Summer Updates

Well, we are mid-way through summer, and I am sad that I have abandoned my blog once again.  But with summer here I am going to try and update a little more often, just to share a few things happening in my life and on my needles.

The biggest update for me is last week's fiber festival. I have been planning and preparing for several months now and now that it's over, I'm sad that I don't have that anticipation anymore, is that normal?

The Houston Fiber Festival had it's fourth year and I was one of the vendors this time around.  I spent a good deal of May and June dying yarn, ordering and matting prints and getting my fixtures together to take.  I love that I am able to share my yarnie art with people on top of my lovely yarn colors.

Having both payed off! The large art was able to draw in visitors that wanted to hear my story and having prints of my paintings meant that I was able to sell and share my art with people who wanted a little pop of color in their homes and offices!  And the yarn did well too! I quickly learned which colors - speckle-ish (go figure) and cool tones - and bases - fingering/sock wins out over worsted - were the most popular and what to focus on going forward.

The event was a week ago and I spent the following Monday updating my shop with the leftover inventory.  Take a peek if you are wanting a lovely art print or some beautifully painted yarn!

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In other life news, I will be moving to a new apartment/studio in a week, so sadly not much dying or painting will get to happen for a period of time as I adjust.  But moving is for the best sometimes.  It allows you to purge and clean as well as start fresh in a new place.  I am excited to make this transition and see lots of amazing things to come.

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On my needles I have been working on a few things lately, finishing many since summer started.  While that is a post for another day, I will share my latest finished project.  The "Mini Madness Shawl" was started about three weeks ago when I found that I had a fair amount of sock yarn scraps that could fade into each other.  I purchased this pattern and went to town.  The last section I even decided needed some weight and bling, and added beads to make it sparkle! I am very happy with this huge shawl and know that it will get worn a lot when the school year starts up again.

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How are your summers going? Too fast, not fast enough? What's on the needles right now?  Leave a comment and let me know, I always love hearing from readers.

Until next time!

~Lisa

Texas Happenings

I have been wanting to update for the past two weeks, but somehow time escaped me.  While you may not believe it, it actually takes a bit of time to update my blog.  Between taking photos, editing them and then figuring out what to say, it can consume a good chunk of time. Which is why, as much as I want to update on a weekly basis, that just may not happen.

A couple weeks ago some pretty scary weather hit my area of Texas, causing freezing temperatures, icy roads and a school day off.  I took advantage of the day off and was able to get quite a bit done.

The first thing was starting a pair of gloves for my mom.  The yarn, Mountain Colors Twizzle, was picked out by her for this project.  I was able to cast on the gloves the evening of the day off and have since finished them.  They will be in the mail this week and I know she will love them.

I was also able to finish the third pairing in my triptych, which has been on my easel for far too long.  When I took on the full time position at my school a few things got tossed aside, mainly  my studio time.  But I am slowly making time to work on my paintings again.

Working Title: "Red Sea"

Speaking of full time, this past week I did a little painting activity with some of my students that involved learning about color values.  We took a color, added white and black to make shades and tints and are making pretty skies for our pictures.  Look how much fun we had!

The dye studio also saw some time that day, as I dyed up several skeins of my "light" yarn - 100% sw merino fingering - in my two new colorways. I also reserved a couple of skeins to just splatter leftover dye on.  I'm calling these "paint water" and ironically I sold those 2 skeins before I even made labels! My knitting group just loved it.

Sometimes life just gets busy, but I always thrive on being busy so I really don't mind.  Maybe I am tired a lot, but somehow I get through the day pretty well.  Remembering that I have the drive and ability to create and share my creations is always something that keeps me going.  What about you?

~Lisa 

2017: The Year That Was...

2017: The Year That Was...

1) The start of a new tradition: knitting journals.

Gifted from a fellow knitter, I have spent the year chronicling every project I worked on and cannot wait to do it again in 2018.  I just wish I didn't have to retire this really nice journal.

