Hey y’all! We had such a lovely, lovely opening day at Yarnhouse Studio. It was full of visitors and friends, and we had a great time! Thank you all for your support.
My wonderful friend came to take some pictures, and thanks to her I have some to share! If you weren’t able to be there, take a little look-see and enjoy. And if you were there: thanks again. You made our day.
(You can click on the images to move to the next one if you’d like the slideshow to move a bit faster…)
Hi Everyone! How are you? I’m great. I have wonderful news to share today!
I’m opening a store: Yarnhouse Studio. It will be in downtown Opelika, which I am super excited about. Opelika has a wonderful historic downtown with lots of great little shops. It has been changing a lot lately, and I’m so pleased to be able to be a part of it.
(this picture was taken when the previous store was still in the space)
Yarnhouse Studio will have yarns (as you may have guessed), but also all kinds of other goodies: supplies for spinning and weaving in addition to knitting and crochet, plus a small amount of fabric (to start off with…), needlefelting supplies, and I’m really trying to get my hands on some crewel supplies! I have a soft spot for crewel, and lots of fun ideas. So hopefully you’ll be seeing some of those ideas soon!
Well, this is why it’s been so quiet around here lately. I’ve been consumed, consumed I say! It has been a wonderful whirlwind, and I just can’t wait to see what every day brings.
Crabapple Tree Flowers
Today I went for a big ol’ walk, and I took a bunch of pictures of the springtime beauty! O, it was so lovely.
Bumblebee on a Redbud Tree
Last week I was traveling, and the travel was bookended by visitors both before and after. It was fantastic! But I’m also tired. :) My walk was invigorating.
Dogwood Trees
Along with all of those goings-on, we are re-doing our front yard. As in, we’ve drudged up the whole thing with a tractor, and have now just about re-leveled it with topsoil we had delivered! We’re hoping to seed it tomorrow.
A Bud Emerging
Tonight or tomorrow I’m hoping to finish the hem of the Coraline Sweater I started recently! I’ll keep you posted. :) Until then, enjoy the pictures!
...More Crabapple Tree Flowers
…And last, but not least:
White Japanese Magnolia
Hi! I just wanted to note that I went on a quick vacation over the past few days. We went to Florida to celebrate my grandmother’s 90th birthday! I got to see my beautiful momma, sweet sister, and fabulous dad, brother-in-law, and two wiggly and wonderful nephews! Whew!
To my great irritation, my computer seems to be having issues with the wireless internet reception. I took my computer, but was unable to use it. Grrr.
Anyway, more soon!
I’ve gotten inspired to get a bunch of old magazines and cut out pictures. I’ve developed three goals as I’ve been sitting and cutting:
1. Vision boards! My husband says: isn’t that just a collage? He likes to point out the ways that all sorts of trendy terms are just re- verbal-packaging of terms that have been around for a while. So, vision board = collage, and mind-mapping = brainstorming. I can see his point, though I do think there are subtle differences. For instance, a vision board is a collage with intention. And a mind-map is brainstorming with aesthetics and layout as a part of the final product. If you have anything to add, please leave a comment! :)
2. Future artistic inspiration. This comes either in the form of seeing actual projects to make or amend, or – my favorite – as color inspiration. Oh the palettes I’m finding!!! Completely beautiful. I think I’m going to have to make some sort of color book.
3. All the other, more day-to-day, sorts of things to make. Lots of this is food. Also, I’m saving some gardening inspiration, how-to’s, or drink suggestions. For instance, I saved a whole article about iced teas. Lots of suggestions there, and since spring and summer are on the way, it’s quite timely! I also found a spread on Margaritas. Since margaritas are my favorite, I am quite excited.
Alright! I’m getting back to it!
Anyone have any suggestions of magazines I might find some goodies in? Or, even better, any suggestions of where one might find good old magazines? I’m not finding the sort of magazines I’m looking for at the thrift stores around here.
I’ve been listening to the Right Brainers in Business Video Summit this week, so it’s been on my mind a lot. I think the over-riding message I’ve gotten this week is about authenticity and infusing your business with your Self. So this means really knowing yourself – your strengths and weaknesses. Also: crafting the business on your own values, knowing who your ideal customer is, and making a marketing plan that maps onto your natural inclinations about how to reach out to people.
There has also been plenty of talk about growing or expanding your already existing business by making vision boards and/or using other media to envision things like: dreams for the coming year, long-term dreams, highlights from the past year, etc. The majority of guests have emphasized or at least touched on intuition, and following your gut or really paying attention to where your energies are enthusiastic or resistant.
One thing that has been fun for me is to see a bit of coalescence of stuff I’ve already found. I mean, the majority of it is new to me (and exciting!), but sometimes there are things I’ve already heard about. For instance, one of the major guests was someone whose podcast I found about two months ago. Those things always make me feel like I’m on the right track. Yes!
FYI: this video summit lasts two weeks, the first week of which just finished. If you’re interested, it’s FREE! So come join along, and let me know what you think. I’d love to chat about it!
