Survey! And knitting!

Greetings from steamy Oregon! We're in a heat wave right now and suffering from cabin fever since it's too darn hot to go outside. Since it has been forever since I last posted, I thought I'd get it going right by doing a little survey/contest/giveaway. I've got a little survey set up to help us determine what we should design over the next six months - fill it out and enter to win a drawing for six of our designs in your choice of pdf or hard copy! The survey's limited to the first 100 people, so get yer answers in quick to be entered to win.

I've also got some yarn that I want to get rid of. I don't know if anyone is at all interested, but I have two garbage bags full of miscellaneous yarn remnants that I don't know what to do with. It's a lot of leftovers from various projects and some single swatching balls, some of it really good stuff and some not so much. Most of it is missing labels, although I could tell you what it was by looking at it, and some of it will require a little TLC to untangle. If anyone wants any of it, please e-mail me and let me know. It would be great for anyone who uses little bits for toys or for other projects that require little bits of random yarn.

In the process of doing this little bit of stash cleaning, I found some balls of yarn that I'd normally never use but right now I happen to be doing a bit of charity knitting. The Knitters for Obama group on Ravelry is collecting hats, scarves and washcloths for homeless veterans, and I pledged to do 4 items a month to donate. Yes, I'm nuts! I did manage to get my June items done, including two hats:





Don't you love that dirty little face, peeking out from under the red hat? I also knit (and crocheted) up a couple of washcloths:



It's so fun to be knitting without a pattern (and not having to remember what I'm doing - I get to just wing it)! I really needed this little break from hard-core designing. I also made a garterlac dishcloth, which was great fun. This is going to be a headstart on my July knitting, which is a good thing since July is right around the corner!



I also got to knit and crochet some afghan squares. The Knitters for Obama group is doing a drawing for two different afghans (one knit, one crocheted) - you get entered to win by donating to the Obama campaign. The knit afghan is the 50 States Afghan composed of a bunch of individual state squares using texture to represent the states. I signed up too late to get Oregon, or Minnesota, or any other state where I've actually lived, so I knit Michigan (which I do have ties to - my aunt & uncle live there and I spent many lovely weeks with them there when I was a kid):



For the crochet squares, it was crocheter's choice. I did the May 12" Aran Square:



And the Windowpane Square:



Both were found on Crochet Pattern Central's 12" Afghan Square page.

We spent the beginning of the week out at the Oregon coast and I got to make a quick stop at Nestucca Bay Yarns in Lincoln City. It is an awesome little shop, and the owner Cheryl was delightful (they will soon be carrying pdfs of the Gardiner Yarn Works patterns - yay!). It is so beautiful out at the beach, I wonder why we don't get out there more often. We also got to stop at the Tillamook Cheese Factory, one of my favorite places (although it's always a bummer to go there on the weekend because the factory isn't running then - I love watching the cheese conveyor belts run). I really love living in Oregon!

And now it's time to get back to our regularly scheduled knitting. I've cracked into the cake of purple Sea Silk. Here it is, sitting on top of my new Japanese stitch dictionary. Aren't they inspiring together?



Actually, instead of knitting, I should really pay some attention to the kids. They've totally gone feral since school let out - I'm afraid of what they're doing out there in the living room. Somehow they got the Simpsons movie on continuous play on the DVD player and have been watching it for way too long. I am officially in the running for parent of the year.

Inspiration

First of all, if you're my mother-in-law, don't read this post until tomorrow. Why? Well...you're having a birthday party tonight, and I wouldn't want to be responsible for ruining any surprises.

