Anyone getting excited for Valentine’s Day? I am.

1.) I made this little stuffed heart from this free pattern on Ravelry. It’s called My Whole Heart. It was fun and quick and now I’m addicted. I made another today but with bigger needles and thicker yarn. I’ll take a picture of that other one soon and post it to my FaceBook page.

2.) Remember the scarf I was working on for what seemed like forever? Ta Da!!!

This is Mustard Seed Yarn Lab superwash wool in bulky….named Triton. I only have one skein left and I’m unsure of whether to keep it or put it up in my shop. Hmmm…

And the proud recipient:

I think it looks like it was made for him. Ha! Mr. Stich patiently waited a very long time for his scarf, and the day I gave it to him was a freakish 60 degrees.  Thankfully, the weather soon got back to normal (aka: freezing) so he was able to wear it the next day.

3.) I sell some of my hand dyed roving in a great yarn shop in Newburyport, MA…. A Loom with a View. Quite a while ago, a very nice woman named Helene contacted me to let me know she had bought some of my roving there and she had showed me a picture of the roving after she had spun it. I had called this colorway Emmet.

 Then she turned it into this!

This is the Thermis Cowl.  Is there anything cooler than seeing roving turn into yarn turn into something beautiful? And I love those buttons, too.

4.) Marisa from CA bought my yarn called North Woods and she made this:

Wow. Right?

It’s like looking at knitter’s porn. Seriously.

This shawl is called Pogona, by Stephen West.  I soon realized that Marisa is quite the knitter. She has more of her lovely projects on her blog: Fat Button Girl. And she has bought another skein of my yarn so maybe at some point I’ll have another Fat Button Girl creation to show off. 

Well, it’s late and I’m signing off now. My book and my bed await me. A big thank you to Helene and Marisa for sharing with me!

Good night all!

So what’s the coolest part of making yarn and selling it? You are going to think I’m going to say something like ‘getting paid’ right? Although that is definitely helpful, the COOLEST part is when I get to see my yarn all grown up into something. Up until recently, I’ve only gotten to see my yarn grown up into creations I made. I never got to see what other people have done with it. I will often send a note along to the people who buy my yarn, letting them know if they’d like to share a picture of what they make, I’d love to post it to my blog. Well, are you ready to see some beauties that have been knitted with Mustard Seed Yarn Lab yarn?

Above we have a shawl made by Patti from Denver. The name of the pattern is Rockefeller by Stephen West. Patti had bought my sock yarn called “Holy Moly Guacamole” and incorporated it into this super cool shawl. This was the colorway she bought:

 She said she had so much left over that she was able to use it to make these mittens:

I only WISH I could knit something as complicated as these! I have yet to try mixing colors to make anything other than stripes.  Above are the Woodland Winter Mittens. I’m so proud! You’d think I made them myself or something. Thank you, Patti, for sharing with me! You were the first person to do that!

And many months ago my friend Denise from Schenectady asked me to dye two skeins a blue and green combo. She sent me a picture to try to copy the colors from. I wrote about the process in this blog post. I did my best and sent her the colorway I called “Earth”. She was making a baby blanket with them. Well a couple days ago, Denise shared the completed blanket with me and here it is:

WooHoo!! It looks so great! I think she’s going to block it to make it even bigger. That will be one lucky baby boy. Thanks for sharing Denise!

So do you see what I mean? The most fun part of all of this is making something I know that someone else will turn into something even more beautiful. I look forward to seeing and sharing more pictures from people who’ve chosen my yarn. I have met so many super nice people buying my yarn on Etsy. I’ve even made few new friends.

So if you are reading this and you have bought any Mustard Seed Yarn Lab yarn, please feel free to share a picture of the finished project with me. I’m sure everyone would love to see it, and I would love to show it off for you!

Sometimes I get really stuck on a name for a yarn I make. The yarn will instantly remind me of something and BOOM…I can’t think of anything else. And I’m not saying it’s necessarily a bad thing to go with the obvious choice, but sometimes I desire something more unique for a colorway I really love. Something a little more special.

Such was the case with this. My very first thought… BOOM… Rose Garden. It’s almost a perfect description and therefore, I naturally wanted to think of something more outside the box. Second thought…BAM…Watermelon. Again, it’s the obvious choice, but lacking the uniqueness I was in the mood for. (Plus I have another skein I’m thinking should be Watermelon, or something close.)  I couldn’t seem to get these two ideas out of my head so I did something I always have fun with, and threw the picture up on FB and asked for suggestions.  (PS, I have my own Mustard Seed Yarn Lab Facebook page now, if you didn’t know already. Feel free to head over there and LIKE me. 

