After a long hiatus...

Which wasn't intentional, but deliberate, I'm back! I've been slowly and steadily working on bringing out a whole new line for this fall which will premier September 1st. It is going to be my fall line of colors and new blends/weights of yarn.

To give you a preview, there will be worsted superwashes, non superwashes is semi solid and varigated offerings. Bulky weight in semi solids. And Halo will premier as well, an absolutely beautiful laceweight yarn that is blended with Alpaca, Silk and of all things...Cashmere!

Some color names: EVOO (extra virgin olive oil!), Sandal Wood, Blood Maple are the three hottest new fall colors to enter the line up, which will all be blended into a variegated as well called "Friendsgiving" after a holiday that is celebrated around here with all of our closest friends and another reason to eat Thanksgiving.

I'm still working on developing new colors and there will be limited releases of tried and trued favorites.

Keep checking in to see more updates of new colors! :)

just some fun

Here's my list of me:

What is your first name? Denise
What is your favorite food? Taquitos
What high school did you go to? Sam Houston
What is your favorite color? Violet
Who is your celebrity crush? Mathieu Kassovitz
What is your favorite drink? coffee
Dream vacation? Playa del Carmen
Favorite dessert? creme brulee
What do you want to be when you grow up? happy
What do you love most in life? docks
One word to describe you? mess
Your flickr name? Dee

Photo credits:
1. The Great Wall, 2. Taquitos, 3. The Face, 4. S!lk, 5. Amelie from Montmartre, 6. coffee & the city, 7. Playa del Carmen Shoreline, 8. Crème Brulée, 9. Call of the Raven (formerly Nature's Special Effects), 10. Rory Meg (1 of 1), 11. Paint Face, 12. stalker

Lime n Violet Rock!

Wow! My first big non-prompted, non-paid promotion!! Why do I want to put on sunglasses and walk outside to say, "I have arrived." Course that would look funny as I am in normal work attire: uniboob sports bra, stained shirt, work out capri's. Unshaven legs and nappy head. That would look cute huh!

I listen somewhat regularly to their podcast, being admittedly a slacker when it comes to listening to these things especially with life being how it's been lately. But there show, along with Cast On, being the two that I always come back to. So publicly, thank you ladies for all your wonderful and kind words, as soon as I get an address, Orchid, Nagini, and maybe a few others will be heading your way!

Wholesale, The Eye of a Storm, and Thumbprints

Hopefully I can chalk this post up quickly, despite being my normal scatterbrained self. I'm now accepting wholesale orders! I've gotten one so far, which hopefully in two weeks the first offerings of Blue Hands Fibers will be up and running on WoolGirl. I'm really excited about this and hope to be able to have more offerings out there on the web and in brick and mortar stores as well!

The eye of the storm has been life lately, not that I'm complaining too much. The hubs took the day off today, as we had been out of town this whole weekend, and we've both been relaxing. I'm about to get him and child off the video game so we can maybe go out to lunch. I've had a horrible craving for Pot Belly's meatball sub and cup of broc and cheddar soup. (warned I was scatter brained!) But have been trying to do the little catch-ups here and there, have plans for laundry (ugh), and winding yarn (yay!) I also hope to get out the Suri bfl combo, which I have four skeins of and three will be for sale up on the store (sorry!), and I'm going to have some fun with the merino tencel blend as well. This next store update will surely have exotic offerings. But today is definitely the calm before the storm or the eye of it, either way I have that feeling something fierce is coming soon!

Now, onto Thumbprints. Our family lost someone very important this past week, and a community lost an important figure to their unique bicultural history: Wilbert North Helde Timmons , my husband's Grandfather. The service was this past Saturday, and while I'm not one for most funerals, one thing this preacher said was about our thumbprint that we leave on the earth, our impression. It really made all of us in the family think about what our thumbprint is going to look like and realize that we have one heck of a thumbprint to live up to but I felt more resound, after thinking about my own life, that I'm on the right path. My only regret, having been to the funeral, is not getting to know him better. The sweet man who took me by the arm over to his piano and played, "It had to be you" Who, when I saw him only a few months ago, had to play it again for me. I'm glad for the thumbprint he left on me.

The ugly side of business

I've been having to make changes, in response to the economy, namely that nasty little liquid that my car has to munch on. Four freaking dollars! And Texas is normally pretty cheap on gas too. As soon as I get enough money to, I'm buying a vespa. The hubs has called me many various names but I know I'll be getting a kiss on the cheek after the first month I've gotten it for how much money it will save us. 70 miles per gallon!!! Hopefully I will be able to make enough by the end of the year and it will be my present to myself. Of course it will be blue and I might get this girl who's done some decals for me in the past to make a custom decal that way it can be the blue yarn mobile. (yep, I'm that kind of dork)

Okay, back to the ugly side of business. I'm having to alter my shipping. I'm going to go to first class where I can charge roughly the same amount for domestic shipping and not have it eat into my profits. I will still offer the option for priority where in the notes you can ask for it and I will send an adjusted invoice through paypal. Long story short, it takes roughly four dollars for me to the yarn in the store and get it out the door. Half of that is what I've been splitting in the difference for priority shipping. With the cost of everything going up, I can't do this anymore :( I will still be more than willing to ship priority, however, it will be for the full price. I will have to charge an additional amount per skein as first class is measured by ounce. But I will offer shipping savings on orders over $60. They will get free first class shipping. I will also be reducing the amount of times I go to the post office to Tuesdays and Fridays. Now, of course, if I happen to know that I'm driving by and I have yarn that needs to go out, of course it will be! :)

I'll keep trying to find ways to pass on shipping savings to all my customers and where there is a will, there is a way.....right?

