Alisha Goes Around

Oh, how things have changed since November.

First there was Thanksgiving.

Then my sister announced she is pregnant.

Then there was Christmas.

Then there was my first TNNA.

And after that, and since then, life has been a blur. I got back from TNNA on January 13th, yarn started arriving at the end of January and continues to arrive, and in the past 5 weeks I’ve managed to get five truckloads of yarn sent off to my wonderful, lovely, fantastic yarn shops that took a gamble on an unknown at her first show.

The orders are aaaaalmost filled — one big order, which the yarn arrived for less than two weeks ago, is dyed but drying. Four other boxes go out tomorrow, since things were a smidge damp on Friday. Other than that, the coast seems clear.

Just in time for the DFW Fiber Fest and Yellow Rose Fiber Fiesta on consecutive weekends in April.

No pressure.

No yarn ready for em, either.

BUT! My friend, Alyson, is running my Etsy shop for me. Right now I cannot dye to order for retail orders (just too busy), but I do have a lot of already-dyed yarn on hand. Over here at the Alisha Goes Around Etsy Shop, there is yarn available. Alyson has the yarn in her hot little hands, she takes the photos, writes the listings, and packages everything to ship, then delivers it to me the next day. I do the shipping, she takes care of most of the rest.

Next week I’m headed to Austin to stay with my little sister while taking 3 classes at Hill Country Weavers. Shannon Okey, Knitgrrl, is teaching, and I am very excited for Designer Bootcamp, Provisional Cast Ons, and Steeking.

More later. Hands hurt. Pots heavy. Yarn wet. Me tired (as the kid would say.)

Hey! I’m on Twitter as AlishaGAround. Couldn’t fit the “Goes” in there with the character limits. I’m a better tweeter than blogger.

Very quickly because I am tired:

I have a free pattern, Hummingbird on Holiday, available. You can find it here on Alisha Goes Around and the Rav Page is Here.

Mr. Bird can be knit in fingering to bulky yarn. For fingering versions, I used 6g of yarn. For DK, I used 14g. Seems to take between 30 and 60 yards, depending on the weight of the yarn. Many can be knit from one skein, each can be finished in about an hour (if you make multiples — the first will take longer).  Skills you need include knitting in the round, increasing and decreasing, and how to knit i cord. A joined cast on (like figure eight (if I write “figure” “8″ without the quotes, I get a smiley face! Huh.!)) is good to know but you don’t really need it, you can get along with a normal cast on and then sew the tail together at the end. The bird is knit in once piece from tail to beak, then the wings are knit flat in garter stitch and sewn to the body. Not too bad.

Here’s a photograph of the next pattern release, which goes out to test knitters this week (hopefully):

Here’s the link to the project page on Ravelry, which has details on what you need to complete  project like this. The knitting takes about 3 hours or so. The painting (of beak and flashing panel), eye insertion,  and application of scrapbook paper and ribbon take another hour or so over the course of two days (lots of drying time). Then you stuff and wire the bird, add a frame, and voila!

I have more things on the way. Right now I can’t keep my eyes off Cookie A’s new book, Knit. Sock. Love. It arrived in the mail today, and now I’m off to snuggle up on the porch with a cup of tea and the book. Good night!

I’ve been a sick puppy since Kid n Ewe ended. I’m feeling better, have all my school stuff finished as of an hour and a half ago, and any orders from this week (aside from the base yarns that are still in transit) will go out tomorrow, Friday, unless I wake up a big sicko monster again tomorrow. And the kiddo is back to school after his ear infection. To avoid being a big sicko monster again tomorrow, I’m going off to bed early tonight.

What helps you get better when you’re sick? I’ve been sleeping more and taking Advil Cold and Sinus. Hasn’t been doing the trick, though it has kept me somewhat functional.

Hola! I arrived home from KnE, ate dinner, and got to work on the website. I’m a whupped puppy right now, so this will be short.

Kid N Ewe was FANTASTIC! I sold so much yarn that I could see out the back window of my car on the way home. I had a wonderful time.  Friday was a nice ramp-up, Saturday was a blur of people, and Sunday was (thankfully) low key but a ton of fun. Since I spent Saturday night awake until 3:30 AM with my son, who has an ear infection, a quiet Sunday with time for chatting was VERY appreciated. Traffic at the booth was great, which I think probably had something to do with our location — while we were at the very back of the very last building, we were between the alpaca babies and the ladies’ restroom. (hah!) I had the peacocks, the hummingbird, the mice, and the flamingo on display. I know there were a lot of photographs taken at the event by other people — I was too busy to get a good one in! I’ll see if I can track some down.

Also, the husband found the charger for my camera this weekend. I had the camera on Sunday for the last couple hours, but I didn’t use it until I fed peanuts to the the REAL peachicks. (Peanuts for peachicks! Hah!)

