Tilt-a-whirl

Bucket Brigade for the South

My wish is that The Red Cross uses the money that we are all donating, in our helpless "not in the area" way will be used to help our nation's hardest hit individuals. I have to admit to being a CNN junkie, cheering on the nation's military people who have been given the opportunity to use their skills in this country, to help their neighbors. I can mutter all that I want to about people that think that California, with our earthquakes, is a scary place to live. Puhleezzzze! I guess that life in Florida and the Gulf Coast is just so idyllic during the NON killer storm times that people just forget how painful giving birth to that punkin' head kid really was. So, while donations are still going into the MSF fund, we are donating to the Red Cross as well. Dog willing and the creek don't rise.

Now then, we did it. The Husband (I make HIM do the big purchases so that I can sleep at night) called up the Mini-mills guys on Prince Edward Island to order our skein winder. Yeah, we's gettin' a robot. :o) How much do I know that this is the right time? Well, someone else in California is getting a mill set-up delivered and so we get to gave our equipment delivered in about a week. Oh my...I told Kerry that by the time she comes for her visit, we will have to be winding yarn on the front PORCH, simply because the workspace for this thing has not been cleared yet. I guess that this means that His Nibs is coming on board with both guns blazing. I thank those of you that have responded to our new yarn and colors with such gusto, right down to my color sprinkled toes. :o)

Here are some new colors. Yesterday was the final dye day before I HAVE to tag the piles that await me for packing to the show this weekend.

The picture does NO justice whatsover to the Peacock color. I just do not know why my camera cannot capture the blue/green in its proper way (it does fine with all other colors but blues are just tough) but it is a deep rich Peacock.

Thanks to Sam, I was able to be forced to put some BFL into the pot the day before yesterday, to give her her heart's desire...Spring Green, which was only done in Silk/merino before this point.

It will be on the website when my turn comes with my web designer but in the meantime, I made a few extra little bumps to bring this weekend.

Time to tag and bag.

Show countdown Sunday

This is usually the week where I lose what is left of my mind, trying to figure out what hole in the stock to fill. Somehow, after dealing with the mania created by PI, I feel oddly calm...ready to pack my stuff into the BAV and roar through 1/4 of a tank of European Gas (I know, I know...we pay nothing, compared to Europeans...) to get over to our familiar plot of land occupied once a year behind the fire station at King's Mountain (unincorporated Woodside). Now, for those of you that do not live in the SF Bay Area, let me give you a little idea of what it is like at this time of the year. Here, in Lafayette we may be experiencing 91F/33C and as you get on the highway that cuts through our town and head west, you find that the air is becoming decidedly cooler. You go through the Caldicott Tunnel, under the Oakland Berkeley Hills and site of the infamous firestorm that took hundreds of homes and out to not only the most spectacular view of the San Francisco Bay but also at LEAST 10 degrees cooler than the town at the eastern side of the tunnel. Yes, that's right. Now, you head down the freeway to the lower part of Oakland and the temperature keeps dropping, at which point, if the weather is nice, you can see over to the San Francisco Coast Range and see a fluffy topping of white ocean generated fog. Yup, in San Francisco, when it is 90 plus degrees here, it may be 30 or 40 degrees cooler. We keep driving west, over the Bay Bridge (yes, the one that broke a little during the Loma Prieta earthquake) and hang a left on the other side, going south along what is called The Peninsula. We get further and further into the Pea Soup fog and this is where I start my internal chanting, mantra, whatever...fog fog go away, etc. Yes, further and further into the fog we go, until we veer off onto the highway 280 that takes us closer to the coast and our destination. We see the fog spilling over the highway 92 cut, the east/west road that goes up and over the coast range to Half Moon Bay and head up this road, rocking and chanting and wishing. On we go, up and up until we reach the fog shrouded apex and hang another left, driving onto Skyline Blvd, which navigates the top of these, the Santa Cruz Mountains. It winds on and I keep praying, seeing the trees leaving wet spots of the road from the fog moisture drips (oh nooooo...) and at the next turn and few feet higher in elevation, we either let out a string of blue words or a HUGE sigh of relief, the difference being how high the fog is and whether we break out of it. If we are out of it, my beautiful piece of real estate in a Fairy Ring of redwood trees will be a cushioned and cool respite in this community park, if NOT, I will be frantic and catatonic, all at the same time because it will literally RAIN under the trees. There you have it...my yearly Labor Day weekend ride.

