ALMERINO = Alpaca + Merino

Almerino is a soft yarn blend of baby alpaca and merino -- luscious! These five colors are closeout yarns, packaged 10 wound balls to a bag. They come in two weights: ARAN, with 533 yds per package and DK, with 615 yds/pkg. This is a one-time purchase and I was not able to secure many of them, so if you want them, check out the details on the SPECIALS page of the website, or email your question to info@wool2dye4.com.

Note made on July 25, 2007: I have taken these yarns off the website, but they are still available. The cost is $10 per bag, and the reason for the low price is that there are little knots in this yarn every 20 yards or so. It is a wonderful yarn, but the knots might put people off. I am doing a sweater in the Sugared Almond blue, and the knots are easy to hide on the wrong side. If you are interested in this soft, yet slightly flawed yarn, email me.

The colors are Grape, Custard, Strawberry Cream, Gooseberry, and Sugared Almond. They are spun in England.

So! give yourself a little rest and knit up something very nice in these comforting colors.

Further reading on the Merino shortages

To read further about the shortage, follow this link:
http://www.wool.com.au/Trade_News_and_Media_Releases/Media_Releases/page__7561.aspx

More on Australian Merino availability

In an earlier post, I wrote about an Australian fiber artist who publishes a magazine (called Yarn Magazine) and writes extensively about yarn from the ground up, so to speak. We exchanged emails about my questions on the shortage of Australian merino, and she posted my letter on her blog.
There were many comments in reply to that entry, and most concerned two issues: the droughts, which have affected the feed available for the flocks, and the fact that Australians are not marketed to as a viable merino customer base. Here is the link to that blog for a broader view of the merino situation:

http://www.yarnmagazine.com.au/blog/?p=167#comments

Interweave's State-by-State Directory

Every once in a while, a customer writes to me asking if I know of a knit shop near their home. This week, someone was moving, so I forwarded a link to Interweave's Traveling SourceBook. Here is the link for your own use:

http://www.interweave.com/knit/sourcebook.asp

Testing new Merino

Lately I have been widening my search for the perfect sock yarn, and am testing three new superwash merino yarns. Some of my regular customers have volunteered to serve on this Yarn Review Board, and have sent excellent comments to help me make the decision.

The reviewers' comments are fascinating, and it turns out that the way we each define the perfect sock yarn is slightly different, yet has some basic similarities such as weight, roundness of yarn, and whether it splits when knit.

Look for a summer announcement of a new line of superwash merino. Once the votes are in, my business will import enough for all of us. One of the qualities of the perfect sock yarn for me is availability year round!

Comments are always welcome.

Sheila's Basic Sock Pattern

A Word about Socks

My favorite sock needle is the 12" Addi Turbo circular in size 2. I cast on and rib, back and forth, for about an inch, then join the ends by switching the first and last stitches. Then it's round and round, in any pattern. Staying with the same circular needle at the gusset, I increase one stitch at both side markers, every other row until I like the depth of the heel. To turn the heel, I just move directly to the center back, and begin the short rows. Neat and easy! When it's time to decrease for the toe, I switch to two 24" circulars, positioning the stitches so that the decreases fall in the center and not at the edges. To end, reposition the stitches one more time on the 2 circulars, and turn the sock inside-out for a three-needle bind off. A sock is a small engineering project!

Back to shipping by USPS

Ok, I tried UPS and learned lots, but am returning to the good old Postal System for shipping most orders by Priority Mail. The difference in price and delivery time is the deciding factor, and when some of my good steady customers began to complain of delayed delivery, I was pushed to make a decision.

One thing I did learn is that shipping to Canada is so very much easier with UPS than with the US Postal System. In the future, I'll ship all orders to Canadian customers by UPS Standard service.

For US customers, I am back to Priority Mail. It's a good service, but I had been avoiding the bad mood of my pickup man and was loading and unloading each day's orders. The business has grown so much in the past year that shipping had begun to take up most of the day, and that loading and unloading became a chore.

Begining tomorrow, I will steel myself for any bad moods with my local pickup man, and return to shipping by USPS Priority Mail.

PS on May 11, 2007
A few Canadian customers have emailed me and one responded below (see comments) that UPS is not a good option for them because of the duty they must pay. I have always felt a flush of guilt roll over me when I have to charge Canadian clients the postage. It is outrageous! Your emails and comments help so much as I try to serve this customer base efficiently. This is how we learn. Thank you for letting me know.

I was looking for a way to avoid a trip to the Post Office to stand in line. I have just signed up for Carrier PickUp and will ask if I can just hand over Canadian packages in the future.