It is spring here in Alabama, and I am soooo excited. My six years in Texas left me yearning for spring of the sort that is emerging here now. I took a long walk yesterday and had a grand time looking at all the buds and the early flowering trees! Here are the tiny leaves appearing on our small free in our front yard. Since we moved here recently, I don’t even know what kind of tree it is! But I bet I’ll be able to tell pretty soon.
As for what sorts of things I’ve been doing besides observing: I’d say I’ve had three other main things going on this week. Tuesday and Wednesday my four year old was sick, so that was most of those days. But otherwise I’ve been knitting (finished two hats that were in process!) and today I cast on for my first cardigan. I’m super excited. My third activity for the week involves ‘attending’ the Right Brainers in Business Video Summit. I cannot say enough good things about this. Jennifer Lee, who wrote the Right Brain Business Plan, is offering this for free (hence making it super-accessible), and it is so well organized and interesting! I really am impressed. So, I am checking in with that every day this week. Currently, though, it’s getting late, and though I want to talk more about this, I think I’d better get on to sleepyland!
This has been a great week for doing this sort of envisioning work alongside watching the emergence of spring and ending and beginning new knitting pieces. I have pictures of the hats and links to link for the cardigan, but I think I’ll save that for tomorrow. Ooo! Suspense.
My sister sent some pictures back to me of the glittens (gloves + mittens) that I knit her for Christmas. I blogged about them here, but only had a couple of pictures of the un-finished, in-progress glittens.
So, here you go!
Aren’t they yellow-y and happy? They were exciting to make, though fiddle-y (of course) with all the finger tubes. :)
…In an unrelated note, today I bought a new lawn mower, weed-eater, leaf blower, palm sander, camping stove, and scale from a yard sale. They are all in excellent condition (some are practically new!) and I am SO RELIEVED. Buying yard equipment was something on my To Do list that I was rather UN-excited about. Something to do with all the decision making, and money spending. So, whoopee! Here we come, yard!
Wow, I’m doing a Very Bad Job at blogging like I want to. And I have to tell you: one reason is because I feel a lot of pressure to have good pictures. I am not in the habit, though, of taking pictures all the time, and uploading them regularly… So, then, I am afraid that there is no point in blogging if I don’t have beautiful pictures to go with my writing!
Well, today, I’ll tell you about all the pictures I wish I had. Number 1: Pictures of the needlework piece I finished yesterday. Finishing this piece was EPIC. I feel like I gave over the last week of my life to it, and watched a LOT of movies on Netflix as I sat on my couch working away. Sometimes it all made me feel very grumpy. Then, after all that, I took it in the car to go camping for one night on Saturday. We took a big bottle of wine to share, which was open but mostly un-drunk. Well, somehow that wine tipped over in the trunk (which has a plastic floor cover, thank goodness) and the cork came out and there was a Cleaning Up Wine Adventure that happened at the beginning of the camping trip. In some ways, we got lucky, because the fabrics that got wine on them both happened to be fleece, and it came out really well. And the papers that got wine on them didn’t matter, and could be tossed. And in the end, the worst thing that happened was that we wasted a big ol’ bottle of wine and didn’t get to drink it.
Or so I thought. Then I found that a little wine actually sneaked into my plastic bag with my needlework inside! It was about 90% done, and was all wrapped up on its frame. So, in the end I was lucky because not MUCH wine got on it, and after I came home and tried a technique from the red wine removal page, I got it out of everything except a few places along the edge that are hidden now anyway! Whew! There was some serious stress going on there for a bit, though.
So, all of that did set me back a bit. So I did end up skipping two sections in my color gradation series right near the end. And I couldn’t get it framed quite as I’d imagined (no time for a special order). But hey, in the end, what counts is that: the wine is out, it’s done, and it’s going to be in an art show that begins… today! :)
I think I’ll save my list of other things I wish I had pictures of for tomorrow. Hey, maybe by then I’ll actually have some of the pictures themselves.
So, I’ve been working on the Springtime Bandit scarf/shawl lately. I really like it. Actually, I’m making it because my great friend Fanny made one in the same yarn but a different color. And Fanny always is making beautiful things! So I’m making one for me. :)
Anyway, I had a mishap yesterday. The pattern is really easy to memorize, so I’ve just been workin’ away, workin’ away. Then, I thought “Hmm… maybe I need to start the edging chart now. How many stitches am I supposed to have at that point?” Answer: 167. I count, and I have: 191. Dang it!!! How many extra repeats have I done? At this point, I have to sit and do lots of math. Also, I have to go look on Ravelry and try to figure out how much yarn people generally had left over when they did this pattern in this yarn. Happily, this yarn was a common choice for this pattern, so I could find that information!
In the end, I decided I could rip out just one repeat (approximately), leaving one extra repeat as a part of my shawl. That was about 12 rows to remove. So, I took out the needles altogether, ripped out the rows, and here’s what I had:
Scary! And the then shawl, sans needles, is here:
BUT, the good news is that I put that needle right back in without a problem! Good ol’ wool. Just holds its place like nothing is missing. I love that. I didn’t miss a single stitch!
Now, to finish it.
