if you’re in pgh, you should try to come! i think it’s going to be a blast. flier here.

get your plants and your yarn in the same place :) and yes, i do think that i am funny…  it’s all about entertaining yourself.

with those 9 hour days, i don’t think i’ll be blogging this weekend, so have a good one and i’ll see you on the other side.

photos and labels. i still have to label this batch too.

p.s. monday i put in my first order for a bunch of my book! it was very exciting! i plan to put in another order this next monday after the market.

p.p.s. speaking of, if you’d like your book inscribed to someone in particular or to you by name… send me an email.

so i had planned to have a 3 day yard sale, but it just didn’t work out. know that i have more stuff and i’ll be listing throughout the summer. in the meantime, here’s what the shelves of the yarn room look like - pretty pretty - notice that i’m not showing you the floor ;) i added a couple of notes over in flickr if you’re interested.

i’m hoping to get the rest of it organized while ben’s away playing organs in europe for the next two weeks.

this weekend i had a fabulous surprise! lynne asked me to do the may market with her. hurrah! i needed more and better craft fairs and this was provided. i have high hopes. it being friday, saturday, and sunday, great location. i didn’t even know it existed. ben and i went out and bought two 4 foot folding tables for the occasion yesterday.

my plans for you? although you may have to bear with me this week while i prepare for the big market with lots of handspun, the making of signs and such… what i really want to give to you are some breed specific posts on the wools i’ve recently spun. i’m also hoping to get another interview with one of the women at knitting group this week which probably won’t be posted until next week. there will be some name game action too, but probably not until after the show and there’s also a new hat pattern on the way. so much to do!

have a good monday!

day two… works the same way as yesterday’s post and there are still a couple of things available from yesterday if you’d like to look there too :)

email: cosyknitsliterally (!at) gmail (dot!) com

hand dyed loop mohair - mohair with a bit of nylon - i think the one in ball form may have some silk in it too
$5 plus shipping SOLD!!

the mother load of black mohair - 4 skeins of Sunbeam Paris Mohair (ravelry link) and two skeins of Iam Mohair, no ravelry link - 100 g/200 m 80% mohair/20% acrylic
$10 takes it all, plus shipping

Noro Kabuto (ravelry link)
$5 plus shipping SOLD!

a nice sort of rough hand dyed wool (not dyed by me)
$2.50 plus shipping SOLD!!

Helen’s Lace - 50% wool/50% silk (ravelry link) the green in this one is brighter than it appears
$20 plus shipping SOLD!!

lace weight merino in navy blue
$4 plus shipping SOLD!

i’m pounding that stake into the virtual yard. if i ever want the yarn room to be organized enough to work in, i must get rid of some of this yarn! so, you, my dear blog readers, are the benefactors of my destash.

asking price is listed below the item and you pay shipping (US $2 for smaller purchases, $3 for larger). canada may be a bit more for the larger packages - if you’re international and really love one of the yarns, we can talk. first come first serve… and more to come in the following days! if you’re interested, send an email to cosyknitsliterally (!at) gmail (dot!) com. paypal preferable.

Harrisville Designs Silk and Wool - 50% silk/50% fine wool
2 skeins Cappucciano and 2 skeins Dusty Pink (ravelry link)
you can have all four or separate them into twos
$2.50/skein plus shipping
SOLD!!