On Friday, I hightailed it over to Buffalo Gold and got cones of their new sock yarn, Trax, which is 90% Superwash Merino and 10% Buffalo. It is fantastic. The yarn is darker than a normal “natural” skein and I am dying to get it in the dyepots. Since I’ll probably be up with the ear infection boy tonight, too, (poor bunny! I hate it when he’s hurt and I can’t do much to help him.) I plan to start skeining the cones while I console a hurty boy. Mothertasking, that is me. If anyone has a colorway request for the Trax, send me an email at alisha@alishagoesaround.com.

I got my yearly Butterfly Girl and Yorkieslave fix! I picked up some  Bountiful Harvest, and will probably get a few more from both their shops. Of course, I haven’t finished plying the yarn made from the fiber I got from them LAST year, so that did limit my binge by a bit, but I get a sparkle ache every once in a while and I Need Angelina!

Oh! Warping reel from Hockett Would Work! Warping reel means self-striping yarn! I have wanted a warping reel for ages (okay, six months), but they are so expensive! Jim had them, made of some very cool combinations of woods, including ambrosia maple and walnut (with some glitter thrown in – no lie!), and I added one to my Christmas list, and it just so happens that I was staying at the Christmas Fairy’s house this weekend, and poof! one appeared in the back of my car! (Thank you Mom and Dad! And thank you for not waiting until Christmas!) I can’t find a link to Jim, but if I come across one, I will update this post. I planned on buying one of his spindles, maybe a boat shuttle or two, but the warping mill, at $125, blew my mind. I had a serious case of the Gimmes.

I also signed up for the Yellow Rose Fiber Fiesta. This is the first year of the Fiber Fiesta, which will be held in Seguin, Texas, on April 15th and 16th, 2011, about 40 minutes from downtown San Antonio, headed Northeast on I-10. Seguin happens to be a hop and a skip from my house, so even though it is the weekend right after the DFW Fiber Festival (Grapevine, Texas, April 8-10, 2011), I’ll make it work.

While I was away, my inbox exploded. Turns out that Anne Hanson at Knitspot mentioned my Plush Lace yarn! She had a Boxleaf Triangle knit with it for her trunk show. Isn’t that the coolest thing? Thank you, Anne. I have a smidge of Plush Lace (which is being renamed Panoply Lace, by the way) left from the show and more on the way from the mill. If you’d like a skein of Chimney Sweep (or any other color on the website) in Plush/Panoply Lace,  just send me an email and I will add you to the list.  I love love love Anne’s patterns and blog am so excited to take a class from her at the DFW Festival — If I can convince my mom to come man the DFW booth with me, I’ll sign up for another one, too. I would love to take all her classes, of course, but I don’t think only spending three hours per day in my own booth would be appropriate.

Now it is time to say goodbye for now. I’m not done, haven’t even posted any photographs, but that will have to happen later. I’m going to try to get a few hours of rest before the kiddo’s ears wake him up. Thank you, everyone, for a wonderful weekend.

Time to go to Kid N Ewe! Well, not this instant. But soon.

Only having two weeks to prepare for Kid n Ewe is kicking my bottom. I’m not going to have things EXACTLY how I want them to be, but I’ve done enough, I think. Of course, it is foggy and drizzly outside, so some of the last minute yarn and fiber batches won’t get into the car today, but I’ve got a 10 foot by 5 foot wall of yarn, so I think I’ll be okay. I am so very excited to be attending with Old Oaks Ranch. The only thing I could REALLY use right now is a bigger car. Or a trailer. And a trailer hitch. Or a really sunny morning that dries the 40 skeins I’ve got hanging in the backyard from overnight.

I’ve been up all night, so now I will sleep for a few hours. I’ll wake up, pack my weekend bag, load the car with 500ish skeins of yarn and braids of fiber, see if I can squeeze in the peacocks, swan, and flamingo, and consider bringing my personal Wollmeise to destash (I love it, but it hurts my hands too much to knit it — wah!). If I’m on time, I’ll head to the pottery studio to glaze a dozen bowls and half a dozen mugs, then drive up to my parents’ house in Boerne. If I’m late, I’ll skip the pottery studio. If I’m really late, I won’t go to my parents house tonight and I’ll leave New Braunfels bright and early in the morning. Hopefully I’ll be on time — which means ready to go by 3:30 — because I’d really like to get my bisqueware glazed in time for Monday’s glaze firing.

I don’t think anyone is reading this, hence the schedule ramblings, heh.

If you are out there, come say hi!

Quick note: I’ve mostly fixed the shop website. The vast majority of available items are republished, and after KnE next weekend, I’ll add the rest. Two events in two weeks makes it very difficult to keep up with what sells and what doesn’t.

These are the first efforts from my Introduction to Wheelthrowing class. The class began at the end of September, it was a few weeks before I thought something was decent enough to keep, and then we learned how to glaze two weeks ago. Last week was the first glaze firing, and I brought these home from school on Thursday. As I told my husband, if this is the worst I’ll ever produce, I’m happy!

