how this all started, pt 2

Part one can be found here.

My 11th grade English teacher, a man who I'll refer to as "Mr. Tweed", undoubtedly squandered much of his youth. I'm sure he spent untold hours holed up in a buddy's basement using controlled substances and staring at Pink Floyd posters under a black light.

In other words, his brain didn't work properly anymore.

A normal teacher might say to their students, "Why don't you get out your Norton Anthology and turn to page 487?" Mr. Tweed took eight minutes to get out the following:

"Hello.

Well,

I don't really

have anything for you

to

do

today. So

just work on other homework

or if you're like Sharon,

read."

In other words, even my teachers thought I was a big fat weirdo.  Which can be a challenge for the teenage psyche.

I had my share of those adolescent ohmygosh *sob* I'm14and *sob* I'mtootall *sob* andnoboyswilleverlikeme *sob* andmyhairisallwrong *sob* andnoonethinksI'mprettyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy *sobsob* moments, where I wished I could just blend in with the gosh darn crowd of other teenagers at the mall and not be stared at for being a freak.

(I'm convinced that every teenage girl, whether too tall or too round or practically perfect in every way, has these thoughts in early adolescence.)

When Mr. Tweed failed yet again to plan any classroom activity, any kind of a lesson at all,  I would turn to the fat Bartlett's Familiar Quotations book that I kept in my backpack.  I could happily wile away a class period copying down all the quotes that stirred my young soul.

“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”  --Albert Einstein

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."  -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”  -- Winston Churchill

I still have all my quote notebooks, full of loopy cursive. They will be worth exactly zero dollars someday.

One of my really great high school teachers made the world so interesting that I couldn't wait to get home to talk about the Six-Day War and NAFTA with someone. A lifelong love of government, current events, and politics was born in that classroom.

I finished high school. I went to college. I became a teacher. I got married. I moved to California. I moved to the Washington, DC area. You can read the whole story here, if you like. At no time did the life of a creative entrepreneur factor into my plans.

I found my dream teaching job in suburban Maryland. I loved the subjects I taught, I loved (most) of my students, I made lifelong friends in my department. We laughed every day, we talked about current events every day, we ate chocolate every day. I couldn't have asked for a more perfect fit in a school. My department chairs knew that no two teachers are the same, and did their best to piece together the elaborate scheduling puzzle so that every teacher could at least be doing some of what really got their blood moving. I had the good fortune of being able to teach my two favorite subjects for eight years, Government and Law.

Here I am, with a group of Law students on the steps of the Supreme Court building. We met at the subway station early in the morning, took the train to Capitol Hill, and silently sat in the back of the chambers while the Supreme Court was in session.

I'd like to say that during this field trip I spent time reflecting on how if I had not had great teachers in my life, I never would have become a teacher.

But honestly, I didn't.

What I remember about this day is how worried I was that a student shouldering that adolescent, I'm invincible swagger would step out into a traffic circle and get hit by a car.

I yelled at them as we approached each (and every) intersection, "ARRIVE ALIVE, PEOPLE! ARRIVE ALIVE! LOOK BOTH WAYS! WAIT FOR THE WALK SIGNAL!" It became a joke for the rest of the school year, so that as the students jockeyed for position to leave the classroom each day I would yell, "ARRIVE ALIVE! BE CAREFUL!"

I'm happy to report that as a result of my efforts,  every single one of these students arrived alive for their graduation.

Meanwhile, my students had no idea that in between the grading and the mothering, I was making stuff like this:

Which is exactly how I liked it. I didn't need would-be hackers looking for easy targets, disgruntled students placing fake orders, or seventeen year olds using the Contact Me button to write ARRIVE ALIVE, MS. McMAHON!

I didn't even tell most of my teaching colleagues about it. They already thought I was weird enough, I didn't need to add fuel to the fire.

My dyeing attempts became less abysmal. It helped that I actually started writing down recipes, rather than just trying to remember them.

People began asking if they could buy yarn from me, instead of having me knit something for them with my yarn.

God bless those people who saw through my crapola photographs and asked for yarn anyway.

I kept working on my pictures. My new point and shoot digital camera was a huge step up from the video stills I'd been using.

In my (not very much) free time, I took pictures next to all the windows of my house to figure out where the best light was coming from.

I discovered silk yarn. I asked him to marry me.

In May of 2006, I collaborated with two other dyeing friends and started a yarn club. We rotated months, so no one person was in charge of completing shipments every month. I'm proud to say that many of the people who bought yarn from me in 2006 are still customers today. In fact, there is one person who has been a member of one of my clubs continuously for nearly five years now.  I hope she's in it for 20 more.

Because I worked from my house, yarn had to dry wherever it could. When the weather cooperated, I hung it outside on a line.

When it was raining (which is a lot in the humid Maryland summers), I hung the yarn over the straight portion of my banister, on drying racks, and on dish drainers I bought exclusively to make use of the counter space in my kitchen and utility room.

