Hesitating About… Hesitating

You know how it is when you really want something, but you hesitate?  I’ve been doing that quite a bit lately.  I used to do yoga to a programme on television called  Namaste Yoga.  I loved it — 30 minutes of calm in the middle of a hectic day.  But the channel changed its line up and stopped showing the programme and I stopped doing the yoga and…  well, I’ve really missed that bit of calm.

There are other yoga programmes, I know, but I really liked this one.  Every now and again, I’ll go and have a look at the website and… hesitate.  And then, the other day, I discovered that they’d put an entire episode online, and watching that reminded me how much I’d loved it.  It’s $100 for the whole set: two seasons, 26 episodes.  It’s not much, really.  It’s one month’s membership to an actual yoga studio.  A bargain!

And yet… I find myself hesitating.  Not because I don’t want them — I do! — but because…   I don’t know.  What is it that is making me hesitate?

Whatever it is, it’s the same thing that so many women struggle with.  How many of us have snuck yarn into the house?   How many of us have stashed new skeins in ridiculous places so they won’t be spotted?  How many of us have held a skein of yarn and squished it between our fingers and felt giddy, like a kid sneaking sweets from the jar?

And here’s the thing: we shouldn’t feel that way.  We work hard for our money and, what’s more, when we do unwind, we spend our leisure time productively.  We knit and crochet.  We make hats and scarves and socks and sweaters for friends and family and charity and… ourselves.   Heck, we make Christmas gifts!  We don’t sit in front of the telly idly flicking channels (ahem!) — our hands are busy.

And we do yoga.   Or, I did yoga.  Mmmmm… maybe I’ll do yoga again..

————————————————————————————————–

What is it that makes you hesitate?  And why?  Or, on the other hand, what do you never hesitate about?

(And… why am I hesitating about the yoga videos?!?  Should I get them?)

The Colour in the Picture: How Much Does It Influence?

Do you remember I told you the story about “Nobody likes Green”?  It’s a running joke in my knit group: one day, one of the members went into a LYS to buy some green yarn to finish a project she was working on.  She couldn’t find any green at all and asked the owner where it was, and the reply came back, “We don’t carry green because nobody likes green.”  And my friend left and went to another LYS where her colour preferences made her a bit more of a somebody.

Now, every time I dye green, I can’t help but chuckle.  Nobody likes green.

On Wednesday, Lisa Shroyer, the editor of Knitscene magazine, tweeted this:

And the link leads to the Ravelry page showing Knitscene’s patterns sorted by popularity.  Sure enough, the top five are green.  When I put “Knitty” into the search box, I couldn’t narrow it down to just patterns from Knitty magazine but, interestingly enough, the first four patterns that did come up were green too.  In fact, most of the top 10 were green and, as you scroll down, green is the dominant colour across the whole page.

Clearly, somebody likes green!

So this got me thinking, how much are we influenced by the colour of the sample on a pattern?  How good are we at actually looking a pattern that is shown in one colour and imagining it done in another colour?  It seems easy enough — we’re all smart enough to look at a picture of a blue jumper and imagine it in yellow — but does the colour in the picture still influence whether we decide to make the pattern or not?

And, is the best default colour green?  Is green the new black?  Are you a somebody, or a nobody?

from left to right: Celeste in City Park, Estelle in Lost, Stella in City Park

So here’s what I want you to do:  Go to Ravelry and have a look through your favourites and your queue.  Is there a dominant colour?  And when you made the items in your finished objects, how far did you stray from the colours in the pattern picture?

Then come back here and tell me.  I really want to know!  Can you see a theme, a link between the colours you use and the colours in the pictures of the patterns you choose?  Are you choosing patterns because of the colour in the picture?

Oh, and while you’re at it…  How do you feel about green?

A Surprisingly Difficult Question

There’s been a fascinating conversation going on over on Twitter.  It started with a question that the ladies at Lorna’s Laces had been discussing, and it seemed simple enough.  In fact, when I heard it, I thought instinctively that I knew the answer…   Of course I knew the answer!  It’s an easy question!

…Until I really began to think about it, and then I realised, I had no idea what the answer is.  And it’s not easy — not at all.  The question is:

What is the difference between an indie business and a corporate business?

Particularly when it comes to the crafting/creative industries, where is the line that separates the two?

Now, you’re probably doing exactly what I did, and thinking, “I know an indie business from a corporate business!  It’s obvious!”  And, maybe it is, but… I’ll tell you what, it’s a bloody hard thing to define when you actually try to do it.

