storing yarn and another for an office so it is starting to be more organized. I have too many orders to keep them in my head any more. When I finally decided on a system for organizing the orders I had a small mountain of yarn to dye. It was pretty funny when I realized how much I had been keeping in my head. Not doable.

This weekend I worked ALL weekend with some yarn that Adam dyed that he calls Grinch. This is so typical Jenna: I wasn't going to put up a picture and then I thought it couldn't hurt to snap a quick shot. Then I was like well it needs a better background so I went rummage for a pillow case. Then I had to take a million pictures (none of which I thought were great so I kept taking a bunch). I just can't let it be. So any ways back to the story. Adam was bummed that no one bought any of his Grinch at the show so I thought of a good way to showcase a Christmas-y yarn: A cute kids Christmas dress.



My Dad's new wife has an adorable 2 year old daughter named Hayden and she is quite the fashion queen. I am very excited to see how this is going to fit her. Anyways, I am going to go do some knitting therapy.

So far today I have mixed up wrong colors (over a gallon and a half), had to overdye skein that I dyed the wrong color, invoiced the wrong people, argued with the bank, comcast, and got my barn fixed. Tomorrow will go smoother. It has to.

:)

Stitches East and Sock Club

I am in recovery mode. It was a great weekend and I was so happy to meet so many people. Sherri from Loopy Ewe stopped by and grabbed a picture for her blog.
Adam, Erica and I had a ball, Erica showed me some cool knitting things that I had not really been exposed to before (like "pretty" stitch markers and special knitting bags). I think Adam got a lot out of it as well. Erica taught him how to knit socks on two 24" inch circulars which was good for him because he really has a hard time with double pointed needles. I was so impressed with how quickly he learned that I decided to pick up some patterns from Kalamazoo Knits (Rav). Mostly I am carrying their Easy Socks on Circulars. I will put them up on my website and I highly recommend them. The greatest thing is that they knit up a variety of sizes. The sock pattern of theirs that I am currently making is the Dressed to the 9's Cable Sock Pattern.
The picture is kind of dark and I will work on getting better ones. The weather here in Washington doesn't always cooperate. The color of the sock is in my new WoW color of the month Something Finney inspired by Murlocs. The other colorway for November is the one that won the vote below call Rezzing Again. That is what always happens to me when I encounter Murlocs. Hmnphh.

So back to Adam's Sock. I realize that once we started knitting the promotional patterns that I was giving out for free at the show that I had swapped the pictures on the 2 patterns. I hope that doesn't cause too much confusion, if people have questions I would be happy to send out a corrected pattern. ANYWAYS! The sock:

Adam calls this color Gargoyle Sunrise. He is making the sock out of Supersock Select DK. He says he is going to dye some more colors for Stitches West. I am always excited about his dyeing, and amazed that even though we use the same dyes and dyeing methods, he still manages to do colors I don't.

I am going to take down last months sock club colors by the end of this week and put the new ones up. We just moved into the new house fully and for some reason my phone service is not working, so if you have tried to call me, I haven't been able to answer. It's on my list of a million things to do today. So bear with me as I get everything sorted out. Email receipts are coming soon, hopefully by the end if the day if quickbooks would stop freezing my computer. Patterns are coming soon. I just keep chugging along moving forward with the next thing I think you guys might like.

On a last note, a lady who purchased some dyes/ blanks and a DVD from me sent me a picture of the yarn she dyed her first time. I have some other first time photos that I have been holding onto and when I find a good place to put them all up I will certainly do so. So keep pictures of dying exploits with your indie dyer stuff and finished objects with your indie dyer yarns. I adore seeing them.


- From Crista called Blue Lagoon.

Vote on your favorite Rezzing Again

So Adam and I disagree on which color is more murloc.


Vote top or bottom color on the side bar to the left! Then I will tell you about my murloc scheme. In a way I am offering 3 color options for next month. I wanted to be able to make the murloc toy with a different color for the fin because I want my murloc to have a body color different then his fins. I think I will do some sort of deal about buying like a Louet gems 50 g skein in the Something Finney for a contrast color. More details after Stitches. I have samples of these colors here at Stitches if anyone wants to see them in person.


