Woolly Boully is now up at the Loopy Ewe!

Sheri has my Woolly Boully yarn up at the Loopy Ewe. (There was a sneak-up last night.) Stop by if you have a minute. As of this blog post, five colorways have already sold out!


Now that the yarn is up on Sheri's site, I can show you my yarn in color.

An embarrassing realization: my camera is on its way out apparently. It's not taking good photos anymore. I didn't know that digital cameras had these abrupt endings until a friend of mine told me. She then pulled out her 7 megapixel camera and showed me the lovely photos she had taken. I went to price new cameras and was so embarrassed to know that 7 megapixels is the norm! I thought 3 was. I thought 7s were so expensive, but now they are priced like the old 3s. And, they now have rechargeable batteries! I guess I don't keep up with consumer goods very well.

Contest Update:

April's winner was Leslie of the Silver Fork Saga. Leslie will receive two skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepard Sport in the watercolor colorway as well as The Sock Journal: Knit the Year in Socks. Congrats, Leslie!

We've also received lots and lots of squares from the following (blogless) ladies: Marylou B. sent in 20 squares; L.M. B. sent 40 (!) squares; Rosemarie V. made 20 squares; Geri T. made an afghan and a baby blanket; Jackie F. made a baby blanket; and Aunt G's sister Pat made a baby blanket. Mom J has also made quite a few items for the drive as well.

We got more squares from Jody, two from Gingersnaps with Tea, and two from Aileen. Gingersnaps with Tea made her squares for Aunt Betty (a beautiful basket weave square in pima cotton) and Uncle Doug (a wool blend that's big and burly like her Uncle Doug). Thanks so much, ladies!


The contest is almost over. If you want to join in the blanket drive, please have your items postmarked by June 15. At the end of June, I'll be drawing May's and June's winners and also the winners of all the other items we have to give away. There are books, needles, and, yes, yarn, including a ball of Trekking 126. Some of you donated prizes, and we are very grateful to you.

Spinning

I finished spinning and plying my Spunky Eclectic roving. It was a crazy spinning experience. Some of my singles were so overspun and some underspun.


I have to say that it looks better after being plied. I've been carrying this skein around the house as if it were a little baby. I know it's ugly, but it's mine.

I finished my Caterpillar socks. They are made in my favorite good ole stockinette pattern. I must have had a difficult month: the tension on the second sock is unbelievable tight.


I've never had this happen to me and my socks before. One sock is tight and the other loose. Good thing I made them for myself.

Going to Texas

I'll be in Texas until mid-June. I'm going to make my father a special Father's Day present with a new colorway that I made just for my father. It's called Fishing With My Father. (In the photograph below, it's the skein in the foreground. The colorway in the background is Strawberry Moon of June, which already sold out at the Loopy Ewe.)


I wanted to make a sock yarn that wasn't overtly girlie, but I also wanted to make it special. When I was a little girl, my family and I always, always went fishing. I practically grew up on lakes and at the Texas coast. My father has size 14 feet.

p.s. While I'm in Texas, I won't be updating my blog much, and there will be very little in way of photos. The internet connection there is slow, slow. I promise to get a new camera soon, however!

My landlady hears my ballwinder

My landlady hears my ballwinder. She says she can hear her ceiling vibrating. I don't understand it. I've oiled the thing; I turn ever-so-slowly. How can something so small make so much noise?

My fridge also died last week. Manly and I had to wait until someone came by to declare it dead before my landlady would order another. Being a tenant makes me feel so beaten down, as if my life isn't mine. I'm trying to look at the brighter side of everything these days, but it feels so difficult to sometimes.

Speaking of brighter sides, the photo above will reveal itself in color once Sheri at the Loopy Ewe gets the order. I got this idea from Susie of Perchance to Knit, who also dyes for the Loopy Ewe.

As a sock knitter and hoarder of sock yarn, I had to stare at this mountain for a while before boxing it. I also had to refrain from wanting to cuddle with each skein.

What is said about drinking and knitting can also be said about spinning. I spun the majority of this after a few glasses of wine:


Non-wine spinning:


(The roving is "Autumn Girls" from Spunky Eclectic, which was given to me by Coley.)

Mind you, I haven't been taught how to spin, so I'm sure that my spinning looks like a very drunk person spun it. I bought a book, read it, and looked at videos on-line. This is also how I taught myself to knit. A spinning friend of mine is coming over this week, and hopefully she can tell me what I'm doing wrong.