Now that TNNA is survived and plans are beginning for the next batch of patterns, I'm overflowing with ideas. When I first started designing, I was worried that I would have trouble coming up with ideas for things to make. I shouldn't have worried - my biggest problem is having enough time and energy to make even a small fraction of my ideas a reality. I guess it's a good problem to have, but it can also be frustrating and make it very hard to focus. I've got yarn for about two dozen different design projects that I've planned out (vaguely, anyway) but I keep finding new inspirations everywhere. Here are a few of the things that are calling to me right now:



You can see my preference for purple rearing its ugly head once again. Those are two skeins of Malabrigo's wool-silk blend, a skein of Casbah sock yarn from Fleece Artist (or is it Handmaiden? I can't remember), some Lorna's Laces Green Line and some Seasilk. I've got ideas for all this yarn, but I'm waffling as to whether I want to make the Casbah into socks or do a lace scarf instead. The Seasilk will definitely be lace, the Malabrigo some kind of hat/mitt or scarf and the Lorna's Laces is destined to be a man's vest (although I have a killer sock idea for it as well). See the problem? There are so many possibilities, how do I narrow it down? I couldn't really tell you why the ideas that have made it to fruition got the necessary attention. They aren't necessarily my favorite ideas, but more a combination of inspiring yarn, timing and the concept happening to pop into my head at the right moment as I'm deciding what to work on next. Someday I will come up with a more organized way of doing things. Really.

I also got this lovely little package in the mail today from Schaeffer:



That's a few lovely skeins of their yarn along with swatching samples of others. Just what I need - more yarn to distract me! I've already got ideas for a couple of the skeins and they just arrived today! Help me.

Finally, here's what I didn't want my MIL to see - a little gift knitting that I did this week.



Those are a pair of my Ballerina Slippers, knit out of a skein of Cascade Pastaza. They're the most perfect shade of bubblegum pink, and they turned out really great - I almost hate to give them away. Of course, they're so quick to make I could easily whip up my own pair (but I have to make Sydney hers first). I modified them slightly to give a bit more toe coverage, which involved knitting flat for about 8 rows before I started the toe instead of starting in on the toe right away. I really hope she likes them!

I'm also making her a poundcake. It has been awhile since I went through my baking kick, but looking through my recipe books today got me all inspired again. I just wish it wasn't so hot to run the oven - we're trying to conserve energy by setting the heat low and the AC high, but I'm very temperature sensitive and get cranky and uncomfortable if I'm not within a couple degrees of 71. It should be a fun summer!

Ah, summer...

My printer is smoking, getting all of those brand-spanking-new patterns ready to mail off to the shops. My printer truly is my BFF - I love this thing. Seriously. Here she is, hard at work printing off a gazillion patterns that will soon be winging their way to The Loopy Ewe.



Patterns generally go out in dribs and drabs except after TNNA, when I get to send them out in a gigantic batch that keeps me occupied for days. Yesterday, however, I took a day off in honor of Father's Day. I did check my e-mail a couple of times, but I did NOT do any pattern work. Instead, I started a pair of guy socks that will eventually belong to Bill. Isn't this the perfect guy colorway?



That's Classic Elite Alpaca Sox there, one of my very favorite sock yarns. These might be done by Christmas (did I mention that Bill's feet are 12" long?).

Fortunately, nice weather has finally come to Portland. This means that the kiddos are busy outside in their awesome new sandbox.



Yesterday we picked up just over 700 lbs of beach sand from Oregon Decorative Rock. This stuff is seriously awesome - soft and light and straight from the beach. I try not to think of the impact that the mining of beach sand for sandboxes might have on the actual beach...in the meantime, the kids are happy and thus so am I.

Our garden is doing very well all of a sudden, too. We spent some time out there this weekend, and I got the beets and carrots weeded (mostly) and thinned. Thinning seedlings always pains me - I know that it's necessary so that the remaining plans will have room to thrive, but it still seems counterintuitive to plant a bunch of seeds and then rip half of them up again. Here are my healthy beets after being given plenty of elbow room:



Yes, I still have a gazillion weeds in there, I know. We've got this insiduous grass that grows everywhere and is impossible to get rid of. I haven't had time to properly fight it off, so I try to keep it from growing right on top of any of the plants we're actually trying to grow. It likes to grow on top of our weed barrier, too, which REALLY ticks me off. What good is weed barrier when the weeds grow right on top of it?



