In honor of the Mother’s who knit us, a Rare Gem Mill End Sale!
In homage to Mother’s Day this Sunday, we are having another one of our Rare Gem Mill End Sales. I’m so smitten with the whole idea of celebrating mothers with Rare Gem (one-of-a-kind as we all are) Mill Ends (a wee bit flawed, completely useful, and extremely thrifty) that I can barely get over myself.
As a mother, which has been my favorite job, I am a work in progress, learn as I go kind of mom – most certainly not perfect. As I’ve been mulling all of this over, I’m thinking this might be one of the best gifts I’ve given my children, this ability to see that they can count on me, but that I am human and as such. I make mistakes—mistakes that I own up to and work on in whatever way is needed to remedy them and move forward. Some of my most memorable mothering moments involve saying, “I’m sorry, I was wrong,” not because I enjoy it—because believe me, I don’t actually like being wrong—but because of the depth intimacy and honesty it affords. So…I guess that makes me a mill-end kind of mom and that I’ll take.
Mothers are all kinds of wonder, from that crowning first moment to…well, forever, actually. I think it’s rewarding on too many levels to count, extremely important work, and hard as hell. I wouldn’t trade being a mom for anything. I am so grateful for all three of the lovely people that are my children (you know who you are).
One of the other things we are doing this weekend, in honor of all mothers gracing the planet, is that for every order that comes through our web portal starting at 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time today and going until midnight on Sunday, we’re going to donate $1.00 to Doctors without Borders.
Those of you that are new to our Rare Gem Mill End Sales, a Rare Gem is a yarn that, for some reason or another, has not met our rigid color criteria for selling as a specific colorway. We save them up, over-dye them and take them to shows . A few years ago you, our not local online customers, requested an online sale so you too could partake. We weren’t sure about this because each and every single one is different so it isn’t cost effective to put photos up of them for you to see. This is especially true if they are also Mill Ends, which are already marked down. You, our customers, said it didn’t matter to you, so we took that to heart and had our first ever sale, and it was great success for us all. After I thought about it, I realized that I would also buy these products sight unseen because I really have yet to meet a Rare gem I didn’t love. There’s just too much color in there not to find something wonderful about them. (I might have several bins of them in the storage pod.)
One of our barn rules is that if there are rare gems hanging to dry, I’m not allowed in for that very short window of time. I have little to no resistance at all in relationship to them. I’m not exaggerating one little bit…it’s bad. So bad that recently, when we dyed some up for a few of the shows, and I had to be in the barn, there might have been a small incident. Debra walked by the table where I was bundling some of these beauties and asked what the two piles were. I pretended I didn’t hear her and kept right on bundling and singing. If you’ve met Debra you know how well that tactic worked. She Tina’d me as she does in this way that makes me feel about 5 years old, and that I completely deserve, so… I told her one was for selling and one was for keeping. She sighed—you know that deep drawn-out put-upon sigh that on the out breath says, “You are on my last nerve and I can’t believe I have to put up with this again”? So, I did what anyone with a healthy sense of self preservation would do. I combined the two piles and continued bundling. I didn’t even mumble anything under my breath about how this is my business and, really, if I want some rare gems, I should be able to have them, dang it…
Anyway… Rare Gems, Mill Ends, and how it works:
We divide the Rare Gems into 3 different color categories: Fire, Water, and Earth. You order, with no small bit of faith in us, I know, sight unseen from one of these three categories and the descriptions there of.
The descriptions are as follows:
Earth:
Picture a big pile of fallen leaves. As all the bright glowing growing energy returns to the earth it deepens and shades with browns, grays and black but mostly in browns.
All shades of browns speckled with green and gold and a spot or two of red maybe and maybe some
muddiness as it all breaks down. These rare gems are created by over-dyeing from the different colors of brown.
Fire:
Red hot warmth. All colors of fire here from rich and warm reds and oranges to bright hot pink in your face ones.
Be careful when you open these. We would not want you to get burned.
Water:
When light hits water it reflects and shimmers, creating jewels. These watery colorways are over-dyed with
blue, green and purple, which gives us our jewel like sea tones. A wee bit or pink might sneak it’s way in here,but it will be a cool jewel. Azure…emerald…amethyst. The world
most certainly is our color oyster.
The Rare Gems go LIVE tomorrow (Saturday) at 4:00 pm Eastern time and stay up until they sell out. They do tend to go fast.
There will be a link to them on the homepage and the side nav bar after you go to Shop online.
As these Rare Gems are Mill Ends and the pricing is $16.00 for the lightweight ones and $18.00 for the mediumweight ones.
If you are a sock club member and want to use your discount code you are more than welcome to.
You can even order other yarns to you do not have to just order Rare Gems!
I think that covers the details.
Happy Mother’s Day. I hope you have a beautiful weekend!
