So much news, so little time

So we did successfully move into the new house (if by successful you mean that ourselves and our possessions are in the building. If unpacking and getting organized are required to achieve success--give me another month!). And I survived the end of school year stuff, although it was quite a slog to the finish. Oh, and I feel like I spent all of June on the road--visiting Michigan, Denver, and working a few extra days in London. I'm sure some other stuff happened too, but by now it would be old news!

So what's the plan for the summer? Three main goals, in any order:
1) Develop the etsy shop more: Expand the stock, promote the shop, consider selling wholesale, etc.
2) Fix up the house: Finish the unpacking, organize the wool & office space, fix up the outside space to enjoy this summer (deck needs to be stripped & refinished, we need a new BBQ, etc.!)
3) Seriously consider the next step career-wise. I'm thinking of taking my Principal's Qualification courses, because there were things about administration that I enjoyed. But I'm also considering other ideas, and still harboring the dream that Waterloo Wools will just take off! :-)

And for some photo content today, it's back to goal #1. I have decided to have regular shop updates every Tuesday (and if it's a busy week, maybe other days too--but we'll start with Tuesday). I have created a flickr set for my first regular update, which will happen tomorrow. I tried to create colourways that relate to Ontario tourist attractions. I had grand ideas in my head about how they should look--some turned out better than others. My surprise favourite is:


Monarch Migration in Falklands.

Stop by the flickr set, or visit the shop for the update tomorrow and let me know your favourite item!

Building Business

In anticipation of the "expansion" of my etsy shop when I get dye space in the new house (1 week away!! Woot!), I've been spending some time lately working on ways to promote the shop a bit more. I think it's a hard time of year to be selling yarn, wool, and wool products--but if I can build a base now, I might be in good shape when fall comes around.

To that end, today I discovered the Stone Soup Challenge, which is a really neat idea. Everyone who signs up pledges to spend a certain amount of their etsy (or other craft site) profits on fellow artists. This is basically what I do anyways, since at this point my shop is about feeding my craft habit, not about making a real profit. In fact, most months I spend in excess of what I'm taking in--hopefully the ability to dye things myself will start to change that, though! I am looking forward to using this challenge to find some new etsy stores to shop from, though--and when I do, I pledge to mention them here for a bit more promotion.

I'm also working on a bit of advertising, and just in general trying to increase my visibility so people can find the shop. Oh, and this summer I have plans to start selling some of my yarns through a few brick-and-mortar shops. I think there are a few places in ON I can sell them, and I have at least one interested store in the US, so that's super exciting! I'm not sure I can produce fast enough to sustain a lot of LYS business, but I'll take it slow and see how it goes.

Of course, all of this promoting is taking away time from the creating. Maybe I'll get back to that this afternoon!

Getting Creative

This week has been all about getting inspired by other people, and putting those inspirations into my own designs. Just a bit of creativity peeking out!

First, last weekend's big weaving project--not quite in its finished state, but as close as it gets right now:

It's a woven bag. Warp & handles are MiddleEarthKnitters sock yarn in "The Ents", and the weft is Hello Yarn Club combed top in "Peat." It was woven in one piece, and I've done some rough seaming to assemble it. My inspiration was a woven pillow that I saw on Ravelry made out of HY roving, and then a bag design from Handwoven. It needs a lining to make it a bit more sturdy, but my sewing machine is in storage for another 2 weeks, so I can't do too much more with it. But it is SO SOFT!!

Then yesterday I got very inspired by a question on one of the Rav forums. A few years ago I tried to find some patterns for UNC dishcloths, but didn't find one. I made a few of my own, and kept some notes, but never organized them. After a request from someone on Rav for this type of pattern, I dug my notes back out. Today I made the Tarheel version:


I've written up the pattern and hope to be uploading it to Ravelry soon in case anyone else wants to make one! I'm also hoping to get around to a design for one with the interlocking NC logo, so we'll see how that goes.

And finally, there is the sock design I'm working on. Not much to show off right now:

But it's growing fast, so I'll have the first one done soon. I'm combining bits and pieces from 3 sources here--a stitch pattern I found on Ravelry, a heel from Cat Bordhi, and pedicure/flip-flop toes from another pattern. We'll see how it all works out!

Oh, and guess what? Next weekend the K-W Knitters Guild is hosting Cat Bordhi. I'll be going to her Sunday workshop, which is "Dancing Along New Pathways"--apparently we get to play around with Cat and come up with new ways to make socks. Sounds exciting, and I'm thinking it will only further fuel my creativity!