:)
Jenna

Art and Murlocs

I never thought that I would have as much trouble with murlocs IRL as I do with them in game. For those of you who don't know a murloc is a famed WoW creature that causes you to die a lot. I have dyed several sets of murloc and I am not sure but they are not done drying yet. So verdict is out until I see them dry. Ever since I saw the knitted murloc I had to have one. I started contemplating the various ways to make one and dye one that I thougtht was a good representation of a murloc. So I looked at some FO's on Rav and decided that a "good" murloc needed two colors: a body color and a fin color. What makes the murloc so cool is the contrasting colors. SO! I was going to look at murlocs today to get a good look at one to see if they would lend any insights into a colorway, but I was so involved in other things (namely the simple re-quest) acheivement I forgot. So this evening at my new house that doesn't have internet, I had to decide on what colors to make my murloc. Well that means that I had think about what I thought murlocs look like. I decided they look teally-yellowy-bluey. Or maybe more greenish -aqua- golden. Anyways that is how I dyed it and I hope when I log in and actually look at them I will find myself relieved they look they way I thought they did.

When Adam and I were in high school at Orme, all of the seniors had to take a class call humanities. It was taught by an english teacher and an art teacher, and later a philosophy teacher I really did not care for........ I thoroughly disliked the class.
The class for the most part was based around the premise of "What is Art?" and we talked some about Art History, but mostly the goal of the class was to try and come up with a definition for art. We looked at Christoff(?), some guy who built the wall of sheets across California and covered a famous building in Berlin. Our assignment was to cover trees in the courtyard in front of the library with orange construction paper. So we took this huge roll of paper and wrapped it around several trunks and taped it up. It looked horrible and to me it definitely was not pretty or "art". However here we are trying to broaden our definition of art and this teacher was teaching us essentially to be more accepting of "art" might be. So here I am 6 years later in my kitchen dyeing and I realize that I may finally actually understand what hell he meant. I have decided that I can be comfortable defining art as a representation of an artist's interpretation. I have been to some famous art museums and seen some really cool art. If you were to ask me in general if I thought I was an artist I would probably say no. I can't really draw, I never took any art classes unless it was a requirement, you get the picture. I was a Biology and Computer double major, I didn't take any art classes in college. In fact quite recently I had someone tell me that I am a "logical" person and not really artistic. To which I said because the person was an illogical person, obviously (and didn't really know me very well).

Anyways moving on, I think now about my colorways and my strive to be unique and think what is it that makes someone look at a Picasso and declare it wonderful art, or a Monet, or even pop artists. I know a lot of what makes art important is the history of art. It is more then that though, I guess you never do know what draws people to a certain piece. I guess I do what could be defined as in the art realm. I definitely don't think of it that way but if you simplify it down more and more, I dye which is in the realm of painting and most people would consider painting art. Yep, definitely not what I thought I would be doing next. How funny, huh? Man, I hope these murlocs turn out, because I can only sell so many murloc rejects..... ;) I have decided on my next colors and I hope they go over as well as the last two. The names are going to be the best part. I love naming things quirky and funny names if I can. Like my tauren druid is named Mynataur because Myna is my nickname. One of the people in my guild is named Eatcritanddie, and another is named Mootilator. Love it!

Stitches madness

Going to yarn shows is really crazy making. I try to sit down and plan out my time. No, not happening. Dye until your colors look at the same to you. Or until your boyfriend says,"Can we call this one Rainbow Disco?" ARG! I am having fun, but we are trying to move at the same time and my Army Boyfriend is "in the field" this week, so basically he is gone all week. Sigh. This seems so much slower when he isn't around.

I have been trying all week to post about colors I have been thinking about and ideas I have had. I have some yarn that I think looks really subtle, but will consumers think it is boring? I think a lot of what I consider "basic" color combos to be boring. On the other hand you can't be too "artiste" and have colors that people look at and say,"I think its beautiful, but I would never buy it." I hate it when people say that. :(

Anyways my mitered square project is coming SLOWLY. I have one square finished. Only a million more to go. I was going to take a picture and put it up, but i have been trying to do that every day this week and it just is not happening. Maybe next week. Sigh. With Adam's schedule I tend to fall asleep around 9 pm and get up at 5 am. So I have about an hour left. :( but that's ok. Although I am a WoW player, I am not so good at other video games I ascertained today. We tried to play Splinter Cell and Adam didn't know whether to be irritated or fall off the couch laughing. So he can play XBOX and I will knit squares. Hmnt. So there.

