Huckleberry Knits

a new logo, at last?

2009-07-13T01:07:00.000-07:00

I've never liked the font on my logo, to be honest, and especially not the way the "t" and the "s" look together in "knits." I have looked at literally thousands of fonts, trying to find something clean but not boring or overused. Or that cost $200 to purchase.

I do really like the branch, though I wanted to prune it a bit. After some fussing, I came up with two concepts that I like.

The first one is pretty true to the original logo, just cleans it up a bit.

The second one, I like, but I don't think it looks that hot in B&W.

I need to decide ASAP. Apple Yarns and I are getting some collateral printed together, so she needs me to send the logo pronto. I'll probably go with option #1, as it's not too drastic a change from my current logo so I won't lose any brand equity that I've built up. Also I don't like sudden change. I worry that the font is too boring and that the little details that I like will be lost, but my husband tells me that I'm too much of a font geek and to just use this one already.

a forced break

2009-07-12T10:20:00.000-07:00

I've had these itchy patches on two of my fingers for several days. I chalked it up to oddly located mosquito bites, since I've been bitten a lot lately.

This morning I woke up with blisters on the patches. Dr. Google says that it's likely irritant contact dermatitis. I threw out my dyeing gloves, will pick up some disposable latex-free ones just in case I'm developing a latex allergy, and I'm planning to take a couple of days off from handpainting.

This is just rotten timing in a lot of ways, of course. Sock Summit is three weeks away, and just last night I developed two colorways that I really like and I'd sure like to dye more of. I have non-handpainting stuff I can do, like revising my logo, getting collateral printed up, skeining yarn off cones, reskeining ... but jeez. I have Wed and Thu lined up for all-day dyeing, so I really need to be fully operational by then.

I'm also panicking a little bit that I don't have enough yarn to dye. It feels hard to believe, given all the boxes strewn about the house, but unless I'm totally forgetting about something, I am getting down to the bottom of my stash. Three base yarns that I was expecting to use are either out of stock or still in development, so that's part of the problem. Oh well, I can only do what I can do at this point. It's still going to be fun and a great experience. Right?

sort of a basket case, sort of not.

2009-06-21T01:04:00.000-07:00

Currently, I am trying to:

1. Improve my crappy posture, which should help my neck and shoulder problems.

2. Cut back on caffeine, also to help with my neck and shoulder (my massage therapist told me about a study she read linking caffeine to stress-related pain).

3. Lose 5 lbs so I can wear the fitted top I'm knitting without feeling like my stomach is the first thing someone sees.

4. Exercise more (see #3).

5. Not drink any beer or wine (see #3). When I complained to my husband that my unwanted weight wasn't because of retaining water, he suggested that I might be retaining beer.

6. Eat better.

7. Enjoy the summer.

8. Protect my vegetable garden from marauding deer and cats.

9. Dye 475 more skeins of yarn in the next six weeks.

Oh, and work 20 hours/week while racing towards a million deliverables all due on June 30 (thank you, federal grants), and chasing a rather busy 4.5 year old the rest of the time.

I would add "sleep more" to the list, but that seems pretty unrealistic.

I ought to be more stressed, and I'm a little sad that I'm missing out on fun summer things like camping trips, but I'm doing my best to get out of the house with the boy on our days together and do as much as possible. He is a great hiker (see #4 and #7) and is game for anything. He's insatiably curious--I feel like I've got to stuff as many diverse experiences into him now, while he's open and inquisitive about everything. I am more than a little scared of the school years and what they may do to him. I don't know why, I turned out fine, though I would've benefited from a more challenging high school for sure, but for some reason I am just afraid that school will bore the curiosity and thirst for learning right out of him.

Sock Summit, what else?

2009-06-20T00:51:00.000-07:00

I have been living and breathing Sock Summit for the last few weeks. I didn't think I'd be able to take any three-hour classes since I'd have to mind my store. So I wasn't really paying much attention to that, until I had a Revelation of the Blindingly Obvious the day before registration opened, and realized that I wasn't going to be chained to my booth until late Thursday afternoon, so I *could* take at least one class. Then I got excited, joined the F5 feeding frenzy, and got into a sock design class for the morning, plus a 1-hour ergonomics class, which my poor neck and shoulder are ever so grateful for.

There's the dyeing, too, of course. I've gotten into my groove and am busily dyeing away. I'm at the beginning of a four-day dyeing marathon--more about that in a future post.

