Tag Archives: Almost a Business

Drive By Update on All the Things

First, an update on the hand-made wedding thing.

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Here’s our save the date postcard, photographed by Brock’s sister, Lori Locke. She’s an amazing photographer and artist. (The font in the photo is original by her.) If you live in Northeast Kansas or the KC Metro area, give her site a look! The picture was taken in front of the old barn (at the farm where the wedding will take place) over Thanksgiving. (True story, Lori was just taking pictures for fun. She didn’t know we were getting married yet when the photo was taken. I am really grateful to her for letting us use it!)

Next, here’s a quick picture of what went out in the January Shipment of the RAWR sock club.

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The inaugural yarn was, of course, hot pink, could it be anything else? Also, the special gift this time was a hand-printed greeting card featuring hipster Tiny Dino. This was my first shot at block printing, and I think it turned out pretty well. Brock drew the dinosaur and helped a bit cutting the linoleum. I really like how the cards came out. I am toying with using this technique for the wedding invitations.

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Card in detial

I finished my abigail cardigan and have been wearing it for a couple of weeks. Not one person has asked me if I knit it myself, which tells me I did a good job with the construction, so I am pleased. The yarn is pilling a lot in the underarms, but nothing a sweater stone can’t handle.

I am now hard at work on the Call Him Ishmael sweater I am making for Brock out of Nikol Lohr’s Literary Knits book. I am knitting it out of plain ole wool yarn that I dyed a nice masculine red, somewhere between brick and wine. I am nearly done with the yoke and love the pattern. It’s the perfect ration of mindless stockinette to shaping and cabling. Of course, it’s been in time out for the last three days because I twisted half the cables backwards on the last cable round and didn’t notice until I was four rounds up. I have become rather adept at dropping down and re-twisting the cables (the trick is to use double pointed needles on just the part you need to work on), but couldn’t face actually doing it quite yet. I will tackle it this afternoon so I have something to do during the Superbowl, as I am neither a big fan of football or beer and junk food.

Speaking of beer and junk food, I have been hibernating in the losing weight arena, possibly eating too many gluten free bread-like products and not enough vegetables. I have, however, been working out more regularly, and am making a commitment to do something active every day this month. So far so good. I hope to give weekly check-in updates about my progress in this arena. I have been gluten-free for 10 months now. I feel like after almost a year, I should have made more progress. I do try to remind myself that it has been a stressful year full of new jobs and changing birth controls and stuff that generally makes it difficult to lose weight. But then again, what year isn’t, you know? All I know, is I want to be stronger and buy fewer yards of yarn to make myself a sweater. Two, very simple goals.

And last, but certainly not least, I have been very distracted the last couple of weeks. Our apartment complex changed it’s pet policy at the beginning of the year, which made my goal of eventually living in a place where I could have a pet and a garden in the ground slightly more attainable. We decided to adopt a kitten from the local shelter. Since then, I have been reading about taking care of cats, reviewing cat products and foods (and trying to find an affordable grain-free cat food.) Basically, I haven’t been thinking about much else other than making our home right for our new addition. It’s very similar to how I was when preparing for Athrun, though much less intense.

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Meet Minerva Pigwidgeon Cheeseburger III, I am sure she will be a recurring character.

28

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Today is the start of my New Year. Today is my birthday.

I am really excited for this year. I have plans. Big Plans. I am getting married. I am taking my first load of fiber to a mill. I am expanding my business. I am going to knit and spin a lot.

I haven’t really sorted out all of my goals and objectives into bullet points and lists yet, but don’t worry, I will. I love a good list. And bullet points. That’s a project that I am getting started today. Not that I haven’t been thinking about it non-stop for months, but today I am finally ready to sit down and start making a PLAN to do all the things. (After I eat a giant cheeseburger and gorge myself on brownies.)

I am ready for you, 28. Let’s go on an adventure.

Introduciong RAWR: A Tiny Dino Studios Sock Club

Can I tell you how longI have wanted to do a sock yarn club?

The answer is pretty much forever.

Because who in the world does not want sock yarn to just show up in their mail box magically, month after month? I know I do.

