Wool Candy

A Lace-Filled Shop Update to Start Your Week

24-Aug-09

I’ve added all of my available colors of Souffle Lace in my shop today. There’s a little something for everyone:

Fresh Fig:

Orange Blossom Honey:

Honey Bunches:

Spanish Moss:

Fresh Herb:

Robin’s Egg:

Crater Lake:

and Damson:

Enjoy!

I’ve also restocked many colors of Lollipop BFL. Stay tuned later this week for a Marzipan Merino/Nylon update, a Meringue Merino update, and lots of yummy wool top going up in the shop as well!

A note about my Dye for Glory colors… there are a couple of reserved listings left to be picked up in the Shop. Microbrew is completely, utterly sold out. I have 4 skeins of Downtown Dusk available in Meringue Merino though!

These two colorways are, sadly, now retired. I may bring them back for the next Sock Summit (here’s hoping there IS another Sock Summit! And soon!), but for now, we say, “‘Night ‘night, Microbrew! ‘Night night, Downtown Dusk!”

Filed in shop Updates, yarn | | Comments (0) »

Knitter’s Review… Squee!!!

21-Aug-09

Did you see Knitter’s Review yesterday? Clara Parkes wrote about Sock Summit. And the yarn she bought from me. Here’s a link to the article.

Can I just say, “SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!”

It’s so exciting! Not only is there a fabulously sweet picture of the Lollipop BFL Sock in Pamplemousse that Clara Bought, but the article perfectly captures the feeling of Sock Summit — the scale, the spectacle, the fun (including my favorite response from a Luminarian, when Barbara Walker, when asked how she accomplished so much in her life, said that she neglected to get her TV repaired for 5 years, and she only needs four hours of sleep a night, and Stephanie summed it up this way: “To recap: don’t sleep and get rid of your TV.”). Thanks, Clara, for a great article, and I’m so happy you like Lollipop, because if you didn’t… well. I’d be very afraid.

Wool Candy has had an incredible response to the article already — thank you so much, everyone! It’s amazing to have a chance to get exposure like this for my little shop, and I’m so happy to have made new friends from it as well. When I opened the shop, I never realized quite how much fun I would have getting to meet so many nice knitters, see so many wonderful projects, and learn so much.

I’m off to see my sister in San Luis Obispo today, and to meet my new niece (who’s not all that new anymore — she was born May 29th) for the first time, and squeeze my little Lily again too.

FO: Spiral Cowl

18-Aug-09

I’m not knitting socks. It’s the first time since I started knitting socks that I don’t have a single pair on the needles. I somehow got socked out. Maybe it was knitting two pairs of knee socks in a row in about 3 weeks.

At the end of Sock Summit, I really needed something simple and mindless and pretty to work on; something for my hands to do, that didn’t require much support from my brain.

On Sunday, I hopped across the aisle to our neighbors at the Yarn Garden, and picked up two heavenly skeins of Alchemy Synchronicity in Spruce to cast-on for the Spiral Cowl, from Knitty Gritty Thoughts, during the Luminary Panel. . It’s the most incredible color: turquoise, with flecks of oxidized-copper green.

It goes perfectly with the recycled copper shawl pin I got from Fox Ryde, our neighbor on the left, don’t you think?

It’s a ridiculously easy pattern, but my brain being what it is, it took longer than it should have, and I only finished it last night. I lightly steam blocked it this morning so I could photograph it, and it smells delightfully of barnyard.

I felt a bit silly wearing a wool/silk cowl and a wool coat in the middle of August, but I wanted to get some nice pictures! I can’t wait for the fall so I can wear this. But we have hot weather until, like, October. So it’ll be awhile, but I’m ready!

I like it pinned like this, but it’s nice loose too.

This really is a stupidly simple pattern. Very easy to work, with a lot of impact to the finished product. I absolutely adore this. The spiral of eyelets, with the strong lines of decreases give it a sculptural quality, especially in this worsted single-ply wool/silk blend.

The Stats:

Pattern: Spiral Cowl by Keri McKiernan (Ravelry)

Yarn: 2 balls of Alchemy Synchronicity, 50% merino wool, 50% silk. 110 yards/50g ball, in “Spruce.”

Needles: Size 7 Addi-Lace circs.

Mods: My gauge was larger, so I cast-on 104 stitches instead of 128. It’s about 12″ wide. I knit until I ran out of yarn, so it’s about 12 inches tall, rather than the 8″ of the pattern.

