Hi, all! Whew, we’re here in the new house and things are slowly shaping up.

I’ve put the fiber club subscriptions for past members- any of you, from members of the last club way back to the beginning, lapsed or not- and they’ll stay available to you until I’m back from Yarn School and have had a chance to do some math and figure out how many slots to make available to new members. Those slots will be made available on October 2.

Please, potential new members, do not join now. So that everyone gets a fair shake, I’ll have to refund your payment and cancel your subscription. I think there will be a fair few slots available, as I’ve upped my production since last time. Mr. HelloYarn is now a full time employee!

My Schedule:

You know, in case you’re keeping track.

I’m off to Yarn School on Monday the 22nd of September and will be returning the following Tuesday, the 30th. I’ll be leaving the shop open during that time, but won’t ship out orders until I return. I’ll be available by email (click the little envelope in the upper left side of the page), but won’t answer quite as zippily as usual.

After that I’ll be dyeing dyeing dyeing the fiber club, then off to Rhinebeck. I think this year is going to be even more crazypants than last year. Everyone and their mother (even mine!) is on Ravelry. That party is going to be bananas. I look forward to seeing you all there.

After Rhinebeck, my life should resume some kind of normalcy, and I’ll be able to do some actual shop updates. An enormous box of Fat Sock arrived the other day. I know there are people waiting patiently for Fiddlehead kits and those will happen, too, promise!

See you soon!

Hi all! I’ve got some stuff going on that’s going to affect the shop.

First off, we’re moving house next Friday, the 5th of September. The cut off for orders shipped before the move is tomorrow, Friday the 29th at 4 pm EST. We’ll ship orders received before then this coming Tuesday (Monday’s a holiday). After that, the shop will close and all the inventory is going to be packed up and inaccessible until the 12th of September. If I get everything unpacked and sorted out sooner, I’ll open at that time.

Secondly, I’m leaving for Yarn School on the 22nd of September and returning the 30th. I’ll post the cutoff date for orders at a later time. I’ll leave the shop open for orders during this absence, but I won’t resume shipping until my return.

I plan on putting the fiber club up for sale after the move and before Yarn School. Past members will be notified by email when member slots go up for sale. If there are any slots left for new members, I’ll post on the blog with signup info.

Speaking of Yarn School:

There are some slots left for the Fall term. It’s going to be great fun. Come join us for a weekend of fiber happiness! I’ve been busy dyeing up the for the students. It’s been so long since I had a chance to dye anything. I’m in fiber heaven this week.

See you all after the move!

Also, we’re finally buying the house tomorrow. I cannot even describe how much we never want to buy a house and/or move again. We plan on being super old and doddering around in that same old farmhouse, let me tell ya. Buying the house took a lot more time and effort than we ever imagined, hence the virtual silence on my part around here and the putting off of the fiber club sign-ups.

Have I shown photos of the house? It’s a really solid little farmhouse built around 1900. All the major stuff has been updated, leaving us with the delightful chore of updating the dated decor. It’s exactly what we wanted- no updating needed that’s over our heads (plumbing, electrical, etc.) but lots of carpet to rip out, paneling to take down, light fixtures to shudder at the sight of and replace. We’re thrilled! I’ve got grand plans for a toadstool/gnome/terrarium-themed dining room. Mr. HelloYarn does not know this yet.

Continuing in the real estate theme, I made a hat as a gift for our buyer agent. Dave is awesome (and I hope he doesn’t read this blog, because I don’t want the surprise ruined) and loves shopping/eating local and has been a great help in pointing us toward places to shop and eat in our new town. So, this hat is super local. I got the fleece used for the yarn from Alice Field of Foxhill Farm in Lee, MA. Here’s the fleece before. I highly recommend Alice’s fleece! Cormo, as you probably know, is gorgeous and soft stuff. This fleece had a silkiness to it that, when combined with the amazing softness, made a fantastic, squishysoft yarn.

It’s gonna be cold in Western MA during the winter, at least that’s what everyone keeps telling me. Colder than it is here in our house only a few blocks from the ocean here in Boston. I shudder to think. It gets COLD here. Right, Bostonians?

Greenery Hat by Lilith Parker
Ravel that bad boy.

This used about 225 yards/102 grams of my handspun worsted weight Cormo chain-plyed (3 ply) yarn.