And today, I finally added a sock yarn club to the Tiny Dino Studios Etsy Shop.

There are either 3 or 6-month subscriptions available, so go check em out.

Also, from now through Friday I am running a special special Thanksgiving sale. Enter coupon code THANKSGIVING2012 at check out and receive 25% off your entire purchase, including the new sock yarn club subscriptions.

RAWR!

Cormo and Cormo and Spinning

I have a set of pictures that might look fairly deceiving.


A pile of cormo top for spinning.


Some cormo yarn in the process of being spun.


The body of a cormo sweater.

Oh what progress can a girl make in a day!

Except that these are two different projects. The sweater is already spun Cormo yarn came from a sale at Juniper Moon Farm, while stuff I am spinning was my 2011 spinners share from the same farm. It’s delightful to work with. These two are both my first cormo projects, and I am completely in love with the fiber. It makes me want fleeces.

Well, that’s not new, everything makes me want fleeces. The only reason I don’t have more fleeces is that I don’t have a drum carder, or the patience to use hand cards day in and day out. Otherwise, my apartment would need no furniture because we would just luxuriate on fleeces instead.

mmmm…Sheepy.

Seriuosly though, I just figured out why I don’t spin more. You see, I used to have my wheel set up by my desk. My desk chair was the perfect height for keeping good posture and still spinning for hours. Except I never sit at my desk after dinner unless I have a major deadline. (After dinner is when most of the fiber progress happens around here.) And if I am at my desk facing a deadline, it is not usually spinning related. (To be fair, I have never had a spinning deadline, but I am looking to change all that.) No, after dinner, on any normal night, I am on my seat on the sofa, watching something British on the TeeVee. I can’t spin on the sofa, it’s too low and cushy, which are great qualities, I feel, in a sofa, but not so much for a spinning perch.

So what did I do?

Wait for it….

………

I sat on a pillow. And it was perfect!

I don’t know why it took me two years to think of putting a throw pillow under my bum, but there you go. Now all I want to do after dinner is spin. Of course, I don’t have anything dyed the right color, and dyeing can take days, but I’ve had this cormo share for a year, and it hadn’t told me what color it wanted to be yet, so I hadn’t dyed it, and I have never spun natural white fiber. Saturday I was itching to spin something and I had been working on that oh so cushy sweater, so I grabbed it on a whim and gave it a whirl. It started to speak to me then. This cormo wants to be a thin, dk-ish weight, three ply yarn, but it hasn’t decided on a color yet. I thought I would get bored with spinning the undyed stuff, but it looks so nice on the bobbin, and splitting it into one ounce little chunks makes me feel like I am spinning waaaay faster than I am–and I am having a blast.

Something happens when I start really getting into what I am working on. I start thinking big–huge even. Like, I should start a regular line of handspun yarns. Not like the one I have now, where I hand paint 100g of fiber and then spin it up into a ooak 100g skein. I am talking buying a fleece and spinning that into a whole fleece’s worth of yarn. And then selling that, dyed in upon request. I mean, I’ve already wanted to start processing fleeces and selling hand processed spinning fiber to spinners, and I sell mill-spun yarn to knitters and crocheters, but why not start and line of handspun? From types of wool that aren’t merino? (Nothing wrong w/ merino, most of my mill-spun yarn is merino, it’s just so ubiquitous, and frankly, not my favorite to spin.) And better yet, why not buy from local (meaning midwest–since that’s the region of the country I am from) farmers? Cause then I could help advertise those farms as well?

Sweet.

Let’s do it.

Only problem?

Still don’t have a drum carder. But I’m working on it.

I am still working out the wheres and the whyfores, but this is the sort of business I saw my one-lady yarn dyeing company evolve into eventually–I just forgot about it a little bit over the last two years.

I have been doing a lot of business soul-searching lately–a lot of realizing that I need to put a whole lot more energy into this machine if it’s going to keep on rolling. I am excited to do it, but it’s going to take some time to work out. So don’t expect a bunch of different stuff up tomorrow, but just know, I’m working on it.

Twisted Fiber Festival

Just in case you were wondering where I have disappeared to:

I have been organizing this with the help of two lovely ladies who are, like me, going to be vendors also. As you can see below, I am teaching a class as well.