I am getting ready. I started preparing shawl kits yesterday and then went in and sat at the Spin-tech for a few hours. That thing allowed me to spin over a pound of two ply yarn in a few hours. Yowza. (having the Bruce Hornsby Free-view on our Satellite, certainly helped the time and fiber go by quickly!)

Vanessa is always wanting to see Tank. Well, he is not a cute little baby any more! He is starting to look like a real grown-up dog. (he will always seem little to me because Sasha is so enormous) Anyone that has Labs knows that there are two speeds with these puppies...full out and ZZZZZZZ. He is doing the latter under the computer table right now but here he is when I insisted that he pose. He looks positively cockeyed from being half asleep. Taannnnk. :o) He has a fresh new collar today because a couple of days ago he, with the help of his cohort, removed his collar and chewed through it. Come onnnnnnnnn...knock it off. So, he has a new one. Tah dah. I told The Husband that between the collars and toys and fancy dogfood, we were going to have to buy stock in Petfood Express! :o(

Enough kavetching. Here are two new Sock! colors, thanks to requests. Pink!

Turqua

It may take a little while to get them up on the site because the web goddess from Canada is going on Vacation but in the meantime, if they appeal to you, we can make it happen for ya.

Time to see if I can break some more spinning land speed records with my aluminum Zippety Doo Dah. I love this thing.

My ears are burning...

So, last night to get away from Chez S, which also doubles as lisaknit.com, I bribed The Husband to wait for me to scrape my mop into some sort of order (yes, it is getting really long...time for a new picture) and go down to good old Baja Fresh, which would only be perfect if they also had a slushy Margarita machine next to the soda dispenser. Yes? Shall we put it into the suggestion box? I needed to get out of here because it went from quiet to wowza within minutes of the Sock! page going live. Unbeweebabble. We needed to talk about the latest shenanigans being attempted by Prophane Industries, who sent their minion to talk to The Husband yesterday. Hmmm, they want him to come to work for them for a 6 month extension of his contract, which is what Can You Hear Me Now is part of. They (PI) want to cherry pick people out of this contract that is going away, which will make no sense whatsoever. Hmmm, no one else does what The Husband manages and when he leaves, they will be left holding an empty sack, empty because they don't know that there is a hole where the money is going to leak out. (He finds those leaks and plugs them) You know what? If nothing else, it was delightful to see him sitting a little taller, saying that they can kiss is you-know-what and if for some reason PI gets their way, it will be on his terms, because he could care less now. YEAH! Oh, it would be nice to have the 6 months of salary, don't get me wrong, but nothing will get in the way of his severance money, which is a bribe to go away. Fine, he will go away and run the skein winding machine. :o) Yup, we are going to NEED one. (gulp)

The first real live shawl "kit" left here today. Yeah, I put one together for Jo and it forced me to do the work to write instructions and all of that. It came in at a reasonable dollar amount, especially since this kit was the other half of what I used for the first shawl and it has my most expensive silk boucle in it but cutting the skein in half allowed me to bring the kit in for well under $100. Yup...now this should be yummy and wonderful for people who like soft, cushy, luxurious and FAST projects. We will test them next weekend. Of course now I need to get busy assembling things...silk yarn makes all the difference, my friends. Dee-lish.

Hmmm, I had a request for a Breast Cancer Awareness Pink sock yarn today and oh yes, next up is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Turquoise-y Aqua, which is essentially the color that Brenda used in the Shoal Waters Cardigan but I will see if I can do it as an immersion dyed color instead of the watercolor hand-paint that is Seaglass. And thennnnnnnnnn, Pat wants Yellow Ribbon. Yup, the palette will fill up quickly but then The Husband has to quit going to the campus of PI and get busy with skeining! I mean, come ON! :o) He was looking into motorized skeining equipment today...I guess that he is climbing on board. Woo hoo!

I have to tell you that the donation amount for MSF has grown to over $350 since we began a couple of weeks ago. How great is that? You guys are simply awesome. It is our distinct privilege to fund these heroes on a regular basis, in our small way, to try to walk the walk when we say that we are citizens of the planet. You can wear your socks or shawls or sweaters and know that you did a wonderful thing.