And last but not least, there's my inner shopper, who has been faithful to a vow of stash chastity for six months now but is showing signs of cracking. The vendor booth numbers got released today, and my inner shopper seized control, printed out the marketplace map, and is matching up must-see vendors with their booths, happily highlighting away.

getting organized

2009-06-06T22:56:00.000-07:00

Sock Summit is exactly two months away, and I'm still dyeing in a rather desultory fashion. My goal for the last three weeks had been to dye 60 skeins a week and, um, I have 57. Total. From three weeks of dyeing. Eeep.

To get myself focused, tonight I've been filling in my inventory spreadsheet with the number of skeins I want to dye per colorway, per base yarn. I already feel more motivated. It's funny how either I need total freedom to dye whatever I feel like, or a very specific game plan. I can't do the in-between, which was to make a list of colorways that I wanted to bring.

My family is going away for a four-day weekend without me, and I'm taking a week off from my day job next month, so I'm expecting/hoping to get caught up then.

Oh, and did I mention how excited I am just to be at Sock Summit? I got into two classes, I'm setting up a group trip to Pok Pok (which I'm looking forward to as much as the classes), and I am going to get to meet a bunch of people that I only have met online, so far. No matter how the booth does, I am going to have so much fun!

dyepot--you're in timeout!

2009-05-28T14:02:00.000-07:00

First batch of colorways went well today, second batch did not. Argh. As my stressbuster, I'm going to sit outside and try out my new Hiya Hiya circulars on Delphine, before I have to scurry into work. Am using my sport weight organic merino dyed in Huckleberry, which is so nice to knit. Smooth and silky. That should put me in a better mood.

Preparing for Sock Summit is a marathon, but as Thursday is my main dyeing day, it always feels like a frantic sprint. I probably need to pace myself better during the week so that I'm not so stressed out on Thursday.

Inked

2009-05-21T22:07:00.000-07:00

My friend Tawny of Baby Bean Designs is having a fiber party on Friday, and this is what I'm bringing:

This is Inked on Shooting Star merino. I always thought of this yarn as fingering, since I use size 2 needles with it, but then it was pointed out to me that the yardage was sort of sport-ish, at 355 yards per 4 oz skein. And I call my organic merino that's 372 yards/4 oz sport weight ... so for consistency I call Shooting Star a sport weight yarn. But in my head, it's still fingering.

get your geek on!

2009-05-20T17:44:00.000-07:00

My friend P. pointed out that when I get interested in something, I focus on it obsessively. Battlestar Galactica, the best TV series I've ever watched, is no exception. I was pretty much in mourning when the series ended in March.

Naturally, it ended up merging with my ongoing obsession with yarn. (Basically everything does, these days.) I started thinking about BSG colorways. Then about all the other great science fiction and fantasy stories out there.

But why geek alone? I picked a few friends who I suspected of similar tendencies, and invited them to stock my store with me.

Tomorrow morning, the collision of art and fandom goes live. A few examples:

Centurion (BSG)

Tribbles (Star Trek: TOS)

Mal's Browncoat (Firefly)

Team Edward (Twilight)

There were so many other ideas I had (Lorien from LOTR, Lyra's hat from The Golden Compass, Jayne's hat from Firefly, and my Coldfire colorway), but alas, just didn't have time. Hopefully I will the next go-around ...

playing around in the dye studio

2009-05-18T01:51:00.000-07:00

One of my constant worries when I'm dyeing a custom order is how closely I'm matching the stock photo. I know that the nature of the hand-dyed beast is the variation among skeins, and I know that most of my customers know, too. I fret anyway.

Since January, basically all my dyeing has been for wholesale and co-op orders, so it's been a long time since I've been able to just dye without worrying about matching. I didn't realize how much this stress was affecting me until last night, when I dyed some of my sparkly vampire yarn (a superwash sock-weight yarn with actual silver spun into it) for this week's science fiction/fantasy stocking--official name: Out of This World. While I was working, I fretted about the purple dye that was turning blue at the edges, that was darker than I wanted, that wasn't like what I had pictured in my head, about the raspberry that I overdyed on two of the skeins ... until I realized that I liked it.

It felt so liberating to just go in and dye something and see what happens! I really love how the sparkly vampire yarn turned out, in particular. I've never read the Twilight series--my husband, who has actually watched the movie (unlike me), suggested the idea of dyeing shiny yarn. He gets bonus points for a great suggestion.

let the Tour begin!

2009-05-13T20:52:00.001-07:00

The Puget Sound LYS Tour begins tomorrow, and my Trillium merino is the featured yarn at Apple Yarns. Today I stopped by to take a photo.

Pretty awesome that what started off as a "sure, I'll knit some socks for you" three years ago has evolved into this. Andrea (the owner) asked if I had any more because she's thinking they might sell out, so I'm going to dye her up a bit more tomorrow.

