Sunday, June 28, 2009

Mojo - are you back?

So, it has been awhile, hasn't it? A lot has been happening here in Knittin' Mom land. First, we survived TNNA, the big yarn/needlecraft trade show in Columbus, Ohio, two weeks ago. Well, more than survived - we had our best show ever! It was our 4th time exhibiting and we're finally starting to feel like old pros. We sold lots of our new designs (which you can see at the top of our Design page) and the book got rave reviews. We booked a bunch of trunk shows for the book and I'm now trying to get my act together so I can actually schedule a few book signings/workshops this fall.

Hot on the heels of TNNA was Black Sheep Gathering down in Eugene, where we shared a booth with Lavender Sheep. I was so wiped out from TNNA I could barely function, but fortunately Donna was not in the same bad shape. She went down for the whole weekend and manned the booth with Yvonne. I showed up briefly with family in tow on Saturday (they went strawberry picking while I struggled to stay coherent in the booth) but was pretty useless. I did get a few pics of the booth.





Don't you just love all that yummy yarn? And this final pic shows the fabulous Grumperina-reknitted Path of Flowers along with one of my favorite new designs from Crochet All Day - the cow bag!



If you missed Black Sheep, come see us at Sock Summit. Speaking of Sock Summit...for some reason I thought it might be a good idea to design a bunch of new patterns to debut in our booth there. What was I thinking? Oh, right - I wasn't.

I just finished the sample for the first sock, and it turned out spectacularly. I'm going a little bit crazy with these socks, since the place will be swarming with avid sock knitters, and making them a bit more challenging than usual (at least, the one I just finished is a tad challenging with some seriously crazy cabling). I'm also using some handpainted yarn that I don't always get to use because of the need to have highly photographable, widely-available yarns used in my normal patterns. I'm going to have these designs reknit in commercial yarns this fall and add them to the regular line in January, but for now, I'm having fun using yarns that I don't normally get to, like Lavender Sheep!

I'm also trying to recover my home-making mojo. Between the final push to get the book done and TNNA-prep (and recovery), the house has basically gone to hell. Bill has done a pretty good job of maintaining, but he gets sick of being the only one doing anything (and I don't blame him - I get cranky about that, too). After I get over myself (I just wrote a freaking BOOK after all - I shouldn't have to do housework too!), I do try to help out as much as I have energy for, but I really want to get back to baking and cooking instead of driving down to Mickey D's for dinner. The kids are starting to like it a little bit too much...

I've started by trying to make sure we use up our CSA share each week instead of letting it molder in the fridge and then using it to feed the compost or the chickens. I don't know why I find this so strange, but Sydney is absolutely ape for artichokes. She loves the things! I find them very strange and a little scary, but I'm willing to cook them more often in order to get a veggie down her little gullet.

I should also admit that we were able to squeeze a little family fun into the mix. In fact, I've been trying to make sure the kids aren't totally neglected now that they're not in school, which takes a bit of time. The Oregon coast just experienced record low tides, so we headed out for the morning to check out the tide pools. It was very cool.







We were out by Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach, which is normally out in the water but when we were there, was almost totally accessible. We missed the very low tide (didn't get up early enough), but we were still able to walk almost all the way out. Very cool!



Sydney thought it would be a good idea to make "sand angels".



Crazy kid! If you can't get enough of the beach (or can't get to the beach because, like me most of my life, you're in the middle of the country), check out the exclusive design I just finished for T-SPOT, a lovely little shop in Manzanita, which is a beach town just south of Cannon Beach.



It's called, surprisingly, the Manzanita Tam and you can get it from T-SPOT along with lots of good other stuff. And here end these messages!

Saturday, June 06, 2009

Gardening!

Even though we've been eating take-out and fast-food nonstop for the past few weeks (and have thrown most of our CSA veggies to the chickens because we didn't manage to eat all that lettuce), we've been planting a ridiculous vegetable garden. Our entire front yard has pretty much been converted to garden, and we just added a bed to our parking strip. We've got popcorn, pumpkins, watermelon, cucumbers (although these seem to be struggling), blueberry bushes, strawberries, green beans, fennel, mint, sage, thyme, rosemary, asparagus, tomatoes, lettuce, peas, grapes, potatoes and zucchini. Oh, and artichokes. If a global food crisis hits, we'll be all set!

Here are a few pics, taken a few weeks ago (everything's bigger now after our recent hot spell).







Now I just need to find time to actually use/preserve all these veggies! At least they're still in the growing stage so I've got a month or two before I need to worry...

This weekend is all about finishing Breaking Dawn (I'm almost there!) and cleaning the house. The book files were uploaded to the printer yesterday, so I've got some respite from that before proofs come back for approval. Then, I just have to sit back and wait for August! Apart from all the pre-publication publicity I've been trying to do. I sent galleys off for review to Library Journal, Publisher's Weekly (that's about a one in a million shot, but I figured it was worth the $30 bucks in materials and postage, just in case!) and Booklist. I'm all set up with Unicorn Books, which is the distributor that nearly every yarn shop orders their books from. They're taking pre-orders on their website and will have an advance copy of the book in their booth at TNNA. I've also sent applications to a couple other distributors that deal with the library market.

If any of you are in Portland and want to see an advance copy of the book, they've got it at Twisted (they're taking preorders there as well). We'll also have it at Black Sheep in the Lavender Sheep booth.

And now, back to the vampires and werewolves.

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Something old, something new...

Even though it probably seems like my life is all about socks right now (and that wouldn't be too far from the truth), this spring has actually been pretty focused on lace. I'm just getting ready to release the new batch of June designs at TNNA next week, and most of them are lace. I had a bunch of single skeins that I couldn't resist any longer, so they somehow turned into lace scarves. And a stole. Oh, and I managed to knit a sweater in there somewhere. Don't worry...I had lots of help.

My first helper spent her spring reknitting two of my existing lace designs in new yarns. One of them was in a yarn that's not widely available enough, and the other was in a yarn that just didn't show the pattern off. I'm happy to say that they've both returned and are making me extremely happy.

Here's the new photograph of Kiwassa, knit in Schaefer Andrea:



But the REAL winner was this, the new Path of Flowers reknit in Mountain Colors Winter Lace, which Grumperina called one of her favorite lace projects ever. High praise, for sure!







Compare these to the original:



Quel difference, no? Of course, it helps that it's modeled by Bill's very photogenic cousin who was here for a visit over Memorial Day weekend. As much as I love that fuzzy orange Kidsilk Haze, it was just a bad original choice for the project. I started that orange sample three years ago, so I must admit that I've learned a lot since then...

And now, onto the new stuff. We've got a wrap:



We've got a buffalo-down scarf:



We've got a silk-and-cashmere cabled lace scarf:



We've got a fuzzy green mohair monster (I mean, sweater!):



And my personal favorite, fun-factor-wise, is an asymmetric granny square scarf!



Bill likes it, too...



And now I'd better get myself back to work. I need to send galleys of the book off to a bunch of reviewers and continue to get prepped for TNNA. I was woken up at 6 am this morning by poor Owen, who has a terrible cough (blasted springtime colds - it's June for goodness sakes!), after staying up until nearly midnight reading Breaking Dawn (which I finally got from the library after being in the hold queue for two months). When I get back from Columbus, I am going to sleep for a week straight!