Some pretty things to look at

In the past couple days a few people have sent me pictures of what they have done with my yarn, and I thought I'd share.

Firstly, some crocheting. I can crochet, but I usually don't, so I'm glad to see an example of my yarn used for a purpose rather different from the one I usually put it to. I've seen crocheting done up in handspun yarn, and the effect is very interesting. The colour blending that you get with the combination of stitch and yarn is really unique.



Next, a use I often put my yarn to -- mittens. Can never have too many mittens, I'd say.



Lastly, a contribution by a Torchwood fan and nascent spinner:



It's been a slow and quiet month. I started my weaving class, and it's been interesting. So far, I don't find weaving nearly as rhythmic and relaxing as knitting, but I'm new, so it's bound to feel clumsy and difficult right now. I've been neglecting my bookkeeping, doing no dyeing whatsoever, and playing around with the drum carder from time to time. I now know that I can drum card 8 batts in an hour. Hey, when you're crafting for profit, you need to know these things. I'm just adding it to the pile of Facts of Limited General Application that I have.

Mostly I've been concentrating on the teaching, this month. Three out of four scheduled classes have gone ahead, and I've enjoyed all of them. My Sweaters Without a Pattern class is beginning this Wednesday evening, and I'm looking forward to it -- I love teaching this class. I love taking a group of knitters and empowering them to knit stuff just the way they want it, in exactly the yarn they want. Freedom from the tyranny of the pattern! Not that there isn't a time and a place for a good pattern, but it's not *every* time. The class has four students in it right now so it will definitely go ahead, but there's room for a few more if anyone is interested. A fun time will be had.

Cautiously Optimistic

The nice thing about being a small business is that I'm very, very flexible. I don't have employees with specialized skills whose time needs to be used wisely, I don't have to pay rent on a separate business space, and I don't have large standing orders that need to be fulfilled or else I lose customers. When something changes, I can change with it.

This is not to say that it's easy, change, no matter what the circumstance. I had a rhythm going. I had regular customers and a fairly predictable set of activities that I would do over the course of a week or a month. Then I needed to stop dyeing in the house, and everything had to be rethought.

However -- I've been thinking and researching and planning these past weeks, and I think I have a workable plan. Here it is.

Firstly, my experiments with Wilton's and my research on the subject (which mostly consisted of talking to a lot of dyers on Ravelry who have used it and various other dyes) has led me to believe that it is not the answer to my problems. I believe I would be sacrificing too much in terms of my results (can't get the colourways I want) if I switched to food dye. So it has to be the toxic stuff.

However, I have figured out how to do a limited amount of dyeing on my front porch. How miserable this strategy makes me in January remains to be seen; it probably behooves me to stockpile a bit. I'm also investigating taking part in Felicia Lo's (Sweet Georgia's) shared studio, a project that she's setting up so that several of the casual and small independent dyers, weavers, and spinners (both business people and hobbyists) can have a suitable space for their activities. I'm not the only dyer out there with the problem of how to use toxic dye without polluting one's living space.

Secondly, the fiber sales are not kaput, but they will be limited. I will not wholesale my fiber, except for the carded batts that I offer to the two local stores I sell through. I will continue to sell some fiber on Etsy and to those who know me well enough to send an email that says "hey what do you have right now, can you send me a picture?"

Thirdly, I need to sell a lot more yarn. I haven't pushed the yarn sales because my fiber sales were doing so well. My yarn sales were mostly wholesales through Three Bags Full and Black Sheep Yarns. This was perfectly satisfactory to me -- the volume was high enough that the cut I take on the wholesale price still leaves me sufficiently compensated for my spinning time, and the online fiber sales made up the rest of my paycheque. Now, though, I need to somehow convince The Internet to buy more yarn. I can do this. I just have to put my mind to the marketing problem.

The last part of the strategy is teaching, which is ramping up about now. My beginners class at Black Sheep will begin this week, and it already has 5 or 6 people in it -- which is awesome. There are three or four more classes already scheduled at the shop, and once I find out whether my Arts Centre classes are going ahead, I'll be able to firmly schedule a bunch more for later in the Fall.