I want to thank you all for the warm comments that you left for me these past two weeks. It's really comforting to know that people are with you and thinking good thoughts for you. Thank you.

Slow & Steady

It's finally spring here in Brooklyn. I had some orange tulips I wanted to photograph for you, but alas, they curled up and died. It seems as if it just gets harder and harder to find hardy flowers at these Brooklyn "bodegas."

So, instead, I'll give you a sneak peak of what I've been up to. I got more dyeing supplies last week and can now do bigger batches. From left to right are Kelp Seahorse, Lotus Blooms, Wisteria, and Brooklyn Candy. I have more colorways to do before shipping this order off to the Loopy Ewe.

I finally found a simple way to twist my yarn into hanks. It took weeks of practice. I know it sounds silly and perhaps every knitter should just know how to twist a skein of yarn into a hank, but it took a lot of tries for me to be able to do it without blinking. And I'm very particular about my hanks; if a strand of yarn looks off, I can't stand it and will do it again. Now I can get my hanks to look pleasing to me on the first try.

Apparently the Loopy Ewe had so much traffic yesterday that the website kind of freaked out. Leave it to sock knitters and their yarn addiction to bring a site down.

After this order, I'll start a smaller order for The Yarn Grove. I want to maintain some business on etsy as I do like dealing with sock knitters and enjoy having the personal interaction with them, so hopefully I'll be able to do a shop update after these two wholesale orders.

Ever want something so badly?

I told myself to wait two weeks. If I still must have it in two weeks, then it's mine.


I'm working on these socks right now. The yarn is Opal Rainforest II in the Caterpillar colorway. I just love caterpillars and pupas and cocoons and butterflies and moths. I really do. So I couldn't resist this yarn.

I've also started a Woolly Boully Google group to send out notifications of yarn news and shop updates. You can sign up here.

Oh, and my prospectus will officially be turned in next week. That, my dear friends, was no small feat. I treated myself by buying a paper shredder. Strange, I know, but I really really wanted one.

p.s. Is it just me? Or are photographs uploaded to Blogger blurry? My photographs look great over at Flickr, but they look awful on my blog. Humpf.

Red Robin Socks Done; Lots of Yarn; More Squares and Blankets

I finished my Red Robin socks about a week and a half ago. A friend of mine emailed to say, "Hey, you haven't updated your knitting blog in a while. It's not like you. Is something wrong?"


It seems like it must be the time of the semester. Everything seems to need to get done all at once. It doesn't help that the weather has been so eerie and for so long now--nothing but dark clouds and the confusion of trees and birds. My living room ceiling had a putrid leak, I had deadlines, and I had a family affair that scared me. (It's okay--I'm just not ready to talk about it yet.) It's no wonder that I feel the way I do, slightly scattered and anxious.


Here are the specs for my Red Robin socks:

Yarn: Woolly Boully Red Robin: Bird, Nest, & Eggs
Needles: size 1 Crystal Palace dpns
Pattern: plain ole stockinette over 60 stitches, 2x2 2" cuff, heel flap, and decreased toe

I love, love, love these socks. I don't want to toot my own horn, but working with this yarn was dreamy, delightful. I could not put these socks down. All I wanted to do was knit and knit and knit these. I'm sorry that they knitted up so quickly.


Say, see this pile of Wisteria yarn? Woolly Boully got its first wholesale order. I just about flipped out. It was the same feeling I got when I had my first poem accepted for a journal, the same feeling I got when I heard my first book was getting published, the same feeling I got whenever something absolutely wonderful and unexpected happened. I have a lot more yarn to dye before I can ship this order on over to the Loopy Ewe. Oh, yes, the Loopy Ewe! And there is another wholesale order that I'll start on after that, but I'll give more details about this in another post.

I'm keeping whatever yarns are listed in my etsy shop at $21. Any new yarns will increase in price to $23, and I probably won't be able to do a shop update for about two months. So if you see something you like, now would be a great time to buy!


Jody, who was March's prize winner, made these three (!) baby blankets.

She also made these seven, bright, happy squares.

And my friend Joanna, who has just learned how to knit, made these squares.


Joanna kept apologizing for her knitting, yet she is knitting beautifully for just beginning. Her first project was a ribbed scarf. Great day! It took me forever to learn how to knit correctly and then another forever to learn how to purl and then another forever to do both with some ease. You're knitting looks wonderful, Joanna!

