Destination Yarn Contest Winner

Ack! It got late fast today. Anyways… so I had over 80 entries into this contest! And between MostlySelfTaughtKnitter and Ttownknitiot it seemed like half of the entries were of someone named Karen! Thanks again guys for making this week such a success! So the winner (as chosen by the random number generator) is… drumroll please….

Weezalana

Her entry was this:

“Tahiti - Bora Bora and Moorea to be exact. The colors that come to mind are deep ocean blue (we went on a catamaran), plumeria yellow (they were everywhere, as was the sun!), and rich brown (the furniture everywhere amde from natural woods, the over-the-water huts, *sigh*).”

Sounds beautiful! Anyways - you have your choice of any of my first 5 colorways. Don’t worry that some of them are sold out on Etsy – I didn’t list one skein of each just to be sure the winner would get their pick.

Thanks again for playing, everyone!

Garter all the time Garter all the time Garter all the ti-ime

Ok so that was the second “Party all the time” reference in 2 weeks. Someone needs to slap me or get me my own VH1 clip show STAT.

So first of all I just want to thank everyone for all of their support in my new adventure. You guys rule. Seriously. I was so nervous about this week but it’s gone better that I ever imagined in my wildest dreams. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!!



I really don’t want to turn my blog solely into a “buy my stuff” blog so I won’t be doing an intense series of Destination Yarn posts again. That being said I have to admit I’ve really, really enjoyed this little experiment. I like seeing the yarn next to the travel photos in convenient scroll-down form. So chances are as I dye more places I’ll probably blog about them, too. If I get too self-promoting or annoying feel free to slap me, though. I can take it.

Random eye candy picture of sunset over Lake Erie thanks to my Dad.

I think one of the coolest things that’s happened this week (other than delivering yarn to Randeep by bike. That was super fun! I felt like the yarn fairy.) was discovering that a Canadian artist is doing the same thing I’m trying to do. He’s condensing cities into a palate of 3 Pantone colors.

His artists statement was a lot more legitimate and a lot less “ooh shiny!” than mine but still… knowing that someone else out there (a real artist for a real magazine none the less!) had the sameish idea is really reassuring somehow.



Anyways! Enough about Destination Yarn. How about some Garter stitch goodness?





That would be the Almost Garter Scarf (on Rav here). I saw Bonnie’s version and had to knit one as soon as possible.



It’s insanely simple and clever and mindless…





Perfect for this crazy week.



I didn’t even think about the colors. I just used the leftover skeins of Patons I had from my Norwegian mittens and Earflap Hat. So now I’ll have a scarf to complete the set!



In Cleveland news – last weekend we went to Luxe. It’s a new restaurant in the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood. It was excellent. Great food, great service, and their signature drink, the Luxe Bloom, is amazing. Afterwards we migrated a few blocks and played some bocce at the Stone Mad – which is quickly becoming my fav. chill bar in Cleveland. I need to try their food next time we’re there now that the restaurant part is up and running…



Ok. That’s about all I got right now – Have a wonderful weekend!



Oh yeah and there’s still time to enter into the Destination Yarn Contest!

#5 Copenhagen, Denmark

Copenhagen, Denmark is one of my most loved cites – other than Cleveland, of course. I lived here during my study abroad and truly fell in love with this phenomenal city.


Copenhagen is a place steeped in the contrast of old and new –

Streamlined modern Danish architecture against a backdrop of ancient brick and narrow medieval streets.


One constant brings these two together, though – Copper.

From the patina of the (former) Stock Exchange roof to the bright metal of the new Copper Tower this material is all over the city. Even the iconic Little Mermaid statue is copper!

Therefore the Copenhagen colorway is a study of copper – all shades of the metal are represented from the bright, shiny oranges through the many greens of patina:


This is by far my favorite colorway yet.


I am tempted to keep all of it for myself but that would kindof defeat the purpose of this whole thing so it’s available now at Destination Yarn.

Ok that’s it! That’s all the colorways I have so far – although I did just order enough base yarn to dye 5 more... Tomorrow the regular Cleveland knit blog will return to normal - rat terriers, silly you tube videos, a whole mess of garter stitch, unfinished sweaters, and occasional drunk pictures of my friends. The contest will stay open until Sat. night, though.

Thanks so much for sticking around through this “buy my stuff” phase!