These were thrown about 5 weeks ago, and I do think I’ve improved since then. In the meantime, our class has learned how to trim a foot, glaze, throw a bowl, pull handles, and we’ve refined our cylinders, curves, lips, and necks. More advanced things, like plates, pitchers, lids, and larger forms, are still a ways in the future. Did you know that teapots are advanced throwing skills? Between the main form of the vessel, the spout, the lid, and the handle, they are among the more difficult items to produce. I don’t drink a lot of hot tea (hello, South Texas), but I do look forward to knowing how to make one.  As it is now, I’m just happy if I improve in one area each week. I’ve spent a lot of time in the studio during the last few weeks, and our last bisque firing day is only two weeks away (bisque firing is the first firing of the clay — after the bisque firing you can glaze your piece, then it is fired again at a higher temperature to set the glaze, and then you are done and can bring your pots home.)

This week, along with the pottery, I’ll make my last big dye push before Kid N Ewe Fiber Festival in Boerne, Texas. My last dye day is Wednesday (if the weather is good for drying, that is), I leave for Boerne on Thursday night, and set up begins Friday morning. The market opens up at noon on Friday! I’ll be in the STAR Alpaca building, sharing space with Old Oaks Ranch. Look out for this sign — that’s how you’ll know it is us!

Kid n Ewe Fiber Festival is coming up November 12-14. It is still being held at the Kendall County Fairgrounds in Boerne, Texas, which happens to be the town my parents live in. I’ll be there, likely in the Alpaca/Llama building (the STAR building) with Old Oaks Ranch. Meanwhile, there’ll be more dyeing, more shipping, and more prepping for TNNA.

If I can find my camera charger, I will post a photograph of my peacock flock. Until then, here’s a photograph of my parents’ peacocks watching the backhoe fill in a hole:

Kinda better than nothing: it was noonish, the sun was bright, the birds were walking away, and the backhoe had failed to dig the proper holes through the Balcones limestone.

I have a new rule: No changing the  store website after 4 AM. (Changing the blog after 4 AM is apparently okay — it is 5:30 AM right this minute.)

Also, another good rule would be to NOT TOUCH ANY BUTTONS unless I know what they’ll do.

I do everything by myself. I make a lot of website-related mistakes, but usually I can fix them within a few minutes. This time, I deleted all the yarn. ALL THE YARN. No way to get it back, just have to redo it all.

The only good thing is that I haven’t published the changes — the old version of the website with all the yarn there is still up, the site is still functional. The changes that I made, like this banner:

AGA Website Banner

Oh, well. I have two whole weeks before the Kid n Ewe Fiber Festival, so that should be enough time to fix everything and make it better. The website will be in tip-top shape (by my standards, lol) within a few weeks.

Oh, Hey, New Logo!

I am exhausted. And my feet are still dirty! I was so busy I didn’t take photographs. Silly Alisha!

On Saturday, AGA trucked off to Wimberley, Texas, for the Fall Festival at Old Oaks Ranch. For those of you who are not local, Old Oaks is a combination of my favorite things: Texas Hill Country, alpaca farm, sculpture garden, yarn shop, and weaving studio. It is about an hour from my house, which means I don’t get there too often, but I am delighted every time I make the trip. Go look at their website — so pretty!

So on Saturday morning (39 degrees outside when I woke up at 6 AM!) we loaded up my car to the ceiling and I drove very very slowly (because I was stuck behind a cement mixing truck for 20 miles on a 2 lane road) to Old Oaks. For the first time in almost a year, I set up my pop-up canopy, which could have gone better. Luckily, there’s very little room for user error when setting up a folding table and stacking cardboard boxes, so that part went much better. After about an hour of labeling new skeins and setting special prices for all my stock, I was ready. I took a bit too long setting up — three customers came and claimed yarny goodness before I was finished.

The weather cooperated, by mid afternoon it was a nice 84 degrees, and it was estimated that more than 400 people turned up at the ranch. Sue Ellen and Sandra did an amazing job pulling this event together — there were over a dozen vendors, live music, 3 bronze pours, 2 alpaca tours, spinning and weaving demonstrations. To keep kids engaged, there was a costume contest and parade, face painting, felting, a book reading and signing, and painting stations. My husband and son even came to visit, which is pretty rare, and my kiddo (a seven year old boy) had a great time (We did decide to keep the felting needles out of his hands, however. My boy once used a hard plastic straw  to punch a hole through the roof of his mouth — limiting the amount of sharp things he can access is common sense around here.).

By the end of the day, I had passed out dozens of cards, used my new Square credit card reader/account 5 times (Very exciting! This was the first time I’d been able to use it since the reader arrived a week or two ago. It worked very well and my customers were very interested in the reader. Half of the cards I passed out had “Squareup.com” written on the back.), had sold enough yarn to be able to see out the back window of my car for the trip home, and had shown off my peacock (more on him later) to rave reviews (Except for that one lady. Very strange exchange with her.). It wasn’t a perfect day — it was windy, I often had rocks in my shoes, I had to hold the tent to the ground for half the day, and I have a sunburn on the back of my neck — but nothing was more than an annoyance. Overall, the Festival was fantastic, if exhausting. And a little Sue Ellen-shaped-birdie told me that they’re doing it again next year!