There and back again

SAFF was, predictably, a great time. This despite the fact that our trip did not begin well as we found out at the very last moment that our Sarah would not be able to join us. Gryphon and I swallowed our disappointment and soldiered bravely on, and soon were giggling hard enough to comprise our safety behind the wheel. Driving the "Beast", as Sarah and Sam have dubbed the crazy yarn bus the Sanguine Gryphon takes to shows, is truly a"laugh as hard as you can so you don't cry" experience anyway, and then add pouring rain and gravel mountain roads and maybe some confusion as to where the road is and you can get true near-death moments. Phew.

Pictures will come, once they are re-sized and flickred and such. For now, you must use your imagination. Imagine the usual beautiful and very medieval Sanguine Gryphon booth, with music and booth decorations, and a lovely lady garbed in amazing period costumes, including one she made herself that was just stunning. You know who that is. Now imagine that kate forgot to bring her Dragonfly Fibers sign, again. Duh. Although, it does say something about the growth of my business that people overall had heard of me and knew my stuff was different from Gryphon's. Hurray! That was a big moment for me, actually.

I think that one of the reason's I had such a great time was this sense that Dragonfly's presence is growing. I do not know the actual numbers from the show yet, but it seems that my yarns and fibers sold really well, too. I know that when i unloaded the Beast yesterday, I found less than half of the yarn I'd brought to SAFF with me. I keep thinking there must be more somewhere, 'cause this is weird. But good weird, you know? I also had some nice wholesale inquiries, and one potential wholesale customer did buy a good amount of Dragon Sock for her shop:)

But probably the best part of the trip was the friends. We'd met so many great southern knitters and spinners at Stitches South last spring and got see many of them again. (Missed seeing a bunch of them too-i'm talking to you, Carla, LindaB, Phyl, and Ro!) Katey helped us set up (THANK YOU!) and helped us throughout the weekend in the booth as well. She and her buddies Amy and Lori also started an impromptu knit and spin in near our booth, sending even more customers our way. Yay!

Wayne and Brittany of the Knit Witch repeatedly performed heroic feats for us and helped us set up, and stay up:) It was so great to see them again and get to know them as friends! I may have spent some money in their booth, some on Christmas presents and some on, well, me. There may have been a sweater's worth of merino roving in my shopping bag. Love Brittany's roving; the color play and the silkiness are calling me! I'm also crazy for Wayne's pottery and special ordered a few things he hasn't made before: a drop spindle vase (don't you need one for all of the spindles you've been collecting so you can show them off in your living room?) and an earring bowl (very cool idea i saw at Crafty Bastards). These are going to be the next big thing, i'm sure of it!


There are quite a few other highlights of SAFF, but for the sake of breveity, I shall continue my story in a few days when i get my pictures together. in the meantime, go see Katey's pictures. I believe there is a video as well:) Of course, i have some no one else has!

One more thing. Thanks to my friend Laura (and much encouragement and reassuring from many others), I finally have a Ravelry group. Hurray! I've been saying that alot, and thanks to some very fine work on Laura's part, as well as some great friends, i already have over 100 members. More yays! I want to let you know that as a promotion for my group, the first 200 members to join will be entered into a drawing for a skein of my new sock yarn, Djinni Sock, in a colorway of the winner's choice. This 200 includes those already in the group. So, go tell your friends, okay?

Okay, two more things. Speaking of Djinni Sock, did you happen to catch that Sneak Up on the The Loppy Ewe on Monday? Talk about exciting! The Djinni Sock went up in the evening and was ALL GONE by mid-morning the next day. I have doubled my next order from my Djinni "dealer", and I thought this last one was pretty big. So, okay a third thing, as soon as i come down from the nice rosy pink cloud I'm floating around on, I'll re-open my shop and update it. (That will be tomorrow, Thursday afternoon and evening) And yes, there will be a few skeins of Djinni Sock, for those of you curious to try it.