So much to post, so little time!

I am, and have been sooo busy! Store is empty, but stuff's in the pots! I recently spent a week in colorado, while my mom was having surgery. Wasn't too bad of a trip, but I had that scary feeling of being away, that I had constantly forgot something! :(

Let's see, updates: I am now venturing into taking on a few wholesale orders, very excited about that. The next months sock club delivery, Mama Rav is in the pots as we speak. And I am busily working on stocking up the store since it's been empty for so long!

Pretty soon, we'll have a new winder video out there. For all my dye friends, it's a reskeiner! And it's quick! :)

Sorry so short and sweet, but too much to do! More to come later!

And the Winner is........

Kristen otherwise known as angel101580 on Ravelry. Here is her winning essay on how she was inspired by Ravelry. The decision was hard to make and I wanted to say a thank you to everyone out there for entering and opening up on how much Ravelry has inspired you. Thank you. :)

The stroke of genius we call Ravelry has been an enormous inspiration to me, the self-taught knitter. When you have a grandma, aunt, or random friend who teaches you to knit, you have a built-in support system to help interpret patterns, teach you tricks and untangle the horrific mess you’ve made out of a previously functional skein of yarn. When you plop down on your couch with a skein of Wool Ease and a book entitled Knitting for Dummies, your support system probably consists of the cat you keep glancing at for reassurance--and she, sadly, has no intention of disrupting her beauty sleep to be encouraging. So for self-taught knitters like me, Ravelry has been a life saver—not just the site itself, but the Ravelers who make it what it is. The knitting knowledge that Ravelry boasts is immense; the knowledge I’ve gained in a year probably took past knitters a lifetime to accumulate. It seems there is no problem that cannot be solved by consulting a Ravelry forum. For example:

“I don’t know what kind of yarn this is.”
“Light it on fire!”

“I always have trouble joining new balls of yarn.”
“Spit on the ends!”

“I have no money for yarn.”
“Have you tried spinning your cat’s fur?”

Having a Ravelry support system to rely on has made me braver, more willing to go out on a limb and try an intimidating technique or make a yarn substitution, because I know someone—even if it is a stranger on the Internet with the slightly suspicious screenname “domiknitrix”—will catch me if I fall. And remind me, the overzealous perfectionist, that it is, after all, only knitting (knitters, I’m happy to report, are very well-adjusted, with no delusions of grandeur).

But, no, the goodness of Ravelry doesn’t stop there! The forums, that depth of knitting knowledge, are actually just the icing on the cake; there are plenty of other treats inside too: patterns (so many patterns!), yarn indexes, project management tools, store directories, the list goes on! In compiling all of these resources in one place, Ravelry, quite simply, makes my life easier. No need to go trekking to yarn store (which absolutely will be closed—I’ve yet to figure out yarn store hours, I think they change them when I’m not looking) to arduously research yarn substitutions, scribble random knitting notes on scraps of paper I will then promptly lose and/or accidentally throw away, or call every library and bookstore in the state of Maryland threatening bodily harm if I can’t get my hands on a copy of the IK holiday special issue. All of that information and more is buttoned up in one happy little website, which means I can concentrate on my actual knitting, rather than scouring the house trying to figure out if I have size 10 DPNs.

In fact, I even have my “friends” organized on Ravelry. Working full time and commuting three hours a day, I have very little time--or, frankly, patience--to go sifting through humanity searching for real life knitting buddies (How would that even work? Hang out in front of the LYS looking like some kind of yarn hooker?). But Ravelry has a built-in social network (which you can search by location, eliminating that whole pesky “hanging around the LYS looking desperate” problem): numerous knitters—and some rebel crocheters to spice things up—forming groups, sharing projects, and even swapping goodies with likeminded fiber addicts across the globe. You are not alone on Ravelry; no matter what outlandish, obscure thing you love—syndicated episodes of Boy Meets World? the inexplicably attractive Alan Rickman? 8-bit video games?—there is someone else who shares that love, they’ve started a group to pay homage to it, and they’ll invite you to participate in a swap inspired by it. Ravelry: bringing people together. (Note to self: do a search for a Sabrina the Teenage Witch fan group)

Perhaps most importantly, Ravelry has inspired me to “up my game.” Sitting at home with Knitting for Dummies, and eventually the ubiquitous Stitch N Bitch, I simply had no point of reference. I didn’t know what others were knitting. I didn’t know how much there was to knit. It probably would never have occurred to me that I could, in fact, knit a sweater. But Ravelry inspires a good kind of jealousy and awakens the competitive spirit—the kind that pushes you outside your comfort zone, drives you to challenge yourself. Before, you were happy knitting garter stitch scarf after garter stitch scarf (the recipients, probably less happy); now, post-Ravelry, you spy something on someone’s project list and say, “Hey, I bet I could do that!” So you queue it up, and give it your best shot (the only problem with this being that I now have a queue so long I am terrified I will die of old age before I knit half the things in it). Undertaking a new craft is always daunting. Without a “mentor,” it can be completely off-putting. But thanks to Ravelry, I didn’t have that problem. I can turn to Ravelry to solve problems, find inspiration, stay organized, and make friends. Could you ask for anything more in website? Certainly tens of thousands of people managed to master knitting without Ravelry throughout the history of mankind; but I’m happy I’m not one of them.