So that's that. I feel much less panicked than I did a couple weeks ago. I'm heavily buoyed up by yesterday's success -- I handpainted some BFL and cooked it in my new, standalone turkey roaster which lives on the front porch. Here is the roaster:


And here is the 3lbs of wool I painted:


3lbs is almost nothing compared to my previous production, but I'm still working out the details. It's a bit like going back to stovetop cooking, this roaster, and managing convection and colour splitting is something I'm having to re-learn. The batches are slow, very slow, so far, and I can't queue them up like I could with my oven method. I probably won't have many more 10 lb days, but hey, that's fine -- I'm mostly dyeing to supply my own spinning, and I can only spin so fast. Slow is fine.

Lastly -- I have had my final Farmer's Market. For some reason, this season has been the pits for sales at the market. Dunno why, but it has. So I've cancelled my last two scheduled days, because I have more productive ways to spend my time than huddling outside in the cold. The market was awesome while it lasted, and I'll continue to shop there, but my days as a vendor are over for now.

Hear that squealing noise? Those were my brakes.

This past week, I've been going through some major changes. I have to stop dyeing the way I have been.

For the time being, I can't use the Ciba dyes inside my house. I'm too concerned about traces of the dye getting into my system and into my family's system. I mix the powders in the little laundry nook in my bedroom (wearing gloves and a respirator), but I have some concern about the powders spreading out into the sleeping space. I mix the dye stocks in the laundry room too, which involves opening and closing a lot of jars, all of which have dried dye on the edge, which can spread more powder.

I handpaint the fibers in my kitchen. I put down a big shower curtain with a towel on top of it, but still, splashes occur, and since I'm still opening and closing plastic tubs with dried dye around the edge, there's probably some powder spreading. In the cooking area.

Step 1: No dye in the house. It's on my covered front porch now, in a big wooden bin.

Step 2: Figure out how to colour fiber without going back on Step 1.

So this is where I am. I see two options: use new dye, or dye outside the house.

The new dye possibility is Wilton's. Wilton's is an icing dye, available for purchase at Michael's Craft Store. It's expensive, but it's a cost I don't mind eating if it makes a difference. The reports on Wilton's aren't great, though. It's very difficult to manage (some of the colours -- several of the colours, in fact -- split like crazy, making predictable results hard to achieve), and it's not as light- and colour-fast as the professional grade dyes. I know of one Etsy seller who is very successful using it, but I'm skeptical. And my early experiments have not gone well. I'd post a picture of the bad, bad colours, but it's just embarrassing. Also, there isn't a decent black with Wilton's.

i just got tipped off about a "Green" dye with no heavy metals in it. I have contacted the company about their MSDS sheet and am waiting to hear. We'll see.

The other option is to dye outside my house. This would involve having someone else mix my dye stocks (I'm sure I can find a teenager who will do it for the right price), and having me retreat to my covered front porch to mix my colours and paint the wool. I would dye using a crock pot and maybe this cooker I found at Canadian Tire. I hear Felicia of Sweet Georgia uses an outdoor turkey roaster, and I'll be emailing her about that. The downside of this option is that a) it's cold and damp out there for most of the next 6 months, and b) it's a bit expensive, what with cooking outside and all the heat waste that implies.

Whichever of these options I choose, it still means that I'm pretty much only making enough fiber for my own spinning purposes. I can't see doing production dyeing with these methods. I might be able to do some fiber sales in the form of carded batts, and I'm willing to try to expand that, but so far my batts haven't been big sellers.

No fiber sales, that hurts. Fiber sales is 80% of my business right now, and for the past few months I've sold close to $1000 worth each month. Putting a total stop to that will hurt my bottom line, and I'm not doing this business as a hobby. It's a valuable part of my household budget.

The bright side is that, if ever there was a time to really push my yarn sales, the beginning of autumn is it. And I have 5 knitting classes starting in a few weeks; hopefully that will become a more significant source of income. And teaching? Completely non-toxic. I can do lots of that, and no protective equipment is necessary.

So that's where I'm at -- going out of my tree, more or less. Any attempt at helpful information or friendly hand-holding will be appreciated.

Coming Events

Just briefly, here are some places you can find me in the upcoming weeks.

Farmer's Market dates: August 24, September 14, October 5, October 26

Classes at Black Sheep Yarns: Sock Knitting, Project Support, Foundation Skills, Beginner Knitting.
Classes at the Port Moody Arts Centre: Freeform Knitting, Sweaters without a Pattern.

