Category Archives: Yarn

Have y’all met Ray?

His yarn? Pretty much where my whole budget-for-such-things goes.

The colors are amazing and even prettier in person, he has lace yarn with nylon in it (!), which saves me the fear of destroying it, he runs awesome specials on his blog, and he’s a damned nice guy on top of all that.

Right now he’s doing some pretty cool things with knitting, too.

And have I mentioned that his yarn is gorgeous?

He’s doing two custom dyes for me soon and I can’t tell you how excited I am to see them, given how much I like his *accidental* combinations. And his regular colorways. And…well, go see. 🙂

Dear cheap acrylic yarn from Wal-Mart,

Have I told you lately how much I love you?

You survive the rigors of being loved by a child. You come in many, many colors, both sane and insane. You are the perfect medium for granny squares, traditional and not, and the afghans they become. You make it possible to do work that I adore beyond measure, even in the months when the car needs fixed.

I may hang around with those fancy wools from time to time, but you’ll always be my best friend, the one whose known me since childhood, the one who is there even if we don’t talk for a while, the one thing in my crafting life that is irreplaceable. And I love you.

So excited!

I got home last night and immediately ordered myself a skein of this: Knitivity Dura-Lace. I adore the yarns I’ve gotten from Ray and I can’t wait to see this one. Yay!

Confessions of an Acrylic Lover, #1

I think my favorite thing about Homespun is the way I have to work with it: gently. I have to loosen up my hands and let the yarn flow through them in a way almost unfamiliar to me. It’s almost a meditation, a forced relaxation and letting go of perfect stitches and lines in favor of a sort of organized imperfection that can’t be forced.

Yarn Envy.

I’ve developed this sort of weird love-hate relationship with Ravelry, because even though it’s expanded my horizons (yay!) , it’s expanded my horizons (dammit!). To wit: there are so many crazy-beautiful yarns out there, and I am dead broke. Undead broke. Monetary zombie here.

People, I can’t even afford the infamous Red Heart Super Saver at this point.

But I’m a total ass, and I can’t stop looking at all the pretty yarn. And reading all the threads arguing about the pretty yarn. (And there are some really interesting class issues in there that I’m sort of dying to deconstruct, but I won’t. And some interesting knit v crochet issues, too, which I think are actually class issues, see above.) And I keep looking at the pretty yarn and wanting it. Desperately.

It’s not Ravelry’s fault, really. It’s human nature to seek what others have. It’s just that it’s all in one place. Where I can torture myself by looking at it. *sigh*

I am so damned glad that I have stash. Not huge by some standards, but at the rate I’m going I’ll be able to work for quite a while before I really need to worry about running out. It’s wicked cool to have a ton of thread, too…lots of entertainment for the buck, there. And I have plenty of cotton to design with. So I would be happy, if I could let go of the bout of shinything! that I’ve been suffering.

I’m not quite sure why I feel compelled to say something about this particular piece of angst, but there you go. Blogging’s like that a lot, isn’t it? Maybe it’s the hope that someone will wander through and say, I know just what you mean. Or maybe it’s just healthier to have it out of my head. Only Poppins would know. 🙂

I should have taken pictures.

So I got home from my interview yesterday to find that my two older children had destroyed…tangled, stomped, and partially soaked…most of the yarn I’d left sitting on my desk. I was planning to make more dishcloths to restock the shop a bit. Um, plan B?

I think I have another set of the same colors, but I’ll need to dig. And order sooner than I would otherwise. And it’s so not a good time for them to destroy supplies! For the love of love, I was off interviewing in the first place because there’s no money to keep things going! *headdesk* The business would be paying for itself rather neatly by now if I weren’t diverting every. cent. to paying outside bills. And those are about to hopelessly swamp us anyway.

*sigh* They’re 3 and 2. What do they know? But it still makes me sad. And today, instead of making, I’ll be de-tangling and seeing if I can save some of it for my own little projects, at least. So not what I had wanted to do, but the longer I put it off, the worse it will be. So here goes…

This is how you win a customer for life.

Be Lisa.

Not necessary to get into the details, but she’s one of the most helpful people I’ve ever had the pleasure of doing business with.

Just thought y’all should know that.

Carry on.