Better Late Than Never!

I confess that this past week very much matches my description of the prior week.  I'm just pushing through to get as much done as I possibly can.

I've enlisted the help of my husband with some of the t-shirt yarn making process.  This has added a rather comical element to things.  I confess, I'm a control freak.  Currently, he is only allowed to stretch the t-shirt yarn and hopefully, one day, he'll learn that it doesn't require Herculean strength.  A gentle tug will do the job nicely.  In the interim, you might see some smaller skeins in the shop every now and then.  Like this one.

I've also begun to schedule some events which is both gratifying, because people want to see my stuff, and terrifying, because people are going to see my stuff!!  It really seemed like it was time to take this next step.  The first event I will be attending is a Maker Expo at the end of May.  This is not a selling event, although you can take orders.  It is billed more as a demonstration event.  More on my plans for that next week.

I've completed cutting and almost completed stretching the dyed batch of t-shirt yarn thanks to some help from my hubby.  I'm hoping to have that in the shop by the end of the week.  Actually, I'm hoping to have it in the shop by Thursday but I'll settle for the end of the week.  Looking forward, I hope to transition to working on some bags in the near future but it might not happen before next week.  Also there's the rug recipe to finish working on.

In other news, the debacle that is my workspace is slowly evolving and I do mean slowly.  Its hard to find time to organize while you're busy making so instead I've been moving stuff from side to side, from flat surface to other flat surface.  Jim took pity on me this weekend and moved stuff out of the room to help me get a jumpstart.  It's much improved but much of it is still in the hallway.  At least now, as I make  things I can put them where they belong and there's several clear flat surfaces to rest my coffee mug on.

There's a really delicate balance going on in my world right now as I juggle teaching yoga, working at the sewing shop, running my Etsy shop and family life.  My hours at have increased which is great given my husband's current lack of a paycheck (thanks Verizon, you greedy bastards) but its also taking its toll a bit.  I'm working hard to set reasonable goals for myself.

So with that in mind, I'm going to step away from the computer and go hang out with my hubby, watch an old movie and knit on my Tanhouse Brook Shawl which I am loving!  It's hard to see shawl pics when they're still on the needles but here's a peek.

See you next week!

Lights, Camera , Action!

As promised, here I am again.  It has been a week of just pushing through to get stuff done, even when all I'd like to do is sit on the couch and knit.

I am working my way through a backlog of t-shirts, slowly making them into t-shirt yarn to put in my shop.  Knowing that these t-shirts are all clean and ready to be made into yarn has been wonderful for me.  I'm falling into this rhythm of prepping a shirt or two (or 6) after work and each night doing another piece of the prepping process.

This chipping away at things approach allowed me to do a shop update yesterday.  Given that last week left me no large chunk of time to work on shop things and Saturday was spent visiting an out of town college, that feels amazing.

Here's a peek at a portion of that shop update:



You might also notice a change in my shop pictures.  That's because I've finally unpacked the light kit that arrived a week or two ago.  I am no master at this lighting thing but what a difference even my incompetent set up made in my photos!  I'll need to work on that but I'm so pleased overall.

I spent a good portion of yesterday dyeing plain white t-shirts that I had been saving.  I have a cache of dyes that I'm working my way through trying to learn dyeing technique.  Here's a peek at the results of that and some future t-shirt yarn

I'm quite pleased with the results both of the dyeing and the photo.  Now I must get ready for work.  See you in a week.  

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Motivation & Introspection

One could say that I'm not very good at this blogging thing and they would be right.  Not long after that last post I went on vacation and, when I got back, I started a new job that has kept me hopping.  The job is a good fit, I get to be around creative people all day but I'm tired at the end of the day and by the time I get in a little work for my shop, I don't have much energy left for blogging.  In fact, after the holidays, I barely had time or energy to update my shop.

All that changed last week when my husband went on strike.  He's one of 39,000 Verizon employees walking the picket line.  Rather than talk about the anxiety that produces, because its a little too obvious to comment on, I'd rather talk about the motivation it has provided me with.  It really got me thinking about my goals and how I want to move forward.

