a trip to Germany

This past spring, I went to visit my family in Germany on the occasion of my mother's 75th birthday.

I want to spend a few days showing you some pictures.

On my first day there, we went to the Kreuzberg  and yes there was still snow on March 27th. This is the mountain where I learned how to ski from my dad when I was 4 years old.

 Kreuzberg is also a Franciscan monastery where every year thousands make pilgrimages.

Franciscan monks have been brewing beer here for 275 years.
This is the inn where I remember having lunch as a kid between ski runs. The skis would lean against this window in the court yard.

Of course we stopped to have lunch as well!

Then we went for a walk through the woods, to the summit.

Back to the car and off to a lovely cafe where we indulged again...or at least my dad did (my mom and I always bring a gluten-free snack).

 And I couldn't have asked for a better first day back home!

happy to announce

Today I get to tell you some news --

Hook A Frog is going to take over online sales of Periwinkle Sheep yarns on June 15th!

This is a small, woman owned company who specializes in US made yarns and needles.

I've ordered from Teresa before, and I know for a fact that she sends packages with great care. Why don't you take a minute and visit her website, designed by her husband, and see what she has to offer?

I do believe we will be starting with a selection of watercolors yarns, such as these --

ignore the feet please

and if there's anything you'd like to see more of, please don't hesitate to contact either of us. I suspect we will be on the phone with each other a lot in the next couple of weeks.

timing is everything

For two days now, a pattern has been in the top five favorites on ravelry, a pattern that uses my watercolors sock yarn. It is called Ripples by Annelie Wallbom, and was written for Serial Knitters, a LYS in Kirkland, WA, for their recent participation in a huge yarn crawl. They carry huge quantities of my yarn.

For two days I have been watching in amazement - I did not see this coming, and neither did the designer.

A minute ago, it just kind of dawned on me (testament to how slowly I process information, or how busy I've been, or how utterly amazed I am, - take your pick!) to check on my website.

Yup, over 1,000 hits today alone, presumably knitters looking for the yarn to make Annelie's shawl. You could have knocked me over with a feather, but in lieu of that, I gave myself a nice slap on the forehead. Why?

I do not have the required yarn in stock.

This realization is the ultimate irony, as just a few days ago I decided to change my business plan and go mostly wholesale. I will continue to be a physical presence, yes, at fiber festivals. But I will no longer have the online retail portion of my dyeing. It will be given to another business, tba very soon, and I will sell wholesale to her, and you can place orders from her, wherever you are and whenever you want.

The stock on my website was never quite what I wanted and needed it to be, I never really had the time to photograph all the colorways properly and upload everything and make it look like a great online shop. Instead, my wholesale business has increased steadily, and I am quite happy with that.
I will pursue this side of the business more and more, as much as I am able without making the shops wait forever for a shipment.

Except for one colorway, I do not have the required yarn for the Ripples shawl in stock, because I have let my stock dwindle. And then I get a thousand seekers, and they find nothing.

I just put a pre-sale option up on the site, so if there's still a knitter out there that hasn't tried to find the yarn, it IS available to you. Also, if you don't care for the original colorway, please let me know. In addition, feel free to call any of the yarn shops listed here. You may be just in time.

light

I have not blogged in so long. Now I've started to have the itch again. This photo was taken a couple of days ago in the parking lot of one of our local colleges.