Green Mountain Madness

Dueling Shows: My current dilemma

What happens when you have to be a NO SHOW at your favorite show? This was my dilemma last week when I had to decide between NENA and Maryland. So I need to vent. Here goes:

Two shows in the same weekend -- what were they thinking? There's the New England Needlearts Show (NENA) in Sturbridge Mass every May and also Maryland Sheep and Wool the first weekend in May. Sometimes these shows are a week apart, which can be a logistical problem if you show at both of them, but this year they were the same weekend, which became my worst nightmare.

Here's my gripe: Why can't these show makers get together? Too many times they pick the same weekend and the result is poor attendance as everyone has to decide which festivities they will forego. I do not care that one show is retail and one show is wholesale. I am a yarnaholic and I want to go to both shows!

We love walking around the Maryland Show and shopping and visiting old friends. We love NENA especially the new exhibitors room and shopping and visiting old friends. Don't make us choose! Making us decide between these two shows results in NO SHOWS both on the retail and wholesale side. This year I went to NENA with some of my employees and my husband went to Maryland (lucky dog) to help out the yarngirls from DBNY who took our old booth this year.

At NENA we sold out of all sock yarn within the first hour and we had to hire someone to break in through a window at our warehouse in VT and drive the rest of the sock yarn down to Massachusetts. The lines were so long that we had to apologize to everyone for the wait. At Maryland my husband said that the main hall was so packed you couldn't move and all of the mill ends we sent down sold out in minutes.

I was so glad, but mad I couldn't go. Now we get to wait another year to find out: can we see both shows?

Small Grapes, Big Cherries

Well don't we feel like little fish in a big pond? Tina, our CTH webmaster and I just came back from the Shopatron Conference in San Luis Obispo County, California. It took us three flights and 15 hours to get there and we should have won a prize for furthest away attendees but that was not an award category offered at the conference.

At Shopatron we were wowed by industry giants who used foreign terms like up-sell, vetting  and no-follow as well as acronyms like SEO (search engine optimization) ISP (in store pick up) and CTR (still have no idea).

At any rate, here we are with our yarn friends STWC and Byron from Shopatron.

Taking classes like Email Marketing, Increasing Retailer Participation and Trends in Open Source Technology, did not leave us bored, just mystified. The dinner at Novo in the Mission District although deliciously sublime as we were plied with organic wine, was overshadowed by Bubble Gum Alley and a trip to Victoria's Secret.  (No Vickie's in VT that we know of, so it was such a treat to buy panties.)  Everyone else laughed at us­ obviously they have stores where they live .

The field trip to area vineyards left us with a taste for expensive Chardonnay and the knowledge that in the internet world were are nothing but small grapes in a vast vineyard.  Thank God we have big cherries.

Living in the wilderness as we do with no cell phone towers and no possibility of texting, we decided to invest more time and money into Shopatron. Great news:  stores, we're going to put lots more stuff up on Shopatron for you to bid on.

Knitters, rejoice!  We are going to offer you many more choices including our higher end yarns and kits. Europe, here we come­ soon you will be able to buy our yarns in Pounds, Euros and Marks. When we got back to Vermont there was still snow and the forecast for more -- what's new?

What else is there to knit socks out of?

Dear Sockies:

I know you can knit socks from bamboo, corn, soy and sea shells but what about possum?

Yes the rumors are true.  We are milling Superwash Possum Sock yarn again but only once and it won't be here until June and then we have to paint it so it will be awhile. This yarn is harder for us to get than Qiviut and that is saying a lot since I teach classes in Alaska every year and there is a Musk Ox farm in Fairbanks.

I know you love the hollow core of the possum fiber and the double halo effect that the guard hair produces and the yarn's incredible loft and so do I but do you realize how hard it is to convince a mill
to combine it with superwash merino and mill it to fingering weight? Impossible! No one has the equipment, no one want to do a run that small, no one wants to run yarn that thin plus the dollar is dropping like a rock in that part of the world.