Interweave KNITS Features Socks, summer 07

The latest issue of Interweave's KNITS magazine arrived this week. Happily, there are three -- count them! -- articles on sock knitting, all by Ann Budd. She is a designer whom I would love to meet. So creative, Ann Budd writes in a clear and conversational style, practical designs.

There is also a review of six sock knitting books by Clara Parkes, also a wonderful writer and entrepreneur/founder of Knitter's Review.

I am still fascinated by the question of which hand-dyers were interviewed for the fall issue of Knit Simple. This is a Vogue publication. It is wonderful to see the big time money folks at Vogue giving the nod of recognition to independent hand-dyers. If anyone has any inside info on the artists' work featured in this issue, please tell all!

YOU-TUBE Video features Yarn!

This link to a You-Tube video was sent to me by Ann McCauley, author and teacher of knitting nationwide. It is delightful!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgXUctWDF34

Folk Life at Pharsalia Plantation April 07

This picture is of Judy Adams, a friend and talented fiber artist, who accompanied me to Nelson County Days on Saturday where we were costumed and fit to create a little folk ambiance, sitting outside the spinning and weaving house. On Sunday, another friend, Ann Vonnegut, brought wool from her Leicester sheep and she spent the day spinning and inviting people to dip their hands into sacks of raw wool 'in the grease' and then into some cleaned and combed rolags. This all happened at a folk life festival held at one of the last remaining intact plantations in Virginia. I always think it is interesting that men seem willing to try their hand at weaving a throw or two, or at mastering the drop spindle. Several boys took to the drop spindle in lots less time than I did!

You might notice that the gentleman at the loom has on a red/maroon remembrance ribbon, and this is because the festival happened just 6 days after the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Nearly everyone in central and southwest Virginia has a connection of some sort to this school. If your dog or horse is sick, you cart them off to the veterinary school at Virginia Tech. If you need your soil tested, you send it to them. My uncle graduated from that school, and I graduated Radford, just 10 miles away, and at that time known as the women's division of the university. This part of Virginia is a Tech football bastion, and just across the historic James River begins the emotional loyalty to the University of Virginia's Cavaliers. We have attachments to one or both of these schools.

The day of the folk life festival at Pharsalia, I noticed many outfits in the crowd which were put together in variations on the red/maroon Va Tech colors, a reminder of truly awful things while we sat and wove and spun and talked to passers by, all in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains, outside a gracious Southern plantation house perfectly set on a knoll and overlooking hundreds and hundreds of acres of apple orchards, pastures laid out logically to allow movement of cattle across the land, two creeks cutting through the pastures with walnut and locust trees overhanging the bends and curves.

It was a mixture of old and new in so very many aspects.

It occurs to me to tell anyone reading this and who may not have been to Virginia, other than a quick pass-through on the north/south routes, I-95 and I-81, or the east-west Interstate route 64, that this is one of the states in our country where a bit of the old colonial history lies around the next corner. I have lived in Virginia, Italy, Mexico, California, and finally made my way back to Virginia again, and I absolutely love it. I know my roots are in Virginia. Running through my town, the James River winds its way to Richmond in one direction, and through mountain passes to eventually join the New River in the other direction. Every single time I cross the river, I say out loud in my car -- no matter if I am alone, or driving Mr. PeeWee to the dog groomer -- I say, "Ja-a-a-a-mes River!" I love saying that. Sometimes I get a quick flash of a memory of the grade school stories of children walking along a corduroy road to school, or think of the bateau festival that starts here in Lynchburg and winds it's way, literally, to the capital of Virginia, Richmond, when, during that two weeks, the boatmen-and-women are reliving a part of our country's early history, every town and village along the way comes out to greet the floating boats, or to put them up in tents on their land along the banks of the James.

If you come to Virginia -- and you must! -- please get off the interstates and drive the old roads because that is where you will see bits and pieces of history, preserved and lived in every day life. When I stopped at a country store after the festival, wearing my colonial dress and apron and bonnet, and walked along oiled pine floors creaking beneath my feet, made my way to a cooler in the back to buy a Starbucks Double Shot drink, no one looked at me twice. I could have been wearing my usual jeans, but my colonial costume somehow did not raise any interest at all. And suddenly, all those yards and yards of fabric getting in my way and wadding between my knees every time I moved, seemed a perfectly natural dress to wear on a late Sunday afternoon in the mountains.

All of this to say that our crafts are pieces of the old ways, our movements are remembrances of women and men who made those same movements and wove and spun and knit and dyed and sheared and combed wool and nursed new little lambs sometimes to health and sometimes not. What we do is important. Every time we turn towards these fiber arts, we are a little tiny representation of a living folk life festival, all to ourselves.