When most people think of a corporation, they instinctively think of large office buildings or big factories but, in truth, almost any kind of business — even tiny ones — can be incorporated.  All it really signifies is the way the business is structured for financial and legal purposes.  A corporation might as likely be run out of someone’s spare bedroom as out of some glass-and-steel skyscraper.

So, I started out thinking that maybe it was the terms that were confusing, and I tweeted that maybe the difference was really between ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’…  or was it ‘professional’ and ‘hobbiest’?

But that wasn’t right because, really, the nature of an indie business is that it’s… a business.  And anyone seriously running a business, even a small one, is going to be beyond amateur, beyond hobby.

M.K. Carroll and Cathy (@glamsmitten) tweeted back with “Indie vs Industry?” and Ruth at RockandPurl suggested, “Mass-market vs Personal Touch”.   And then M.K. asked, “At what point is something ‘mass-market’?” at the same time that I tweeted, “Is the keyword, ‘handmade’? Can something be both mass-market and handmade?”

I really thought I’d hit the nail on the head.  I was feeling pretty pleased with myself, actually.  Yep, the key was ‘handmade’!

And then M.K. replied, “Mass-market crochet items are ALL handmade. There is no machine-made crochet.”  Damn! She was right!  And further, “Couture uses a lot of handwork (e.g. ‘petits mains’) – it’s not mass-market.”  And there was a picture of a Chanel dress being carefully stitched by hand.

Chanel is definitely corporate, at least in my mind.  At one point someone asked if was about the ownership of a company…  the difference between private companies and publicly traded ones?  But then someone said that Lion Brand is a family-owned company.  And I thought about a company I used to work for back in my “corporate” days — a huge, multinational company with tens of thousands of employees… which was entirely family-owned.

Huh! This was turning out to be a much, much more difficult question than I had first thought!  And though the Twitter conversation continued on for some time, not one of us was able to come to a satisfactory answer.  Was it the size of the company?  Does having employees mean you’re not indie anymore? Or is it the amount of money a company makes?  Or is it the intent of the company?  What is ‘intent’ anyway, when almost all companies — large or small — are in business primarily to make money?

So, even though it feels like it would be an instinctively easy question to answer, it isn’t.  How do we define the difference between corporate and indie?  It’s much more thorny than it appears.

——————————————————————————————————-

That Twitter conversation was yesterday and, all day today, the question has simmered gently in the back of my mind.  While I was in the studio dyeing, I pondered it, and it percolated while I packed up orders to go out.  And at some point today, an answer bubbled up that started to feel a bit right.  I’ve turned it over and over in my mind and, so far, it still feels right…

Is the difference between ‘indie’ and ‘corporate’ the extent to which the owner is involved in the making?

I’m thinking that a company stays indie so long as the owner or founder is regularly in the studio creating — even if it’s only for part of the time.  When the owner moves out of the studio completely, and leaves the making entirely to employees…  maybe that’s when a company crosses the line from ‘indie’ to ‘corporate’…?  Can you imagine a company of 150 people where every single person spent as much time creating as they did in the office — would that make the company feel ‘indie’ even with so many employees?  When the owner was right there in the studio with her sleeves up alongside everyone else?  Maybe a company moves over to ‘corporate’ only when it allows most of its focus (and time) on the business side of things rather than the creative side.

So far, that answer feels right to me.  But then, every answer I’ve come up with so far has felt right, and then turned out to be wide of the mark.  What do you think?  How do you define the difference between corporate and indie?  I’d love to know, because I’m amazed by how difficult it really is!

I Need Your Help Choosing a Yarn

One of the really fun things about TNNA was just wandering around and looking at all the lovely yarns.  I mean, really.   For someone who loves yarn, who really gets quite giddy around large quantities of it, TNNA was heady stuff!

And the yarns ran the gamut from rustic bulkies to really stunning silk laceweights complete with beads and sequins — everything a fiberista’s heart might desire.  And I really thought I’d be drawn to the finest, most delicate, most beautiful yarns… so when I realised that the one thing that kept jumping out at me was these smooshy, chunky, single-ply yarns, it totally took me by surprise.  But they were wonderful — they looked like clouds, they looked so sheepy… I just wanted stick my face into them and snorgle!

So smooshy!

And, they seemed to be everywhere.  Even though I was trying to look at fingering yarns, my eye kept spotting these chunky single-ply yarns everywhere.  So, I’m tempted to buy some for my autumn/winter dyeing.  And y’know, when I say “tempted”, I kinda really mean “aching”.  As in, I loved them so much, I am aching to get my hands on some and start dyeing!

Man, I love this yarn...

But there’s a distinct possibility that instead of spotting the emergence of a fabulous new yarn trend, I might be just falling head-over-heels for my own personal preference.  And that you, my fingering-and-laceweight-buying customers, might be reading all this and just going, “Whaaat…???”