And of course I'll be spending an absurd amount of time at Black Sheep Yarns just hanging out, because there is now a yarn store within blocks of my house and I can.

Summer Hiatus, apparently

I didn't mean to take a hiatus, but it seems to have happened. It was an accident though. I have the time to work and I want to work, but it seems that I've been ordering such a high volume of supplies that I've been cleaning my supplier out, and then getting caught in her supply dip when I want to reorder. It has happened twice this summer. Once, I had a forced break of only a week, and that was fine, I just devoted myself to spinning, but this last break lasted three weeks. I had no supplies, I had a rapidly dwindling stock, and I could do nothing whatsoever about it.

I do not mean to criticize my supplier -- I have nothing but love for her service, her attention to quality, and her prices. I'm just growing is all. I am working out a deal for a standing order with her, and that should help. She's growing too -- namely, she's growing some storage space so she can keep more in stock, herself -- and the timing is perfect for that. With any luck, this won't happen again.

I did get my first box of supplies on Tuesday: 5 lbs of Corrie, 22 lbs of BFL, 1 lb of Wensleydale just to try, and another pound of wool/soysilk which is oh so pretty. I have attempted to work. My mom is visiting though, so you really can't blame me for taking Tuesday afternoon off to go see Brideshead Revisited instead. And yesterday, I apparently pissed off the gods of electronics. I had Internet connectivity troubles all day (this is unrelated to the dyeing), and my electronic scale went on the fritz. If I can't weigh the wool, I can't dye the wool.

As a result, although I got supplies on Tuesday, this is all I have managed to achieve:


That's 4 lbs of BFL. 4. On a decent single day, I can do 7, and that's if they're all handpainted colourways. If I mix up some semi-solids in my workload, on a day when I'm burning through the wool I can do 12. So 4 -- not so impressive. But as I keep reminding myself, there is NO SUCH THING as a wool emergency, so I try not to fret. But still, I'm feeling less than impressed with my output.

Something I am impressed by, though, is this:


For those of you playing the home game, that's tweedy yarn, spun from those mixed batts that were cluttering up my desk a few entries back. I am so beyond thrilled with this yarn I can hardly tell you. I'm spinning it long draw, so it's a little uneven, which is perfect; I'm going for a look that's really sort of arty. I plan to use this yarn in my next Sweaters Without a Pattern class that I'll be teaching at the Port Moody Arts Centre this fall. I always like to have a personal project to do so that I can demo the various techniques on a real project.

In other news, Black Sheep Yarns is days away from opening. I'm so delighted by this development. For one, Port Moody is ready for an upscale yarn store. The local knitters are numerous and artistic, and are apparently tired of driving to Maple Ridge or Vancouver for good yarn. Now me, I spent a decade living in a very boring town that was 2 hours from any really good yarn stores, so driving 35 minutes to Main Street to visit Three Bags Full was always just fine with me, but that's me. Living away from a decent city for so long, I relish the chance to go a mere half hour away to be in the midst of the interesting people, the cool shops, and the swank little coffee shops with wireless access.

However, a local yarn store -- really local -- is fantastic. And it's excellent for me, because I finally have a teaching home. I've been given more or less carte blanche to offer whatever classes i want, at whatever schedule I want. I'll still teach a couple classes at the Arts Centre (Freeform Knitting and Sweaters, this fall), but most of my teaching will happen at Black Sheep. I absolutely love teaching knitting, love to share my passion and my skill, so I have great hopes that I'll get to do a lot more of it now than I could at the Arts Centre.

The expected opening day for the new store is August 19, and the first knit night will be held the night before.

Lastly, here is a picture of cute children with a sheep. I took my daughter to Maplewood Farm the other week, and she loved it. She fed bunnies who were stuffed but tried to be polite and take a few nibbles of the profferred apple wedges, frowned at goats who were trying to nibble her shoelaces, and petted the sheep. I petted the sheep too. Or rather, I crouched down and poked at their fleece, gauging it for staple length, texture, and crimp. As the sheep looked back at me with an unmistakable "What *are* you doing?!" look on its face, I thought, most people probably don't do this.