Next up: my SF/fantasy-themed stocking next week (5/21). I have some sparkly sock yarn with actual silver spun into it to dye up in a Twilight-inspired colorway (apparently vampires sparkle in this series? so says my husband, who made it through the whole movie, unlike me), plus some Battlestar Galactica and possibly Lord of the Rings colorways to do. My friend Diane of Bugsnugger, June of Rising Sun Earthworks, and Denise of Zen Moon will be coming to my geeky little party. Time to celebrate our inner nerds!

hitting the refresh button on my logo

2009-05-10T12:12:00.000-07:00

I have looked at literally thousands of fonts, trying to find the new (type)face of Huckleberry Knits. I'm starting to think that the best idea is to just change my name to this font, Natalya Swashes:

You may simply refer to me as The Artist Formerly Known as Huckleberry Knits.

Sock Summit vendor list is up!

2009-05-09T09:30:00.000-07:00

And I'm on it! There are quite a few vendors whose work I'd love to see, having admired their yarns from afar. This is going to be so much fun!

http://www.socksummit.com/vendors

I'm in the homestretch of my current wholesale order (which I am dropping off on Tuesday) and as soon as I'm finished, it's on to Sock Summit dyeing. I had been thinking anyway that I was going to bring non-sock yarns, and after having seen future shoppers comment that they were saving up their annual yarn budgets to blow at the Summit on all types of yarn, I definitely think this is the way to go.

can't find huckleberryknits.com?

2009-04-30T20:14:00.000-07:00

I'm in the process of transferring my domain to a new host, but in the meantime my URL isn't forwarding to my store. You'll need to go directly to http://hyenacart.com/huckleberryknits. Sorry about the confusion.

skein winder, how do I love thee? let me count the ways

2009-04-18T00:00:00.000-07:00

I'd say there are 76 ways, right about now. Just wrapped up my latest co-op order, which was for 76 skeins. I capped it at 50 variegated skeins, plus an unlimited number of solid coordinating skeins. Usually there are maybe 10 trim skeins. This time, there were 26.

I could absolutely not have done this without my electric skein winder. It was well worth the investment--solidly made, flawlessly functional.

the homestretch

2009-04-16T22:51:00.000-07:00

I finished dyeing a 75-skein co-op order today, and did half of a small wholesale order. All that by 10 p.m. I don't even have to walk the dog tonight--did it already. Just finished my Easter treat to myself, a lovely hazelnut crunch, fair-trade, and organic chocolate bar from Theo Chocolate, a local-ish confectioner. Now *this* is a nice evening--productive yet relaxing. I could get used to this.

I've been wanting to update my typeface in my logo for a while now, and finally had a chance to try out the idea of removing the serifs, since they're part of what bugs me about the font. So I converted the font to paths in my beloved but obsolete Freehand 10, and deleted away. It wasn't enough of a change, and honestly I have too much going on right now to spend hours sifting through fonts.com to find The One True Typeface. So I contacted a designer tonight, and we'll see if she can help me out. I have also been seriously neglecting my advertising, so I'm hoping to get some banners put together, too.

I've forked over my dough and am now an official Sock Summit vendor. Time to put all my ideas and plans into action!

well, whaddaya know - not procrastinating actually pays off

2009-04-09T23:14:00.000-07:00

Tonight, instead of goofing around on the internet until 10:00, buckling down to dyeing work for a few hours, and then stumbling into bed at 2 a.m., I started working on my dyeing at 8:30. I was finished with everything I wanted to do by 10:37, then washed a backlog of dishes and reskeined a few hanks of yarn. Now I'm browsing through Ravelry forums, eating a dish of coconut avocado ice cream. (It's okay; it could use some more citrus or other tart note to make it less heavy on the tongue. And as the recipe suggests, it's better with chocolate sauce.) I will actually be in bed by midnight tonight. What bliss!

This week I switched to a new brown dye and I'm sorry. It does not take kindly to handpainting, since it has an olive component that wicks badly. And when I dip-dye several skeins, using very similar dye/fiber ratios and temperatures, it ends up being dramatically different colors. So I'm going back to my old brown, which I know and love. I was hoping to switch all my dye purchases to the same supplier, in order to save on shipping costs, but this just won't do.

Off to bed!

thoughts on superwash from a tired dyer

2009-04-07T23:12:00.000-07:00

Things I like about dyeing superwash yarn:
1. When you put a color somewhere, it generally stays there. Especially if the dye solution is hot.

