Summer Sale

I'm having a summer sale in one of my etsy shops - the one that sells Ashland Bay Fibers and also has quite a bit of stash yarn already at bargain basement prices.  I have more than 160 different rovings - many different fibers, many colors.


10% off using coupon code SALE10.  If you purchase more than $75 use coupon code SALE15 for 15% off. You must enter the coupon code at time of checkout to get the discount. This discount does not apply to prior purchases.

These are some new stash sale yarns added to my etsy shop

New roving colors

Four new roving colors from Ashland Bay, now listed in my etsy shop for sale

Dusty Rose, Mulberry, Forest and Graphite

Blending board fun

This afternoon instead of doing things I should be doing I decided to play with my blending board. I'm going to stop beating myself up for not focusing on my business all the time, it's the time to do more playing with less guilt involved.

I pulled out a bit of roving bits & bobs and separated them into color family piles

I put together an autumn color scheme including some bamboo, glitz and silk sari bits

Then I put together the blues, greens and purples along with bamboo and glitz

I decided to play with the blues, greens and purples randomly putting them on the board and then pulling off the rolags for future spinning

And this is as far as I got - there are 9 piles of rolags - 4 rolags in each pile/color order. This is approximately 1/2 pound. I still have a huge pile of roving on the floor waiting to be finished up which will probably make around 1 pound total of this colorway. Can't wait to start spinning it.

Pulling the rolags off did 'smart' my right thumb to my wrist. Recently I had to lay off knitting for a few weeks to let it recover but this has made it flare up again.  I've got to be more wary of repetitive tasks.

New roving in shop

I've spent the past two days fondling roving..........only it's not as fun as it sounds. I've been weighing, bagging, tagging, updating inventory and listing in my etsy shop - too much administrivia. Thank goodness for Sam's help since working together makes the job 3 times faster than me working alone.

I've got some new items like the green bamboo (above left) and these 5 new colors of merino.  The rest was just restocking sold out fibers in my shop.  Check out what I've got to offer here.  Of course I couldn't resist setting aside a couple colors for a future project - Mink & Plum - I need to decide what else to mix with them.......that will come when I'm ready to start playing with the blending board or drum carder......too much else on the to-do list at the moment........

Felting Landscapes Kits

In-between working on holiday sewing today I put together more Felting Landscapes kits for my Etsy shop. I had run out of two of them and then decided to put together a new one. And of course, since first putting together kits many colors had been discontinued by Ashland Bay so I came up with new versions. 

The new kit is the top one - Sunflower Power. Then revamped kits - middle is Sand in your shoes, bottom is Rain Forest.

Coming down the homestretch on holiday sewing - then I can get back to weaving - whoo hoo.

Administrivia

I spent the better part of the day fondling roving. I had a huge order to weigh, bag and label that I had ignored for two weeks......decided today had to be the day to deal with it since my original plans changed. Then there's the administrivia of putting it all into inventory records and updating my etsy shop - phew........overload........

I have two new colors of multi-colored merino - I can't wait to spin up the samples. Above is Cabo, below is Granada.  I love both of them.  These are now available in my fiber etsy shop.

Now off to finish up with more administrivia and on to other mundane chores........

Sizzle

Sizzle....that's what we're now doing in this extreme heat. Yesterday it was 105 in town, only 101(hah) here on our property since we're outside of town and up a bit in elevation. 10 day forecast is for 100+ temps plus chance of dry lightening each day.  But that's not the clincher - it's that our compressor went out last night so no air conditioning - ACK. Call into local company last night, called again this morning and were told that 'John' was returning calls......hoping to hear back soon.  There's no telling what is wrong or how long it will take to get repaired/replaced. Not sure what's on the agenda today - definitely will not be anything that generates heat in the house or in the body......there's only so much an attic fan and ceiling/floor fans can do in this heat.  I do have some dreaded photography work to do........could work on planning future weaving projects - but way too hot to be winding a warp or weaving.

This is the resulting handspun from those rolags I made on the blending board using one of my felting landscapes kits - the Strawberry Fields Forever kit.  I got 1,036 yards - not sure what it will grow up to become.....will sit it on the shelf and marinate for a while........

New roving colorways

Yesterday morning and then again today I started dealing with a big Ashland Bay roving order - photographing, weighing, bagging, labeling, listing in the etsy shop and putting into inventory records - way too much administrivia for my taste, would rather be weaving. Above are some lovely new colors of Superfine Merino. Here's the section of the shop with all the superfine merino including the variegated discontinued colorways I have left.

And here's a limited offering of a merino in natural, brown and grey. It's lovely and I keep eyeing it wondering if I should spin some.

The shop is also restocked with some sold out merino colorways in addition to ecru merino and ecru superfine merino.  And now I can move on to something that's a little more fun.........

