Well it has been an interesting month, and an especially interesting week. Interesting is probably not a good word for it, but I try to stay positive…so keep that in mind as you read on.  This is also going to be a long post.

This morning, as I was making my coffee, I was trying to figure out what “lesson” or “gift” I am supposed to pull from this week’s experience.  This on top of the experience 2 weeks ago when my trailer broke down on I-84 just at exit 7 and 8 in Danbury, CT.  Trailers having problems on busy highways can be disastrous for the truck and the trailer being pulled, but it can be equally bad for those traveling around a trailer.  Every day as I travel on roads and highways, I realize how much faith we all have that we will get somewhere safely and that all the other drivers will do exactly what needs to be done to get there and stay safe themselves.

But this week, well I suppose it is one of the worst things that can happen to a small business. I have had smoke damage to almost all of my dyed inventory, and to some of my undyed yarn base. How did this happen?  Very simply.  I went over to the studio on Sunday and dyed a pot of yarn. Then I walked out of the studio thinking I had turned it off, but hadn’t. Thank God for stainless steel pots! as over the course of the next 16 hours it smouldered but never ignited.  Jen found it the next morning when she came in.

The Pot - (Yes, the water was added when it was found)

So we immediately opened the studio up and removed everything and as the day went on I became convinced that the damage was worse than I could imagine.  The smell more penetrating than I could believe.  There is nothing so sad as a carport full of yarn and fiber that simply reeks of smoke.  On Monday, we also took almost everything on the website down to zero as it was clear we could not sell anything.  I put a vacation notice on the front page as I have just needed some time to think.

Day One

Moved all yarn to the carport

Another picture of the carport

Rack of toes - Stinky!!

So here is what is happening.  After conferring with my insurance adjuster, we are taking all of the affected items to the dump. None NONE of the smoke damaged yarn will be available for anyone to purchase at any price.  I have a few skeins that I have hung outside as they were my “dyeing guides”, but as soon as the colorways as repeated, those will be gone from outside.

As we started the process of getting rid of the yarn yesterday, it was amazing how much the smoke had affected the color of the yarn.  Hmmm….. hand-dyer….color….feel…smell…texture….isn’t that what you are buying when you buy yarn from me and from other dyers?   I have had so many suggestions about…can’t you just air it out? can’t you wash it? and then air it out? Don’t you want to do a fire sale? Can’t you use an ozone generator (we are in the repainted studio.) Well, maybe the smell will go away, but I have been told that ozone can pull some color out of fabrics, oops…that darn color thing!  So, about 900 pounds went to the transfer station (dump)yesterday and more will follow today.

Sport weight yarn

Sock Yarn

To be clear about my thought process about the yarn and you, my customers.  The quality of the yarn, its colors, its feel, its smell (or lack thereof) is what you are buying from me. I cannot let any one of those things be less important than the other. I cannot let making a buck be more important than the quality of my yarn.  My reputation is on the line. And no doubt, I will see many of your sniffing my yarn at shows to make sure I am telling the truth about all of this.  All I can say is here are the pictures.

Yowza skeins

Yarn Headed to the Dump

Yarn in the dump.....

Load ticket from Trip #1

As to the studio itself.  Thank God it did not go up in flames, and it lives to dye another day. (Probably a bad pun, but I was brought up on bad puns.)  The entire studio has been painted with Kilz.  The floor has been painted a lovely milk chocolate color.  We are getting fresh plastic supplies for using with dyes and so on.  The stove has been removed and will be going to the dump today…yes, it still works, but I will no longer be doing that kind of dyeing inside the studio.  Can’t risk it!  Can’t trust me!

Craig painting the floor of the studio.

New yarn is on its way to us.  I expect that I will start dyeing again on Sunday or Monday.  We have a Stitches show in 3 or so weeks in Chicago.  Yes, we will be there with a substantially smaller stock for folks to select from….but it will all be freshly dyed.  The yarns I will be focusing on dyeing for now is Yowza, the two Yummy’s (2 and 3-ply), Sojourn (cashmere-silk), Yasmin (my new lace), and my Bamboo Baby show special.  I will also be dyeing BFL, mixed BFL, and Merino/Bamboo/Silk.

I would also ask that you be patient over the next month or so in terms of communication with me.  I tend to get up early and answer e-mails, and that is the best way to communicate with me as I do not keep a phone available during the day in the studio.