Chenille - over 14 oz. - $5.00 takes the lot, plus shipping - NOT PICTURED (because I found it later) Gedifra Saga in a bright bright blue color, 2 50 oz balls

Karabella Frost - 3 balls of color 9259 - 30% cashmere/30% silk/40% viscose (ravelry link)
$10 plus shipping

Pingouin Mohican - 60% wool/30% acrylic/10% viscose (ravelry link)
$3 plus shipping SOLD!

in my first blog entry about color, i mentioned that i never thought i had a favorite color. well, the fact that i’ve been knitting in a lot of blue and the fact that some of you mentioned liking the blue of my sock in the last post has brought me back to thinking about colors again, and the potential of having a color that i’m relatively neutral on. blue is a color that i’m not particularly attracted to. i may, however, be attracted to a particular kind of blue for a particular purpose.

in the photo above, bottom right and fuzzy, you see some of my hand dyed handspun shetland. i am quite a fan of the shetland to begin with, but this blue has more than that going for it. i think grey blues are very beautiful and it helps that the roving was dyed in the wool giving the subtle and lovely depth after plying. ben always likes the dark blue/black/grey combos and so they have been growing on me as i have started to notice and appreciate them more. as a side note, ben’s eyes are blue/grey too. maybe it’s a ben color that has rubbed off on me.

the sock. for some reason, i thought that bright blue needed to be on my feet and i wasn’t particularly enamored with any of the other colinette colors. frankly, in hindsight, i love the spiraling purple/magenta too. ben was surprised by this purchase i think.

light blue ball of yarn. what can i say? this yarn is the nice sort of rough and the depth of color that i always fall for. when my mother-in-law first took me to learn to crochet at my favorite yarn store in fairbanks alaska, i chose a yarn pretty much the same as this one. i have a crocheted potholder made out of it. i looked at all the colors in this sort of yarn and i chose this one. i have no idea :) i think the instructor recommended acrylic or a blend to learn on and i came back with this one. a cheeky girl, i am.

in the back you can see some garter stitch in pale blues and brown - my hand dyed recycled sweater wool. despite the fact that i do, as a general rule, like pale and muted, i think that what attracted me to this one was the interplay between the brown and the blue.

despite the fact that i’m not overly keen on blue as a pure thought, i love both water and sky. i love looking at them and living with them and, frankly, i would not do without any color. i remember once when we had to do a paper trying to convince someone of something in university, i pretended i was the color yellow and i was trying to convince them not to put me in exile. in the same way, the world would not be the world without the color blue. nor could you make green, and that would be a crying shame ;)

your turn. has anyone ever ‘introduced’ you to a color or a particular shade of color so that you saw it in new light again? have you ever surprised others or yourself by choosing to buy something very outside of your personal preference color range? do you love one particular thing because of the color interplaying with other colors, even though you don’t really love the base color? do tell. i’d love to hear your color stories.

sheep and wool was very very fun. i may have to spend the night next year! i arrived via bus with 50 other knitters from pittsburgh, many of which i knew and, frankly, the people who came on that bus really made my day. first we got into the food lines, knowing they would just get longer later - and we were hungry from getting up at an ungodly hour. after eating, i headed to the ravelry meet-up where i met my editor, jennifer, for the first time and got this button

mostly i was there because i wanted to clap and scream for jess and casey when they arrived :) and i did. they’ve done such an amazing job on the website that they at least deserve to be hooted at. then instead of standing around and feeling awkward i darted off to do my shopping. my friend vivian was all about sitting in the shade, so many of us stopped to sit and chat, eat and drop off our purchases with her. then we headed off shopping with other people when we felt the need to go.

my purchases you ask? all very very boring :)
white roving since i didn’t think my current housing situation very suitable for fleece cleaning
but since you asked, here’s the rundown

-26 oz of corriedale from The Clearing at Curry Farm - this is the only show they do. i really enjoyed talking to her. i saw a bunch of corridale’s too and i must admit, i had no idea they were such big sheep! my friend flo said they could be 150 lbs. that would be as big as me.

-5.5 oz bfl from Potosi Sheep Farm. i may contact them again when they get more roving made. love supporting those small farms.
-24 oz bfl from other sources (most likely imported)

-10 oz of farm wool from The Good Shepherd, the owner of which rattled off a bunch of different breeds she had crossbred to get this particular wool :) after that, i ask you how i could not buy from there?