Back to the tangled mess

Now that I've got holiday stuff under control (I think) I can go back to the knitted felted tote bag I started a few months ago. It should be fast knitting with these big needles and two strands of worsted weight wool knitted together but it's not.  I have 9 balls for the intarsia stripes, working from the inside and outside of each ball for the 2 strands. I have to stop and untangle after knitting two rows. I tried putting them in containers in front of me but it didn't work any better. If it were intarsia using small balls it wouldn't be a problem.  It really doesn't take long to untangle this to start the next 2 rows of knitting but it is making this take twice as long to knit as it should. In hindsight if I had know this I would have knit the bag in one color. There will be felted flower embellishments to come so it wouldn't have been plain by any means. If anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear them.

Yesterday was spent weighing out Ashland Bay fibers for my etsy shop - colors I was out of, colors I was low on. Sam helped me, even after I fired him for non-performance earlier in the year. He thought up a new 'process' for when we do it together which shaved 1/3 off our time. So, it took around 4 hours for the two of us, it would have taken me a full 2 long days on my own plus getting the etsy shop updated as well as my inventory records so make that 2 1/2 days. Thank you Sam.....just might have to rehire him.....

A bit of this and that......

I got very little time at the loom this week - makes for a grumpy me. I got the 2 burgundy towels woven and just started on the green warp. Not sure what I'm going to so to remedy the lack of time weaving but something has to happen soon or I may snap - working on simplifying life but it takes time.

These are 3 new colors of Ashland Bay merino roving, Citron, Flamingo and Kiwi - great colors! Makes me think of Florida, very tropical. These are now up in my etsy shop for sale. But the remainder of the roving that just came in a big huge gigantic order, at least 40 colors, sits in the huge boxes waiting to be weighed, bagged, labeled, put into inventory and relisted in the shop - just not up to it at the moment, sometime next week......

Last night was the first community concert of the season and it didn't disappoint - Fernando Varela, incredibly strong tenor - beautiful opera singer, classics, contemporary. I could have listened to him for another couple of hours - a voice that can bring tears to your eyes.

New felting kits

Color Fusion Felting/Spinning Kit

Don't ask me where the week has gone and what I've accomplished - time flies these days and I don't like it. I'm getting very sad over not having enough hours in my day to do the things I want to do. It's win-lose situation - selling lots of roving is a win as it's income, selling lots of roving is a lose as I have to spend a lot of time dealing with roving, packing/mailing orders which takes away from weaving time not to mention sewing/crafting/reading time. I have nothing much to show for the week other than going to my spinning group (great day of visiting and spinning), working on my April guild program handout some more (ready to print), lunching and walking around downtown with a friend, and yesterday putting together a new felting/spinning kit using the new Color Fusion Superfine Merino from Ashland Bay (in-between doing massive amounts of laundry). I can't say enough how much I love this roving - it's beautiful to spin.  I haven't tried nuno felting with it yet but being a superfine merino it's got to nuno felt even more beautifully than the regular merino.

Samples spun

I finished spinning mini sample skeins of the new colors of Ashland Bay rovings. Don't look too closely at my spinning, this is quick and dirty (and fun) spinning, not concerned whether or not the yarn is perfect, they're just samples added to the etsy shop listings to show what the colors may look like spun.

Superfine Merino - Color Fusion Line (a new line of fiber & colors)

Merino (new colors added to the already extensive line of merino colorways)

 

 

You get what you pay for...........

Well, I have learned that with an employee I get what I pay for.......a gold bricking shipping/receiving/inventory control employee........Sam gets no compensation for his work which is why he was outside working on the property in (fluke) almost 70 degree weather and I was inside weighing, bagging, labeling wool roving, putting it into inventory records and then listing it in the etsy shop....oh, and there are many new colorways so add photography to that list. I spent the better part of two days working on this. Hmm, going to have to re-evaluate this arrangement.......maybe a little incentive so I get to spend time at the loom instead.

Here is a new line of roving from Ashland Bay Fibers called  Color Fusion - it's a Superfine Merino, 19 micron, and is beautiful. It's hard to capture the color variations in some of the colors but I did my best. These are in the Superfine Merino section of my shop (or mixed in by color with everything else if one browses the shop page by page).  I can't wait to spin up sample mini-skeins of this in the next few days to see the color once spun, it's a perfect wool roving for for nuno felting since it's so fine.  I'm going to put together a sampler kit of this line but probably won't get to that until next week.

Here are 9 new colors of the regular Merino roving, some really nice colors to add to the already huge line of this wool. They can be found in the Merino Section of my shop, or mixed in by colorway if one browses page by page.  I get to spin up samples of these new colors too. It's a time consuming job but oh, so fun to spin small amounts of many colors.  Now I need to figure out what to do with all the mini-skeins of discontinued colors or my sold out hand-dyed colorways as they're no longer pertinent.....maybe adding small bits of color to knitting projects? maybe to decorate gift boxes? I'll come up with something.