I need to thank some very special people who have been helping me through this. First of all is Jen who found the offending pot and the smoke-filled building and who has been right there through moving all of this. Kathy who is the wonder who twists most of my skeins.  If you have touched my skeins, you have touched her handiwork. She is a working/cleaning/painting wonder! Sally has kept shipping flowing (I have certain items in the house away from the studio) and done the myriad tasks I have asked of her. And Craig…who showed up on Monday because “something” told him to come by. Within 10 minutes of arriving, he had paint in the pan and started rolling. What more could I have asked of a friend! And then my lovely husband who has kept me steady in the face of all this. He is my biggest cheerleader and supporter!

So back to the beginning of this post.  What is it that I am supposed to take away from all of this? Now mind you, even though I am a production craftsman with yarn, I consider myself to be an artist too.  I can only believe that out of destruction will come new inspiration for creativity, for new colors, for new willingness to try things in new ways as I try to figure out how to achieve effects that I used to do in the pot to now be done on the table.

Jen here:

It didn’t look good as we came down through a snowstorm at the Charlotte Airport.  It didn’t look good as we stepped off the shuttle at the long term parking lot into slushy puddles.  It didn’t look good as the Rav 4 warmed up and the wipers pushed the frozen snow off the windshield.  Had we really left ALL signs of spring back in San Jose?

We did leave a jolly good time, a great show at Stitches West, and gorgeous green and blooming spring.  We left a fabulous group of people who helped set up, bought lots of yarn and fiber, traded stories and projects and smiles, helped pack up, and made us look forward to next year’s show 30 minutes after the market closed!

But what about Spring?  Is it time yet here in the mountains?  There ARE a few signs!  The mating pair of Canada geese have returned to our pond.  The daffodils are poking up through the soil down the road.

Daffodils Poking Through!!

Crown of Daffodils!!

The driveway has turned from icy ruts to muddy ruts.

Muddy (Not Ice and Snow) Driveway!

Best of all, we have had some sunny, warmish days.  We are all tired from our trip, but strangely renewed.  When the boxes arrive from the west coast, we will update the website with new stock and new vigor.  Having a better, fuller website is a big focus for us this year!  Babs and I are both working on new knitting projects.  Maybe posting the progress here will encourage more FO’s.  One can hope…and that is what Spring is all about!

Jen here!

This has been a wet week!

This is not a complaint, merely an observation!  After 2 years of drought, with our spring running dry, facing the choice of laundry OR showers, and 75% of our foundation plants dying…I will not complain about what has been falling out of the sky!  But, that clarified, we have had a little bit of everything!  We had ice, rain, fog, sleet, freezing rain, frost, slush, and lots of different snows.  I like to look at snow like I look at popcorn…its all very different!  This week we’ve had icy needles, little syrofoam balls, splaty slushy stuff, powdery stuff, and some big cookie decoration sized flakes that we all stood and admired in some slushy bootprints on our way to lunch!  I know…snow can be a major pain in the butt…’specially when it’s the consistency of mashed potatoes and you can’t walk or drive in it…but it is rather pretty if you take a closer look!  Then you can shovel the crap outta yer way!!!

Cookie Cutter Snowflake

All this moisture makes it hard to get the massive amounts of Yarn and Fiber Babs has been dyeing to DRY before we wind it up pretty!  There is wet stuff hanging everywhere.  There is dry stuff hanging everywhere.  There is wound stuff, and braided stuff and boxes of stuff, and piles of stuff, and…wait till y’all see this stuff!

One of the Piles of Stuff!

We are in Pre-Show Mode so there is less than 2 or 3 feet you can walk in a straight line in the studio, and we hafta move 2 or 3 things to get to anything…the Rubix Cube Effect!  But we laugh and have a great time in the chaos…and dodge the precipitation in its many forms!  We haven’t had raining frogs…but we named some fiber after the phenomenon!  We also have Glacier and Pond and Lake Michigan…It’s been a Wet Week!!!

Blue Lagoon in Merino/Bamboo/Silk

Mariner in Mixed BFL

Glacier in Merino/Bamboo/Silk

Raining Frogs in Merino/Bamboo/Silk

Lake Michigan in BFL

SAFF was a great show and I want to thank everyone for their continued support of me and my yarns and fibers. I always leave SAFF a very grateful and humbled person – amazed by the customers, the vendors, and just the general affection.

I came home to having to face putting one of our beloved dogs down. Miss JJ came to us about 6 years ago. My husband picked her up from the side of the road where she had been abandoned. She was terribly frightened of storms and loud noises. She was a Vizsla, we believe purebred…a beautiful dog. She was my original monochrome. Here coat, nails, eyes, nose were all one of a similar red-brown color. She was incredibly soft and had a bay that would knock your socks off if you weren’t ready to hear it. She didn’t bark…she bayed. She also had a “special” way of complaining about not getting a bite of food soon enough when we were eating (yes, my husband is a feed at the table sort). She would “do her o’s”. Her lips formed an o in front and she would do short bays that kept her lips in that o.