(that's a nickel, by the way, not a dime -- I couldn't find a dime...)

So, tell me, what do you think?  Do these pictures get your heart racing, and your fingers itching to cast on?  Do you want to grab that skein and just smoosh it?  Or does it leave you saying, “Meh…” and happily turning back to the much more delicate yarn of your current project?  Please tell me — leave a comment below, I’d really love to know your thoughts!

In a World of Colour, Are We Starving?

Last night, I went round to a friend’s house and she showed me her knitting.  The pattern is simple — just a stockinette cardigan — but the colour is spectacular.  She has chosen a blue so deep, so intense, that I almost felt I was falling into it headlong.  I felt energised just looking at it  …just being near it, in fact.

Celeste Fingering Weight Yarn in Blue Horse

As adults, we shy away from colour.  I first became conscious of this when my daughters were born.  The clothes that they were given by friends and loved ones were full of colour: brimming over with wild, riotous combinations of shades that I would never (at the time) have had the courage to put together myself.  Colours full of life, calling out with joy.

Shades of… Blah

By contrast, when I looked at my own wardrobe, it was made up entirely of drab.  Sensible colours (yawn), muted colours (yaaaawn), black, brown, grey, beige (zzzzzzzz….).  And I wasn’t alone — everyone around me dressed (dresses) this way.  You know it’s true — and, next time you’re in a crowd, look at the colours you see on the people around you.  Sure, there will be one or two red jackets, but that’s it — the rest will be a mass of greys, blacks, browns, and blahs that all merge into one big drab blob of blending-in.  We all blend in.

We dress our children in glorious colour (and we are jealous of them), and then we dress ourselves to blend in  …to disappear.  If colour is primal, if it is the food that nourishes our visual souls, then we are all malnourished.

Stella Fingering Weight Yarn in Carnival

Colour Freedom

I’ve always considered the biggest appeal of knitting or crocheting was the zen-thing — that wave of calm that washes over as you fall into the moving meditation of stitch upon stitch.  And then, of course, there is that wonderful rush of having created something — a garment, a pattern, a new stitch combination — from our own ingenuity and with our own two hands.  Powerful stuff.  But more and more, I’m coming to realise how much the fiber arts also set us free to embrace the glorious colours that we otherwise deny ourselves.  Yeah, there are lovely yarns in neutral/natural shades and they can be formed into beautiful garments.  But it’s rare for a knitter to walk into a yarn shop and choose black.  We are called by the colour.  It sings to us and we are drawn to it.

Stella Fingering Weight Yarn in Sweet Dreams

And so here is the other great appeal of the fiber arts: in our knitting, in our crocheting (our spinning, our felting…), we are suddenly free to dive into the colour that our hearts desire, but which we so often deny ourselves.  With the yarn in our hands, colours running through our fingers, we can envelope ourselves in the glorious colours that wake our senses, that make us feel alive and giddy with excitement.

…That let us escape from the blah of blending in.

Celeste Yarn in Forgiven

Challenge: To Be Aware

So here is my challenge to you: let yourself become more aware of the colours around you — of the colours that nature presents to you each morning, of the colours that you see through the day, of the colours that call out to you.  And more than that, become aware of the colours that you knit or crochet with, and of the colours that you wear.  Do they match up?  Do you adorn yourself (your home, your life) in the colours that you truly love?  Or do you shy away?  And if you do shy away, why?  Or… perhaps more importantly, why not?

Because colour is primal, colour does feed the soul.   And there is an absolute feast of colour out there, just waiting for you…

Celeste yarn in Garden in Spring

.

Members of the Interstellar Yarn Alliance: be ready for your feast…!

Emptying the Shop!

Don’t panic!  There’s a good reason to empty the shop and it’s only temporary.  More on that further down.  But first, we head out this weekend to Savage, Maryland to be part of the HomeSpun Yarn Party on Sunday, and this place is a flurry of activity getting last-minute prep done.  And I know I mentioned in my last post what a busy time it’s been around here, but I did I forget to mention what an exciting time it’s been?  I think I did..

Profiled on the HomeSpun Yarn Party website

Exciting is not just because of all the prep Homespun, but also because HomeSpun Yarn Party did a feature post about SpaceCadet Creations on their website.  It was such a rush to see our name and our yarns up there with all the other fantastic indie dyers and spinners who go to HomeSpun!

.

Interviewed on Falling Stitches

And, to add exciting on top of exciting, the designer Ariane Caron-Lacote interviewed me on her blog, Falling Stitches.  I’ve been a fan of her designs for a while, and I was so delighted that she asked me to be interviewed.  Pop over and have a read and, while you’re at it, check out her designs (including my favourite, Dalia).

