Sneak Peak

A sneak peak at some of the sock yarn coming to Rocket Yarn & Hanks this week.

On a Fiber High ...

I've been surrounded by yarn and fiber, by spinners and knitters ... both in person and online. And ya know what? I have this constant smile on my face that follows me everywhere I go. I made a big decision recently to try and really make a go of this Rocket Yarn thing. And as soon as I did all sorts of fibery things starting falling in my lap. My sales really picked up on Etsy, I got to go give a spinning demonstration at a knitting class here in Lake City last night, I've met some other fibery people in the area and I'm going to have a table set up at a Fiber Fest in Trenton next weekend. Seriously ... I'm in heaven. :) I'm really looking forward to meeting everyone there. The woman in charge, Elle, is in a string band and they will be playing there that day. She keeps nudging me to bring my viola but I don't think I'm ready for that quite yet. Either way, even if I don't sell a thing I know i'm going to really enjoy it.

And remember that crafty group I started here in Lake City in hopes of finding some other fiber lovers in the area? Well last weekend a few of us brought our wheels and we were quite a hit at Starbucks. We had people stop in their tracks when they walked in the door. It was so funny. Several people came and sat and watched and asked a bunch of questions. It was great. And we had a new knitter join us as well. She saw my post on the Lake City Reporters online calendar. How exciting is that? There ARE other knitters here and I am finding them! The ladies at the knitting class I went to last night were really nice too and it sounds like they are going to join us as well. Yipppeeeee! :)

As far as my happiness and sense of accomplishment, this ranks right up there with my first day of work as an aerospace engineer. Driving up to Kennedy Space Center that day and going into the high bay to help run some tests on several elements of the International Space Station ... I was on cloud 9 that day. And again when I ran my first test in the cockpit of Space Shuttle Endeavor. And yet again the same with my first day after transferring to Johnson Space Center and walking into Mission Control. That sense of having done something great ... that I did all on my own. The acceptance and love of my hand dyed yarn and fiber makes me just as happy. Happy in a different way but has the same effect (affect? i can never remember which of those to use) on my mood. I honestly haven't felt this sense of accomplishment since we moved here to Lake City. I have always had an artistic side but I haven't had the perfect way to let it out until I started dyeing yarn and fiber. The engineering accomplishments say "i'm smart" or "i'm motivated" ...but the artsy stuff ... the side i've had to supress in the name of doing something "smart" that makes more money ... I just can't express how happy and fullfilled that makes me. Art comes from the inside and to have people accept it and love it and pay good money for it ... well that just makes me giddy.

What's this you ask? That would be 17 pounds of undyed yarn and fiber. And I have about 20 pounds more on its way to me.


And this funky looking pvc thing? This is a skeinwinder that my awesome husband built for me.


And I will leave you with some crafty pics ...

Handspun Merino/Nylon Pencil Roving

I spun up some roving from my shop this weekend. Can't wait to start knitting with it. I went for a fairly thick sock yarn to make some quick socks for the boys for Christmas. Dave Ramsey says "Christmas is a craft" while you are dumping debt and this will definitely be true for us this year. :)

Here's half of the dyed roving.


Here's the other half already spun on my Julia.


And after plying the two singles together ...


WALLA ... we have yarn! :)

Halloween

What a busy day! First Houston had his Fall Festival at The Blake School. That was really great. They sure know how to put on a festival. The theme was superheroes and Houston's group at school is named the pickles. So Houston decided he wanted to be "Super Pickle" for Halloween. He came up with this all by himself too. I was amazed. He was going to be spiderman but then one day a couple weeks ago he came up to me and said "mama, I don't want to be spiderman anymore ... i want to be a superhero pickle". So I drew up the logo for his shirt and used one of those print your own iron on transfer things. I've been playing with a new graphics program lately making some ads for Rocket Yarn so I had fun making this logo. And then I made him a cape and ironed a bunch of pickles on it. I think it turned out pretty cute. Everyone at his school certainly got a kick out of it.





Here's Houston enjoying some popcorn at the festival. (i ate a bunch too, those people know how to make some popcorn!)



Here is Houston's class before we headed out back for the festival.


Here's Houston showing off the pumpkin he decorated for the contest at school.


Ready to go!


Brett got to man the octopus slide. See him in the background?


Now to the evening festivities. We joined some of our friends in Alachua for some trick-or-treating. Then we all went out to Kazbors for dinner, kids and all. I think we had 10 adults and 6 little ones. Amazingly we all left with our bellies full and our sanity intact. Our boys were especially well behaved ... probably because they were worn out from the day and too tired to want to run circles around the restaurant.



Nemo was a huge hit! We had at least three different people stop us and ask if they could take a picture of Brody. It was really funny.

Rocket Yarn

So i've been working on getting my shop stocked up because I have ads going live on Ravelry this coming weekend. For some reason, I ended up selling $140 worth of stuff last night. Yippeee! :) Sold all but one of my pencil rovings. Yikes! Time to get dyeing!