Vizsla’s are active, and we always called her “Miss Busy”. She had to go see what was going on everywhere, she could run like crazy – all stretched out, she would tattle on the other dogs when they were doing something she deemed was out of line, she was ever aware of activity on our property. It has been quiet. We have all been quiet. Missing here presence. She was my morning greeter. She would come to get a morning hug and see what was going on before going back to lay down, or needing to go out.

When she first came to us, she was frightened of everyone. Over time and with lots of love, she warmed up to many people. The first visitor I saw her warm up to was Sandi from my fiber guild. Since then, many other people were rewarded with willingness to check them out and trust them with a chance to pet her.

My husband called her the Duchess, and would say she was a Romanov, but that she wouldn’t tell us where the eggs were hidden. She was a lady. She was tough AND sweet AND polite.

We will miss you….

Well, I promised a few pictures of what we have been doing out in the studio. This doesn’t show everything, by any means….but here we go!

Piles and stacks of yarn and fiber that haven’t been hung up yet on racks. Hanging will start in earnest today. We have to move some stuff out of the studio before we can do that though and iit was just too cold yesterday to open the doors of the studio and let the outside come in and the inside go out. Hopefully today will be better, that is warmer!

The sun came out yesterday! It has been so rainy that the yarn has been slow to dry. We’ve been having to take it in and hang some of it by the wood stove so it can dry in the dry heat.

Here’s a some new colorways….

The top picture has Journey and Lake Michigan Colorways. The bottom picture is a Crazy Sock – and there’s only a few of them. I dye these with leftovers at the end of a day or two of dyeing. This is how I came up with Jazz Club and also Frog Princess.

Can’t wait to see everyone.

My sister Jeannie is also coming again this year. She will be doing demonstrations of sock cast ons, ball winding and kitchener stitch help. So bring your socks that need kitchener stitching and she will help you!

The schedule of her demonstrations will be listed later today or tomorrow!

Back home last night with Jen. We left Portland at 6 a.m. yesterday morning and drove up my driveway about 8:30 after having to circle Charlotte for an hour or thereabouts due to runway construction. Greeted by the furry friends and husband, and collapsed into bed soon thereafter!

Slept almost 9 hours (which is incredible for me!) and am still pooped!! Glad to be back in my regular time zone – amazing how difficult it is to accustom yourself to other time zones.

Sock Summit was great! Meeting so many people was wonderful! More later – with pictures!

The shows this year were good for me and I am planning to do a busy show schedule for next year. I will be doing 3 of the Stitches events – West, South, and Midwest. I hope to do Maryland Sheep and Wool…keep your fingers crossed for me!! Then the Sock Summit in Portland, OR and SAFF. I am also applying to New York Sheep and Wool – so we’ll see!!

I hope to add some patterns for socks this year, along with having samples of more sweaters and other items for folks to see. I wouldn’t mind adding some lighter weight yarn(s) for folks in the south and milder parts of the country, but am unsure what folks would like to work with. I have had silk in the past, but the sales of it was uneven and therefore made it difficult for me to keep it. I have added the wool/silk modified laceweight this year, but would like to hear more from folks about what they would like to work with.

I have been working on filling orders from shows and the few wholesale accounts that I have. I will not be taking any time “off” this holiday season, but will be working some slow days in order to recuperate from the year, and get ready for next year.

I am excited about going west this year to 2 different shows and meeting the many customers that I have on the west coast! All for today! It is still cold and I need to go stand in front of the fire to warm up.

We finished packing the yarn, the fiber, all of the booth “stuff”. Now we gotta pack ourselves. We’re taking two days to travel north and west…it’s only 700 miles, but when you are pulling a trailer it is more work and you go slower than you do (at least I do) than when I am traveling without an attachment on the back!!

Hopefully taking our time this will give us a little time to rest up before we get to the show. Who’s coming?? Well Jen who works with me, and has been for over 2 years now and myself. The great husband is staying behind so he can get over the flurry of our insanity for the last month, and take care of the pups – my livestock!!

Contest!!!!!

Looking forward to seeing everyone in Chicago (Crystal Lake). I am bringing 150 Ravelry name buttons…they will be available free until gone. I would suppose they’ll be gone by the end of Friday evening. Hey, that could be a contest…Whoever guesses closest to the correct time that the last button is gone gets a free skein of sock yarn!! Put your guesses in here or via my contact page. I will have my computer with me so I will be able to announce the winner at the booth and here!

See you there!!