That's our nice gravel and flagstone path, being eaten alive by weeds. I really wish I could let the chickens (aka destroyers of all things green) out there to take care of it, but unfortunately our garden would suffer some serious collateral damage. Just so you know the scale of their destructiveness, here's a picture of them by their fence.



See the nice green grass on one side, taunting them, and the bare dirt on the other? They've managed to take care of every single weed, blade of grass, what have you in their little run. We're definitely going to set up a temporary fence and let them go to town on the garden once it has run its course. I also encourage our neighbors to throw their weeds over the fence rather than putting it out with yard waste. The only problem with this is that the chickens now beg and plead with them every time they're out weeding. I hope they find this charming and not annoying!

We've also got nice green blueberries...



And lots of pea plant action...



And potatoes!



This last one has got me really excited - I haven't grown potatoes since I was a kid! It's amazing how much stuff we can fit in our extremely small yard. I've taken to calling it my "global food crisis garden". We've also got carrots, watermelons, lettuce, strawberries, raspberries, Walla-Walla onions, a pepper plant, an artichoke, a tomato, beans, a zucchini (or rather space for it, since we haven't managed to locate a start yet) and possibly some pumpkins (if they survive the rigors of our backyard) along with a bunch of herbs. We've also got about a dozen volunteer sunflower plants which I may or may not allow to survive. We'll see how well they behave themselves!

In Recovery

We survived TNNA! It was a whirlwind week (and I'm still trying to mentally recover while getting everything wrapped up from the show). We showed off our new patterns and picked up a bunch of new customers. I'll be adding them to the Gardiner Yarn Works retailers page very soon - I've got about a gazillion little piddly things to do and they've been keeping me very busy all week. Who knew that I'd have to teach myself web development, publishing and graphic design to do this job? Let me tell you, my Adobe Creative Suite skillz are getting better by the second! Just this week I figured out how to get graphics from Adobe Illustrator into InDesign without them getting all pixelated. It was the stupidest, easiest fix ever, but without combing through the help I didn't get it right the first time! Live and learn.

Since I haven't got any new pictures to show you, I'm going to sprinkle in little photos of the new stuff. If you've seen it over and over already, I apologize.



So, TNNA - as usual, we had too little time and too many great people to see. I met lots of folks who I'd only known via e-mail which was really fun. We got to hang out with Anne Hanson of Knitspot and Jessica of Rose-Kim Knits (she had her Auburn Camp Shirt-in-progress which she passed around the table at the bar one night to much acclaim). I met Bonne Marie Burns of Chicknits, Sharon of She-Knits and Kim of Knitting Matters. We got to chat briefly with Jess, Casey and Mary-Heather of Ravelry, and Amy Singer and Jillian Moreno brought me my designer's copy of Big Girl Knits 2 along with lots of nice compliments on my designs (they are such sweethearts). Amy had bronchitis and completely lost her voice, poor thing! I ran into her a few times and am sure she got really sick of me saying that same thing over and over - "Oh, you poor thing!" It's the mom in me, really. I also got to hang briefly with my KFO peeps Carol and Kristen who are both hilarious and wicked smart.



Annie Modesitt was kind enough to give me a signed review copy of her new book, Knit With Courage, Live With Hope which I started reading on the plane and finished up this morning. I want to give it its own post, but I will say here that I highly recommend it for anyone who is a fan of Annie's work OR who finds themselves turning to knitting as relief from life's many curveballs. It was also fun to read about my old neighborhood in St Paul (Annie's new house is about two blocks from where I used to live), although I wish that their arrival in MN hadn't coincided with her husband's sad diagnosis. But again, I'm going to save my full commentary for another post.

Back to TNNA. I can't possibly list everyone that I met and reconnected with - it is so nice to get together with people that I only see a couple times a year at most. I just wish that exhibiting wasn't so hard. We had to leave our dinner early on Sunday night because I was so exhausted and about to have a complete and total meltdown. I got to the point where I just couldn't talk to anyone anymore.