;) More to come later.

Early Morning

I had an early morning this morning because I had to drive Adam to work at 4:00. Instead of going back to bed I decided to dye up some samples for my WoW inspired yarn of the month. I got out to the new house and mixed up some dyes and dyed my first color Firey. After it went through the cook and rinse I decided it has too much orange and not enough black. So instead of using orange as one of my colors again I just made my red and yellow overlap more. Looked way better to me. The other ones are still nice, but they didn't look to me like I had in my head.

For those of you who don't play WoW I googled Felsteed and put up a picture of one.

Then I did the Winterspring. Using "white" or rather natural is always a bit difficult especially when you are only dyeing one skein like I did here
Anyways now that I have started dyeing WoW inspired colors of course everything seems WoW colored to me. I have to remember to dye "normal" colors as well. My problem is once I start something getting em to stop is like trying to stop a freight train. I just have to make sure to remember my other interests and hope that will inspire me for more "normal" colors. I have been thinking about dyeing things the colors of my horses. I am not sure how that will look. It will either go over really well or totally bomb. I will get back to you on that one.

As far as knitting goes, I am making several things. I need to make mates for some glittens. I feel like I am over glittens, because now that I have figured them out they just don't seem as cool as they used to. Instead I would rather work on mitered squares in stockinette I found a pattern on rav for how to do them now I would be tickled pink if I understood the math behind how they worked. However they may be less cool then and maybe I wouldn't be so excited about knitting a million little squares. Meh.

Gotta go send out some orders (8lbs of roving!) and dye some more yarn for stitches. I am trying to dye sock yarn in small sweater making amounts. CTH has this beautiful simply supersock sweater and we all know how good I am with sweaters, but OTHER people can knit it and I will have the pattern. Other people with better sweater knitting gumption.

I might try and check out some local yarn groups this evening. There is a yarn shop near me in Lakewood and I thought I might try and go. However. I do have to pick Adam up so... we'll see....

Happy Knitting/ Dyeing!
Jenna

Blog Time

I know I seem to hardly ever update my blog, and I have decided to try and make an effort a couple times a week to write in it. I always want to write in it, but after a go-go-go day, it always seems like by the time I have a moment, all I want to do is spend time away from my computer. Anyways, so for those of you who like to check on it I will try to carve out an hour or to in the morning before I start running around like a crazy person to write something.

Moving on. I got back from Ally Pally and I had a lot of fun, did a lot of sightseeing and knitting. At yarn shows is when I have the WORST cravings to knit. All the cool garments and the yarns and the standing around waiting for people to come buy yarn. Yeah, so I picked like 6 new things I want to try. I learned how to do some mitered squares and now I can't seem to stop. I am one of those people (and I get this impression from a lot of indie dyers) that I just want to know the concept and work with it myself. I had a lot of frustration trying to knit the pattern for a garter mitered square with stockinette stitch. I come back to rav and read up and find out the right pattern. I prolly knitted about 10 wrong ones with little different variations to no success. ARG! Oh well. I dyed a bunch of ends (skeins that aren't full skeins) various colors for an emulation of the CTH mitered afghan. I am going to make a baby blanket for a friend. It's really a toddler blanket but whatever. The first blanket I made was out of cotton.

Chase's Baby Blanket

I think Chase will probably want something a little studier this time. Especially if he might drag it everywhere. This way I can use up some leftovers as well.

I have been knitting A LOT lately. I wish there was a way to knit and drive, it makes driving some like such a wasted chunk of time. My boyfriend and I have gotten to where we fight over who has to drive and I always point out that if I am driving and he is not knitting then it is a wasted chunk of time. He doesn't see it that way oddly enough.

Anyways, I have some new dye ensembles up on my site including Fall Festival (for those of you enjoying Fall) and Tropical Paradise (for those of you that hate winter).

Time for more knitting!