The introspection actually started a few weeks ago as I was working on this special order t-shirt rug.  I started thinking about pattern recipe that I've developed for making these rugs.  For the first time, I took extensive notes on my process.  I've always jotted notes down but this time I really paid attention.  I even tweaked my technique to improve the overall look.  Honestly, that change was so obvious I'm ashamed to admit it.  In the end, my customer was really happy with the rug and so was I.

My goals as far as the t-shirt rugs go are to phase the pre-made ones out of my shop, offer special order ones to customers made out of their own t-shirts as this one was and to have the pattern recipe for sale by mid-May so you can make your own masterpiece.

Another thing this rug project got me pondering was how to maximize the t-shirt yarn that I can get from one shirt.  I needed to use every bit of the t-shirts sent by my customer to make sure I had enough to make the rug size he wanted.  I played with different cutting techniques to accomplish this and eventually found that joining smaller strips was the way to go.  This experimentation for the rug led me to make this joined yarn ball.  Its still an experimental process as

far as I'm concerned.  I'm going to wait for some feedback from the customer who bought it before making more but I'm really excited about the potential of the process.

I also had a question from a potential customer about how thin I could make the t-shirt yarn.  I experimented a bit yesterday and discovered that, although the cotton t-shirts I prefer to work with don't like to be much thinner than I'm already cutting them, I can get a cotton polyester blend t-shirt as thin as 1/10 of an inch.  As with the joined ball, I'm still considering this an experimental process but I'm hopeful that the potential customer will agree to take this first ball, use it and offer some feedback.

I have other goals in mind but this post is running long and I need to get ready to go to work.  I'll save some of my other thoughts on how I want to move forward for my next post.  Speaking of my next post, I'm going to aim for a weekly post done on Monday mornings.  So I'll see you in this space again on the 25th, I promise!

That Worked Out Well!

Well all that work last week, winding the last of the yarn balls and sewing little bags, paid off nicely this morning.  An order came in and all I had to do was pack it and print the shipping label.  That was a real timesaver.

I'm starting to suspect my use of a ridiculous amount of packing tape on each package may be negating the good I'm doing using upcycled paper grocery bags to ship in.  I'm going to explore commercially made packing envelopes and see if I can come up with a better option.

I've had quite a few other things on my plate this week that have slowed down some of my goals for the shop but here's a sneak peak and the gray t-shirts that were soaked in the leftover dye from the Summer Sunset t-shirt yarns.  The lighting is not fabulous but you get to see a bit of the process.  These lovelies should appear in the shop Thursday afternoon.

Stretching

 Getting ready to wind

You get a peek at my work area too and you might notice, there's a whole lot of stuff going on there.  So many ideas, so little time!

I've been looking on Ravely for patterns that make good use of bulky and super bulky yarns and found The Wildflower Headband by Sophie Scott.  I am itching to give this a try.  Looks like it will be a pretty quick knit once I actually sit down and do it.  I might actually take one of the Summer Sunset skeins out of the shop to do it.  We'll see.

Still working towards increasing my inventory for a craft fair entry.  I think I can, I think I can...

In personal crafting news, I've made more socks!

And I have another pair on the needles.  My dog, Oreo, loves to sit in my lap whenever I knit. 

What's on your crafty agenda for the week?

Striving for Consistency

I spent the last two days getting my shop updated with the loveliness that was last week's dyeing experiment.

I've dubbed this Summer Sunset and, while I love the way it came out, I'm not at all confident that I could replicate it.  Consistency like that will come with time, at least I hope it will.  If you love it, get over to the shop and get yours while it lasts.

Speaking of consistency, I finally took the time to wind up the last of the original yarn balls on my ball winder.  They are now all center pull skeins, happily nesting in their very own drawstring bags, with business card tags on them.  As I say on each listing:  

Yarn is wound into a center pull ball and packaged in a reusable, drawstring bags made from a t-shirt sleeve to keep your yarn tidy and tangle free while you work with it.