UPS, Here I Come!

Starting next week, I am going to try out USP as my shipper. Getting out the orders in late afternoons has become a real rush, and so I signed up for a retail UPS account. This way I can leave packages outside the studio door and not have to stand in line at the Post Office.

For the next month, then, I will be using UPS ground service for shipping the orders, unless the mailing address is to a post office box. In that case, I'll continue with USPS Priority Mail.

At this point I cannot accurately compare the costs of shipping between UPS and USPS, but if it does prove to be cheaper -- as UPS assures me! -- the shipping costs will be changed on the website.

Hopefully, this will put a stop to the mad afternoon rush to ship and the frustrations of wasting time standing in line. I will give UPS a one month trial and if all goes well, will change over to them permanently.

American Bald Eagle: Live camera shots

I know, I know that I say all of the posts on this blog will be about Wool2Dye4, but today I make one exception ... the American Bald Eagle's nest at the Norfolk (Virginia) Botanical Gardens. This is a link to a live camera trained on a nest of three, and it is fascinating. I don't know how long the link will be active, but here it is for now.

http://www.wvec.com/cams/eagle.html

New! Superwash Blue Faced Leicester Roving

I am expecting an order any day now from England and the Blue Faced Leicester folks. This time I am trying out the BFL Roving in Superwash.

Several spinners of sock yarn have been asking for superwash BFL rovings, and now we have it. It will soon be posted on the website, but until then, just email me (SheilaMahone@wool2dye4.com) to order.

Cost: $25 /pound.

Knit Simple magazine Features Hand Dyers!

I was recently contacted about advertising in Knit Simple magazine's upcoming issue, and am happy to report that they are featuring hand-dyes in the Fall issue. Here is the blurb for that issue of Knit Simple ...

TO-DYE-FOR KNITS You won’t be able to resist these classic sweaters in delicious yarns from the industry’s best hand-dyers.

Now, which hand-dyers would a Vogue publication consider 'the industry's best hand-dyers?'
Is it you?

P.S. on May 10th ...
Just found out that Lorna's Laces is one of the featured dyers for this issue!

Kona Fingering is coming .. I promise!

Today I heard that Kona Fingering is soon to be on it's way to Wool2Dye4. Hooray! When it arrives, I will take the blocked order key off the website, and insert a message across the top of HOME page (where the messages crawl across the page). It's been a long wait for this merino from Australia, and we have all been faced with either changing our choice of wool, or learning to wait. BUT the good news is that it will be here in about a week.

Many customers decided to swap their backorders for Kona Fingering for the new BFL Ultra! yarn, and I am hearing back from them that they love the Blue Faced Leicester. Thank you to everyone who was so gracious through the backorder wait. Let's see ... that would be everyone except for one person who seemed unable to wait and needed someone to blame. That, of course, turned out to be me!

Emails: Help me Identify you

Here's a simple request and one which will absolutely help me out. When you write with a specific request, please sign your emails with your first and last names. Many times customers have creative email addresses which have nothing to do with their names, and they sign their emails with their first name only.

This will save me searching through old emails trying to find a place where you might, just might, have given me your full name. Or, worse, searching through PayPal to match your email address to a name. If you are requesting that I send you something, please give me your address in the original email. That helps!

This simple act will save me hours!

Compare dyed / undyed Konas & BFL Ultra! yarns

One of the most frequent questions I get from new dyers is about the thickness of the yarns, so I thought I would post a picture of the three most popular sock yarns side-by-side. The top two are the Kona yarns. Yellow is the DK/light sport weight; green is Kona Fingering. Pink is BFL Ultra!

All three are superwash yarns.
All three bloom/expand/fluff up when dyed or given a very hot bath.

Kona Fingering has 2,240 yards per pound, and is a 2-ply.
Kona Superwash has 1,120 yards per pound, and is a 4-ply (Basically double the weight and plies of the Fingering)
BFL Ultra! has 1,900 yards per pound, and is a 3-ply.

Kona Fingering and Kona Superwash are merino yarns from Australia.
BFL Ultra! is Blue Faced Leicester from England.

Which one you choose depends on your preferences. I have read in people's blogs who have written that the BFL Ultra! is thinner than the Kona Fingering, and I'd disagree with that observation. The difference in yards per pound is one clue, but the most telling difference is in the number of plies. Kona Fingering is actually much more loosely twisted than BFL Ultra! making it not as firm and round a yarn.