Our little Grandsonfetus is doing beautifully and he is going to the San Diego Zoo today...do you think that he will remember? Hah. Oh yeah and Sunday is his first Dodger's game...I guess that he will have to "have dual "citizenship" when he is born because his daddy is a Dodger's fan and his mama was born in Oaktown", the land of the A's. I still think that it nice of the A's to have a star by the name of Chavez, so that little GSF can have an infant outfit with his name on the back. :o)

Time to stir the pot.

Sock! is "live"

Up dyeing at the crack o' dawn and here are two new colors of Sock!. Pacific
...and Deep Periwinkle.

The page is live! Thank you all for the feedback and support to get this beginning palette of colors off of the ground. I think that this is going to keep my busy!

Sockalicious

More colors are emerging even as The Husband winds and winds and winds skeins.

Rumor has it that the beginnings of the Sock! offering will be up on the site tomorrow. :o)

We have not gone Postal

Well, maybe a little, but it just involved the BAV and a trip to see some international orders off...I know, I couldn't help it. I have been a bad bad blogger, keeping all of this business to myself until I could work through it with color and texture. We are fine, here at Chez S and this is the latest of the malarkey, just in case you want to read about what The Husband's friend calls The Perils of Pauline.

You all know about Friday, which will from this time forward be known as the Day of Torture. The weekend came and on Saturday I decided that we needed to get out of the house and to the movies. We both really really needed to laugh and so we chose The 40 Year Old Virgin. I must say that this is one hell of a funny movie, raunchy, silly and sweet. We both loved it and it proved to be just what the witchdoctor ordered...a date flick for men and women. He let go just a little...a teensy bit. On Sunday we feted my mother for her 80th birthday, in the only way that she wanted, breakfast at our house with just us, so that she could hang with the Thundering Herd and admire all of our hard work around here. Hey! The price was right. :o) We used the rest of the day on Sunday to plan our attack on our future, even though The Husband was painfully hanging onto a shred of a chance that he would be offered something, there in the Evil Kingdom, or as Wiley Miller of Non Sequitor calls it...Prophane Industries. Not a chance, buster. He spent Monday finding out who got jobs and who did not and he is actually one of the few sacrificial lambs. I told him that he should be happy for his friends that did get offers because they have more need of this than he does, the two people that will absorb his job function are a young man who is the breadwinner of a little family and the other person is a single woman in a position of being too young to retire and too old to be on the job market. I told him to count his blessings and ride out the days until his early retirement and then just turn his back on that place with his head held high. He wore his lucky Kiss My Ass shirt today...a beautiful and bright tropical print. I think that he is finally getting it...he is escaping and we will be ok.

We will stay put for the time being. There is plenty of potential for building the business on this property and so that is what we will do. The bay area is still very centrally located and the You-puss man knows where to drop the heavy yarn boxes...

Ready for color? I really really have been busy and not just wallowing in the mud (it was easy to get sidetracked when The Husband got my $$ hopes up with a possible job offer and now I am back on track). Here are the first pictures of Sock!
Yup, the work has begun on this beautiful, beautiful yarn. I am so happy with how it takes color in such a deep way and know that it will be wonderful for socks or a myriad of other projects. We will get it up on the site as soon as Brenda has time for me but in the meantime, more colorways are set for the dye table today...there is a big tub of yarn soaking out there right now. (The Husband has been winding yarn like a pro...)

I finally finished the first pound of the new silk/merino colorway that I decided to call Bimini Blue. This was the real tester for the Spin-tech because I wanted to do two 8 ounce bobbins and ply them...no problem. The color is even richer than it reads with this light filled shot.

Thanks to the encouraging words of friends, I did put together a couple more shawls from my stash of yarns. I tried to see if there were other things that could be put into the combinations, to give the same drape and luster as silk and tried one of my favorite cellulosic yarns, Fatima (rayon/cotton textured yarn) and nope...(rude buzzer noise inserted here) it is silk or nothing. Here are pictures of a couple of other pieces that I did this weekend of torture...they are a fine way to chill out.