Twisted! Details

Vendors:
Alpacas at Orchard Hill
Knit n Spin
Tiny Dino Studios
Twisted Sisters
Th’red Head
Blushing Ewe
Shirley’s Succulents
Tom Swayne Woodworking
Prairie Productions
Laura’s Pygoras
Creations by Anna
Rouse House
Images in Time 3D
The Wicked Stitch
Elaine Kruger’s Sewing
Barb’s Nuno Felted Wearable Art

TWISTED Fiber Festival
FREE Classes/Demos
Saturday, November 3, 2012

The Potwin Fiber Artisans are happy to offer the following FREE
classes/demonstrations during the course of the TWISTED Fiber Festival! Each of the demonstrators is an artisan in the subject matter of their class/demo and many have scheduled classes in January so that you can build upon the knowledge and techniques you learn during the festival. Each session is 45-55 minutes long and the artisans will have tools available for you to utilize during the class; some will have tools available for purchase, and many vendors at the festival will have fibers available for purchase!

10am- BEGINNING KNITTING with Jenny Binfield
Jenny will show you how to caste on and begin knitting, and will have a handout with her basic knitting tips and techniques. Needles and yarn will be available, or you can bring your own needles and purchase some delicious handspun from one of the vendors.

11am- BEGINNING CROCHET with Susan Hudgens
Learn the basics of crochet, including slipknot, chain, slip stitch, single crochet & double crochet. Bring a crochet hook, yarn and scissors-some materials available, first come, first serve.

Noon- SPINNING with Marla Holt
Learn drafting techniques that allow you to quickly and easily spin fun thick n thin yarn and lofty thick singles on your spinning wheel. Please bring your spinning wheel and about 4 ounce of fiber you are familiar with spinning.

1pm- EMBROIDERY BASICS with Susan Hudgens
Learn the skills needed to complete a simple embroidery project including choosing materials, overhand knot, back-stitch, overhand stitch, French knot, satin stitch,, Lazy Daisy and as many other as we can fit in. Bring scissors, aida cloth, needles & floss-some materials available, first come, first serve.

1pm- DRUM CARDING DEMONSTRATION with Jennifer Beck
With an eye for color and texture, Jennifer creates beautiful art batts! Come watch her show you just how fun and easy it is to create an amazing fiber batt on a drum carder, ready to be spun into a unique OOAK yarn or used in your next felting project.

2pm- MAGIC LOOP KNITTING with Meg Wickham
The Magic Loop Technique allows you to make something small and circular by using one long 32″ or longer circular needle. Bring 75 yards of worsted weight (very soft) yarn and US sz 7 needles at least 32″ if you want to try alongside the instructor.

3pm- DROP SPINDLE SPINNING with Lori Warren
Lori will cover the basics of using a drop spindle: getting started, prepping your fiber, drafting, starting a leader, and park & draft spinning. She will also demonstrate how to skein and finish your handspun yarn. Drop Spindles, made by Lori, will be available for $10.

4pm- NEEDLE FELTING BASICS with Anna Walker
Stab something into existence and learn from @FELTit herself! With a barbed needle and some pretty fiber, learn the basics of needle felting as you create your own little cyclone! Basic needle felting instructions will go home with you along with your felting needle and a foam block!

I might not be very present until all of this is over, but when it is, look for the relaunch of the Tiny Dino Studios Etsy store and lots and lots of knitting!

Sweater Class!

Remember last week when I showed you this?

It’s pretty exciting. Not because I magically knit an entire sweater in a week, because I didn’t. In fact, the sweater still looks exactly the same. What’s exciting is that this is my pre-work for a sweater class I will be teaching in September!

Here is everything you need to know!

Project Class: O W L S by Kate Davies Skill Level: Adventurous Beginner – Intermediate
Six Week Class Meets Thursday, September 13, 20, 27, 2012 and October 4, 11, 18, 2012 from 7-9 pm at Potwin Presbyterian Churn in Topeka.
Cost $45

This iconic sweater by Kate Davies would make a great first sweater project, or a fun way to explore new techniques for an intermediate knitter. O W L S is a women’s sweater knit in the round from the bottom up. It include waist shaping and a ring of cabled owl around the yoke. Knitting this sweater will teach you how to knit, purl, increase, decrease, knit in the round, cable, bottom-up seamless sweater construction, and short rows.