------Edited to Add------

You guys cleaned me out again! Thank you!!!! I have one skein left that I’m holding on to in case whoever wins the contest wants it. But don’t worry - I will dye this colorway again since everyone likes it so much! The base yarn will be here tomorrow so I should be able to dye on Sunday and list it sometime next week.

#4 Tampa, Florida

Every winter I go to Tampa, Florida to visit my grandparents (blogged here, here, and here). Coming from the gray, bleak, snowy Cleveland winter my first reaction off of the plane is always “Look how green everything is!” And then I spend a weekend soaking in as much sun as possible by the pool:

To describe this feeling in yarn form I’ve used exaggerated, vivid greens and the brightest of blues.


You can almost feel the sunshine!




Available Here at Destination Yarn

Also exciting? I’m now a “yarnie” on Ravelry. Yup. Here’s the site. How much fun is that?! I feel like a real business now that I’m listed on Ravelry.

In other Etsy pimping news – Jackie also started an Etsy venture this weekend: Gaslight Dyeworks. I covet her roving balls… and I have a sneaking suspicion I know where my first sale money is going to go….

Only one colorway left!

#2 & 3, Paris

Paris is one of my favorite cities. Easily top 5 of any place I’ve ever been. So defining it in yarn form was a bit daunting…



I decided after a bit of experimentation that it needed to be broken down into two colorways:


Paris day:





Which is a self-striping yarn and will stripe to look something like this:


(btw. Knitting the test socks for my yarn has been so much fun. Almost as much fun as the dying!)

And Paris Night:


Which is a verigated blend of purples, deep blues, and burgundy.

I can almost taste the wine!

Both are now available at Destination Yarn!

(again, I’m really excited about this, please bear with me)!

*********EDITED TO ADD************
Well I sold out of the first round of Paris Day! You guys are amazing! Thanks so much for your support! I do, however, have a few skeins that have a knot in them (I’m still figuring the best system for winding and in the process I ‘effed up a few skeins). I wasn’t sure I was going to sell them because of the knots – I hate when I find a knot in yarn… nothing is more frustrating - especially in a self-striping. So what I’ve decided to do is offer the skeins with knots in them as “Seconds” and knock $1 off the price. I think that’s a fair way to do it….

Yarn Postcard #1: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Ok I’m a Clevelander. It’s a bit weird that I started this venture with a colorway our rival city.

But honestly I like Pittsburgh. It’s very similar to Cleveland in that it’s a modern city:


With a gritty industrial past:



Plus a city with this description just begs to be made into yarn:

“Hell with the lid off”

My husband was born and raised in Pittsburgh so he had a lot of opinions on this colorway. The first skein I dyed was “not bright orange enough” and the redo was “too black and red”. Finally I created something that he felt conveyed both the fire and the grit of steel production.

Also I love me some bright orange socks.


It’s available here at Destination Yarn.

Dude I just listed my first thing on Etsy ever! Exciting!

Anyways so about that contest thing....

Destination Yarn Launch Party Contest:

Prize: One skein of your choice of any of the first 5 Destination Yarn yarn postcards. To Enter: Leave a comment on this or any of the colorway posts and let me know what your favorite place is and what colors you think it would be. Or really any comment saying you want to enter will work. I’m pretty excited about this whole situation so I’m not going to be too picky about entry.

Additional ways to enter: If you are a regular commenter on this blog I’ll enter your name in twice just to thank you for reading. Also because this is a “get the word out” sortof a situation if you refer someone to this or any of the Destination Yarn posts and they mention where they came from I’ll enter your name again. Oh and if you buy a skein of yarn I’ll enter your name in again!

Other stuff: The contest will run until next Sat, June 27th. Get your comments in by midnight on Sat for them to count. Sometime during the day on Sunday (or possibly Monday) I will draw a name and pick a winner!

Destination Yarn

One of my passions (other than knitting, of course) is travel photography. What I love about it is trying to capture with one image the entire feeling of a place. To take an entire city and condense it to one photograph, one moment - it’s enthralling. So lately I’ve started the process of scanning in our travel photographs from before the digital era.



Spending so much time sorting through photographs I started to think….

Could I do the same thing with yarn? Would it be possible to condense a place into a colorway?

So I ordered a ridiculous amount of a good base yarn and set out to create a series of yarn postcards - skeins of sock yarn that capture the sprit of a place in the same way that a photograph would.