2) An (almost) successful attempt at keeping my feet forever warm.

You can see all my projects here!

I am happy to report that I finished 11.25 pairs of socks.  The December pair is still on sock one, as I just cannot speed up those cables.  But I plan to finish them by the end of January, which was when I declared the goal to begin with, so that counts, right? 

3) A major inspiration in my painting world.

With these beauties being my most successful to date (although I am kinda sick of looking at them), I feel like my art is going in a new direction and cannot wait to see how 2018 goes!

(Also, I recently sold the Originals!)

4) The start of many new and exciting things.

I cannot believe I only started this dye journey in March! It feels like I have been doing it for so much longer.  But I guess when you find something you love, time seems to fly.  I have truly enjoyed this new endeavor and cannot wait to introduce my new colors (last 2 on right) and new ideas in 2018!

I have two shows coming up already! One in March and one in June.  I cannot wait, but that means more work for me...

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What else can I say? I went through and re-read all of my posts from this year and am very impressed with myself on how consistent I was and my ability to share what was happening.  Thank you to everyone who read and commented this year, it always means so much to know someone is listening.

I'm leaving you all with this song, which is from a movie I saw last week.  The lyrics are stuck in my head and are very inspirational for me as an artist.

Bring on 2018!

~Lisa

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

We all know what time it is? Christmas....BREAK! Ok maybe I'm a little excited, but the knowledge of having the next two weeks off from school is a pretty nice feeling.  Even though I will be traveling home for part of it, it's still nice to have a little bit of time for myself before I go.

I have had a good amount of time lately to tackle some projects, and I wanted to do a quick post about all of them.  Many of them were started yesterday, my official day off for the holidays, but some have been ongoing.

The December socks are on the needles and taking their sweet time.  The pattern is Lowry Crossing by one of my LYS owners, Petra, and the yarn is from Kimerie's Knit Knacks that I purchased last month.  I love the way these look, but the cables are really tedious and thus slowing me down.  

This will be pair 12 for me and I gotta say, it's been a trip.  I'll do a recap at the end of this pair of each one I've done this year.  Safe to say, I'm worn out and definitely need a sock sabbatical. 

Handmade gifts are also happening again this year, in the form of these cute woven coasters.  I have been spinning mini-skeins on my drop spindle from a grab bag of fiber and then weaving those minis on my small wood loom to make the awesome coasters.  It's been really fun seeing the random stripes and designs my handspun is making!

With my day off yesterday I was able to start on a bunch of things, including a new colorway in my yarn.  Based off the painting "Early Snow Flowers", the colors on this are very warm, considering the name.  Why did I name that painting the way I did? Lol.  But seriously, this is a nice change for me, although the red dye is a little potent. 

On the subject of starts, I also managed to begin the 3rd painting in my triptych.  While I can't get all three in a row on my easel, I am able to at least get the two.  The one on the right - the new one - will be very pink.  I like that I could hang them all separate if I wanted, but that they are also a continuous work. Merging from red to pink, this has been a fun challenge. 

Playing with pink, I also have this "spa cloth" started yesterday that I am going to gift to my future sister-in-law for Christmas.  I'm planning to make two of these, each with Cascade Ultra Pima. I've had a couple of cloths made in pima cotton for a few years now and they hold up so well.  I highly recommend it!  For this gift I am planning to also gift her a bar of soap from my favorite soap maker - RAH soap. She does some amazing scents and varieties and I always have a very positive experience buying from here. 

And finally I decided to do some playing with my dyes.  I had a bunch of end pieces from winding skeins to sell and made some 10g minis.  I laid them all out, grabbed the squirt bottles that already had dye in them and just went to town.  While I'm not selling these (they're for something else), I am thinking of doing this again with larger skeins and calling it "paint water" - as in whatever dye is left in my bottles after a dye session.  Always changing and always fun.

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I hope everyone has a fabulous holiday.  Whether traveling or staying home, make sure you give yourself time for yourself and your craft, as well as family.  Self care in today's world is really important, and sometimes we miss out on that during the holidays.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays!