Fun with Fringe

One of the frustrating things I have found about weaving is figuring out how to best finish a project off. I understand there are entire books of finishing techniques for weaving, and it's probably about time that I look them up and learn some new ideas. At my weaving class, we learned to do twisted fringe, as seen here:


Our instructor had a neat little gizmo for twisting the fringe, but it isn't terrible hard to do my hand, so I've finished a lot of my scarves that way.

Even easier is just doing simple knots:


I could swear that I once just left the fringe completely "as is" with no knotting or twisting, but I can't find any photos that show that, so maybe I made that up.

However, I will admit that these options left me wanting more. I thought there must be more ways to finish a scarf, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what they would be. Then I saw a picture of someone else's finished work on Ravelry, in which she had tied a cool pattern of knots into the fringe. I knew right away that I wanted to do it, so I proceeded to Google. Lo and behold, I found this fabulous reference.

And now I have this cool triple-knotted fringe:


I have to say, this left me very excited, and I am now in search of even more ways to finish my fringe. Got an idea for me? Please let me know!

New in Stock!

I've added a new section to my Etsy shop this week, featuring handwoven items. I'm discovering that a Rigid Heddle loom means that I will rapidly end up with more scarves than I can wear or gift, so I might as well try to sell a few.

I expect that I will mainly feature scarves made from my handspun yarns, although one of the two I listed today is from a commercial yarn. I may also branch out into other handwoven items, not just scarves...we'll see where it goes!

More pictures are on the site, but these are the 2 scarves currently available:

A few tastes of Honduras

So my camera did turn up, and I've managed to get the photos uploaded. Unfortunately, I didn't get that many great shots (most were taken from the window of the bus!), but I can share a few.

We took a LONG drive in which we crossed almost the entire country, so I got a few snapshots of the varying terrain we passed:




Our home base was the city of Comayagua, which has a lovely central square with a cathedral:


On Good Friday, there is a procession from the Cathedral. Groups of people prepare "carpets" on the streets for this the night before. The carpets are usually made out of dyed sawdust, and portray a variety of images--typically Biblical, but not always. We were at the orphanage when the actual procession occurred, but we did take an early morning walk to see the carpets as they were being finished. I have a ton of pictures of these, the colours and detail work were amazing. It's hard to pick just a few to show off!

This one was made by the family that owned our hotel, a church group from Minnesota, and the children from the orphanage:


Check out the detail in this one:


We took a group of children to the Mayan ruins at Copan. We only had about an hour or so to see the ruins, but it was a very impressive site. Seemed much better preserved than what I saw at Tulum in Mexico:


Check out the intricacy of the carvings in the stonework:


Everytime this cart passed us in the village, I tried to get a photo, but he moved so fast I usually didn't even get my camera out in time. This day he was driving through the yard of the school, which slowed him down enough to get this:


However, one day he actually stopped and let one of the other volunteers take a photo of me SITTING on the cart! She's still at the orphanage, but I'm hoping she emails me the photo when she gets home in a few weeks.

Most of the rest of my photos are of kids at the orphanage or of my students working on projects, which I won't be sharing here. I wish I had taken more photos, and I wish I had been able to really get out and see more while we were there. Perhaps a return visit is in order!

I'm back...

So I arrived back from Honduras at about 4 am on Saturday, and the movers showed up at our house around 8:00. I managed to survive the packing and loading with only minor issues--I did somehow let them pack up my one-cup coffee maker--normally kept on my desk at school and only brought home so I could have coffee during the move, so the next 6 weeks without that could be interesting. I also apparently wasn't looking when they packed up the bathroom, and have had to go buy a new toothbrush, hairbrush, and a few other small necessities. But all in all, that's not so bad, right?

Sunday we cleaned, and Monday we signed the papers and turned in the keys. (oh, and collected a nice cheque, so it's hard to complain about that!)

Fortunately school is closed today (Baha'i holy day), so I have a little bit of time to unwind and catch up on life before going to work tomorrow. I have bags and boxes and suitcases to unpack, mail to catch up on, and probably quite a few phone calls and emails to return. And I would love some time to process my trip, but am not sure how that's going to go. If I'm really lucky I'll take an hour and sit down at my spinning wheel and see if I remember how it works after 3 weeks away from it!

Photos from Honduras...I didn't take a lot of good ones, but there were some. However, I'm not sure where my camera is now. It might be in my car, or Stephen's car, or a box, or...we'll see. Most of the best photos were taken by others, though, so I'm hoping they share them soon. I'll post again when I have something to share!