When I look back now, I laugh at the innovations that did not even cross my mind for the first, oh, three years, I dyed yarn. For example, it did not occur to me that I could put the rinsed yarn into the washing machine, turn the washing machine to spin cycle only, and spin most of the water out of the yarn. Didn't occur to me.

It didn't occur to me to get more than one receptacle for dyes. I had one. One yellow glass pitcher from the 1970s that I bought at a yard sale for fifty cents. I would make one color, put it on the yarn, go back to the sink, make another color, put it on the yarn, etc. No, Gee, if I get multiple containers, I can premix all the colors I need and get done more quickly! No. To this day, all of my recipes are written to reflect the amount of water that one yellow glass pitcher held.  I cried when it broke.

It also did not occur to me that I could dye more than one skein at a time. One skein at a time. One color at a time. Recipe for efficiency right there, my friends.

Here's a non-awesome picture of the kitchen I worked in.

If you bought handknits or yarn from me from 2004-2007, it was probably dyed right there on that island.  You can still see some of the drips waiting to be scrubbed off.

****************************

One warm Sunday in late April, I saw an ad in the newspaper for some sort of sheep festival happening the following weekend in a neighboring county.

My husband went to humor me. The kids came to pet sheep.

I had no idea people were that interested in sheep and/or wool. 70,000 people converge on the fairgrounds in Howard County, MD the first weekend in May every year. It's a beautiful mayhem to fibery folk.

I got my first large wholesale order for yarn that summer. I placed the order for the undyed yarn, most of which came from a local Maryland farm.

Two days later, I discovered baby number three was on its way.

Now, if you've ever had children, you'll understand exactly what I mean when I say: Four year old. Two year old. One hundred degrees. Husband traveling on business.

For the uninitiated, I was completely, utterly, helplessly, horribly, exhausted, sweltering, cranky, and worried.

Pregnant-tired is a completely different kind of tired than regular-tired or even from new-baby-tired. Pregnant-tired feels like someone has hooked you up to a continuous dose of IV sleeping drugs and you are powerless to stop them. Nothing helps. Caffeine doesn't make the tired go away. Sleeping doesn't even make the tired go away.

I worried about this order so much, because I could barely see through the haze of exhaustion to cook something other than cereal for dinner. I had no choice but to tell the person that placed the order that it was going to take a leetle bit longer than expected because I wasn't normal-tired, I was pregnant-tired. Fortunately, she had three young children herself and understood.

It took me longer than expected, but I did get it done.

I sold all of my yarn in adorable little cakes with custom-printed bands that could fit around even the largest cake of yarn. I was so proud of this order than I had to throw a quilt over the couch and take some pictures of it. I'd never made that much yarn before. Every single skein was hand wound by either me or my husband on my little plastic yarn-cake winder. 

Then came the turning point in the photographic road. The light tent.

Suddenly, I had a seamless white background and a degree of control over the lighting in an image. While far from perfect, this new generation of pictures were just an eensy bit better than this:

My schedule became more hectic. I was getting up early to get myself and two kids ready to leave the house, teaching school, picking up the kids, and spending the afternoons working on yarn.

The amount of time required for a non-professional photographer, non-professional computer programmer to dye the yarn, take pictures of the yarn, edit the pictures, and create product listings was far more than I could have imagined. Hours. Hours for two skeins of yarn.

In the pre-etsy world of online sales, my hourly wage was a pittance. When you figured how much the undyed yarn and dyes cost me and factored in the time it took me to photograph, list, and ship the yarn, I was making less than $.50 per hour. 

But I loved it. I loved it so.

When yarn entered my life, she didn't politely knock on the door, inquiring if I might have space for her.

She arrived in the middle of the night, unpacked her suitcases, and settled down with a movie and a bowl of popcorn on my living room sofa. When I awoke to find her occupying my home, she put her hand on my arm and said, "I'll take it from here, dear."

I should have asked her exactly where she was taking me. 

To be continued...

magnificent

That's what I think.

About this.

And this.

And this. (Yeah, that's cashmere.)

And that's also what I think about our trunk show tomorrow (Saturday, March 5th) at Yarn Harbor here in my hometown.

You'll have to stop by to see the new Yarn Harbor colorway. And to eat some snacks with me.

I'm good at eating, just in case that was a concern of yours.

Pop by anytime between noon and four for cold, hard proof of this fact. I'm hard to miss.

*Note: I may be more or less perky than this picture depicts.

**Note: The yarn is definitely as beautiful as these pictures depict.

***Note: This is but a miniscule sampling of the awesomeness you'll find.

****Note: I may or may not have had too much caffeine today.

*****Note: That may or may not be different than any other day.

******Note: Regardless, I'd love to see you tomorrow. A girl can only snack and fondle yarn so much before she needs co-conspirators.

*******Note: We have a big lake in Duluth. Perhaps you've heard of it.

********Note: I may or may not have had too much caffeine today. I'm going to check on that.

*********Note: See you tomorrow?

how this all started, pt 1

I get asked this a lot. "How did you get started?" "What made you want to go into dyeing yarn?"