I handcarded this fleece before spinning. It really begged to be combed, but I didn’t have the patience and carded very delicately so as to not damage the fiber. It worked out well. The yarn’s a little more rustic than it would have been had the fleece been combed, but the 3 plies evened each other out quite well. Chain plying (aka Navajo plying) isn’t my favorite way to make a 3-ply yarn, but the yarn was a little thin as a 2-ply and with two bobbins of singles, chain-plying was the simplest way to get a bulkier yarn.

To get a fabric I liked in this yarn, I had to knit at a tighter gauge than the pattern specified, so I had to add 2 cable repeats to the circumference and one full repeat to the length of the hat. I also made the top of the hat cleaner looking (totally personal preference) by taking a cable twist out at the top.

This is a very attractive pattern and a fun knit. I highly recommend it!

Boy, Twist Collective has been fun to work with. They supported me in making mittens and a scarf that look like little logs! I was also able to use a great local yarn, Harrisville New England Highland, that I adore. It’s a wonderful worsted weight tweed yarn that accentuates the rustic wood grain idea.

The pattern combines traveling stitches and colorwork, a steek, attached i-cord, sewn-in lining- all kinds of fun! These are a quick knit due to the weight of the yarn. I hope you enjoy them.

The Info:
Faux Bois Scarf and Mittens
Pattern available from Twist Collective, Fall ‘08
Ravel the scarf.
Ravel the mittens.

The pattern contains instructions for both mittens and scarf.

The pattern from this issue that I just can’t get over is Anne Hanson’s Gnarled Oakwoods. It’s beyond gorgeous.

And I have to say, flipping through the pages is more fun than flipping through the Ikea catalog online, and that’s sayin’ something.

It was a great experience working with Julia and Kate and everyone else, and I’m thrilled with how the pattern came out. If my finished pattern is any indication of the rest of the magazine, which I’m sure it is, we can expect a lushly photographed magazine full of gorgeous creations with very thorough and clear instructions.

My pattern is pretty much what you can always expect from me: something that’s got a traditional inspiration with a decidedly modern *something*. And it’s colorwork.

You can Ravel them, already, though there won’t be photos until the magazine is unveiled:

Faux Bois Mittens
Faux Bois Scarf

They’ll be available tomorrow at Twist Collective.

Hello Yarn Fiber Club’s April selection
"Hive" Falklands wool combed top
worsted-spun 2 ply
worsted weight
1 lb., 1008 yards

I’ve got another bobbin of singles that I’m so tempted to combine with Red Velvet, as pumpkinmama did. It would make such a nice sweater with Hive changing to Hive plied with Red Velvet changing to Red Velvet, wouldn’t it?

The Website:

It’s been acting strange, hasn’t it? I’m super lame with this website stuff (so I didn’t catch on until it was too late), and there was someone, somewhere clogging up my server with constant queries of the blog’s database. The IP is now blocked and life should resume. If you visited the site today and saw that awful Account Suspended page, I apologize. I really did pay my bill.

Moving:

We really found a house and we’re moving on September 5. My dye studio needs to be built there, so it will take awhile, depending on plumbers and electricians, etc. The actual act of buying the house is taking up far more of my time than I ever conceived. I have not started dyeing the next round of the fiber club yet. I also have not started packing. I’ll keep everyone posted about it all.

*serenity now*

I can’t think straight enough to knit much, but there’s been some spinning.

Wool/Alpaca blend from Spinners Hill
light worsted weight
1572 yards/ 1.5 lbs.

The dye would not exhaust on this. I had to reset it by soaking in water and citric acid, then bringing to 190F on top of the stove and holding there for 30 minutes. Grumble.

Purchased at Rhinebeck 2007. See the batts here. This was a rustic prep and it resulted in a rustic yarn. There were big blobs of Alpaca (the red, orange, and paler green) that didn’t blend well with the wool. This is a nice, fluffy, light yarn. Very soft!

Merino wool, from my hand-dyed top.

sport weight
250 yards and 2.6 oz.

This was spun from scraps left from wool I sold. I think I’m going to crochet a blanket with these small scrap skeins. They’re super fun to spin.

Spunky Eclectic Fiber Club May 2008 selection
"Rosebud" Corriedale wool
2 ply
3.7 oz. (there’s some single left on a bobbin)
250 yards
14 wpi/sport

Spinning up about a pound and a half of "Hive" Falklands wool, the Hello Yarn Fiber Club April ‘08 fiber.