Making Ready

Last week, it rained endlessly, slowing the dyeing and making little boys completely insane. Insane enough, in fact, to run out in shorts and a t-shirt to shoot hoops in the pouring rain. I wonder if it was also the rain that made him declare "I love shopping!" while thrift store shopping with his mom. I believe we were looking for clothes for his sister at the time, too!

Little girls (young ladies?) were less insane, as my mermaid had to get up at 5:30 Saturday and Sunday to go swim in a meet. She spent the dryland portions of her weekend lying prone on her bed, avoiding homework. Although, in the pool, she showed up to swim and went so far as to knock 11 seconds off of a 50 (that's 2 laps to you and me). My girl dropped a ton of time in all of her events, reaping the benefits of some hard work and a great new attitude! "Yay me" she says (with maybe a touch of irony in her tone). Then she showed up to sing in the church choir; luckily the robe covered the cut offs and uggs combo she was sporting that am! I'm digging 7th grade so far!

I have dyed as much as I can for SAFF, but really wanted to get Sheri her order so the first Djinni Sock update can coincide with the fest (although why do I think people will want to order more yarn during or just after a fiber fest when they have spent all their money already on woolies?). I will definitely have some Djinni, and lots of beautiful spinning fiber, and Dragon Sock, Lace, and Worsted. And many other yummy yarns, but maybe not as much Marengue as I would have liked. Well, come see. I think you'll be pretty happy!

So, the three fates are hitting the road again. Tomorrow at a rather civilzed hour, for a change. I think I like it when Sarah starts the trip off:) We'll be picking Gryphon up in Harrisonburg, VA (and not, as the confused among us thought, Harrisburg, PA) sometime late morning and we'll be knitting and barrelling through the beautiful Smoky Mountains to Asheville. Look out, Southern Knitters, here we come!

What I'm doing today

Maybe not as productive as Abby, but I do have my good days. A little laundry, pictures, blogging, and of course, working over the dyepots:) With a little bit of kids, and soccer on the side. Maybe I'll even cook dinner. Pork tenderloin anyone? Come on over; we'll have plenty!

No carpool today, giving me an extra hour. Perhaps this is what makes me think I have time to blog? The lovely Jack is out of town, so no one to complain about my mess! More dyeing time, too!

I'm cranking out an order of Djinni Sock for the Loopy Ewe; biggest order ever. I'll let you know when it's up, so you can go over and check out how pretty this stuff dyes up. There will be new colorways; the above bit of loveliness is called "Golden Pear". "Atomic Pear" might be a more accurate name!

I may have mentioned that I'm going to SAFF with Sarah and Gryphon. That show starts Friday, October 23rd and runds through Sunday. The best thing about a 3 day show is that you can really relax and have fun, cause so much of your time isn't taken up with set up and take down. And that show's awesome cause I'll get to see all my southern knitting and spinning friends. Yay!

I'm also working on getting some new spinning fiber dyed for the show. I'll have 50% silk, 30% wool, 20% sea cell like the beauty above. LOVE this roving for spinning. I'll also have some camel-silk roving, although the stuff is hard to dye because it is soooo delicate; it breaks when you're measuring off dyable quantities. I'll have it, but it will be all different sizes:) At between $6.5 and $7 an ounce it's an affordable luxury spin. You can see it to the right in this picture.

The yumminess to the left and below is superwash merino-silk. The ultimate sock spinning project, in my humble opinion.

And, hurray, Djinni Sock was well received in my etsy store. All gone, now. I'll be focussing on getting ready for SAFF and for that reason, won't be updating until after i return. For those who will be in Asheville in a few weeks, i'll have more Djinni, plenty of my usual line up, and some sweater yarns, just for fall and holiday knitting. Can't wait to see everyone there!

Well, as we already know, multi-tasking is more than it's cracked up to be for sure. I may have blogged today, but I missed the postman, and i had to re-dye a whole colorway 'cause i didn't have it quite right. Ah, well. I did dye some lovely CVM locks in "Atomic Pear":) I close with a picture of my gigantic busy boy trying out some natural dyeing.