Reflection

Last night, I went to give a talk to the West Coast Knitters Guild. There are a number of fiber related guilds in town: The WCKG mentioned above, the Greater Vancouver Weavers and Spinners (a chapter of the Northwest Weavers Guild), the Coquitlam Weavers and Spinners Guild, something in Maple Ridge, something in Langley. This area is lousy with fiber artists! In my travels, I've met a lot of them, and I've been invited to check out many of the local guilds and groups.

My family life is such that evening activities aren't practical right now, so I have to keep saying "thanks, but no" to the invitations. But I did thoroughly enjoy checking out the Guild last night. I met some local fiber artists as well as knitting enthusiasts. I got to talk dye technique, and say "why thank you!" to people who complimented my colour choices.

I was sorry that I had to hightail it out of there before the meeting was over, but with a 7:30 meeting and a 40 minute drive eachh way, that was the price for going at all. And it was fair. My motto these days, for getting through this busy time when my child is young, is this: "You can have it all, but just not much of it, and not all at once." It makes me sanguine about taking a hors d'oeuvres approach to my life.

I drove home watching the sunset light bounce around the haze that always seems to cover this city, making the North Shore mountains look like glowing shadows. I was blissfully alone and listening to my iPod, which was somehow feeding me a lot of my favourite songs all at once despite being on random play.

If there has been a theme of the last year, a principle I have learned, it's this: jump in bravely and do what you like, and good things will come from it.

I don't remember what I did that led to it, but in the spring, I was invited to demonstrate Freeform Knitting for the Port Moody Arts Centre's Arts 4U day, a day of demonstrating various arts and crafts to locals as part of the PoMo Arts Festival. I had never heard of freeform knitting before this point, but I jumped in. The day was fun, the demo was a success, and at the end of the day, one of the people at the Centre asked me if I'd be interested in teaching knitting there in the Fall. Paid work, teaching something I love and am an expert at, two blocks from my house on a schedule that I determine? Why yes, thank you. I would be interested.

Putting in a table at the farmer's market led to be being noticed by a writer for the local paper, Sarah Payne, a tremendous supporter of local artists and artisans. The article was open on the table the day Helen, of the soon-to-open Black Sheep Yarns, told her husband she thought she might like to open a yarn store, and what did he think? He turned the paper towards her and said, "I think there might be a local market for that, yeah." And the store is going to be my new teaching home in a couple months. That little cause-and-effect loop kind of gives me chills, the kind you get when the pieces are just so perfect you can practically hear the "click."

And last night, I had another little moment. As I said, getting to the Guild meeting was a bit of a labour, and definitely not something I can do regularly. But I was flattered to have been invited by Linda, who works at Three Bags Full, who sell my yarn and fiber and have been tremendously important to me for both the personal encouragement the owners and staff have given me, and for my local marketing. As I was setting up, I was approached by a notable local fiber artist who is working on setting up a fiber arts studio on Granville Island (for non-locals, pretend I just said "Soho"). She wanted to talk to me about being involved somehow, as a supplier at least. I kept my cool, but it tripped off all kinds of dreams of being artistic and fabulous in a Granville Island studio.

There have been a lot of little things, too. The friends, well-wishers, students, and business tips I have picked up by being at the Farmer's Market have been invaluable. The spinning class I just finished netted me some new friends, new customers, one student, and a drum carder, not to mention an acquaintance with Irene Weisner, a formidable force for craft about whose support and practical help I cannot say enough.

I have dyed the colours I liked without regard for what I thought other people wanted, and it turned out other people liked those colours too. And strangest of all, when I started dyeing wool in Whoverse-themed colours, I found all these people who were obsessive fans of both fiber *and* the Whoverse. Talk about a niche market, but I wouldn't have found it if I hadn't been just mostly making myself happy.

I don't believe that The Universe is taking care of me; I don't believe in The Secret. It's not my bent to believe in mysterious forces that do right by us if we're virtuous enough. I'm feeling awfully fortunate right now though, and just at the moment I'm rather taken by the picture that has presented itself. I took a real leap about a year ago when I decided to throw myself into something that had no guarantee whatsoever of being a viable job. I jumped in with both feet though, said yes to all kinds of things just because it pleased me to do so, and what I have in front of me at the moment is a wealth of something we all dream of: work that I love. And I couldn't be happier -- unless someone has figured out a way for me to do everything I want to, and still get 8 hours sleep? No?

