For days gone by…

Hey, if you're interested in having a good cry, pull up some old family pictures on your computer or in a photo album. Maybe of your children as just-borns. Maybe of a departed loved one. Maybe of your retirement account pre-stock market crash.

Go ahead, I'll wait.

Now click on this link and spend four minutes letting it all out.

The singer is Mairi Campbell. She and her husband Dave Francis are Scots and have released several albums as The Cast. There's just something about the arrangement of this song.

I thought maybe you could use that.

And a very merry Thanksgiving to you as well.

I hope you had a lovely holiday, complete with large quantities of deliciousness and good company. And I hope that if you live outside of the US, you had the best Thursday you've ever had.

To celebrate, I am posting the link to a podcast interview I did while I was away at Stitches East.  It was conducted by the girls at Craft Mentality, whom I've known online for many years, but never had the pleasure to meet in person.

Just to set the scene, I was interviewed in the middle of our booth surrounded by large quantities of people.

So as we're doing this interview, people stopped and gathered round. If someone gave me bunny ears behind my head, I would not have been surprised. It took all my concentration to stay focused on the interview because there was so much noise and so many people around.

So, just picture me:



sitting in that exact spot, surrounded by lots of noise and people and a person with a digital voice recorder. A very very nice person with a digital voice recorder. The fact that I sound the way I do has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with her.

I learned it is much easier to sound reasonably awake and intelligent in a quiet room than it is in a booth at a convention. I will add that to my list of Life Lessons Learned Through Experience. It's on the wall of my studio right next to the rest of the signs I have tacked up.

It's a long list. It also has things like, "Spilling black yarn dye on blonde hair = not good," and, "When in Estonia, don't eat the pizza." (I know, I'm probably one of the few people in the world who doesn't like pineapple and blue cheese as pizza toppings. Together.)



The first interview in the podcast is with my Yarn Love partner, Katie, and I am third in the broadcast.

Have at it! -- Stitches East 2008 interview

(If you're new to podcasts, you just click on "download episode 12", and turn up the volume on your speakers.)

And try not to hold it against me.

Uh oh.

I can't lift my arms again. That's what happens when you spend five days lifting very heavy things to shoulder height and keeping them there for several minutes.

You know when you're working out (this requires me to dig deep in my long term memory), and you just can't do one.more.repetition, and you reach complete muscle fatigue? Not just, "I'm tired and want to stop,"  but, "My muscle is shaking and I can't control it anymore?" Yeah, that's where I am. Except I wasn't trying to work out.  Why would I try to work out when my every day life makes it so I can't lift my arms?

Perhaps I will sidetrack you with a picture.



It's a little something I'm working on. I cant' tell you what yet. Mostly because I'm mean, but you knew that already.

Last week, I set up a little photo shoot with my yarn. I actually used props. Most of the time I am against props in yarn photographs. 99.9% of the time, you won't see props in my pictures. Yarn with lollipop? No. Yarn with woodland wildlife? Too risky. Yarn with household grime and clutter? Cleanliness is next to Godliness.


Pictures... just a second, where are they... ah-HA! Here we go.

Mulled Wine:



The yarn is one of December's Sock Yarnista colorways, dyed on a superwash Blue Faced Leicester yarn base that I am in love with. The mug is from Shafford, the pattern called "Golden Fruit," for those collectors out there. I love vintage tableware.

Jack Frost:



Do you see the little glint of icy snow crystals in the background? This amuses me, I don't know why. Oh yes I do, it's because I'm easily amused.

To recap:

I can't lift my arms.

I can't tell you anything about this:



Here's some yarn in vintage tableware:



Here's some snowy yarn:



Thank you and goodnight.

Just in case you were wondering…

... and I know you were. You can't hide the wondering from me.

Just in case you were wondering what my studio now looks like, here are a couple of pictures:

Pardon the mess. No, seriously, stop looking at the mess. 

This is where I actually dye your yarn. I stick notes to myself up on the wall. They say things like, "Quit looking at the wall, why aren't you looking at the yarn?" "The yarn will never get done if you keep staring at this," "Step AWAY from the brown dye!"and "Buy more tape."

I had this table custom made for moi. You can't have it, it's my baby.



This is the room where the finished yarn goes, waiting to be shipped.  The color isn't that great in this shot, I only have the overhead lights on, not the fancy special lights. The wall on your left is actually deep raspberry, and the wall straight ahead is periwinkle.

Some days I think I would like to get a futon and just fall asleep staring at the yarn wall. That would not be a popular choice with my husband.



Perhaps, instead, I should blow up some pictures of the yarn wall and put them on my bedroom wall at home.

I need something with a fine art quality. How about something like this:

Yarn seen through miniblinds. This has a postmodern quality to it.



And here's what a yarn wall would look like if the yarn were actually made of fur and not wool. I could splash this with some red dye, and it could be PETA protest art.



Perhaps something a bit more traditional, like an antique mosaic:



Or mid-century modern, like molded plastic?




Maybe just a classic oil painting would do the trick.




And finally, here's what the yarn wall would look like if it were actually fine aged leather. Maybe I should look into getting a club chair upholstered with this.



Decisions, decisions...

Pictures to quiet your secret inner ogler.

