Bad Shows Happen

What should have been a great market day was anything but, and serves as a prime examplet of how sometimes, a bad market is just out of your control and therefore you have to just roll with the punches. I had a booth at the LA Market at Dodgers Stadium, and what should have been a great market was killed by unexpected soaring temps of over 103 degrees, which resulted in the show being shutdown in the middle of the day. It was so hot that literally almost all of my pillar candles started to melt, and are now so deformed, I will have to completely melt them down and re-mold them, which is additional work for me when my time is already at a premium. Despite my van being insulated, even the inventory that I kept in there was destroyed.

But I try to walk away from every show, even a bad one with a positive outlook, and walk away from it learning something. At this market, I learned that while it may be great for some of my products, its not great for all. Also, I learned that the 20 foot space they provide I could totally utilize a lot better that I did with a little more preparation. Also, this type of a market, I would use more for getting rid of excess or discontinue inventory, rather than making everything new. More importantly, I learned the importance of allways bringing a cooler and plent of water with me, especially for an outdoor market.

What happened today is a prime reason why I gave up doing outdoor markets 9 years ago, but I am going back for my customers, who are wonderful and loyal, but who cannot always make it to one of my larger shows due to either location, or excessive high parking and entry fees. Therefore I am trying to do as many local markets in between my larger shows as possible.

Another good thing I learned from this show is that Lee Philly's Gogi Food Truck is too die for! They had the most awesome global cuisine. My favorite was the Gogi Taco, which was a really big taco for only $2.50. Gogi is Lee's seasoned Korean beef which was juicy, tender, and the taco was topped with cheese, spices, a kimchi salsa? Whatever you call it you will love it like no other! This food truck hits up a lot places around the LA area, so if you ever see it, definitely stop and have a taco.

My Bigmama's Pineapple

As I have mentioned before, I love vintage crochet. My great-grandmother (whom I lovingly called Bigmama) had a lot of crochet items that her mother made and left her. One of my favorites was a table cloth that had an intricate pineapple in the center of it. I have finally figured out how to make this particularly intricate pineapple after years of: try this...rip...try this....rip....looks like this....rip...over and over and over again. And before you say it, yes I have searched for it in pattern books (hence the overindulgent purchases to Abebooks and Thriftbooks), to no avail, and in a twisted way, really enjoyed the trial and error aspect overall. Never mind the many unpleasant words I used and created every time I had to rip it apart, but nonetheless, perseverance has finally paid off.

I made the one pictured above using Aunt Lydia's Crochet Thread #3 in silver, but my plan is of course to make them using my own Badan ARTisan hand dyed yarns in various weights, and to also play with variations on how to connect them together in various designs. Any suggestions?

Look to the Bulbs for Inspiration

I have a Easter show to get ready for, so I have really been inpired by what I see growing in my garden. Lots of irises and day lillies are popping up, so my mind is completely excited about the possiblities. I decided not just simply create pastel or candy colors, I want spring to be infused into my yarns through nature. So with that said, I need to start working on mixing up some new colors. I prefer to mix my dyes dry, before putting them in water. I know I know some dyers say only mix dilluted colors, but I am a rebel. Fearless in creating the perfect Spring colors.

Thick v. Thin

I love thick & bulky weight yarn! I truly enjoy bulky and super bulky weighted yarns, and at the smallest, I will go for a nice worsted weight. However, it seems at times that I am the only one. This picture shows the same color combo in a sock, dk/sport and worsted weights. Of course I love worsted the most and made a ton of it, however, everyone that purchased this colorway went for the the other two and I still have the worsted left. Why is that?

I think that thicker weight yarns are just as flexible as thinner weights. Also, I love the stitch definition achieved with a great worsted or bulky fiber. Am I totally alone on this. I also did a batch of a beautiful turquoise as part of my "Adobe" Collection. The first and last sale of the collection was the Seacell Sock weight. I still have beautiful big bundles of Irish worsted that are awesome.

So tell me, why the resistance to thicker yarns?

I can't stop dying bulky yarns them because I love them so much. And I figure, what I don't sell, is a perfect excuse to use it for my own personal creations.

What do you all think?

DYE DYE DYE!!!!!

DYE DYE DYE!!!!!

I have been doing a lot of dyeing to build up inventory for my March show and the remaining February shows here in Southern California. Here's one of the new colors and fibers, Black Cherrie. I love this color and the fiber. It is a combination of 70% superwash merino wool and 30% SeaCell. I have put a couple of skeins in my Etsy shop. Getting this rich and intense of a color took a little extra work and time. I used 3 different colors to make this color, and 3 different dippings.

I can't wait to knit or crochet something up with this. Right now, I am working on a new crochet fedora hat pattern. I will be hopefully rolling out a nice colleciton of hats for spring. I really want to do some larger pieces, I have designed a caftan for lounging around in the house, but I don't know how long that will take to do. Here are a couple of other items from the dyeing session this week.

Fall Shows

Sugar Plum Festivals are going great!  Lots of wonderful knitter & crocheters came out to purchase new colors and fibers.  They were great and showed some great creations with my hand dyes which always feels really good.

This seasons collection as you can see was really rich and intense, yet still very colorful.  I love it and had a great time creating it. I will be creating even more in the next two weeks for the next show, I hope everyone will be as happy with the newest creations.

Displays Finally Finished

Well, I finally finished an entire set of display cases for the shop, and I think that they are pretty nice if I do say so myself for a do-it-yourself with no experience type of thing. I didn't put 3 of these on wheels, but I should have and will do that later most definitely as it really make a difference when vacuming and mopping the floors. Now I only need about 6 more to be completely done. I even built in a peg board display with storage shelves underneath to be able to display nice hanks of yarn.