I was also a little bit bummed out by our sales, which I was expecting to be stronger than in January. We went back to our room and I looked over the numbers, which settled me back down. Our wholesale business has actually been doing quite well and although we didn't do a huge amount of business at TNNA, we picked up a bunch of fabulous new shops and hope to have orders for the new designs from our existing customers trickling in. Speaking of which, our new patterns should be arriving in shops in the next couple of weeks. I've also managed to whip up a hat/fingerless mitt combo since arriving home and am halfway through another scarf, so there should be no shortage of new designs to release in the fall for quick holiday projects.

Now that the big show is over, I should have time to focus on my next round of designs, including that pesky project that I was going to blog about. I'm so unreliable, I know, but I WILL get around to it one of these days! First I need to print, sleeve and mail a giant stack of patterns. Then I need to format some new Ravelry ads and send in a few submissions (I've been so overworked lately I haven't been submitting anything, so my stranglehold on the Interweave Knits sock patterns will be ending as of the Fall issue...). Have you seen Twist Collective? It's a new online magazine spearheaded by Kate Gilbert and it looks amazing. It's a new business model and the patterns are not offered for free, which allows the designers to get paid decently for their work. I got to meet Kate at TNNA, too - lucky me!



Donna got a few pictures of the booth and other stuff, but of course I didn't remember to bring the camera. Until she blogs about it (or e-mails me pics so I can post them), you're out of luck. She's off enjoying herself with the family so it might be a little while.



In the meantime, Franklin Habit also attended TNNA and while I spotted him (and the Yarn Harlot, who was also there but, even though I walked right by her, didn't get any stalker-like attention from me, as hard as it was) from afar, I didn't actually talk to him. However, he gets the prize for the best TNNA write-up I've seen including all those "hey, is that Pam Allen?" moments that I remember from my first (and second, and third...) time attending. And now I'm off to daydream about the distant future, when somebody will whisper "hey, is that Chrissy Gardiner?" when I walk by...

Tick tock, tick tock...

Only three days left until I leave for Columbus and TNNA - yikes! I feel much more prepared this time than I did in January, though. I've only got a couple patterns left to finish and send off to tech editing (IIRC, in January I had more than that) and I'm feeling sort of twitchy this week not having more to do. I've only got one project on the needles and that's making me a little twitchy as well. I've got to get something else started and quick! I've been so busy with commissioned projects and the new GYW stuff all spring that I neglected my submissions - that means I don't have many new commissions coming up (apart from a bunch of socks, but I've got those down to a science these days and they don't worry me like, say, a sweater would). Time to get back to the design project I've been promising you all! That will be next on the list after TNNA has been survived.

In my free time, I've been watching the primary shakeout more and more obsessively. I've found my peeps on the Knitters for Obama forum on Ravelry and can't go more than a couple hours without checking in there to see what the latest scuttlebut is. I just wish things weren't so divisive - I worry about my party on a daily basis. The Knitters for Obama group is organizing a bunch of charity knitting, to be donated to a homeless shelter that caters to veterans, and I'm throwing myself into that project over the summer. I don't get to do nearly as much charity knitting as I'd like, but this will finally get me off my tush - I've pledged four items per month over the summer, including a bunch of washcloths, hats and even a scarf or two. The hats and washcloths only take a few hours each, so I really don't have any excuse not to do them.

My "health revitalization project" is also going very well. I've lost 10 lbs since mid-April, despite the cruise, and my Portland-to-Coast training is going better every week. I've started doing yoga again (I used to be pretty good, but it's a struggle now with all that extra chub in the way) and I'm using the high gas prices as an excuse to walk everywhere. Over the weekend we walked to the farmer's market and to my in-laws' (5 miles round-trip). I'm planning to walk to my class on Wednesday. If I can keep my blisters under control, it should all be good.

And now, back to the grind. I've updated the website, so you can see full details on all the new designs at http://www.gardineryarnworks.com/catalog.html. See you next week with a full TNNA recap!