2. When you need to do touch-up dyeing, it's much faster than when you have to touch up untreated yarn.

3. The colors are so vivid. Untreated yarn usually needs more concentrated dye solutions to achieve the same brilliance.

4. I like being able to rinse the yarn when it's hot, instead of needing to wait for it to cool down. Also, it rarely requires more than a single rinse. Pretty much all of the dye will bind to the yarn.

Things I don't like about dyeing superwash yarn:
1. When you put a color somewhere, it generally stays there. The dye strikes so quickly that you really have to work at it to make sure that all strands in a section are the same color. Pale or even (gasp!) undyed spots are not uncommon.

2. You don't get the same kind of color melding that you do with untreated yarn. Sometimes I'm really looking for a lot of shades that are in between two colors, and I don't get quite the same effect with superwash as I do with untreated.

3. My dye formulas that I develop first on superwash yarn need to be seriously tweaked before I can replicate them on untreated yarn. When I'm dyeing a mixed batch of superwash and untreated base yarns, this can make things a little screwy.

store news

2009-04-01T21:51:00.000-07:00

I have dyed a lot of yarn (for me) in the last two weeks. 60 skeins, I think? The biggest single batch was the most recent Apple Yarns order, part 1. This is McIntosh, an exclusive colorway for them:

A closeup:

Also, some yarns that are going live tomorrow, including these:

And a lot more that are for my current group order. Yet, surprisingly, I am not completely exhausted and/or insane. Maybe putting together 600-1000 skeins for Sock Summit won't be as impossible as I thought?

Except maybe for the cash flow thing. I realized today that I am going to have to front a lot of money for the inventory. I know this is totally obvious, but I had been so focused on the cost of the booth, lodging, display materials, etc. and the time it was going to take to dye everything that it didn't even occur to me how much the base yarn was going to cost. Um, duh. Most of my capital is tied up in worsted, aran, and bulky undyed yarns. So I will need to do a huge flurry of non-sock dyeing after the LYS Tour madness has subsided, in order to raise funds to buy sock weight base yarns. My timeframe for dyeing has just gotten even shorter. Eeeek.

production dyeing: the next step

2009-03-27T00:48:00.000-07:00

I dyed 20 skeins of yarn today, all the same colorway. I thought it might be easier and faster than, say, four skeins each of five different colorways, but if it was faster, I didn't notice, because here I am at my normal time at the end of a dyeing night.

I don't know about easier, either. I decided to mix up a highly concentrated stock solution for each color and divvy it up evenly as I refilled my dyeing bottles. I thought this would both make things go faster (since mixing dyes seems to take much longer than I think it should) and also make the skeins more consistently colored. This idea would've worked better if I'd had more mixing cups with 1 oz markings. Argh--just realized that this would've been the perfect use for all the baby bottles that I still have kicking around. Or instead of storing one of the colors in my measuring cup, I could've dumped that into a jar and then measured all of the other colors more accurately. Now that's a blindingly obvious solution--why on earth didn't I think of that at the time?

Anyway, live and learn, I guess. Or should I say dye and learn?

The last batch of skeins should be cool enough to rinse now, I think. Time to finish off the job and go to bed.

slacking off

2009-03-25T19:46:00.000-07:00

After a few months of being a good and faithful blogger, I have really slacked off in March. Part of it was being gone--I was down in Phoenix at spring training for a week, which was lots of fun unless you were my husband, who was completely out of it for a day from eating a listeria dog and only semi-functional for three days after that.

Since I've been back, I've either been too busy dyeing or blubbering over the end of Battlestar Galactica to post. Tomorrow I will be combining them by dyeing some BSG-inspired colorways, as a tribute to the best television series I have ever watched, so I'll post some photos this weekend.

Got confirmation today from my LYS, Apple Yarns, that they will be sharing my booth at Sock Summit. So that's a go, for sure. Still have a co-op order and a huge wholesale order to complete before I can start dyeing for Sock Summit, but I'm excited to get started!

jumping in with both feet

2009-03-15T23:46:00.000-07:00

Okay. I think I'm going to do a booth at Sock Summit, after all. I'm 90% sure at this point. I started jotting down a to-do and supplies/equipment list. I think the main things are:

1. Handling in-person transactions. My main concern is setting up credit card processing. I'm looking at three options, Costco's program with Elavon, ProPay, and PayPal's virtual terminal. Leaning towards Elavon, as they appear to have the lowest per-transaction fees, but I need to talk to a live person about some of the details. My credit union also offers card processing services, and they always have the best rates on everything; I should check with them, too.

2. Choosing base yarns and colorways to bring. I want to bring two new bases online, a superwash sport and a wool/nylon fingering. I've identified the superwash sport but am still considering the new fingering. Of course, I've got all these other undyed yarns sitting here, hogging up all the extra space in my house, which I will not be able to dye anytime soon. (This should be my final cure for the impulse buying of random base yarns.) I need to get my supply lines better organized. I feel like Napoleon's quartermaster, trying to figure out these logistics.

