Socks, Socks, Socks

Happy Halloween friends! What a month it has been. Full of knitting, dying, selling, painting, and making! I have loved every minute of it.  

Tonight it's all about socks, as I finished my October pair last night, just in time for Halloween, and have the next pair pretty much planned out.

"Lacey Pumpkin Socks" are toe up, short-row heel and toe done in a fun orange and black colorway.  The yarn is 'panda' - Merino/nylon/bamboo - that was handdyed by my LYS.  I have been saving it for this month for pretty obvious reasons. 

Because... well... because :)

Next up on my list will be a simple pair made in my own dyed yarn on the new "sock" base.  I haven't had a chance to knit any samples in this 75 merino/ 25 nylon and need something for my upcoming Fiber Fest (in 2.5 weeks....wow). So what better time than to make some socks! Hopefully at least one will be done in time to use as a demo.

I'm sure it's the nylon content, but it does seem interesting that the sock base tends to dye up more pastel than the 100% merino.  Oh the things you learn when you start to really play with dying!

Now I just can't decide what socks to make.  I probably should just do some vanilla socks, as this yarn is highly variegated and I don't know how it will pool, but what fun is that? Maybe I'll try Flowers and Sunshine, a pattern I found via Instabgram.

Image (C) Dana Gervais

Or there's always the standbys - Vanilla Latte, Hermoine's Everyday Socks, and Jeck. 

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Do you have a stand-by for your sock knitting? Any suggestions for patterns with highly variegated? Shout out below!

I hope you have a safe and wonderful Halloween (if you celebrate).  Until next time!

~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!

Knitting Road Trip

I'm not really sure what happened to updating on Monday or Tuesday, but somehow I got off. Either way, I wanted to update today while this post was fresh in my mind.  I will get back to the regular schedule soon.

Yesterday I didn't have to teach due to state testing, so another teacher friend of mine offered up a quick road trip to a couple of the Yarn Crawl shops.  As much as I wanted to resist, it was just too hard and so off we went.

The first stop on our trip was Yarnorama, a cute little shop in the very tiny town of Paige, TX.  I really enjoy this ship every time I visit, as she has a huge selection of great brands as well as her own line of hand dyed - Fiber Obsessions.  It's always an adventure to explore her cute little shop.

The second shop on our little trip was The Quilted Skein in LaGrange, TX.  This is always a favorite stop for me, because of the amount of color and light that fills the space.  Their yarn selection goes all the way to the ceiling and yet it's still not too crowded.  They carry some really great yarn brands as well. One of my favorites is The Knitted Wit, which is so squishy.  I also discovered a couple of new brands here - Jitterbug and Leon Alexander Yarns. 

A quick lunch and we were back on the road, headed for Rohan Meadery, which is a supporter of the crawl and even carries yarn! The tasting room manager is also a yarn dyer and has some AMAZING things! Check them out for yourself - Blue Mule Fiber.  It was hard not to resist buying a few things.

The final stop on our trip was a little town called Roundtop, which is centered around the antique business.  A few times a year they hold HUGE antique festivals that draw thousands to the area.  Luckily we missed that this year, but were still able to stop and check out some of the cute little shops, including Copper Shade Tree.  This shop features lots of local Texas artists, including new favorites Joan Bohn and David Vollmer.  Check out that Wire Knitting, holy cow!

Image (c) David Vollmer

My budget wasn't as high as I would have liked, but I managed to stay within it, which makes me feel good.  I walked away with some Fiber Obsessions roving and some Blue Mule yarn.  Both are gorgeous colors and I cannot wait to get working with them.

Finally, I discovered a few new patterns that are now in my Ravelry favorites.  Hopefully at least one will get knitted soon?

Hexagon Petal tee

Barnstable

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Been on any knitting road trips lately? They sure are fun, especially when you can play hooky from work for the day to do it!

Have a fabulous week!

~Lisa

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!