This benefits me as well.  Now all my t-shirt yarn just needs to be packaged for shipping and its ready to go.  That having been said, what a lot of work it was to get it all done.  The worst part was, it felt redundant.  The difference of course was that this time it was getting done in a way that really works best.  That didn't stop the temper tantrum that was going on in my head though.  Looking back on that picture, maybe making 18 bags is a pretty good accomplishment.

I also did some much needed updating in my pictures and descriptions today with a goal of making things more consistent.  I stuck with the t-shirt yarn section for today but I got some feedback from other sellers about other sections that need attention as well.  I plan to make those changes in the very near future.  Feedback is so scary to ask for but so important...but mostly scary.

Dyeing to Try or Trying to Dye

I've been working to replenish my t-shirt yarn stock in my shop, not the plain colors but the funky ones.  T-shirt yarn made from tie dye t-shirts never lasts very long in there.  What's a girl to do when there's no guarantee of finding tie dye t-shirts at the thrift store?  She can try dyeing some of the seven gazillion white t-shirts filling thrift store aisles.

That was my task today.  I had some dyes on hand that were also a thrift store find and I'd already destroyed a canning pot with a dye bath a while back, so I was ready for action.  

Here are the results drying on the clothesline.

A closer peek

You can expect these to make their way into my shop on Monday.  

Overall, I'm pleased with the results.  I wasn't thrilled with the process.  Chemical dyes stink, literally and rinsing out the dye until the water runs clear wastes a ridiculous amount of water to my way of thinking.  I wound up using the washing machine to do this and I still feel like the amount of dye coming out was endless.  I still have some chemical dye left but I lean toward exploring natural dyes in the near future.  

Since I still have some of this dye batch left, I've got some gray t-shirts soaking in it.  I'm curious to see what they look like.  Every time I've made gray t-shirt yarn it just looks grungy and unappealing to me and my efforts to bleach dye gray t-shirts have been utter failures.  The gray never changes color with the bleach!  How is that even possible??

The other discovery I made was that the blade on my rotary cutter was insanely dull.  What a difference a new blade made! 

Happy weekend to all!

The Road Ahead

I really enjoy listening to podcasts when I'm crafting.  I'm hooked on some of the usual suspects like Serial, Undisclosed and This American Life.  I'm also hooked on some crafty, maker related podcasts like Prairie Girls Knit and Spin, the Knitmore Girls and, most recently, Have Company.

I confess, I've been binge listening to Have Company since the end of last week.  Its really inspiring to hear the variety of guests Marlee Grace has on.  After listening to a wide variety of artists and makers, my wheels really started turning.  I started pondering different aspects of my shop and the direction of my shop.

In my mind, the earliest beginnings of Saved by Kate date back to denim quilts made for my sons' bunk beds.  First my sons, then my daughter, then my daughter's boyfriend, then my other daughter, then my sister, then my daughter's new boyfriend...one quilt organically led to the next one.

The memory quilts have followed a similar path, one that feels like a natural progression, rather than a business plan.  Yet a business plan is what it has become.  A close friend, and my first paying customer, just responded to pictures of my latest effort with, "you are really an extraordinary crafter of these and must continue to market them to the paying customer."  Given that she is an amazingly talented seamstress, my heart is singing (or screaming, OMG, OMG, OMG!!!!!)

So what does this all amount to in practice?  Well, yesterday I took a deep breath and put some business cards out on 2 community bulletin boards.  This morning when someone in my yoga class asked what I was doing later, I told her I was sending my latest memory quilt off to its owner and offered to show pictures.  I ended up showing her several of my projects.  In a sense I outed myself to the class, which is something I need to do more often.  I've gotten good at this in some venues and remain not so good in others.  The conversation this morning was a good first step.

For the future?  I need to replenish my t-shirt yarn a bit.  I'm working on a prototype for a possible class.  There's a fairly local craft show that I think would be a great venue for me but I need to see how much inventory I can build up before applying.  In the just for me category, I'm knitting socks, lots of socks and their mine, all mine!!

I leave you with two pics of the finished memory quilt.  (I'm still working on the photography piece of this, especially the lighting.)  Let me know what you think.