Filed in finished objects, handspun, knitting | Tagged spiral cowl | Comments (6) »

Shop Update-o-Rama-Rama!

14-Aug-09

Peeps. There’s yarn here. Lots of yarn.

The full complement of yarns going up in the Shop can be seen in my flickr stream here.

Today’s Shop Update is all about Lollipop BFL Sock. This shiny, sturdy, silky sock yarn is 100% superwash blue faced leicester wool. Each skein is 3.5 oz/100g and 420 yards/384m. Each skein is $23.

Here’s a selection of what you can find in the shop:

Wagashi

Pamplemousse

Sugared Violet

Moss Rock

I’ll be putting in Meringue Merino sock, Marzipan Merino Sock, and some new colors of Souffle as well! If you see something on flickr that you like that isn’t in the shop yet, let me know and I can reserve a skein for you. I have multiple skeins of just about every colorway. I’ll get these in the shop as quick as I can over the next couple of days.

Oh, and dudes. I totally forgot to tell you in my Sock Summit post yesterday that Clara Parkes (of Knitter’s Review) and Melissa Morgan-Oakes came into my booth on Thursday night. I think I played it cool — I tried very very hard not to flip the $(@*# out. We chatted, and they were both SOOOOOOOO nice, and very complimentary. And they both bought yarn from me. From ME. Tried (again) not to flip the *#(*@ out. Playing it cool. I hope Clara doesn’t mind me mentioning that she recommended my Lollipop BFL yarn to her students. A few of her students came through my booth and told me that. And I tried very very hard not to flip the $(*$&(@*&! out. Playing it cool, folks. Cool.

The whole weekend was like that — I’d be walking through the convention center, and BAM, there’s Stephanie Pearl-McPhee on a walkie-talkie. Or I’d come around the corner of the Marketplace and BAM — there’ ANNA FREAKING ZILBOORG STANDING RIGHT THERE. I said “Hi” to her. That’s all I could manage. I so wanted to go up to Stephanie and Tina the whole weekend to thank them for Sock Summit. That’s all I wanted to say, and I just kept freezing every time I’d see one of them anywhere nearby. So, I’ll just say it now, in my lame little way, in my little blog. Thanks, Stephanie. Thanks, Tina. Thanks ST-2. You guys rock. Sock Summit was the best.

Filed in shop Updates, yarn | Tagged Sock Summit | Comments (3) »

Home from Sock Summit!

13-Aug-09

Well, Sock Summit is over. Nina and I drove back from Portland on Monday, and I still feel like I’m recovering. Tired as I still am, I think I’m also suffering from a bit of Sock Summit withdrawal. For 4 days, I was a part of this huge, amazing THING, where thousands of knitters gathered in one place for a single purpose: to knit. We knit socks, we talked about knitting socks, we fondled sock yarn, we broke a world record, we bonded over the funny looks we got when we told people we were going to Portland to talk about knitting socks.

It was amazing. AMAZING, I tell you. As a woman from a small town in the midwest who doesn’t have a lot of knitting friends said to me, “I feel like I’m with my people.”

It was seriously the most exhausting, fun experience ever. Even when I thought I was going to fall down, I was so tired, I was still having a blast. Since neither Nina nor Marilee are as much of a knitter as me, and neither has knit socks, I’m not sure if they’d agree, but they were such troopers. I couldn’t have done it without them!.

I didn’t take as many pictures as I thought hoped I would, but I got a few! Nina got some great shots of our Voodoo Doughnuts, so I’ll post those when she’s done processing them (someday…).

Mare couldn’t make the road trip with us — she flew up on Wednesday night– (which, though we missed her terribly, was kind of a blessing because it meant that the Pile fit in the car. It otherwise would not have), but Nina and I drove out of Santa Clara at 7:30 am last Wednesday. I-5 is the most boring road ever, so no pictures really. Though I did get a good shot of Gorilla Monster* and my sock-in-progress.

When we got near Mount Shasta, the air was all weird and hazy and smoky because of a forest fire someplace, and Shasta looked like it was floating in the air. You could barely see it, off in the distance.

We set up the booth on Thursday morning. Jocelyn, who I know from Nine Rubies in San Mateo, and her awesome daughter Amanda helped us, and boy did we need them! My mom built these really nice wooden displays, but they were a little too lightweight to carry all the weight of over 100 skeins of yarn each, so Jocelyn had the brilliant idea of weighing them down with rice or beans. So after a quick trip to Safeway for Nina and Marilee (while I struggled to move tables and boxes and set up lamps), we were in business!