The ideas came fast and furious. I laughed when Alissa also suggested Rose Garden, but then said that was probably too obvious….it’s like she reads my mind! And then came all the Watermelon suggestions…Watermelon Swirl, Watermelon Tourmaline, Seedless (so creative!!!), Rind and All, Melon Sorbet and Twisted Melon. Some of these ideas came from Breida with a b. putting out the call for help on her own FB page (check out her page for a beautiful and inspiring blog!).  And then there’s Kate D. who ALWAYS comes up with something fun and unique for me….this time her thoughts of Christmas inspired her with You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out and Triple Dog Dare. HA!! I love them both!  My cousin Tricia obviously was in need of a drink when she thought of Poinsettia Champagne or Peppermint Martini. Mmmmmm. And how cool is this? Tricia has friends in Italy who saw the  post and gave there own ideas….in ITALIAN…so I was lucky enough to get translations from Tricia and learned they offered Strawberry Sorbet and Unripe Blackberry. Then there were the more poetic suggestions…Now and Later from Denise or Remember Me Summer from Robin. My sister suggested Finnick, which I am totally going to steal for another colorway…maybe even do a few Hunger Games themed skeins. So, you are wondering what I have chosen after all these great ideas?

Well, after all that, my gut keeps telling me to go with my first choice, which was Rose Garden!! (Becky chose that one too.)  I know, I know…I said I wanted something less obvious, and I did, but in my head, I just couldn’t envision anything more perfect than Rose Garden, and heck, what’s so wrong with just going for the obvious every once in awhile?? It just seems to FIT so well. I know someone out there wants to smack me right now 

Thank you for all the great suggestions and thought everyone put into helping me. I will need your help again, probably very soon.  And I’ll be putting up another post soon. I have a lot to talk about.

MWAH!!

So much has been going on. Things have been getting done. Mustard Seed Yarn Lab has become a tiny bit more popular this month with 6 Etsy sales! (I typically have been averaging 2 to 3 Etsy sales a month.) I could spend this entire post catching you up on all the goings-on, but I won’t. That just feels too overwhelming to me and I already feel a little overwhelmed with life as it is, so I’ll just tell you a little bit.

I now have a Facebook page for my business! Please head over to www.facebook.com/mustardseedyarnlab to ‘like’ my page if you’d like to know a bit more about what goes on in the lab from day to day (or at least every few days). I’ve been posting all the new yarn creations there as they come into existence. Sometimes I need name ideas and I love getting feedback.

I have 1000 business cards coming my way. They were designed by my husband, as was my logo. And my blog will soon be undergoing some major changes as well. His graphic design talent never ceases to amaze me. And he’s cheap too! (Well, if you’re married to him.)  If anyone reading this needs something designed, (business cards, a logo, a website) let me know and I can direct you to him.

So last night my friend came over for dinner and for a little catch up time. I told her I could sit and talk with her but I had to dye yarn while she was here, because I’m still desperately trying to finish 200 skeins before September. She offered her help, and MAN, did she help!

The hardest part of dyeing yarn for me is reskeining the skeins that need to be reskeined. Some I leave as is, because I like the way they look the way they are, but most need to have the colors redistributed to really get a better idea of what they’ll look like knitted into something. This hurts my back. A LOT. To do this you use a niddy noddy and wind the yarn around it a million times. I typically won’t reskein more than one a day. Well, Wendy, my strong, volleyball playing friend, wound 10 SKEINS for me in one night!! And all I did was make her soup! Talk about cheap labor. If a bowl of homemade creamy chicken and rice soup gets me 10 skeins reskeined, next time I’m going to make her filet mignon and see what happens.

Just a quick update. Remember the two skeins I showed you at the end of my last post? Here they are finished. I seriously love them both.

Above is ‘She Hates to Wear Dresses’.  I painted two of these at the same time so they’d be the same. Do you want to see the magic that happens when one of them is re-skeined and the colors are all jumbled up? Below is the exact same colorway, only the colors have been redistributed.

It gives you a better idea of what the yarn will look like when it is knitted into something. Here are the two of them together:

I can’t decide which I like better, the skein with the colors chunked up together or the skein with the colors jumbled up.

And the second two skeins I dyed are called ‘Abalone’. Here it is below with the colors still together:

And below you can see them jumbled up:

Again, I can’t decide which I like better.

What do YOU think? Would you rather buy the skeins with the colors left as they are, the way they were painted on in patches of color….or do you like the skeins better when the colors are redistributed, to give a better idea of what they’ll look like knitted? I can’t decide the best way to sell them. Maybe I’ll just have to make the decision per each colorway, whether I think it will look better left as is or re-skeined.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Leave me a comment if you’d like to give your two cents!