The student is responsible for purchasing their own pattern and supplies. (If this is your first sweater, I highly recommend purchasing your yarn from The Wicked Stitch, The Yarn Barn, or other local yarn store where the employees can answer your questions.) The pattern can be purchased online at ravelry or from the designer’s website.

Supplies needed: enough chunky yarn to knit the sweater in your chosen size, 32-inch (or longer) circular needle in US sizes 10 and 10.5 or size to achieve gauge, cable needle, stitch markers in two colors, tapestry needle and waste yarn. Optional supplies, 5mm buttons, needle, thread.

Homework: please have your gauge swatch knitted by the first night of class.

I have long been wanting to knit this sweater. It is fun and simple. I hope to have a good, every day pullover when I am finished knitting it–and some cool weather to wear it in. (Right now I am pictured myself pairing it with a flirty skirt, my black boots, and the socks from the cover of Sock Knitting Master Class, knit in a grey instead of brown. It’s a funky outfit, but oh will I ever be warm!)

If you’re a local and on the fence about the class, take a look at all the projects on the ravelry project gallery page. It’s full of inspirational photographs, yarn ideas, and helpful hints. I guarantee you will fall in love. And if you aren’t local, download the pattern anyway. Kate Davies is a brilliant independent designer, and I promise, the $6 (or whatever the current exchange rate from the pound is) is entirely worth it. If I hadn’t been so focused on the pineapple socks, I would be well into the sleeves of this by now. I am not exaggerating, that’s how quickly this knits up.

So happyknittingfriends, I have 8 spots open for this class and you have one month to collect your materials. Won’t you join me?

(Also, check out what other classes the PFA is currently offering!)

Focus

I have been blogging to you in my head as just about every day of the week, especially on days I don’t get a chance to blog. I have been having so many new ideas!

You see, I am now gainfully employed, instead of just-barely-sustainably employed, which opens up a lot of new opportunities. I can now seriously entertain the idea of one day owning a car that can haul all my yarn and supplies to craft shows. I fantasize about my future yard and future giant garden with a real sense of attainability. I can pay my bills and use my debit card without cringing for fear of it being declined. What will happen first of course, before any of that other stuff is acted upon, is that I might finally be able to pay off my debt. I don’t have a lot, bit it’s enough to be an encumbrance for attaining a decent car or a yard or a vacation. To have the opportunity to finally make more than minimum payments on my debt is a staggering prospect. It’s freeing. It’s a whole new world, as it were.

And the crazy this is, I really like my job. I think I have said this before, but even that fact still surprises me. I thought for the longest time that if I wanted to work for more than minimum wage I would somehow have to compromise my integrity. While I know this assumption is wrong on many levels, I also don’t believe it to be uncommon. Perhaps it’s a collegiate-inspired disillusionment? I am fortified know that I can go to work each day and do my job and not be dishonest. (I think, working in the service industry requires an amount of dishonesty in that it requires a person to assume some complacent anonymity to get through the shift and not annoy customers.)

At the same time, the new schedule and the new environment is an adjustment. It is all new, and I have a lot of new work-related things to think about. So much so that sometimes I have trouble shutting these things off throughout the day and into the evening. Sometimes, I wake myself up in the night thinking up clever merchandising plans for one of my retail sites that have nothing to do with reality. (One recent idea/dream had to do with feigning a haunting, which involves a level of dubiousness that I do not possess.) Because of this, my fiber art energies have been diverted into as much knitting as I can handle. With two sweaters and two pairs of socks on the needles, I am in my knitting element. I have not been dyeing any yarn–except for one special order. I have not been attending the farmers market. I have not been spinning or weaving or designing. I have been knitting items that are not for sale as fast as my fingers can move.