I love how the booth turned out — it was exactly I pictured it in my head! It was a tiny booth — 5×10 — so I wanted it to be as spacious and welcoming and open as possible.

I think we got it right! We had nice, incandescent lamps to combat the horrible green flourscence of the convention center, and dishes of candy for people to keep their shopping strength up. I had a cushy wool rug down on the concrete to help sooth the tired tootsies. Oh, and YARN. Lots of yarn, and lots of fiber.

It was a great show– I sold bunches of yarn, but better than that, I met so many really sweet, wonderful, friendly knitters! I loved talking to everyone who came through the booth. I made a few contacts with shops, both online and local, which I really hope will turn into some wider exposure for my yarns (I’ll keep you posted! Fingers crossed!).

I sold quite a bit, but I also came home with A LOT of yarn. I’m going to do shop updates over the next few days. Lots of colorways of Lollipop BFL Sock, Meringue Merino Sock and Marzipan. I also have several new colors of Souffle Lace that will go up as well. Keep your eyes peeled! I’ll post here to let you know when the updates happen.

I really want to thank everyone for their well wishes and kind words both leading up to and following Sock Summit. It meant so much to me to receive comments and emails and messages on Ravelry. I so, so, SO appreciate all of your support — Knitters are the BEST! Thank you!!!

*A few years ago, Nina and I took a road trip up to Ashland, OR. I got her this creepy-weird gorilla monster postcard as a present (because she’s the monkeygirl) and we took him on our road trip with us. He was in almost ALL of our pictures. It seemed only fitting, since we were roadtripping up to Oregon again, that Gorilla Monster come with us again too!

Filed in Uncategorized, knitting, shop Updates | Tagged Sock Summit, yarn | Comments (5) »

Off We Go!

05-Aug-09

The car is packed, my suitcase is packed, and anything I’ve forgotten, I’ll have to live without or pick up in Portland.

Sock Summit, HO!

See you in Portland!

Filed in Uncategorized | Tagged Sock Summit | Comments (0) »

T-1 Week

30-Jul-09

ZOMG!!!! This time next week, Nina, Marilee and I will be in Portland. This time next week, we’ll be setting up the booth.

Holy crapmonkeys.

After months and months, I can’t believe it’s almost here. All of the dyeing is done (well, I technically have a few skeins of Fondant in Robin’s Egg that need to be rinsed, but that’s it!), the spinning is done, the yarn is packed (well, except for that Fondant). The to-do list is getting shorter and shorter (though it’s one of those two steps forward, three steps back things. As soon as I cross something off the list, I add 2 more things). We might even actually be able to fit everything in my mom’s Mountaineer, with room to spare for 3 people to sit in relative comfort (and by comfort, I mean that yarn makes a very nice, cushiony pillow).

Here’s the Pile, which has taken over our kitchen:

I spent the early part of this week organizing the yarn into bags and tubs, trying to get it all consolidated into the smallest amount of space possible. First, I sorted all of the yarn by fiber and color, completely taking over most of the house in the process.

Turing helped me.

And by “helped,” I mean crawling into my lap every time I sat on the floor and stopped moving. Oh, and looking ridiculously cute and innocent. Psh. Like I’m falling for that one again.

Each tub has exactly the number of skeins that will fit onto the displays, so when we get to set-up time, all we have to do is pull out the skeins and hang them up:

That’s how it’s supposed to work, in theory.

The extra skeins went into huge garbage bags. This was Marilee’s idea, and I think it’s brilliant. Trash bags compress a lot better than rigid tubs!

It’s not the most dignified way for my yarn to make the trip to Portland, but this way it will actually have a fighting chance of fitting in the car. Hopefully, it will forgive me.

There’s still some stuff that will have to go on top of the car and get strapped down — my mom is building some big frame-like displays, and they won’t fit inside with us. I’ll show those to you when she’s finished with them — she’s building 4 this week.

I also got this nifty rubber stamp with my shop logo on it from rubberstamps.net. It’s 4″ x 2″ and cost about $20. I stamped 500 handle bags while I watched Leverage the other day. I love how they look. What do you think?

It’s almost here! Just a few more things to cross off the list. And probably a few more things to add…

Filed in Uncategorized, spinning, yarn | Tagged Sock Summit | Comments (5) »

A Glorious Day of Baking

20-Jul-09

I actually scheduled a whole weekend off from the dyepots this past weekend, and stuck to it! It was so exciting. And relaxing.

