New Product Line, Shop Update and Life Update

Apologies for the radio silence and the resulting long update post which follows:

First Things First:

I want to extend a huge public thank you to Lime and Violet from the infamous Limenviolet Podcast for their amazing mention of my shop in their Yarn Porn segment.

I am featured on Episode 97: Ketchup for any who are interested. I am deeply honored and blown away by their praise of my shop and products. When I first conceived of my business I dreamed that some day I would be featured on Limenviolet and I am overwhelmed that it actually happened!

In Shop News:

Introducing the Llady Llama Fiber Co. line of hand-turned drop spindles:

Each spindle is unique and hand crafted with extreme care and attention to detail. Both the shaft and whorl are made of lovely oak. The whorl is notched to securely hold your hand spun yarn over the whorl.

All wooden surfaces are sanded silky smooth and finished with a beeswax and orange oil wood finishing product. The metal hook is hand bent and is glued securely in place. Some spindles also feature a tung oil dark walnut stain.

I currently have only top-whorls listed but I will soon have up some large bottom whorl plying spindles as well. I may also have spindles made out of different woods in the future.

The spindle weight ranges are approximately as follows:

Llina: 10-16 Grams

Lluna: 17-28 Grams

Lleto: 29-40 Grams

Llampetia: 41-58 Grams

I also just updated the shop with some new hand painted roving!

In Personal News:

Life has been absolutely crazy with familial health scares and job/financial weirdness, but we're hanging in there.

On the positive side Rachel and I celebrated our 6 year Anniversary yesterday!! It seems like only a heartbeat ago I met the most wonderful woman in the world!

Rewinding A Bit:

I received an Ashford Traditional Wheel for the holidays from my parents!

It's a previously-loved, double drive, single treadle and I absolutely adore it!! I've been busy spinning up the 14 oz (!!!) of roving that came with it and I'm planning on dyeing it a lovely purple when I'm done and knitting it into a huge shawl (and will probably have lots of yarn left over).

I've finished plying the first batch of singles and already I have 4 oz. at 613 yards with still about 10 oz. left to spin.

While my Mom was cruising Ebay looking a spinning wheels she fell in love with an antique Dutch wheel. She ended up purchasing it and after some resistance she gave into my insistence that she learn to spin so that the wheel would be more than decorative. I started her off on one of the new spindles and then showed her wheel spinning on my wheel while I was home for 2 days over the holidays. She has learned very quickly and she can now use her wheel, has made her first yarn, and is hooked on spinning! Haha I've been telling her I'd make her into a spinner! I am very proud of her!

OMG BLOG UPDATE!!! Image Heavy

First, gratuitous pictures of our trip to NC for Thanksgiving:

It was really too cold to go in the water, but that didn't stop Rach and I from going in up to our waists! Oh I LOVE the beach!!!
This is Arden's shawl all done (and in time for X-mas too!) modeled by my lovely girlfriend Rachel. And yes, that is a giant ceramic badger in the lower left corner. Rach loves badgers the way I love llamas and she made it in her Handforming Clay Studio. Leila is poking about in the bottom right there.
Here are my Mom's Monkey Socks all complete. (Thanks Mom for the picture):

These are my Dad's socks.For some reason the first one self-striped beautifully (it was not self-striping yarn) and the second one refused! I cast it on and ripped it out 6 or 7 times before my Dad said I should just knit them and get it over with. Sorry these were late Daddy!(Thanks again to my Mom for the picture):

My Mom has been inspired by the handknit socks I made them and has picked back up her knitting needles after many years away from them. She had never knit socks but I showed her how to make a baby bootie with a heel flap and gusset and she's been feverishly knitting socks for her and Dad since!!! Yay someone to enable and share fibery goodness with!! I don't know if I've mentioned this on the blog but my Mom is my best friend and I call her and talk with her every day, so it's exciting to have her as a knitting buddy too! (Like we really needed more to chatter on about!)