Well it's taken me about 5 years and a lot of whining and wheedling so we're going to get a little bit (about 4000 hanks) one more time. Here's a picture of what it's  going to look like. There are only 4 hanks in existence. I gave one to Sheri at The Loopy Ewe, Allison at Simply Socks and Leah at Inua Wool.  The other hank is MINE and I keep it beside my mouse at work so I can pet it when I am not typing to you.  The ends we turned into colorcards so nothing was wasted. The hanks are 50 grams and 225 yards which will knit a scarf but you're going to need 2 for a pair of socks.

If you want a colorcard let me know.  We're sending them out free until they are gone!

Not Socks

I just joined a group on Ravelry called Sock Knitters Anonymous and I need help from sock knitters everywhere.  In my book I call you guys Sockies.  Don't worry, I am a Sockie too!

So Dear Sockies:  I need pictures of your sock yarn stashes and comments for my new book Not Socks. This book is all about knitting with sock yarn but resisting the temptation to knit socks. Here's an excerpt from the introduction:

Knitting socks is addictive, we realize that.  Just look at the yarn!  Sock yarn, especially fingering weight is every knitter's eye candy.  Most of it is smooth and soft, supple and superwash, easy to knit, easy to wear and the color ranges can make you drool.  Knitting socks is portable and relaxing, turning the heel is exhilarating and the plethora of available needles from zippy Addies to new Hiya Hiya Bamboo lend themselves all kinds of innovative knitting techniques.  You can try creating socks on single circulars, magic loop with two circulars, traditional 4 and 5 needle methods and more.  Just picking out the needles can be too much fun!

But here’s our question:  Why stop at fun?  Fun is nice but pure adrenaline excitement is better.  Here we take knitting with sock yarn to the next level, which is where it belongs:  wearable art.

Sockies, what can you tell me about having lots of sock yarn and knitting something other than socks with it? Do you separate sock yarn from other yarn? How much sock yarn is enough and how much is too little?  For example, I suffer from stash reduction anxiety.  Can any of you commiserate? I am worried about my sock yarn. 

Do you have anything you want to share with sock knitters everywhere?  I think we have some space for comments and quotes if you have anything to share. 

First Day of Spring?

No Maple Syrup Yet
It's almost the end of March and still snowing. Last week when it looked like the snow might melt and that sugaring season would start, my husband plowed a road up to our sugar house and flushed the pans, filled the woodshed and got out his 500 buckets. This is supposed to be fun, and I guess if you are the lucky one who gets to drive the sleigh, it can be. My husband had two huge Belgian horses named Doc and Otis and they love to pull the sleigh around the sugar woods, especially if the gathering tank is empty.

It took us two days to hang the buckets using horse power and snowmobiles (our other horse power).  The sap started to drip, a sure sign of spring thaw, and all was well.  Hoping to fire up the arch we went up to the woods the next day and the next, gathering what little sap had plinked into the buckets. And then winter struck again with a vengeance. We're thinking about creating a new line of Maple products -- Very Cherry Maple Popsicles.

Hopefully next week things will thaw and we'll starting making syrup. Until then, we'll just keep on making yarn.

Our newest colors...

Here are swatches of my two new colorways that were shown on the Great Wall of Yarn at Stitches West.

The darker one is knit from Supersock in Caribou Creak and designed by none other than Myrna Stahman, author, lawyer and Seaman Scarf yarn queen. This design also appeared in the novel Back on Blossom
Street by Debbie Macomber.

The lighter one is knit from our newest sock yarn, Sockittome (pronounced sock it to me -- I thought most people would get this, but various yarn store owners have asked about the exotic name of the yarn. It is not exotic, it's just plain old American slang.)

The colorway is Cherry Blossom, which won a color contest in the UK. We marketed this coloway just in Europe until this year when the magazine that ran the contest released Cherry Blossom to the US. The
design is by lace queen Lois Young.

Stitches West....

Here is my daughter Cheyenne at Stitches West with her friend Kat from SWTC. Stitches West was so much fun and we finally got to meet the Ravelry Crew!