Since it looks as if I'm going to be busy dyeing up a storm, writing the ole dissertation, and finishing that 250+ page book I started two summers ago, I think I should make June 15 the deadline for getting in squares, afghans, and blankets for the drive. If you still want to participate, go here for details. Thanks so much to everyone for their support!

New Colorway: Autumn's Tremblings

Well, running an etsy shop isn't as easy as it seems to be. I need to get a bigger pot so that I'll be able to dye more yarn at a time. Maybe it would be a good idea to use two big pots. Now, I can only do three skeins at a time. If I could do eight at a time, I wouldn't have to spend each day dyeing or preparing to dye. (Very Shakespearean and morbid.)

This new colorway is called Autumn's Tremblings. The full name, taken from a line in one of my poems, is: as vibrant as autumn's tremblings. "Autumn's Tremblings" are, of course, the wind-blown and fallen leaves.

I'm dyeing more Woolly Boully Neapolitan today, and I'll do a batch of Red Robin next--perhaps in the next two days.

I'm almost done with my Red Robin socks, but that isn't at all as exciting as almost being done with my prospectus.

I was so close to being done with it last week, but then I had one of those computer mishaps, you know, the kind that our students always have and we never quite believe them? Well, I guess this was pay-back; two of my pages turned into 30 pages, all with about ten weird characters at the start of every page. It was scary and frustrating. After crying and throwing paper around, I realized that it was probably a good thing that this happened: I was able to realize that I was really stressed out and didn't know it; it also helped me to know that I should probably take another week with it.

Red Robin: Bird, Nest, & Eggs

I think I'm going to really enjoy this rainy day. The workmen are finally, after all their brushing and draping and glass breaking, done with the ceiling in my bathroom. I only have to live with the paint vapors now.

I get to organize my office, locate my tax forms, knit a bit of my (modified) RPM socks, write a bit of the ole prospectus, and curl up with, again, Barthes' Camera Lucida.

There is rye bread (seeded). There is pastrami. There are cornichons and bread.

And, besides, I have new sock yarn to pet. Its name is "Red Robin: Bird, Nest, & Eggs."

I've never taken to red really, but after knitting up the sock yarn that Coley dyed for me, with its little unexpected bits of red, I've grown to really crave spots of red in my knitting.

When I told J. that I wanted to dye a robins egg and nest yarn, she suggested that I put a bit of red in it. Why, yes, a red robin.

I liked this yarn so much that I'm keeping one for myself. One is listed in my Woolly Boully shop.

* * *

Jilian made three squares for the blanket drive. These squares are in memory of Grandma Gerda. Thanks so much, Jilian.


J. made four more squares. I think she's made about 12. I have some catching up to do. Thanks, J!


I want to thank all of you who have encouraged me in my dyeing enterprise and send an extra special thank you to those of you who purchased some of my Woolly Boully yarn. I think I'm loving the dyeing as much as I am the knitting.

* * *

It's official: my little sister is all grown up now. She got her driving learner's permit yesterday. She was very excited to get it. I wasn't excited by getting mine at all; I feared it.

Woolly Boully now open

Woolly Boully is stocked. Stop by if you have a moment.

Wisteria; March's Prize

I named this colorway after one of my most favorite flowers, wisteria. I love how the wisteria plant always seems to spring back, even after the harshest of winters. My other favorite flowers are lily-of-the-valley, lilac, blue bonnets, hyacinths, mountain laurel, lotus blooms, and peonies.

March's Prize

This month's prize will be two skeins of Lamb's Pride worsted in Creme, accompanied by Traditional Aran Knitting.

Beneath the Cherry Trees & Luna Moth

This colorway is "Beneath the Cherry Trees." Manly asked if I could please make a colorway called cherry blossom, and that's how I came upon this colorway.

This colorway is called "Luna Moth." I handpainted this one, so there are many different colors and color variations.

I'm dyeing two more skeins tonight in a different colorway. Dyeing is great--you get to work on other tasks as the dye sets, which is a good thing, considering the overwhelming amount of work I have to do this week.

I'm going to open up my etsy shop on Friday. I'll post here once it's up and running.

Thanks so much everyone for your encouragement and thoughts on Kelp Sea Horse.

Kelp Sea Horse

Here is my first official colorway for Woolly Boully. The short name of this colorway is Kelp Sea Horse. The full name is I thought of how I might disguise myself as the kelp sea horse does, clinging. I think I'm going to wait until I have about ten skeins of different colorways before I stock the store.

p.s. For some reason my computer isn't loading the "visual verification" when I go to comment on blogs. So, please know I'm reading--I'm just not able to leave comments.