-the new breed i’m trying out is cormo. i bought 9.2 oz from the America Cormo Sheep Association booth, some from Foxhill Farm and some from Running Wild Yarn (from montana!!). i’ll let you know how she spins. i may have to get ahold of those folks in montana…

i drank strawberry lemonade. my friend christine baked enough fabulous baked goods to keep me and many others in our group away from any other sweets (that and the ice cream line was really really looooooooooong).

and a bit of new knitting was started as bus knitting - colinette jitterbug, size 2 US needles, 3×1 rib. i needed something suitably brainless for a tired trip there and a tired trip home.

i highly recommend going to this festival with friends. a great time was had by all. just wish i had more time to poke around and learn more about the farms.

p.s. i need to order copies of my book very soon - so if you’ve decided to buy a book through me and you haven’t paid yet, please do so! if you need further assistance or want me to bill you over paypal, email me at cosyknitsliterally (!at) gmail (dot!) com.

p.p.s. the name game is done! go look at the yarn names over here. thanks for the help.

have a good monday! i’m dyeing in the bathtub, which, as my roommate pointed out yesterday, sounds utterly morbid ;)

for those of you not going to maryland sheep and wool, i’ll leave you with something to distract you :)

US domestic wool in lots of 3 and 6 oz. all spun from these rovings. as usual, if your name is chosen and you think you may want the yarn, email me and i’ll give you the specs. if you choose to buy, you get 5% off of the price and free shipping to US/Canada and a couple bucks off the shipping to elsewhere. i’ll pick the names sunday evening. i love your creativity and you are in NO WAY obligated to buy or even think about buying if you participate in the naming. there are two ways to name, click into flickr and comment, or comment on this blog post. the benefit to flickr is that you can focus in on one particular yarn and see it closeup by hitting the all sizes button above the photo (oh la la!).

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p.s. just want to do a shout out to sarah and her book. if you’re interested in hats, i think this book is a great resource!

then into the spin cycle

have a great day!

thanks for the bazillion wonderful comments on the sweater! i think i’ve worked it into the wardrobe every day since i finished it :) luckily it got cooler here because alpaca + 100% humidity + 80 degrees does not really work for me.

my new plant from a knitting friend. i’ve lived here how long and it took spring to get me to have plants of any sort?? i love house plants. i also got a begonia clipping a couple of weeks ago that i’m rooting. yay for plants!

so this week feels like slow motion. ben’s finals week. i’ve been spinning and knitting, but knitting in threes, so you have to wait until they’re all done. i’m close to finishing some commissions (3 acutally…). i’ve been prefering working hard to thinking about this pile growing

although i think a trip to ikea next week for more baskets for the shelf might help a lot. i tried it the pretty way and it just didn’t work.

the trip to maryland sheep and wool? that might just make the pile worse. i’m mostly going to go for roving i think - breed specific and localish. are any of you all going? i’ll be there saturday and will definitely be at the ravelry meet up for a bit at 11:30. i’m very very excited!! i’d love to say ‘hi’ in person if you’re going to be there.

speaking of breed specific local wool

a hat of course! i can’t stop knitting with this shetland. it’s so fluffy and gets so soft when knit up. the fabric is truly remarkable. addictive, that’s what this is.

another thing that is growing is my shop stock. i have a lot of knit goods and handspun yarns and i’m starting to worry that i need to get it out there more. i’ve been thinking about what this might mean. i’m not quite to the point where i’m willing to up my prices crazily and sell in boutiques and yarn stores… so i’m focusing on finding new craft fairs and other spaces where i might fit in. not only do i need new craft fairs, i really need the big ones that will actually make me money… but gas is expensive and will the craft fairs in other cities be worth it?  i’ll certainly be applying to renegade in cleveland and handmade arcade here in pgh.  but as to the others, will someone else i know get into the craft fair so we can carpool? somehow, i just hit a scary spot in the business plan. i guess we’ll see what happens, but something has to happen soon… something’s got to give…