The result has been just so much fun.


But that’s not the big news. The big news is that with this experiment/concept I’m starting my very own Etsy shop:


Destination Yarn

For me this is a Very Big Deal since I’ve never sold anything I’ve made before and since I’m a bit of a perfectionist – especially when it comes to putting my name on a design. I’ve been working on this/debating doing this for months now. Seriously just creating my logo took way longer than it should have because I was certain that I wanted it to look like a vintage travel poster:

But now the fun part begins….

This week to celebrate both the start of Summer of Socks 2008 and the beginning of Destination Yarn I’m throwing myself a little launch party. I have 5 colorways to start with so all week I’ll be revealing them bit by bit. There’s also going to be a contest complete with fabulous prizes. Because no party would be complete with out favors!

Super exciting, right? I’ll post the first colorway and contest details sometime today!

Fire is fun

So the wedding we went to was fun. Sadly my camera is starting to die so I took only 2 pictures all weekend. This one:

Us right before the wedding. After this my camera batteries died. I really need to get a new little portable camera.

And this one:

Matt’s aunt, uncle, and cousins looking through our Peru pictures. And then my camera died again. Boo.

His cousins are awesome. After deciding that we have a mutual dislike of small talk we completely skipped the “how’s the weather up your way” crap and talked about politics, democracy, capitalism and what it means to be an American. Also? They are weavers. Which automatically means that they are good people. One of his cousins even spent time in South Africa working with local artists (mainly fiber artists) as a part of a grant program to get their work displayed/sold in the US. That’s about the coolest job I’ve heard of ever.

In knitting news I decided that some stash reorganization was necessary:

Uh huh.

Matt came into my “organization” midstream and all I could say was “I’m not crazy, I swear” His response? “Then why the hell are you burning yarn?!” Yeah. I read somewhere that wool won’t burn but acrylic will. And I had an entire drawer of stuff that was either patons or wool-ease or cascade or something else. Over time I’ve lost the ball bands and everything has become very confused. So I lit it on fire. My experiment totally worked! Plus it’s beyond fun. Wool yarn doesn’t burn at all. It just ashes a little and then stops… but acrylic is like lighting a wick. It burns quickly and kindof melts a little. Funtimes. Although if you try this at home may I recommend not burning yarn that’s attached to a work in progress? That’s a plan that results in a lot of cursing and a wet hat. Ask me how I know.

Finally – Summer of Socks starts tomorrow and to celebrate I’m finally going to post something I’ve been working on in semi-secrecy for awhile now. Also there will be a bigish announcement. Isn’t the suspense just killing you? Heh. Until then check out my fav. youtube video ever. This cracks me up every time (even though it’s extremely wrong):

Hitler Plans Burning Man

Ahead

So right now I’m at a wedding in North Carolina but thanks to the genius of the new Blogger Draft’s “schedule” feature I can blog while not around to blog! Super fun.

Anyways remember when I said I was in a vortex of tulle? Right now I’m at a wedding, and last weekend I was at a bachelorette party for a different wedding. And can I just say a big thank you to all of my bridesmaids for not forcing me to do anything that involved peni in any form? No straws or hats or slippers or..... piñatas:

Yup.

The party bus/dancing was ridiculously fun, though:

I made good friends with the band after a random dude at the bar “so is the band any good or am I going to have to gouge my eyes out? Because I cannot handle any more crap music tonight after whatever that was on the bus.” His response? “I hope so, I’m in it.” Oops. But then we became buddies when I explained that the bus party mix included such awful as “Party all the Time” which really should never be mentioned unless in a clip show mocking it. He was right, thought - the band was awesome. They even played the Save Ferris version of "Come on Eileen" and noone can tear up the dance floor to that song like Jill and I. Also there was drunken swing dancing that might have been a FAIL due to neither of us knowing the “guy part”. Uh huh.

Funtimes.

As for knitting content… I’ve decided that the only way to finish up some of my unfinished projects was to lock myself in a room with them. Or take only them on a weekend trip. So the only knitting I have with me is this:

Sahara, modified to be knit out of bamboo (on rav here).

I stopped knitting this when I tried it on and realized that there were some serious issues with the sleeve sizing and I was going to have to rip and reknit. That was a year ago.

And just to leave you with some pretties – my roses are all in bloom:

So pretty!


Enjoy your weekend!