Saturday night was Beth and Ryan’s summer party. Every year, they have ONE HUGE BLOWOUT with a tropical theme. This year it was Magnum P.I., complete with a lookalike contest and a Ferrari photbooth (as in someone brought their Ferrari over so you could sit in it and have your picture taken.) Awesome.So I spent the day on Saturday baking (sorta) Hawaiian inspired desserts.

I used to bake all the time. I LOVE baking. Especially because I’m usually not tempted to eat what I bake. The act of baking it is enough to satisfy me. It’s been a few months since I’ve spent the whole day sticking my head in a super hot oven, so this was long overdue and a real treat.

I had ten overripe bananas sitting on the counter, somehow. So I tossed the five that were just way beyond saving and turned the other five into this:

Roasted Banana Coconut Rum Bread, which I won’t waste your time on since I’ve already blogged it here.

and this:

Banana Layer Cake with Chocolate Buttercream.

Yum. I roasted all of the bananas, for both the bread and the cake, because there’s no reason not to. It really does bring an incredible richness of flavor to the fruit. This is the recipe I used for the banana cake, and this is the frosting.

It wouldn’t be me baking if I didn’t tweak the crap out of a recipe (hmm… I do that with knitting too… sensing a theme here). It turned out I didn’t have enough cake flour, so I substituted whole wheat pastry flour. It really worked. I was worried the cake would turn out heavy, but it was quite light, considering the fact that I used half of the eggs required. I only had 3 eggs total, when I needed 4 for the rum cake (see below), 2 for the banana cake and 1 for the banana bread. So I used 2 for the rum cake, 1 for the banana cake (upping the yogurt to 1 cup) and just left the egg out of the banana bread altogether. It’s kind of amazing what you can get away with leaving out of a recipe sometimes.

Yeah, I also made this:

Caribbean Rum Cake. Or, as I affectionately have dubbed it “Caribbean Rum Cake OF DOOM.” Diane, a friend of Nina’s, made this beast for a party one time and it was amazing. Oh my god, this cake is, like, WOW.

And as soon as I saw the recipe, I knew why. Look at that. There’s A STICK OF BUTTER JUST IN THE RUM SOAK. Crapmonkeys. And a WHOLE CUP OF RUM in the recipe. *hicc* Oh, and is that ANOTHER stick of butter in the cake? Oh yeah? And half a cup of oil too? Okay, sure. Why the hell not.

CAKE OF DOOM AND FATNESS. It’s so good, though. Really. Try it sometime. Take a bite, and then just walk away, forget about it. Don’t look back.

The party was so much fun, as all their parties are. And I love having these excuses to bake the day away, while giving everything to someone else to eat (and worry about the calories). I can’t wait for the next party. There’s this key lime cheesecake recipe I found that I want to make.

Filed in Baking, Uncategorized | | Comments (1) »

Dyeing for Glory

14-Jul-09

Yet another fantastic Sock Summit related event! Ravelry is running a Dye for Glory contest for vendors at Sock Summit. Check out the details here… or here, and here.

I’ve created two colorways that I’ll have in my booth for sale at the Summit. I’m going to take pre-orders for pick up at my booth (Booth 1107!)– I’ll have 20 of each colorway. I will take pre-orders for 10. After Sock Summit, I will have some for sale in Etsy shop for shipping in August.

These are dyed on a new base-yarn that I’m debuting at Sock Summit. I’m calling it Meringue Merino. It’s a springy 2-ply with a nice, tight, pearly-textured twist (think Koigu) that takes colors beautifully. It’s so soft, and knits up with wonderful texture, while still allowing for great stitch definition. I’m knitting the Evening Stockings for a Young Lady out of it, and it’s a winner!

Both colors were partially inspired by the Sock Summit logo (see it over there <—– in the top left corner of my blog sidebar?), but also by things around Portland. I’ve heard Portland is well known for its beer, produced by small breweries, so here’s Microbrew:

Lager,

red ale,

and (my favorite) stout blend in a sampler platter of tasty brews.

I love this one!

This second colorway is inpired by some striking photographs I’ve seen of Portland’s downtown area at night, and at dusk. I’ve entered this in the Watercolors category, because the dyeing method I used resulted in the fluid blending of all of the colors. I’m calling it Downtown Dusk:

The soft, deep red of the setting sun,

the shimmering lights of downtown

reflecting off of the dark, nighttime blue-green waters of the Wilamette River.

This color reminds me of San Francisco’s downtown at dusk as well.

