Posessed

One of my very favourite games to play is matchy, matchy with all of the skeins of sock yarn hanging on the sock wall of colour in the dye barn.

I like seeing compliments and contrasts who wants to be fast tonal friends and how they all play together. If there is a specific project that has my attention or the attention of the knitter brain at large, well then all the better.
So… this evening I spent an hour putting together colour trios for our current obsession, the affection of colour.  Here’s a few of them. I only used what was hanging there and we are a bit short since we are working on restocking the wall with the brand new larger skeins.

Tumbleweed, Aurora Borealis and Aubergenuis.

Jengu, My Blue Heaven and Twilight.

Manly Yes but I like it to, Morticia and Smoke on the Water.

Falcon’s Eye, Smokey mountain Morn. and Smoke on the Water.

Blue Moonstone, Thraven Fledge and Thraven.

Winter Solstice, Stormy Weather and Black Onyx.

Bleck, Thraven Fledge and Stephen Philip.

China Rose, Briar Rose and Brick.

Winter Solstice, Cozy,Fierce, Dirty Orange and Copperline.

Bleck, Cozy,Fierce, Dirty Orange and Copperline.

China Rose, Grimms Willow Wren and Jade.

China Rose, Chestnutty and Bittersweet.

Just Jack, Rauen Fledge and Spinel.

Midsummer’s Night, Aurora Borealis and Sapphire.

Ocroid, Deep Unrelenting Grey and Pallas Athena.

Rose Quartz, Happy Go Lucky and Mustang Sally

Oregon Red Clover, Coppertree, Chestnutty.

Saffron Jungle, Rauen Fledge and Meet Joe Brown.

Oregon Red Clover, Dark Shadows and Stumptown.

EOS, Smoke on the Water and Grawk.

So much colour and so little time… I brewed up a whole bunch of new shaded solids today that we plan on having up by Friday.  There’s a smokey beige and pale marine green that I’m so excited to see that, I think after I post this, it’s off to the barn to rinse them out.

Sweet dreams!

Afflicted with colour affection

Colour Affection or what we lovingly referred to it at Sock Camp, Colour Infection, is what is on my needles, in my basket and piled in tonal trio’s around the barn.  Even before Josie showed up at camp with not one, but two shawls, and her wicked, “knit this you know you want to mojo”, that almost turned sock camp into shawl camp, I’d been thinking about knitting this tonal colour study design of Veera’s.

Truth be told, I would like to knit quite a few of Veera’s shawls, they are stunning. I love how her knit brain works.
I think Debbi was the first one to fall under Josie’s enabling spell. It wasn’t long before pretty much, knitter by knitter, the whole camp had caught the bug, as you can see here in Steph’s blog post.
We were joking one of the mornings in the store as we helped pick colours and wound yarn, that affection was an infection and most certainly are far better one to get then the ones we usually walk away from camp with.
Actually I do believe it is the only one we walked away with this time so yeah Josie!!
As everyone else did, I mulled over a few hues and then picked my three colourways and went on my merry way to wind and swatch. Unfortunately.... someone ( I’m not naming names, you know who you are,) beat me to my appropriate needle for this. I tried my level best to get gauge with the size I had with me that was closest, but it was having none of that. Oh well… I’d wait. It’s not like I didn’t have knitting. It worked out for the best in the long run, as these things tend to do, since Stormy needed my Smoke on the Water to complete her trio. Yeah!!  ( yo colour karma fairy! You caught that one right?)
So we wrapped up shawl sock camp and when I got home, I went in search of needles and my missing second colour. While perusing the sock wall of colour with Deb
(Again Accuardi, not Stone or McVae. I can’t even talk about the Deb thing going on here.) she suggested knitting them in Silkie. Being the mercurial soul that I am, I decided to take her suggestion and switch.  In my defense, it has silk in it, what’s not to love about having that draped around you?
Also… I had these beauties hanging on the wall.

I was just not a strong enough woman to resist the scummy pull of this trio.
I’m over the moon thrilled with my choice and I do believe I am going to keep this one for myself.
Don’t worry about the trio I choose at camp, I have a friend I am going to knit that one for, her dark purple heart is going to be tickled.

I started yesterday on the way to the beach with my girls for the day.

A good place for a scummy cast on don’t ya think!

Odd and ends

Really this post is mostly about yardage and price increases, but odds and ends sounds so… much better than, price increase. Nobody really likes to talk about money, especially these days. However, it is a fact of our lives and really, just a means to an end.

After a good many years of resistance on my part, we’ve raised the yardage on both the mediumweight and lightweight sock yarn. So we’re offering both Socks that Rock lightweight and mediumweight in 405 yard skeins, which we feel is more than enough sock yarn for any size foot. (I feel a challenge coming on.)
Along with yardage increase comes a price increase.  I hate raising prices, it gives me a cramp. I work really, really hard to keep our prices reasonable for our knitters, that said, you can’t really add in more yarn without upping the cost. I did my best to keep it as low as I could while still making sure we all got paid.

You’ll also notice that we raised the pricing on a few of the garment yarns.

I mentioned at the beginning of the year that we were headed in this direction. I actually thought, as with the new colourways, that this would be a done deal by now. However,the website upgrade gods had a different plan in mind.  I wish they’d send out memos, it would makes things a whole lot tidier. I believe we’re finally on the tail end of all of this website drama. ( Knock on wood!)
Thank you dear knitters for bearing with us during all of this!

We are packing up and getting ready to head to Port Ludlow for Camp Cast Away today. If you’ve emailed or called in the past few days you’d have noticed that Paula is back. Our lovely Rosie is on vacation visiting her family in Mexico and Paula kindly offered to come fill in while Rosie is away. Yeah Paula!
I had a bit of an epiphany a few weeks after Paula left. I realized that she could easily handle a bunch of our customer service from Missouri and still be a part of our team which made us all very happy.
So Paula is back and we’re all thrilled.

If you have not already seen it the new issue of the Twist Collective is out. I spent an hour with a cup of tea scrolling through all of the really great designs and Spring colour.
There’s two designs with our yarn that are quite wonderful:

Xylem by Rachel Coopey using Socks that Rock Lightweight in The New Colour of Love. I love the lines on this sock, especially the back.
and
Nyame by Julia Trice using Marine Silk Sport in the colourway Nyame.  I love this piece and… more importantly so did both of my daughters!
And… Nyame is on the cover!

Well.. I hear the natives rustling around the kitchen and Debbi will be here in 29 minutes so I better get rolling towards the barn.

Have a lovely Wednesday!

ps. We moved the girls ( baby chickies) to their new digs, the hen house, yesterday. I only got up twice last night to go check on them. I think that’s pretty good. Don’t you?

ps. I might be a wee bit possessed. Don’t tell.

ps again: The sideways pictures, can’t even…