If the emails I've received are to be believed, many of you are near the brink of death waiting for pictures from Stitches. Some of you are ready to hurl yourself off a cliff. One of you is ready to throw yourself on a pyre of burning wool.

Because I am a good person, I will do my best to save you from all manner of death that shall shortly befall you.

If the death is related to yarn pictures, that is. If you're about to be hit by a bus, I probably can't assist. But let me know, I'll do my best.

If you missed the first installment about Stitches East, begin reading here.

We left off with my darling husband dutifully loading all of our equipment, display items, and yarn into the truck.  He left, driving the items to the loading dock at the convention center in Baltimore.  I had additional help meeting him there, and Katie, Francesca, and I were going to follow close behind after we ran a few errands.

Of course, the errands took longer than expected (don't they always), and we arrived at our booth after everyone else was already there, the truck was unloaded, and things were starting to come together. This is really quite an excellent way to run things, I must say. Send help on ahead to prepare the way for you, so you have time to go to the bank and purchase snacks. You should try it sometime.

I didn't photograph the discombobulation that existed before the booth was erected and stocked, out of respect for myself. I can describe it for you in a respectful way, though. Katie and Francesca, tell me if I've hit the mark here.

There were a few small assemblages of yarn boxes that needed to be delicately unpacked after the display shelves were quickly and easily put together. All of the yarn had been prelabeled, and so was completely ready to be placed neatly on the designated shelves. We had also premarked the shelves with things like "red" "green" and "blue" so that anyone could locate exactly where the prelabeled yarn from the assemblage was to be placed. We strategically installed our lighting, plugged in the cords, and the booth was complete. It took about 27 minutes, total.

Afterward, we carefully broke down the empty boxes, neatly labeled them, and they were taken away by the concierge to be placed in storage until the end of the show, when they were returned to us in pristine condition.

We had so much time left before the 6:00 pm opening of the market preview that we drove back to the hotel, showered, partook in refreshment, and had a small nap so as to better greet our guests that evening.

Here's Katie, langorously putting the finishing touches on our booth with more than enough time to spare.



Please pardon our mess, everything was perfectly tidy for the remainder of the three days, I can assure you.

We invested in some awesome display pieces which are often used in yarn shops. I think they really helped show off the yarn to best advantage -- in my humble opinion, things looked quite appealing. The extra lighting helped considerably -- the convention center lighting was absolutely atrocious, even under the best conditions.

During set up, it was so dim inside I complained for about 25 minutes to no avail, when someone -- it's hard to recall who -- finally smacked me upside the head and told me to stop sitting on the floor kicking and screaming about the lighting and to get my arse back to work. Of course, there wasn't much left to do, only about two minutes of work remained.




I was quite pleased with our location. We were not just near the emergency exit, we WERE the emergency exit.

It was comforting to know that should any unforseen events occur, like nuclear war or a small kitchen fire, the only way out of the convention center was through our booth. People could stop to smell the yarn on their way out and make a mental note about stopping back to #239 when the crisis had been averted.



The floor left something to be desired. I wouldn't choose cement for my yarn shop, personally. But the yarn? That I would choose for my yarn shop.




Nearly all of this was sold out by mid-Saturday. We had to do some restocking and rearranging.



This was at the end of the day after approximately 92,000 people had fondled our yarn. That's OK, that's what the display is for. It just needs to be neatened.



We arrived Sunday morning at 3:30 am. Katie offered to take my picture, saying that I may want to consider posting a picture of my adventure on my blog. I agreed, knowing that even if I was less than happy with the result, someday I will look back on these pictures and think, "Wow, I used to be so young and so thin! Why did my mother let me move out and start a yarn business when I was 15 years old?"

Katie had a wee bit of trouble with the photography. Quite likely it was my own fault, I am not the most willing subject, nor the most photogenic. Quite likely, it was also her fault. She kept just standing there, waiting for me to do  something.

After viewing the first picture, I realized it was really, really unfair that all the celebrities who are so gorgeous and so fabulous and so wonderful and fantastic and skinny get to have personal trainers, personal chefs, AND air brushing.

I decided that even though I don't have a personal trainer and I'm not so wonderful and fantastic and skinny, I'm still worthy of a little airbrushing. I decided to get rid of some of the bags under my eyes. I whitened my teeth, thinned my nose, removed some jowls, intensified the color my eyes, and made a few other minor adjustments.



The second photograph yielded a rare picture of me lost in deep thought.



Facial contortions are my specialty. That, and yarn.

Katie kept just standing there behind the camera. "What are you waiting for?" I asked serenely through gritted teeth. "Get it over with."

"I'm just waiting for an interesting moment," she replied. It may help you to remember that it was now 3:46am.

"Like this?" I said. "LIKE THIS? IS THIS WHAT YOU'RE WAITING FOR?"



Apparently, the answer was yes.

The next shot was mitigated only by the lovely yarn in the background.



She did take a picture of me knitting. She actually took several pictures of me knitting. One makes me look as if I weigh 493 pounds. And the other is so blurry you can't actually tell that I am knitting.



I had high hopes for the last shot, but alas...



It was also blurry.

Katie, I love you anyway.

We met so many awesome people -- some new friends, and some people I've known for a long time, but had never met in person. We got to walk around a teeny bit and fondle other items, I will post about those separately another day, I think we've had about all that we can handle here.