All the while, I have been fantasizing about owning my own yarn store and what about my new job I could take with me to do that. Now, don’t get too excited. Remember the beginning of my post where I was excited about some very simple, generally attainable things? Without a serious financial backer, there would be no way I would be able to open my own retail operation anytime in the foreseeable future, but I have been applying these fantasies to Tiny Dino Studios.

In the past, I have tried to sell knitted good along with my yarn. I have had good luck with these products, bu t I don’t enjoy the process. I am selfish with my knitting. I do gifts of course, but when knitting to sell, I sometimes get angry that I can’t knit what I want. Taking frustration out on knitting is not a good place to be.

As fall approaches, I have been feeling pressure to create winter items like scarves, hats, and mittens for sale at the farmer’s market. I am not going to give in to that pressure. I have other knitting goals that are more important to me to meet. I want to teach knitting classes and eventually design my own sweaters and mittens and socks. There is a lot of work I need to do to be able to reach that goal. I am working through projects / books that I believe will get me there.

Focusing down to only just selling yarn from now on takes a lot of pressure off of me and gives me the motivation to move forward with my dyeing business where lately I have been feeling discouraged and confused.

A Bit of an Hiatus

Some of you might have (or are bound to now) notice that I put my etsy shop on vacation this morning.

I am not taking it down.

I am not dissolving my business.

I am not even going to quit selling at the farmers market.

I just have not had the time or the peace of mind to put the energy into the online shop that it needs. I make a sale, then forget about it until it’s the last available shipping day. This has happened with every sale this month. I could understand if I weren’t making sales, but I am, and then I forget about them. And I don’t think that is fair to anyone, especially the folks waiting for their fun, new yarn. So I put my shop on vacation until November 5th, 2012.

This gives me time to do three things:
1. Settle fully in to my new job
2. Plan the 3rd Annual Fiber Arts Bazaar (I will settle for nothing less than a fabulous.)
3. Build up some hand-made inventory and replenish sock yarn, etc for the holiday season.

Things I am not taking a break from:
1. Blogging and micro blogging. Keep checking back here and on facebook and twitter
2. Knitting and spinning and maybe weaving if I ever get off my arse and get my loom back out
3. Dyeing
4. Selling locally

So there you have it, the big news.

In other realms, I have decided what my knitting challenge during the Olympics is going to be! (see how I cleverly worked my way around the name controversy there?)

I am going to make Motheye by Anne Hanson out of my red laceweight yarn. And I am going to finish this one! (Some of you might have noticed that I have pulled out every laceweight project I have ever started)

What’s your Olympic challenge?

Sock Inspiration

One of my favorite things to knit in summer is socks. Top-down vanilla socks are easy for me now, because I can carry the pattern around in my head and I don’t have a large wool something on my lap when it’s 115 degrees outside. (And I do wish I was exaggerating.)

Here are a few pictures I took a couple of weeks ago of socks I have been working on.

I used yarn left over from my Daybreak shawl to knit a cute pair of shorty socks.

I really love these colors together!

Then, I treated myself to some Ginny Weasley sock yarn from Gnome Acres. I will admit I bought the yarn because of what it was called (it’s no secret that I love my Harry Potter), but the colors are gorgeous too.

Here’s how it’s knitting up for my size socks. (64 stitches over 8 stitches per inch, your mileage may vary.) Of course, this was a couple of weeks ago, so that sock is long finished. And I am onto the second one. I am seriously considering indulging in the Bertie Bott’s colorway next.

If you are a local, and want to learn to knit socks for yourself (and your friends and family) I still have space in my sock class!

Special Promotion!

As I was doing some light maintenance to the etsy shop this morning, I noticed that my online sales are sitting pretty at 96. 96! Do you know how close that is to 100? I’ll tell you since I am so good at math: it’s 4 skeins away from 100. And so, I thought, you know, this is cause for celebration.

From now until I sell 100 items, all items in the shop (including spinner fiber) with be 20% off with coupon code DINO20. So get in there and get while the getting is good, because I imagine those will go fast!

What’s even better than yarn on sale?

Free yarn? Custom yarn? How about free custom yarn?

Whoever purchases with 100th skein of yarn will get a free custom dyed skein of 100% merino sock yarn.

Happy Shopping!