3. Getting a banner, tweaking my labels, and ordering collateral like business cards and notepads. These all involve deciding if I want to alter my logo at all. I'm somewhat dissatisfied with the font but need to look at fonts.com and my font books to see if I can find anything else that I like better.

4. Getting samples. A lovely friend has agreed to knit samples for me, but I need to finalize colorways and base yarns so that I can get her everything in time. See #2 above.

The list goes on and on. But now it's time for #5: Get enough sleep so that I'm not a crazed short-tempered grouch in the morning.

not my day

2009-03-05T12:09:00.001-08:00

I soaked some yarn a couple of nights ago, but didn't feel like dyeing last night so I decided I'd just do it this morning. It felt damp, but apparently it wasn't damp enough because it resisted the dye mightily. That was a hassle and took twice as long as it should have to work the dye in.

While I was working on the first batch, I decided to throw the rest of the undyed yarn for the dyelot into the washer to soak again. I've been doing this for several months--I can soak more yarn at a time in the washer than in a pot, and it's easy to spin it out.

... unless you get distracted. I got absorbed in dyeing and vaguely noticed the washer agitating during the soak cycle. It didn't hit me till several minutes later that, uh, you shouldn't agitate yarn unless you're interested in felting it.

I spun out the yarn and sure enough, it had started to felt. In fact, some of it had started to felt around the superwash skeins that were also in there. Grrrr. That took a while to untangle.

The yarn isn't too felted. It's definitely still knittable, so I'll dye it and offer it in my store in the future as extra-thick yarn for soakers and longies. But it certainly wasn't the smartest thing I've ever done.

I'm typing this as I eat my lunch--chips and salsa. My dyeing days are pretty low on the nutrition scale.

back in the swing of things

2009-03-04T01:54:00.000-08:00

I've been laid up for the last couple of weeks with the flu and then a nasty cold. No knitting or dyeing--I had terrible aches when I had the flu, especially in my shoulder and neck. It was an unpleasant glimpse of life as a 70-year-old. I know people tend to get arthritis in joints where they have chronic pain; this recent illness made me realize that I have GOT to get this shoulder issue resolved, or else my golden years are going to be pretty painful. I'm stalling on seeing my doctor because I know that she's going to tell me to lay off the knitting for a couple of months, and I just have too many half-finished things lying around to take an extended break. Maybe in the summer.

I did manage to take some photos of already-dyed stock, though. Some will go live at Venus Vanguard on Thursday evening. The rest will go up at my own store on Friday morning. A little preview:

No progress on Rogue, though I did manage to finish some bed socks for the local hospice, and am halfway through my second Duckie. The dithering continues on Sock Summit. I think that covering my costs may not be totally insurmountable, after all, and my LYS just approached me about possibly sharing a booth. I really just want to jump in and go for it, but my innate caution is protesting loudly about doing such a huge show for my first standalone selling experience. We'll see which side wins out.

most recent group order

2009-02-22T20:05:00.000-08:00

I forgot to post these photos earlier. They're from my latest group order. Also the largest one to date--over 50 skeins. The first one to include spinning fiber, as well. I finished the order in just over 3 weeks, and could have done it faster if I hadn't run into some issues with black dye. It's nice to see how much I've streamlined my production.

You can see the Flickr photo with notes on the colorway names here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/huckleberryknits/3279835348

I had two favorite results out of this batch. One was Morgaine, on Corriedale. The photo doesn't show it well, but there are lots of intermediate shades of blue, green, and purple in the two skeins.

The other one was Inked, on Canadian BFL. I just like something about how these particular shades work together.

a-rovin', a-rovin', since rovin's been my ruin

2009-02-17T08:59:00.000-08:00

Surely there must be a dyer out there who likes both roving and sea shanties? I bet there's a blog named after A'Rovin'.

Anyway. Based on many helpful responses from my contest, I have been dyeing a fair amount of roving. Well, top to be more exact.

First, the custom for the winner of the contest, MamaMay:

And because several people said they liked to see the whole extent of the fiber, here's a photo of it unbraided:

Coral Reef is up for sale on Thursday at my store:

And Tawny of Baby Bean Designs spun my Provence top for me. The big skein is plied with a semi-solid reddish-purple top; the mini-skein is just Provence. Not a great photo, since the yarn is so lustrous; I'll try to retake it before I knit it up.

Here's the original top for reference:

There's more on my Flickr--look under the fiber or roving tag.