Blocking a shawlette

This morning I decided I should get the shawlette recently knit blocked. The pattern is Brome from the book Free Spirit Shawls.........it's a great book. I knit it out of some of my handspun, between a dk and worsted size - merino in the Baltic colorway from Ashland Bay Fibers. It's a great color to go with jeans. The garter stitch area at the top is done in a series of short rows, wider in the center, dwindling down to practically no garter stitch area on the ends, just couldn't capture it all in the picture from my angle. Next I want to knit the pattern Framework out of the same book - it calls for fingering weight yarn - first I need to decide if I want to knit it with commercial yarn, some of my handspun stash or spin something new.......there are some roving colorways calling my name so who knows what I'll decide..........

New roving colorways

I've just updated my etsy shop with roving with new fibers, new colorways and relisting of previously sold out items. I've got some beautiful 75% BFL/25% Ecru Tussah Silk blend - I can't wait to dye some of this when the weather warms. The 5 multi-color rovings above (2 in 100% merino, 3 in merino/silk) are old colorway names but new dyelots/blendings from Ashland Bay. They are so different than the originals, I almost feel like they should have changed the names - a few of them are so different. I can't wait to spin up samples to see what they look like as yarn - I bet pretty outstanding which is the norm for their incredible colorways.

Yesterday was spent taking inventory and weighing out 100 pounds of wool into 8oz bags, this morning it's been listing in the etsy shop and updating inventory records. Phew, have had quite enough of administrivia. And my new worker bee, my husband Sam, complained (good heartedly, in fun) all day yesterday about standing on the concrete in the garage weighing wool, complained about his shoulder hurting (which was hurting before he started) and complained about the color purple whenever he came to a roving with purple in it - he says purple makes his head hurt. Phew, I guess I got what I paid for in help......but it was very nice to have company and not do it alone. Pretty soon he'll be doing all the weighing on his own, learning how to update inventory, pack up and print postage for orders........this will free up more time for me to do what I love most, weaving.

Getting sidetracked........

I got very sidetracked this morning and played with my drum carder (which doesn't happen very often) blending colorful batts.....very fun. These are Ashland Bay Merino colorways; lime, peacock, sky blue and violet. I added a bit of white silk, white tencel and white angelina to the batts too. While I was drum carding I put on the DVD with the first 3 episodes of The Vikings, A History Channel series - bloody but great - now to wait for the next DVD to arrive from Netflix to watch more. Of course if I had paid attention I could have watched it when it was on TV but I didn't know about it until it was almost over.

Here the colors are being loaded onto the drum carder. It's an old Clemes & Clemes drum carder, not the biggest or the top of the line carder but for how often I use it, it's great. I saw that C&C will motorize the old ones.....for a pretty penny......Sam has said he can do it for me.....hope it's within the next 10 years......

Here are what the finished batts look like. I already have ideas for more colors to combine in batts. Now off to do something I 'should' be doing......

Fiesta merino roving

The other day I put up a pic of the new Ashland Bay roving colorway  Fiesta.  Here's a picture of a sample handspun - I love it.  It's supposed to replace the discontinued Daffodil and Sunflower - well, no where near what daffodil looked like but pretty close to Sunflower which was one of my favs. It's very autumn inspired once spun up. 

Yesterday I took an all day class at Top Stitch, the Berina store in my area, on my new serger - what a great class - Jonathan is a wonderful teacher demystifying sergers in general and Bernina ones in particular. Looking forward to a class he said we can do for those of us with the 1300 model to learn about the chain stitch and cover stitch which others did not have in class yesterday. Jonathan is great, as is his wife Karen who also teaches at the shop.  If you're ever in SW Oregon they've also got a great cotton fabric selection, not the big 4 pattern company patterns, and threads........not to mention machines and irons.........

New roving colorway

I've spent the better part of two full days weighing, bagging, labeling roving, putting it into my inventory spreadsheet and updating the etsy shop - phew - too much administrivia!  Anyhow, there is one new colorway of Ashland Bay roving that I've now got in stock - Fiesta. It is a replacement for the discontinued Daffodil and Sunflower rovings.......both colorways I loved and didn't keep any for myself......very sorry I didn't. I'm hoping later today to get a sample spun up of Fiesta to see how it compares to the other two.

New roving in etsy shop

I spent just about all day today finishing putting together more felting kits that had sold out, weighing, bagging, labeling roving and putting it into stock. I'm just starting to list new and sold out colorways. The four rovings above are brand new colorways of merino from Ashland Bay - they are listed in the shop now. I can't wait to spin up samples to see how they look spun up, I'll be adding the pictures of the handspun in the etsy listings once I get them done. Previously sold out felting kits are back up for sale in the shop. More previously sold out colorways of roving to be listed over the weekend.

Where do my hours go?  I thought I'd get the roving job finished up mid-day, then I'd make some blueberry jam and maybe run the vacuum......needless to say it's lucky that I'm making dinner after finishing up with the roving.

Wool, wool, everywhere......

70 pounds of roving, weighed, bagged and labeled this afternoon - I'm beat.......will be waiting until morning to put it into inventory records, relist the sold out colors on etsy, and add it in the stacks of bins where it's stored awaiting new homes.