Converting the world - one little girl at a time.

I was hanging out with DBF’s sister’s friend’s little girl, Ava. She won at a game her and I were playing and declared that I owed her $3 cause she won (this wasn’t set up before I starting playing the game with her - gotta love little kids!). I told her “I don’t have and money - you want yarn?” She said yes, so I cut some bits of the yarn I had from the project I brought over, and started knotting the yarn into a friendship bracelet a’la 3rd grade. Ava come over to watch me do this, and was asking questions (she’s 7 y.o.).

DBF’s sis said “Why don’t you show her how to knit? She’d like that!” I asked Ava if she wanted to see me knit and she said yes. I was making a stuffed dog and had finished the body and had just casted on for his leg before I got there. I took my cast on row and started knitting, telling her the poem I heard “In through the front door, up over the back, peep through the window, and off jumps jack.”

Well, sure enough, Ava wanted to try. I only had my size three needles, and some “Reclaimed” yarn I was working with - not the best stuff to teach a young kid with, but damned if she didn’t keep trying and got it after a while. I kept telling her things like “you missed your house.” when she would put her needle between stitches, and “keep your hat on when you look out the window” when she would lose her yarn over.

Her older brother, who was in college, came over to watc, and I’m sure he thought I was nuts saying this stuff, but she was knitting and doing well. My fav. thing she would ask is “Where’s my window?” and I would take my figure or needle and show her where she was to peek out of.

I told her and her mom if Ava really wanted to keep knitting, to bring her over my house one afternoon and I had better stuff for her to work with and it would be more fun for her, rather than learning on these tiny needles.

Turns out, her father’s mom use to knit, and she died in a car accident when he was 24 - he teared up when he saw me knitting, and he left before I taught Ava how to - I’m sure he would be tickled pink if she learned :)

Sorry for the long post- this just made me happy and I wanted to share.

BTW - I was telling her how I make yarn from sheeps' wool and she asked me “who kills the sheep?!!?” I explained and put her on etsy to look at the different colors of roving and wool. After a bit, she pulled her brother over and proudly proclaimed “That’s sheep!” He said “That don’t look like sheep to me…”.

I've been busy

and nervous and scared and knitting and busy and ...

I started my own company. You may have (or not) noticed that I changed the name of my blog. This is now the home of Yarns from the Haunted Surf Shack. We are currently "debuting" at Sock Summit, thanks to Cherry Tree Hill Yarns showing some love to us Indie dyers.

This is where the nervous comes in. For purposes of full disclosure, I've only been dyeing yarns for about a month. Started when I lost my job, since I didn't have much else to do with myself (over then feel like crap, but that's another story). I enjoyed it, and send some of my hand dyed along on a Traveling Scarf Swap I'm part of over on the Ravelry. I figured that if I enjoyed my colors, maybe someone else would too.

I made the mistake of showing DBF.

He is ALL about quitting the day job for something that you love. This is the man that wants to give up our house that he just bought last year and just travel the country in our RV and make music, with me booking shows and whatnot along the way. Since DBF has been to a few LYS with me, and MD Sheep and Wool this year, he saw that I'm not the only one into fiber, and realized that, well, there's an opportunity here.

He's so super encouraging about this whole thing it's a almost a bit scary. Has bought everything thing I need of dyeing, without complaining. Is going to (slightly) remodel our basement washroom so I have a place to work. Even his brother has designed our logo, and my BBF Tamar is our printer of the business cards and labels.

Post Apocalyptic Luau in the mix

So what does all this come down to? I can't sleep. It's 3:48 in the morning, I have to get up at 6, and here I am, blogging, looking at colors, dye methods, yarn types, anything and everything I may need to keep this venture going. I fear failure. I don't want to let everyone down who's helped me. This could be awesome, or I could suck and not know it. I won't know for another week or so, until Sock Summit is underway and I how/if my yarns sell. I'll also have trunk show at Lovelyarns September 18, along with trying to submit something for the phatfiber sample box. So I've got enough to keep me busy for a while. And if I'm busy, I can't worry, right?

Argh, I need sleep.

Spinning - I can! (well, sorta)

I did that!

And I've done a lot more since that photo, but I haven't got the battery power to take *actual* photos of said work. So it may or may not have happened, depending on your way of thinking.

This year at Maryland Sheep and Wool, I finally got my Hitch Hiker spinning wheel. I loves it! Really. It took some figuring out as to how it goes together (cause I can't be bothered to read instructions!) but once I got my wheel working, I've been spinning just as often as I can. (Which turns out to be pretty often as I've lost my job. But I don't want to talk about that.)

I have lengths of singles from when I was trying to spin on my older wheel that I got for Xmas, and I think what I want to do is add some twist to them (terribly underspun), dye them each a different color (yeah, I do that now too), then join the whole lot together and see what happens. I'm hoping for awesome, but who knows.

Oh my GOD - I need to take photos!?!?!?!?!!?

Don't look at my Ravelry notebook. Really. All you'll see is a bunch of blank boxes, telling you that there should be yarn, or a project there, but really, there's nothing. Why? Cause I suck about taking photos.

Right now would be a great time to update all that stuff, but I can't - cable is at work and camera is at home. I'm at home, and therefore, can't upload anything. It's been this way for weeks, cause I'm too lazy to bring one thing to the other...thing. ARGH!

The other reason I need to take pics, is cause I wanted to make a really nifty tutorial thing about how I taught my self to knit Left to Right so I won't have to turn when knitting flat. But again, no can do.

So where I am, writing yet another pointless, boring blog, without the benefits of pointless, boring photos to give you something for the trouble of reading this. Well, I'm sorry. Stacey FAIL!

I'll do something better next time I bother to blog - I swear!