PS: The little stickers on the bobbins tell me how much, in weight, is on each, plus in which order they were spun. I spin in dribs and drabs and don’t trust that my spinning will be perfectly consistent from the beginning to the end of a project. This way, I can ply bobbins 1 and 4 together, and 2 and 3 together, etc. to help even things out. I keep track of the weight because I am a pretty darn consistent spinner (despite my lack of self-trust), so if each bobbin has 250 grams on it, chances are there will only be a few inches of one single left from two-plying. The system works well! Amy Boogie taught me.

Moving:

We haven’t moved yet, but think we’ve finally found a house. It’s been kind of a brutal search, since we have to drive 300 miles every time a house we like the looks of comes onto the market. It’s got a sweet little plumbed room with a big bright window for my dyeing, lots of space for drying, and a barn that we’ll eventually convert to a dye space for me. There’s a garden with blueberry and raspberry bushes and super nice neighbors. It’s in a beautiful quaint village filled with artists and local-eaters and other assorted lovely people. We’re so excited! I’ll keep everyone posted.

Shop Update:

There will be one this week. Buy it all, please! The house needs all new appliances.

PS:

Does Firefox 3.0 hate you as much as it hates me? Nothing works right.

I’ve been making bunches of salads so that we don’t have to keep cooking in this deadly heat. I wrote the recipes for these three delicious yumminesses up. They’re so lovely and tasty and light and you only have to heat up the kitchen once.

Summer Salad Mania (PDF) contains Summer Noodle Salad, Curry Rice Salad, and Mom’s Cucumber Salad.

PS: I’ve corrected a typo, an error, and clarified some things since this was first posted. I need a recipe tech editor, pronto!

PPS: The HBO documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired was so good! I can’t wait to see what the rest of the summer’s documentary films are like.

Pattern: Anne, by MK Carroll. Ravel It.
Yarn: My handspun and hand-dyed worsted weight singles yarn. Corriedale, 3.55 oz., 212 yards. It’s the one on the right.
Hook: 5mm
Size: Approx. 3″ x 80″

I spun a singles yarn from the end of an un-split combed top for long color repeats in the finished scarf. I love it!

Check out Cheryl from yarnbee’s awesome example. She Navajo plied her yarn for a long color repeat.

Here’s the other one I made a little while ago, complete with “elbow” where I forgot to turn the scarf. Oops!

Later on today I’m going to add some nostes and handspun from Maisy Day Handspun to the shop and I’ll be back later today or maybe day after tomorrow with some fantastic summer salad recipes I’ve been making like crazy for the past couple of weeks. They’re saving our lives in this heat!

I should probably show you my current big project before it’s finished, huh? This sweater is a total experiment. I usually like to have an idea if something is going to look okay on me before I start it, but I’ve thrown caution to the wind on this one and am just going with its glorious 70s smockness. Will it be too dorky? I do not know. Let’s hope the yarn’s beauty keeps it on the awesome side. If not, you’ll hear all about it.

Here’s the inspiration:

It’s a smock from Knitting in the Nordic Tradition by Vibeke Lind, knit in stockinette stitch with rolled edges. I’ve done absolutely no shaping whatsoever on this sweater. The pieces are four rectangles that I’ll sew together, leaving a wide boatneck. The stripes are made like all those scarves, by knitting 2 rows from one ball and 2 from another, only I’m using the same colorway for both balls. The decision to make the stripes vertical comes from the inspirational smock and a bit of honesty about the fact that I have a 40 inch chest.

And here are the results so far:

The yarn is Taiyo (colorway #4), the 40% cotton, 30% silk, and 15% each wool and nylon big fat papery Kureyon-looking, yet summery, yarn from Noro. The fabric is light and bouncy at the loose gauge I’m using. The colors are insane. The knitting is fast. I should be wearing it, weather permitting, within the week.

There are more projects coming: another handspun Anne scarf, a handspun naturally-colored striped vest for Mr. HelloYarn (Totally not copying yoohoo, in fact, he copied me. Yeah, that’s it.), and who knows what else that’s buried in my knitting basket!

PS: As you might have noticed, I’m a ton better at keeping things up to date over on Flickr so, if you miss me, you can always find me there.