And a couple of years ago, I started writing the story of Three Irish Girls. You can read it here, if you have an hour or three.

I'm feeling a bit nostalgic lately, as we just celebrated our one year anniversary here in Northern Minnesota. Today, we drank coffee, ate sushi, snuck too many chocolates, and gave ourselves pats on the back.

Yesterday, I started trolling my hard drives for pictures of how this business came to be. I have surprisingly few shots of my first studios or of myself in action, but I do have close to 50,000 pictures of yarn.

And once I started looking at pictures, I realized that tracing the history of this little yarn company is a bigger story than one post will allow. 

I can see it like yesterday. I can go right back there again, place myself in the exact spot in my kitchen, hugely pregnant with my third child and working at 1:00 am when my older babes were sleeping. I can see myself at 3:00 am in my basement wearing headphones and drinking coffee. I can feel the long weekends in my studio with little more than an iPod for company. Being a Yarnista isn't glamorous. I just scrubbed two days worth of dye off my arms, threw my stinky T-shirt in the laundry, and unleashed my limp mane from the constraints of its perpetual ponytail.

It's a lot of hard work. But in every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and snap!, the job's a game.

And every task you undertake becomes a piece of cake.

A lark, a spree, it's very clear to see...

Here I am, living in the same zip code I grew up in, next to the biggest lake in the world, with a job that I always look forward to. And if you told me two years ago that I'd be here, I wouldn't have believed you.

The flames of sentimentality have been stoked by visits to my hard drives, the modern-day keeper of the memories. I went in search of the earliest photographic evidence of my yarn dyeing, and I think I've found it.

This picture was taken in June of 2003, and this was back before everyone had nice digital cameras. In fact, this was taken with a video camera, because I didn't even have a digital camera yet. This little boy is now a hockey player, a horsedog walker, and the class clown. And he's cute. And he's a giant. And I love him.

See the undyed yarn around the back of the chair? I know it's easy to be distracted by the blue eyes and the little Chiclet teeth.

At first, the dyed yarn just fueled my custom knitting orders, where I made things like this:

(A hand dyed, hand felted flower pin perched atop a pumpkin orange hat.)

I made this to match:

I think I ripped out the meandering vines panel eight times before I was happy with it.

This is the only picture I could find of the kitchen I started dyeing in. (Really, self? One picture? Let's hope it's a good one!)

(It's not.)

My son had just taken a tumble, and I was trying to make him feel better by taking our picture and then showing it to him. The stove I started on is right behind me, and the microwave is to your right.

This kitchen was cute, but was a tiny room in a tiny (1,000 square foot) house.

My dyeing attempts flared and then fizzled. I had no ambition to production dye yarn, as it's messy, stinky, and my teaching job was starting up again.

Plus my knitting kept me busy. I made lots of baby things for other people.

Wasn't this model a beaut?

I always loved it when customers would send me pictures of my work in action. Still do.

I made up all of these patterns. Did I write them down? No.

And that's because I am very, very intelligent and blessed with the gift of forethought.

But I did discover how awesome my hand dyed leftovers were when I took on these embroidery projects.

Beat that with a stick.

And though my photography skills were on the wrong side of bad, I did make some darn cute mouse slippers.

All this knitting kept me busy while I was growing this sweetie pie.

I can hear the inward groans of the men who are reading this.

Sorry, dudes. I can't help it.

But I will warn you before I start discussing placenta. Fair enough?

If you've ever had a baby girl, you know how irresistible baby girl clothes -- and knitting -- are.

I used more Kool-Aid to dye up some semi-solids so I could make a ruffled skirt.

The ruffles!

The ruffles! They kill me! I don't even know what this piece of knitting is! But it kills me!

Little B. was the proud recipient of many beruffled, beflowered knits.

When this baby was a baby, I started experimenting with acid dyes. My new kitchen was bigger, and the island with skylights over it made the perfect work surface.

Sadly, my experiments yielded results like this.

Ha. Hahahahahahahahhehehehehehohohoho. Ho.

Oh no I didn't!

Sadly, oh yes I did.

Tomorrow's installment is entitled: Yarn That Only Sucked a Little Instead of a Metric Tonne.

Dudes, there are fewer babies -- and by extension, fewer placentas -- in the next chapter. Promise.

monday post #3

Today's the last day to sign up for the March shipment of any of our yarn clubs. I'm deeply in love with the colorway options this month, which are all named after Hollywood starlets.

Vivien Leigh:

Grace Kelly:

Katharine Hepburn

More info on Sock Yarnista here.

Check out Stash Menagerie yonder.

And Pick of the Knitter is here.

2nd post for Monday

I'm very excited about this Saturday -- not only do I get to come out and meet some of y'all, I get to do it in my hometown.

I got a haircut. I got a new dress. I made you some yarn.

Don't leave me hangin'!

Make plans to stop by between noon and four this Saturday, March 5th -- there will be prizes, colorways that can never be recreated, and the debut of Yarn Harbor's new exclusive colorway!