~Lisa

East Texas Fiber Festival

It's been too quiet lately, and for that I apologize.  Life just kinda hit me like a ton of bricks, with multiple milestones all happening at once.

The first, and most important for blogging sake, was the East Texas Fiber Festival that I attended as a vendor last weekend.

A small festival in Lindale, TX, in it's third year, I enjoyed myself.  The venue was semi-outdoors, which wasn't ideal, but wasn't awful.  I went with the mindset that this was my first outting and that I really just wanted to feel the waters.

As you can see, taking photos without some sort of glare was a challenge, but I was able to snap a few good ones.  My setup was pretty basic, with yarn and paintings in the back, art prints on one side and shoe samples on another.

The highlight was supposed to be the shoes, but sadly I didn't take any orders as planned.  Several people seemed interested, so maybe this week?

My top seller was actually art prints! Maybe because it was unique among all the yarn vendors, or maybe because people want art for their craft rooms.  I just know that at my next show I will be highlighting those a bit more.

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Somehow I managed to walk away with only a couple purchases.  A project bag as a gift (not shown), a skein of yarn, and some beads to match my own yarn.

I made lots of new fiber friends as well!  The yarn above is from Kimarie's Knit Knacks and the beads are from Gilding Lillies (who specializes in matching beads to yarn).  Other new friends included The Ewe Hues (a co-op of several friends who all dye), Four Hens Fibers, McKnittey and DJ's Alpacas.  All gave me great feedback and advice for my future in the industry. 

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And in other, life important news, and likely to affect my art/knitting time, I wanted to share that I recently got offered a promotion at my school.  Previously I was only teaching the secondary classes for art on a part time gig.  Well the elementary teacher decided to leave and they offered me her job as well.  Starting next week I am officially the ONLY art teacher for the entire school of St. Joseph's and I could not be more thrilled!  All my hard work is finally paying off!

And that, my friends, is an excuse to party hard and eat harder on Thanksgiving.  I hope you all have a wonderful one (for those who celebrate).

~Lisa

My First Yarn Show

I had truly meant to post this last week, but somehow time escaped me again and now here we are a week later.

I also hope that all of you out there are not sick of me talking about my yarn dying adventures! I promise soon I'll post something completely unrelated.

Just over a week ago I had the privilege of spending my weekend in Wimberley, TX, hanging out at a cute little yarn shop - Ply! Yarn, Art and Handwovens.  It's a small, quaint little destination in a small, quaint little town.  A friend and I drove up for the weekend and had the luxury of spending our down time in the beautiful guest house of another friend who happened to live in the hills.  Check out that view!

  

The town itself is a hidden gem, with a very cute downtown square made up of boutiques, specialty shops, art galleries and cute restaurants.  Ply is located towards the back, hidden away a bit, but still fits right in with the town.

The owner, Kathy, has been very gracious in offering me a chance to sell my yarn during the annual Yarn Crawl, and I made sure I utilized the opportunity well.  Setting up a little space on an end table, I had the chance to meet many knitters as they walked in the door, telling them my story from art to yarn and selling a few along the way.

People really responded to my inspirations and colorways, as well as the base yarns that I have chosen.  I feel as though I made a new friend with each skein I sold!  Speaking of friends - the ladies working at the shop were all super sweet and so much fun to get to know during my two days.  I will be returning soon!

Tip for dyers: Always have samples! Having several samples of my yarn knitted up helped me sell at least 5-6 skeins.

At the end of the weekend we added everything up and did some math before heading back home.  I won't go into money, but I am proud to say that I sold 19 of my 27 skeins of yarn! That feels like a success right?

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Oh and I almost forgot! She had lots of other indie dyers to show off as well.  Here's the list and a few photos to tempt you all. :)

Chasing Rabbits Fiber Co.

Noti Yarns

Open Skies Yarn

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Have a fabulous week everyone!