Now it's time to get to work, I think...

And in other news

This is more of an update post, no fiber arts here. Just in case there are some non-knitting friends & family out there checking in to see what's going on!

First up, I received quite the BIG birthday present yesterday...we bought a house! We'd been looking for a few weeks and had seen some good properties, but we lucked into finding a really great place this week and reached an agreement on it last night. The market here seems to really be heating up--a lot of the properties we looked at sold at or above asking price, and some went to multiple offers. We feel really lucky to have been able to get our offer in before anyone else started bidding for it, because there was a lot of activity on the house it's first day on the market.

I haven't taken any pictures myself yet, but I think this link will get you to the pictures in the listing. If it doesn't work, maybe I'll get some pictures myself next week!

We don't move in until the end of May, so we'll be stuck living condo life for 2+ months still. But I think I can take it, knowing the end is in sight--and knowing that we have such a great house to go to! I especially love the outdoor space--the wooded lot, the deck, the patio, the fact that it backs onto a trail (that's not a road in the pictures, it's a walking trail!). There's just a small front yard to mow, but plenty of space for planting out back, and maybe a container veggie garden on the deck where there will be lots of sun. Of course, the St. Jacobs farmers market is a short walk from the house, so I don't really NEED to grow my own veggies!

In other news...I just learned today that I'm going to be chaperoning a school trip to Honduras in 2 weeks! We send our grade 11 students every year on a service trip to an orphanage there, but this year one of the regular chaperones had to pull out for medical reasons. (She's OK, but her doctors have suggested that she shouldn't be heading to the third world right now.) She asked me to fill in for her, so I'm scrambling to get ready for that now. (vaccinations, etc.) It should be a really great experience, I've actually thought before how great it would be to go--although the timing isn't great. I'll get back 2 days before the closing date on the house we're moving out of! Under the circumstances, we plan to pay movers to do as much of the work as possible (including packing).

OK, I think that's all the big stuff. I'm on "vacation" for a bit longer, although still doing some telecommuting. Plus, most of my time off now will go to planning for the move and the trip. But I'm still squeezing in some craft time, and might have more pictures before I flee the country. Watch this space! :-)

Fireside Frenzy

I'm focusing this post on some finished knitting today, and will be posting another "big news" post separately! So here's what I'm showing off today...excuse the bad photography:


Fireside Footies in my handspun Spunky Eclectic club fiber (December colourway--Champagne, domestic wool blend).

This pair is for Stephen. I've been talking about knitting him some slippers for ages, and was thinking of something in grey--so when I finished this yarn I knew that was its destiny! BTW, the yarn looked like this:

Worsted weight singles--about 225 yards. This was shorter than what the pattern called for (240 yards), so I was a bit nervous. In fact, I decided to knit a test pair for myself out of some Patons Classic Wool Merino just to be sure I would have enough handspun:


There was leftover yarn from this pair, so I proceeded with Stephen's and also had quite a lot of yarn leftover. I would say that (depending on the exact yarn, how much it felts, and the finished size) you could easily make a pair of these out of 200 yards of worsted weight.

Now just a note about the pattern...it's not the clearest set of directions I've ever encountered. First, and this is a small complaint, in the directions for the heel flap it says "work R 1&2 for 12 rows". I'm quite certain this is a typo and that the author meant 12 REPEATS--a total of 24 rows. 12 rows would be way to shallow of a heel. From looking at other people's work, I think pretty much everyone has figured this out.

The bigger problem I encountered was in working the heel turn. The directions as given do not work out--you wouldn't be able to work 7 rows of the heel turn pattern, and you would end up with more than 14 stitches left. For my pair, I muddled through and came up with my own modified version:
R1: S1 P12 P2tog P1
Turn
R2: S1 K3 K2tog K1
Turn
R3: S1 P to one stitch before the break (the last turn) P2tog, P1
Turn
R3: S1 K to one stitch before the break (the last turn) K2tog, K1
work rows 3 & 4 for 7 more rows (until no st remain to be worked)
(14 st should remain)

This gives you the right number of rows & stitches, but does make a pretty narrow heel. It actually worked well for my foot, though.

But after working that option out, I received a message from a Ravelry user with a link to her own corrected version. After reading it, I think that she has figured out what the designer actually meant. So I used this version to make Stephen's pair, and it seems to have worked out quite well.

OK, so that's what I've turned out in knitting lately. More life news to come shortly, and maybe a spinning post as well...