Speaking of Mom, she bought me some stash when we went yarn store crawling in Buffalo this January during their visit to buy my laptop (SQUEEE!! I love my new MacBook more than life itself...and it's purple!!!::licks laptop::) I've never tried Flat Feet and I was helping my Mom pick out her first sock yarn ever, so she get me this as a pressie!!!

At this point, chronologically speaking, my life blew up. With the help of my parents I decided to leave school and pursue other things. It was one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make but my parents were beyond amazing about it!! I have mental health disorders (those who get squeamish about such things can scroll down, there are more pretty pictures to come) and I've taken time off of school before to deal with them and come back and it was just not working out. I was stagnating there, and using it as an excuse not to grow. I may go back someday, I may not, but for now I am focusing on new endeavors and it has really been good for me!

I still am going to keep the new endeavor a bit secret until I know more, but stay tuned!

I had a spinning swap in January for which I spun this lovely batt from Crystal Creek Fibers (nice transition huh?):

It turned into this yarn: (Photo compliments of my swap partner Hattie because I forgot to take any ::headesk::

 I received this lovely skein in exchange (I don't normally like glitz but this is quite subtle and nice):

I spun up another Crystal Creek Fiber batt (I adore her batts!!) for myself. This is the single, I'll probably do a 2-ply.

These are Mark's Slytherin socks that I just finished (sorry for the lateness Mark!) I'd never done two colors before and I had to wing the heel a bit. If I do another pair with accent heels I'll start further up the heel flap with the color change, do a peasant heel or do toe-up.

This is what I'm spinning right now. The amazing BFL I picked up at the Knox Farm Fiber Festival this fall. I'm going to handpaint it when I'm done.

I still need to make Rach's holiday socks (it's a good thing she loves me), but I need to order size  1 1/2 needles from Knit Picks.

I also need to make my sister's 80's Glam Rock Legwarmers (she asked for them, what can I say, we were children of the 80's) and a BSJ for a friend of the family who is due in April (yikes!). I don't have the yarn (or the money for the yarn) right now so I'm kinda stuck on those.

I'm making the Putting on the Ritz Legwarmers from Knit Picks (these are actually cool legwarmers, not the cheezy 80's kind) for myself and I am done with one. I still need to seam it and I need buttons.

Whew, so much to update on. Hopefully my blog posts will become more frequent again and I promise I'll let you in on my secret soon!!

Just a quick note...

to say that I have in fact not fallen off the face of the planet. There are VERY BIG life changes taking place right now and I'm very busy, but happy...well...getting there. I have pics of knits and yarn to share and NEWS but it'll have to wait a little longer. Well, I'd better get back to work, I have so much to do!!

One sock done, Stash, More Holiday Projects and Babbling

Here is the first completed Monkey sock:

I decided to make these for my Mom for the holidays, and I followed Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's guidelines for foot length (as stated in her book Knitting Rules!) but they seem too long for my Mom's size 6 feet. I tried them on and I'm not sure if it's because of the stretch that the lace pattern gives the sock, but my size 9 1/2 foot fit it pretty comfortably. I'm going to have her try it on at Thanksgiving and I might have to rip out a repeat or two and redo the toe to make it fit well.

I like this pattern, but because the yarn I used didn't have a lot of stretch the cuff is a bit tight around my calves (I'm a big girl though so my Mom should be fine with them). I used the Twisted German cast-on for stretchiness, but if I made a pair of these for me in similar yarn, I'd probably cast on more stitches for the cuff and then work a couple of decreases before the lace started.

More Stash Aquisition to share (it's all from The Loopy Ewe):

Rach picked this skein out in "Lovely" from Chewy Spaghetti's Spaghetti II line. It'll be socks for her at some point:


This is the colorway "Verdigris" from Araucania's Ranco Multy (just cause it's pretty):

This is also from Araucania. The yarn line is Ranco Semi-Solid and the colorway is "Mauve."
These will be socks, but I'm still deciding who'll get them (no, they are not for me).