.

Emptying the Shop

I will remove most of the yarns and fiber from the shop while we’re at Homespun (to ensure that we don’t inadvertently sell any of the same yarns twice!), but I will get everything back in again as quickly as possible.  I will probably take the stock out on Saturday night, and then you can look for the shop to be fully stocked again sometime between Sunday night and Tuesday morning.  If there’s something in the shop right now that you really love, grab it now!

And, of course, I will keep the subscription buttons for the InterStellar Yarn Alliance live, so that you join and become a member any time you like!  Remember, there’s less than a week left to sign up for the Yarn Alliance — subscriptions close March 31, 2011!

Of Christmas, Ballet, and Good Friends

Do you remember these funky little slippers by Kate Atherley?  Do you remember I said they’d be perfect for two ballet-mad little girls I know?

.

I had planned to knit them in time for Christmas morning, but as December wore on, the whole month got crazier and crazier and seemed to be flying by at an alarming pace.  One day I looked up at the calendar and realised I had only one week left before Christmas, a bazillion things left to do…  and the wonderful little slippers weren’t even cast on yet.

Is Christmas about gifts or about friends?

My friend Natalie was ridiculously organised and had already finished all her Christmas knitting well before crunchtime.  “Would you like me to knit them for you?, she asked.  “So they’re ready for Christmas Day?”  I was floored!  How could I possibly say yes?  They were supposed to be gift from me!  But looking at the calendar…  oh, how could I not?  Without Natalie’s help, there’d be no Christmas ballet slippers at all.  I said yes.

Natalie knit like a fiend, and got all four slippers done in a week.  …In that last manic week before Christmas.  They were wrapped and under the tree for Christmas Eve.  They were opened on Christmas morning.  They were beautiful!  …And loved.  And danced in.  And danced in… and danced in…

The most perfect Christmas gift!

Knit in Celeste yarn in Funky Ballet Shoes

 

With deep thanks to Natalie for knitting the slippers.  And genuine thanks for Kate Atherley for the pattern and her incredibly kind offer to resize it for tiny feet.

And my deep apologies to both for not blogging about it until now.  That crazy December pace?  Yeah, it’s March and yet the pace still hasn’t let up!

Things My Non-Knitting Sister Says

You get it, right?  I mean, you love the feel of yarn running through your fingers.  You get that wave of gentle calm come over you as the needles click.  You fall in love with colours — madly, deeply, falling right into them.  You know exactly when I mean when I talk about snorgling the fibers.

Right?

Celeste Yarn in Cold Flame

When you’re surrounded by fiber-people all the time, it’s easy to forget that there are some people who aren’t.  They just aren’t.  Yarn and fiber form no part of their lives, factor not at all into their days…  I know, it’s so hard to wrap your head around.

But then, sometimes, you get a little reminder .  My sister helped us at the Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Festival…  It was very kind of her, because she had no personal interest in the festival: she is not a knitter, she is not a fiber person at all.  And we knew that, so we decided that it would be best if my sister handled the money, while Natalie and I concentrated on answering questions about the yarns and discussing knitting projects.  As it turned out, the three of us worked very well as a team.

But I really didn’t have any idea how much my sister is not a fiber-person.   …Until some of the other vendors came up to look at our yarns.  They were so excited, petting them, snorgling them, negotiating who got this one and who got that one….  Exactly the way fiber-people do, exactly the way you and I do.

Lucina Yarn in Plumberry

And after they’d left, so happy with their new yarn, I turned to my sister to share in the excitement that other vendors had liked my yarn so much   …and she looked back at me in complete confusion.  And it was then that I got that sharp reminder that not everyone is a fiber-person…

My sister said, “Why would they do that?  Don’t they have their own yarn?“

I was momentarily stunned.  Don’t they have their own yarn?!? She totally didn’t get it.

So I fired her.  Then I hired her back — at twice her wages.  I’m a good sister like that.

Lessons From the Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival

It’s been an incredible weekend — exhilarating, exciting, educational, an absolute whirlwind, and a lot of hard work.  SpaceCadet Creations was at the Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival, and we had the time of our lives!  And now, as I get the chance to sit down for the first time in days, I realise just how many lessons there were from doing our first show.

Here’s what I learned:

• How fantastic is it to finally get to meet my customers in person.  Seriously, it is the best!  These are people I see tweeting, people who leave comments on the blog and on Facebook, but there is nothing like meeting you guys in person, discussing your knitting, seeing your projects, and just being able to put faces to names.  Meeting you all was fantastic fun!