My desk clutter has changed

My desk clutter used to be like most people's desk clutter. Bills that need to be paid, papers that need to be filed, a book in progress, pens that may or may not work, and a half-drunk cup of coffee from earlier in the week. But it's different now. Now I have a baby bottle full of olive oil that I was using to oil my wheel because I couldn't be bothered to go buy the proper kind, 13 batts of burgundy-based fiber blend destined to become tweed yarn, a spare bobbin, some thrift store yarn that will be used to attach labels to my stuff, some exciting sparkly eyelash yarn destined to be the binder in a wild boucle, a bag full of assorted fiber gifted to me by a friend, my case of knitting accessories -- and that half-drunk cup of coffee. Today's anyway.

Does the Fly Lady have anything to say about fiber kipple?

Meet my new baby

I now have visual aids to help those of you not already imbued with carded-batt lust understand what the big deal is.

Here is my new drum carder, and a basket of fiber "nibbles" (1 oz bits) that I am preparing to blend by carding:



I'm sorry to say that I don't know what kind of carder I bought. I have a piece of paper that tells me. All I know is, it was a price I could afford, and good deal according to Irene the Fiber Goddess who brokered the deal, and after I fiddled with the positioning of the drum for a bit, it works. So I'm as happy as can be.

Here is a before and during photo -- the dyed roving before carding, and a drum with a batt on it, not yet removed:


Here is what a batt looks like, carefully folded and glowing in today's lovely sunshine:


And here is my in progress, personal carding project -- my attempt to make something like tweed. I'm using some dark BFL that I dyed burgundy, and all of my considerable leftover bits of wool from the past several months' spinning:


I can't wait to spin it up. I plan a worsted weight yarn done long-draw, to preserve the excellent wooliness of the BFL. If all goes well, I'll use the wool for my next self-designed sweater. I always make a personal project as a model when I teach my 8-week class in knitting sweaters without a pattern. For the past two classes, I've done a kid's sweater so I could be sure that I would finish each stage in time to demonstrate it, but I'm feeling ambitious these days (must be the sunshine). My Fall teaching at the Port Moody Arts Centre is confirmed, and my sweaters class is going ahead pending registration, so I have until September to finish the spinning. Maybe I'll knit the body in advance, come to think of it; that doesn't need to be demo'd.

Weather into the weekend is good, and if the Port Moody Knitters group on Ravelry is anything to go by, it looks like we'll have at least a half-dozen people at this weekend's Fiber Party, maybe more. I'm looking forward to it.

Party at My Place!

This Sunday, I'll be at the farmer's market for my scheduled day, and I'm throwing a party. I'm going to be hanging out, spinning, and playing with a drum carder. And while that sounds like a perfectly fun time to spend all by myself, or just with the friend who is bringing the drum carder, it would be a lot *more* fun if there were lots of fibery people all together.

So, I'm throwing a party, a fiber party at my market booth. Bring some fiber if you want to play with the carder (or buy some of mine); bring hand cards. Bring your spinning wheel or your drop spindle. Bring a pair of knitting needles and you WIP, or bring a crochet hook and stand tall as a representative of the beleaguered-but-belligerent hookers out there.

Also bring your own chair, and possibly some sunblock.

Location: Coquitlam Farmer's Market (click here for directions)
Time: 9am to 1pm

What do you think? Who's in?

WWKIP

This Saturday, June 14th, is World Wide Knit In Public Day. I did not make that up. I have no particular feelings on the subject of this day, but I like any excuse for knitters to get out and publicly fondle each others projects, so I'll be going to at least one of the six events happening in the Lower Mainland.

Specifically, I will be attending the Port Moody get together, which will be held from 11am to 1pm in front of the Social Rec. Centre here in PoMo (that's the building that has been under construction for the past 3 years, to the right of the library). Fingers crossed for sun, because if there is rain, there is no backup plan.

If you're on Ravelry, there is a thread devoted to the PoMo KIP day here.)

I will be raffling off a skein of my handspun at the KIP, and the price of entry is to knit a bit on the baby blanket I'm working on. I hand dyed 20 skeins of gorgeous superwash merino in different shades of blue, and I'm making a lovely log cabin blanket, but I want as many hands as possible to work on the gift; just as many hands help a mother to care for her baby.

Hope to see some of you tomorrow!