It's comletely overcast here [we had really wet sloppy snow last night (blech) and we have a winter storm warning in effect until Tuesday night...yay Western NY weather!] so I had to use flash in some of the pictures. The color of the mauve is closer to the second picture, but it was so unclear that I included both a flash and non-flash picture.



This is Zen String's Lotus Toes yarn in "Concrete Jungle." It is going to be my Dad's holiday socks, and I had to get so much extra for his size 12 feet (I got 2 skeins, that's 970 yards!), that I'll probably have enough left over to make myself some ankle socks from it...I hope!

I'm planning on casting on the Dad socks today so I can have one Mom sock done and one Dad sock done at Thanksgiving for fitting. Then I can make adjustments and make the 2 second socks between Thanksgiving and the winter holidays.

Of course using the excuse of needing to check the fit of the socks might be an elaborate disguise for Second Sock Syndrome, but I'm doin' it anyway!

I also found out on Saturday that we're going to North Carolina for my Birthday and Thanksgiving this year to visit my Sister, my Grandpa and his Girlfriend. ::HAPPY DANCE!!!:: The reason for this last minute descision is because my Grandpa was going to sell his car (due to some medical complications his eyesight no longer allows him to drive). My parents know my car is held together with sealing wax and chewing gum so they offered to buy it from him for my Birthday, but he decided to give it to me himself for my Birthday!!!!! ::100,000,000 hugs to my Best Buddy (that's what I've called my Grandpa since I was little)::

I am very excited as my car has no heat/defrost (or AC), the driver's side window doesn't work, the Anti-Lock Brakes are messed up so sometimes my car doesn't feel like stopping, the O2 sensor is shot so the service engine light is always on (which is really fun come inspection time), it has a gas leak, body rust and has had almost everything on it replaced once (minus the engine and the body). Yeaaahhhhh, I can still drive it, but it's a problematic vehicle. My Grandpa's car is by no means new (it's a '98) but he's taken great care of it and it's in immacualte condition. I am very excited!!!

Of course I am even more excited to see everyone and have Thanksgiving together!!! Rach is coming down too!! Have I mentioned that my family in general, and especially my parents are awesome and adopted Rachel as a "daughter-in-law" before we had even been dating a year? We've been together nearly 5 years now and we share holiday custody between her Mom and my family. This isn't Rach's year to spend Thanksgiving with us, since she spent it with us last year, but her Mom was pretty understanding. Thanksgiving always gets a little extra tricky because I want to spend my Birthday with her and it's the 25th, so it falls around or sometimes on Thanksgiving itself.

Anyway, babbling about my personal life aside, because we are going down in 2 weeks (yipe!!!!), my Mom suggested we bring them down their holiday presents early to save shipping costs. They can't open them early, but that still means I have to finish them...quick!

I hadn't thought what to get my Grandpa's Girlfriend yet. So, yesterday I decided that I'm going to make her the Andean Treasure Shawl (it's actually a stole). The pattern is a free PDF from Knit Picks that also has instructions for a scarf and a throw in the same lace pattern (if anyone is looking for a last minute gift idea, you should check it out!). It's a super-easy (but pretty) lace pattern done in sport weight, so it should go pretty fast. I ordered the yarn and needles yesterday, hopefully they ship soon. I'm making it in the yarn and colorway shown in the pattern and I got a pair of the Options Interchangable Harmony Wood Circular Needles to knit it on.

I know I'm probably going to be using the 14 hour drive down to North Carolina to work on it, so I figured circs would be easier with less chances of dropped stitches and dropped needles for that matter! I'm always dropping my DPN's and then freaking out hunting for them. I'm going to have to block the stole at my Grandpa's house, but I'm sure he won't mind. Of course if it's sitting wrapped up for a month will it stayed blocked?

Yikes, what a long post today, I've got to get off the computer and get knitting!!!