Dye-ary

Well this is an early post for this week (or a late one for last week?).  Either way, I'm here and ready to share more yarnie things.

Somehow every other post seems to be about my dying adventures, but it also seems that dying is the only changing thing for me to post about lately.  I'll have more knitting WIPs next week, I promise!

This coming weekend into next (Oct 6-14th) is the Hill Country Yarn Crawl in TX, which is a huge deal down here, with 20+ shops opening their doors to crawlers from all over Texas.  Free patterns, specials and indie dyers await at each spot.  

I'm super excited I get to be one of those Indie Dyers this year, participating in my first ever truck show at a little shop called Ply! in the gorgeous town of Wimberley, TX.  While I will only be physically there for the second weekend, the shop asked me to provide product for the whole crawl and needed it by the beginning of October.  Well you can guess what I have spent the last two weeks doing (besides art show things, which was it's own level of stress). 

Making sure I had a decent inventory was priority number one of course, and so it began.  I played around with my color  recipes a bit and was able to finally find satisfaction with all three of my main colorways.  

Sadly, I wasn't able to acquire the large amount of my original base - 100% sw merino, light fingering - and therefore had to improvise.  But improvising ended well, as I was able to introduce a new base - 75/25 merino/nylon, perfect for socks!  Once the crawl is over I will be stocking it in my Etsy as well. 

On the left we have the sock base, on the right we have the sw merino base.  You can definitely see a difference in the yarn type! As for color, I'm pretty proud of myself for getting them to match so well when they were dyed on different days! 

I'm also sending off a batch of my 50g tonals to pair with the merino.  The colors came out a bit bolder than I hoped but they are really pretty regardless if you wish for them to match the paintings.

The other task at hand was making sure I had samples! I was able to get my Morning Garden Stream pattern finalized and have the Fallen Moon Drops one typed up, so I am sending those two, along with something in my new version of Fallen Moon Drops (that a friend graciously knitted for me) and a cowl knitted with Mushroom Petal Bloom that I overly stressed over to get done in time.

Pattern - Elevations by Sharon Lex

Pattern - Willow Cowl by Amelia Lyon

I'm sad I had to send the cowl off so fast - I LOVE the drape and how it looks in my yarn.  I will definitely be making more!

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Well, fingers crossed the sale goes well, I could really use the sales to help justify that what I'm doing isn't crazy.

Interested in my yarn? I have a few left in my Etsy, and will be updating it again after the crawl!

Bombs Away

There's something about the concept of yarn bombing that just cracks me up.  Maybe it's the colors people tend to use - bright and out of place.  Or the whimsy it adds to a location.  Of just the title itself.  Yarn Bombing.

It seems like lately I've been enjoying this concept on a whole new level, by utilizing it in my artistic practice.  Bombing, or taking over, a place is a fun concept that I have been applying to locations around my area in a way you may not first think about.

When I booked a show for this month at my local (and favorite) cafe/gallery, I knew I wanted to do something that would appeal to a huge audience and make them smile.  I had been playing around with painting on old postcards and decided to try doing the same thing on my own photos.

 The ones you are seeing as you read this are just a few examples of the 50+ that I completed for this show.  Some are serious, some are funny, but all should bring a smile to the viewer's face, especially when they see all of them lined up like below.

I've placed oil paintings along the other walls of the cafe, so overall the show looks nice and cohesive.  The official reception is this Thursday and I think it's going to be a good turnout.

In other news, I recently booked my first Trunk Show! During the Hill Country Yarn Crawl, various shops stay open longer hours and host indie dyers to share their yarns.  A shop in Wimberly, TX, reached out to me via Instagram and asked if I could come sell some of my yarns with her one weekend.  Of course I said yes! So now I am in major sample mode, making things with my newest colors to encourage buyers.  

The willow cowl seemed like a good fit for this yarn, and a quick knit.  I chose to use my Mushroom Petal Bloom colorway and so far the variations and pooling are looking so amazing.  I really do feel like I am meant to do this.