The question came up about kitting these things and yes, I am going to give it a go at the Labor Day show, to test the waters. I think that they can be quite reasonable, if I break up the skeins into the "just right" amounts. I have also called in an order with Brittany for a stash of size 17 needles (no they are not heavy) so that people can get started on the way home. I think that it will be fun. We will see how they go in person and then put up individual kits on the website as they are put together. They will be nice gifts for knitters or nice kits to knit up as holiday gifts. Cushy Shawls.

Powered by Margarita

What do we do when we wait all day for The Corporation to send their Snapple Cap message of "You Are a Winner" or "Sorry Try Again" and get neither? We drive downtown and get the biggest Margarita that will fit in a glass, clink them and say a few blue words in honor of The Corporation. Yeah...sweet. The Husband waits around with a couple of other people, calling victims in other parts of the country, trying to see if it is "just him" or if offers were starting to trickle in...they trickled in...around three pm Pacific and for a couple of other people. I guess that I shouldn't have been surprised that he did not get an offer today but when they said that there would be emails to say that they were not going to be part of the program and did nothing, I think that it is just the corporate climate, one that is quite cancerous. I have to say that we had our hopes up, unfortunately, hearing that if offers came, they would be at the same salary. The company is finding some way to eliminate him and then hire some RCG to take his place, at half the salary. Nice, isn't it?

So, now...should I teach him to spin??? :o))) I will teach him to be self-employed.

Finally there is sock yarn

This is my blank canvas.
Now, you guys need to just speak up about what you want...:o) Oh yeah, it is 75% superwash wool/25% nylon and it comes in at 1984 yards per pound. Now, we begin the skeining and skeining and skeining.

Log rolling

I was thinking about the Log Jam being broken and what do you do when you have more room? Log Rolling. Precisely. :o) The amount of relief of getting that colorwork creation off of the needles and photographed was enormous, like leaving the dentist office for the last time after all of that ugly work is finished...you know. I used to do it when I had finished the last piece in the pile for my (at that time) biggest show of the year, a pile of sweaters handknit from my own yarn...a huge accomplishment and the sign that I could go take a long weekend vacation in the mountains before tackling this show. Jumping for joy, taking deep breaths and having a clean slate, all at the same time. For someone that used to work by the seasons, starting with shearing time, this was cause for celebration. It felt a little like that yesterday, simply because what used to be joyful and easy, this inventing things on the needles, became mental defective hard. Hard because of the ways in which my brain and nervous system have been taxed for about 6 weeks now, which only allowed for the mind numbing spinning and attention to detail in the dye room while trying to imagine how to handle whatever is coming in our lives. That is why the finishing of that piece was significant for me.

That being said, by being able to relegate the remainders of the yarn that I used back to the large zip bags that hold my balls of yarn for such projects, I allowed myself to fondle the NEW yarn. Yup...I have these piles of yarn that usually don't get opened by yours truly, but yesterday was an exception. I knew that I needed to do something diametrically opposed to what had just come off the needles and so I threw these things together, saying to myself...MMMMMMMMMMMMM.

They are an orphan skein of my standard wool yarn in an old color called Blooie, a skein of the 100% Bombyx silk boucle (Tiara) in Garnet and a skein of mohair/silk boucle in the new Mardi Gras colorway. I knew that these textures and colors could live well together and so I began. Yup, I broke into my Brittany stash and pulled out a pair of 17's and cast on three stitches. I increased one stitch, one stitch from the edge on both sides, ever other row until I ended up with 96 stitches on the needles. I bound those stitches off VERY loosely and with the weight of the silk, the drape is just right. I sat this morning and added a luxurious fringe and there you have it.

Here is a little detail of what the yarns look like together.

It is joyful and fun and FAST and cushy. Perfect for yesterday afternoon.

Today, I must head out to the dye room and get some orders out. So be it.
We wait...

Mesa Cardigan is finished!

This is the sign that I can go on with life...the cardigan that has been taunting me, telling me that my brain was becoming atrophied and useless has finally become a finished object. The logjam in my brain, the place where ideas are backing up can now be disgorged for my own good. Here she is.

This is wool and angora and alpaca and silk and a little lurex lurking in there. Now that I am done, I can stand back and wonder why it took me so long to give birth to this thing, but knowing all that has gone on around here, I celebrate its arrival.