• How wonderful it is to talk to customers about my yarns and get that feedback.  I mean, I do all this in isolation.  Day to day, I work in my studio mostly on my own, with pots simmering quietly and yarns soaking…  And when I pull them out, well, sometimes I think a yarn looks great and sometimes I’m not so sure.  And it was just such an incredible experience to see customers making a beeline for the colourways that were calling out to them, and to hear their comments and get their feedback.  Nothing beats that.

• That every person has their own unique colour style, their own sense of what works for them…  and you absolutely cannot judge a knitter or a crocheter by her cover.  We had people come up who looked like they might choose calm, quiet colourways but who instead went straight for the brightest, craziest colours.  And others whom I thought would go for the same wild yarns but who instead reached straight for the peace and serenity of the semi-solids.  The truth is, crafters are unique and interesting people, and you can’t box them into categories!

• That many hands make light work, and work doesn’t feel like work when it’s split out amongst friends.  …With HUGE thanks to the Wednesday night knitters for bagging and tagging, knitting samples, brainstorming, and coming up with some great ideas that made the show a lot better for us.

• That there is simply no way to show how beautiful, how smooshy, how fibery-lucious a yarn is over the internet.  Great photography is all well and good, but absolutely nothing beats getting to snorgle that yarn in person!

• And, following on from that, that the purples and blues that I absolutely cannot photograph will sell like hotcakes when people can see how lovely they really are!

• 

  The Vendor Hall was HUGE!

  That when you get a look behind the scenes, you realise that the Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival is a HUGE undertaking with a bazillion variables that really could all go disastrously wrong, but somehow Barb and her team keep everything under control and pull the whole thing off seamlessly.  And they smile the whole time!  I don’t know how they do it.

• That you can’t actually go all day without eating.

• Also, you can’t actually go without sleeping either.  The body will revolt and shut you down.  And that little factoid put a serious dent in my festival-prep schedule.

• What fun it is to meet and finally get to chat with other fiberisti in person (Hello KnitPurlGurl!  Hello StevenBe!)
  

  StevenBe

• That StevenBe’s mother and her friend are lovely, lovely women and so interesting that I could have sat and talked to them all day.   Hallo Christa! Hallo Barbara!

• That I go a bit giddy when I get asked if I’d like to be a guest dyer for a LYS’s yarn club.  YesIwouldYesIwouldYesIwould!!!!

• What an incredible rush it is to asked by LYSs whether I wholesale yarn   …and how that plants interesting little seeds in my head.

• That having friends there to show you the ropes, give you tips and ideas, loan you display furniture, and make change when you run out of small bills…  that kind of professional camaraderie makes all the difference!  (With big thanks to Amy, Bloomin Yarns, CosyKnits, Wren&Rita, and GwenErin)

• How nice it is to be able to bring yarns out of the shop, give them a fresh airing, sell them at the festival, and then have brand new yarns to offer to all my custermers who couldn’t get to this festival.  Look for new yarns to start appearing in the shop in the coming days and weeks!
  

  All dyed in three weeks!

• That you can increase your dyeing by 10 times your normal rate and fill a festival booth with stock in only three weeks, but everything else in your life will come to a complete halt.  I really have to get some laundry done before I run out of clothes and some bills paid before they shut off the utilities!

• That none of this is possible without the support of a great team.  And I had a great team (With more thanks than I can express to my husband, to Natalie, to meine kleine schwester, and to my mum   …and to my dad, who apparently hasn’t eaten in weeks because my mum has been here the whole time!).

• And, finally, that I love love LOVE doing festivals!!!!!

An Open Letter

An Open Letter to Those who Don’t Get the Fiber Arts

I am not doing this to recreate the past.  I don’t harbour any fantasies of wearing petticoats or a bonnet.   And I don’t knit because I want to feel domestic.

I do this to free my soul.  I do this to work in colours that make my heart sing.   I dye because I see in my mind hues and shades that are bursting to be let out.  And so I do let them out, laying them down in dye upon fiber – vibrant shades poured out over wool, over silk, over the ordinary of life.

And when, at last, I cast those colours onto my needles, I feel a calm wash over me as I work them up into a fabric of my own making — the needles clicking softly and the colours gently blending and contrasting.

I know you think this is old-fashioned, but it’s not.  It is as modern as imagination, as current as discovery, as now as creativity.  Would you ask a painter why he doesn’t just take a photograph?

And it’s ok if you don’t get it.  I understand.  But I just wanted to say – I just wanted to say out loud – that this is nothing about old fashioned.  This is what I do, and I do it now.  I am a fiber artist.