I know I keep talking about round firm yarns because it is important to understand how a yarn will act when knit into fabric. Round firm yarns give more detail to the stitches, especially if there are cables or ribs involved. Also, the fabric itself has a better hand.

Of course, it all comes down to personal preference. Price may figure into the equation, too. Remember, though, you pay for what you get, and while the BFL Ultra! is a little more expensive than Kona Fingering, it is a different breed, a different ply, a different twist.

U.K. National Knitting Week Pix

Author and knitting teacher, Ann McCauley, of Colorado -- and originally a Virginia gal! -- sent this link to a public relations event in England. The picture above is a unique weaving loom from this site. Click on the link to see a wonderful variety of needlework that is innovative, beautiful, and inspirational. Here goes ...

http://www.bhkc.co.uk/data/national_knit_events06.htm

Merino Shortage from an Australian's Viewpoint

I recently stumbled across a wonderful site and new magazine.. well, new to me, but I ordered a subscription and all of the back copies. Here is the link to Barbara Coddington's blog and magazine info: www.yarnmagazine.com.au

This merino situation has me fascinated and frustrated at the same time, so I wrote to her to see what her thoughts on the subject are. She has given me permission to use parts of her letter, and I think it will make interesting reading for American merino knitters who are experiencing the frustrating wait for Australian merino yarns.

Hi Sheila,
That's a very interesting query. I have been looking into it a bit for my own research and writing purposes, and I think I can give you a short answer.
As you already know, we've had a series of droughts in Australia. Flock size is down over the last several years and overall, wool production is down somewhat. I don't believe the situation is considered a sheep shortage, however.
What has changed quite a lot, though, is the type of merino available. There's actually been an overall increase in the finest quality merino fibre (19.5 microns and under). Some of this is known as 'hunger fine' wool and is due to poor nutrition in the sheep due to the drought -- they produce less robust fleece when stressed. But some of it is also due to really good growing conditions a year or so ago in parts of Australia. It can take awhile for the seasonal ups and downs to trickle into the market.
So the combination of there being fewer sheep and each sheep producing a bit less wool which is finer than usual means the increase in fine merino has come at the expense of middle range merino around 21-22 microns which I imagine is what may be back ordered in NY.
I can't comment on the marketing campaign you mention as we are not subjected to it here! The Australian market is quite small and I feel the global market is usually the main focus of their efforts. (As you've seen in my blog already.)

Looking through the return comments on Barbara's blog, it is evident that many Australian knitters have a hard time finding yarn in one of the largest merino producing countries in the world.

Selling Your Hand-Dyes

To get started with selling your handdyes, you could go the eBay or ETSY route. Lots of my customers do that and it is easy to set up. The other route is to find an owner of a local knit shop who is looking to stock some different yarns than everyone else has. They are definitely out there, especially as the popularity of handdyed yarns begins to penetrate the general knitting public's consciousness. New shops are a good place to make that connection, or shop owners who are innovative themselves. You need to come up with a set of samples, a list of your prices, and an agreed upon policy about color matching. That is so hard, but being a scientist, perhaps you have solved that problem.

Try to compete with a best seller in your area. I have two personal examples, one of which I followed through with, but will not repeat because it would be like starting a new business for me and I just cannot take on any more work just now. We have a shop owner in a small town nearby who is a master knitter, has been to the conventions for years and knows all the designers, takes the big classes, etc. When she opened her shop, her vision was to carry yarns that you don't see everywhere. We talked about me supplying my handdyes to compete with a popular light sport weight yarn (which starts with a "K"). That's her best seller, but hard to reorder without an extended wait. Also, even though they use the same numbers for their colors, the dye lots cannot be counted on to match. The other was a new shop, opened by a former yarn rep, and he, too, wanted lines that are not all over the place. He was targeting the beginning knitter folk and giving lessons for small projects to reel them into his new shop. Sock yarn was his thing, so I dyed up 3 dozen skeins and he loved them and they sold very well. I didn't follow up quickly enough with the first shop, and also didn't present myself well, I now know. My presentation was more polished with the second shop I described -- samples of dyed and undyed yarns to show fiber choices and colorways. Price lists. Discount policies. Suggested retail pricing. That sort of thing.

The other way to go is to dye up as much yarn and spinning fiber as you can manage, and to attend a local fair, a fiber festival, a small business expo, etc. There are always fiber folk in every crowd, and you will sell yarn at events which are not related to our field at all. Better, of course, if it is at least on the artsy side of life. Sometimes there are events open to the public for privately owned historic properties, and they might be open to the idea of a quaintly dressed fiber artist selling baskets full of colorful yarn. You will never know unless you ask. AND, you'll meet some interesting people along the way.