The Handmade Movement

I came across this today and wanted to share. I spent a good while searching through the Etsy shops listed in the chart of past sneak attacks at the bottom of the page. I found quite a few things that I marked as favorites with Christmas gifts in mind. Don't know who I would give any of these to but Pinkfink has some really cute little things.

Grandma Hearne

My grandma is having open-heart surgery this morning for either a triple or quadruple bypass. I am so scared for her. That has got to be a very difficult thing to recover from for someone in their 80's. At the time I am posting this she should be in surgery. It was scheduled for 7 am central time. Everyone please send good vibes and prayers towards Munster, Indiana this morning.

Love you Grandma!

Look What I Made!

Remember this?






I've only plied about half of it but I love it too much not to show it off yet. Excuse the crappy photos. My camera has gone on the fritz and only partially works and only when it wants to. Aggravating ... it's the last Sony digital camera I buy. That's two in a row that have lasted less than two years. I ordered a Canon A590 that was only $112 but gets very good reviews and supposedly takes better pictures than the Sony's I've had in the past. Watch this thing last me twice as long for less than half the price of the others. I looked into getting the Sony fixed but it was going to cost me $100 to get it fixed unless they got in there and found more wrong in which case it would cost me even more. No thanks! I'll take the brand new Canon for $112 and free shipping. I just hope it gets here soon because I have some sock knitting bags to ad to my Etsy shop. And speaking of Etsy, I have a graphic artist who is going to design some ads for me to place on Ravelry and she is working for yarn. Sweet!

In other news, The Yarn Harlot finally blogged about her trip to Jacksonville. Go check it out here. Look closely at the very first picture in the post to see yours truly. :)

The Yarn Harlot

Last Thursday a friend and I went to see Stephanie Pearl-McPhee aka the Yarn Harlot speak in Jacksonville. We met up with several other knitter friends from Gainesville and Hanks. It was awesome! I honestly have not laughed that much in years. She is so freakin' funny and smart. I wish I could relay some of the things she said but I am nowhere near the story teller she is so I will not even attempt it. There was some very interesting research she shared with us about knitting and brain regeneration and stress relief. There was aslo a really funny story involving coffee and another one involving a skunk. I guess you just had to be there. When I got up to the table to get my book signed I asked her if I could take a picture of her holding my sock. She went to grab it and realized it was a monkey sock and made me say "will you touch my monkey" before she would touch it. Cracked me up! :)



The shop that hosted the event, KnitWitz, gave away a ton of goodies before Stephanie started her talk. I never win anything but this time I did! I won a gorgeous skein of Mohair in colors that I totally love. Now I just have to figure out what to knit with it.



It was a great night with some much-needed friend time filled with humor and knitting ... two of my favorite things. :)







Lorena and Sharon aka "The Hanks Ladies" ... this picture was just too darn cute not to steal from Lorena to post here. :)



Me and Glimm ... one of us trying not to smile at the camera but I can totally see it sneaking through. :)


(ETA Links)
Here are a couple more links regarding the Yarn Harlot's trip to Jax:
Article in the Florida Times-Union
Yarntender

A New Way to Dye

I think I found the perfect way to dye this pencil roving. It's a little difficult to explain in words. I may write up a tutorial sometime in the future and post it here. I love the results of this new method I've come up with and can't wait to try it on some yarn. :)

Back to Basics ...

... of my yarn/roving dyeing philosophy that is. More on this later.

Pencil Roving

Here's a sneak peek at the new fiber I've been playing with this week. This stuff is absolutely wonderful. So soft and smooshy and is really fun to dye. It's 80% merino and 20% nylon pencil roving. A supplier i've been using had a mill in Canada make this up for me. I have a ton of it too so I hope it sells well. But then again if it doesn't it just means there is more for me to play with! Win-win if you ask me. :)



Here's some more still on the drying rack. The bottom one is something new i'm trying out. You basically randomly splatter a bunch of dye on the roving. I used to think this was ugly but I've been reading a book about dyeing that has some pictures of roving dyed like this, the yarn spun from it and a sock knit with the yarn. It is freaking gorgeous! So this one is going to be my test dye-spin-knit. I'm still debating whether or not I want to add some more dye to it before I spin it.

Monkey Socks

Anyone remember those toe-up monkeys I started way back in March? Probably not the best idea to start a new project using a new method (toe-up) where I have to constantly refer to the instructions (lace pattern) while hubby and I are also starting our engineering firm. They were destined for the UFO pile from the start. Well I'm happy to say I've finally picked them back up and am cruising right along. I've turned the heel on both and now all I have to knit is the leg and cuff. I am just delighted to no end at the heel/gusset on these socks. No gusset stitches to pick up! Yippeee! I just might have to make all of my socks this way from now on as the gusset is what I usually end up having to do over several times and seriously stretches out the time it takes me to make socks.





In other knitting news, I started a twice a month craft group here in Lake City and we had our first meeting this past Sunday. There were five of us there, all knitters, and it was great. Everyone was really nice and it was fabulous to actually be sitting in Lake City of all places knitting with a group of crafty ladies. :)

Alpaca Fest Pics