This contest has been so fun. I’ve loved seeing what other amazingly talented fellow dyers have come up with. These colorways also really pushed my usual sense of color. I tend to use many of the same colors in different ways, and this pushed me to try new and different combinations of hues and values. LOVE it!

Filed in Uncategorized, handpainted, yarn | Tagged Dye for Glory, Sock Summit | Comments (4) »

Socks for Posterity

11-Jul-09

My life has been utterly and completely consumed by Sock Summit lately. I’ve been dyeing like a mad woman, every day, sometimes late into the night. It’s super fun, but man, am I tired. And I’ve got blue dye stains on my toes that just won’t wash off, no matter what I do.

Despite my insane dyeing schedule, I volunteered to knit a pair of socks for the Sock Museum. The museum is just one more reason of so many that Sock Summit is truly the most amazing knitting related convention ever in history, put on by two visionaries of sock knitting. Volunteer knitters will be sending socks knit from historic patterns, as well as iconic patterns from knitting history, to be added to a permanent exhibition of handknit socks that will be displayed in person at the Summt, and online afterwards. So cool! And so after my own sock knitting obsessed heart.

I volunteered to knit Evening Stockings for a Young Lady, a pattern originally from Weldon’s, Volume 15, Fiftieth Series. From 1900. The pattern I’m using is adapted by Nancy Bush, from her amazing book Knitting Vintage Socks. Here’s the pattern on Ravelry. I was totally intending to take in-progress shots of the stockings as I worked. But they’re going SO FAST. They kind of have to — I have to mail them to the museum by July 25th, and (silly me) I still want to knit a pair of knee-high socks that I can wear to the Summit in my booth. Heh. Plenty of time.

I dyed up two skeins of a color I’m just calling “Old Paper,” for now. It’s sort of a yellow-camel that really does remind me of old paper. Vanity made me use one of my own yarns, a new 100% wool that I’ll be introducing at the Sock Summit. It’s a tightly-twisted 2-ply, with a pearly texture much like Koigu. It’s squishy and soft and wonderful to knit. Perhaps not historically accurate, but hopefully close enough.

This is a pattern I’ve wanted to knit for a long time, and it’s lovely. The lace is only a 4-row repeat, so it’s very easy to memorize, but it’s so striking.

The lace is decorative without being fussy, and stretchy enough to accomodate my gigantic calves.

The challenge in knitting these, for me, has been following the pattern as closely as possible, one of the “rules” of the Sock Museum Knitalong. I’m doing my level best. I’m usually one of those knitters that subs in a different heel, or changes the pattern to have a different toe, or a different “seam” up the back of the leg. But I think I’ve shown incredible restraint.

The only “mod” I’ve made so far was a mistake. I missed an instruction to purl 2 together at the back of the leg, but didn’t catch it until I was almost done with the leg. So I left it. I honestly really do like the look of the 2-purl stitch seam that runs almost all the way down the back of the sock to the heel, and I hope that this one error adds to the “handknit” aspect of the museum, and doesn’t take away from the historic accuracy of the project.

Here’s kind of a janky photo of the back (it’s hard to take pictures of the back of your own leg, and I can’t find my remote shutter release. ):

I even trusted the instructions for an insanely loooooooong heel flap. This thing is FORTY ROWS. FORTY. I usually do somewhere in the neighborhood of 30, picking up 15 stitches along the heel flap for the gusset. I went with it, though. And it worked. It totally fits!

I love that the ribbing from the lace pattern carries all the way down the heel flap. It’s so pretty.

Sock Summit is just a short four weeks away. I can’t believe it! I’m so excited. And stressed and overwhelmed by the amount of dyeing, labeling and packing up I still have left to do. It will get done. Oh yes, it will. And it will get done with the help of some of my lovely knitter-friends. I’ve suckered them into coming to a labeling “party” next weekend, where I’m going to put them to work tying labels on skeins of yarn in exchange for snacks.

It’s so awesome that I have friends willing to come over and help me do this. I literally would not be able to do it all by myself. So, thanks girls!! You rock!

Filed in knitting, yarn | Tagged evening stockings for a young lady, Sock Summit | Comments (4) »

A Lace-Filled Shop Update to Start Your Week

Knitter’s Review… Squee!!!

FO: Spiral Cowl

Shop Update-o-Rama-Rama!

Home from Sock Summit!

Off We Go!

T-1 Week

A Glorious Day of Baking

Dyeing for Glory

Socks for Posterity

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