The other day I said my next post would be on the knits in Outlander, but I’m going to need a little more time than I thought. Things are more complicated than they first seemed.
SO!
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| Watson Being Adorable |
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| Watson Helping me with Paperwork |
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| And Tea, because Fall is right around the corner! |
I’ve made no secret about the fact that I love Outlander, and the other novels by Diana Gabaldon. And I’ve been watching the Starz TV show of the same name since it’s come out.
One of the things I love about the show?
All the handknits.
Let me show you the my favorites:
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| Garter Stitch Wrap |
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| Posted by the Diana Gabaldon, of the filming: Claire’s Shawl! |
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| Bulky neckwarmer |
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| Claire has a sleeved Shawl in Garter Stitch. |
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| Jamie has a pair of fingerless mitts – hard to see. |
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| Mrs. Fitz with fingerless gloves. |
I have some thoughts about the show’s pieces, which I’m planning on sharing tomorrow.
Stay tuned!
First, a reminder I’m teaching a variety of classes this weekend in and around DC. If you’ve been missing my smiling face, this is a good opportunity to get your Tinking Turtle Fix! A quick rundown, excerpted from my newsletter:
Darn Those Knits is happening at Fibre Space on Saturday the 6th.
While this class is wonderful for teaching you the practical skills of learning how to repair your handknits, it also has a great side benefit: you’ll have a greater understanding of know knit and purl stitches interact. You’ll go home with a better understanding of the Duplicate Stitch, and even learn a great way to “hack” doing the Kitchener stitch. This class isn’t only about repairing things, it’s also about understanding your knitting.
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Crazy Simple Lace: Hairpin Crochet is one of my favorite classes to teach for a couple of reasons. I don’t get to teach crochet classes as often as I do knitting. I love how fast this scarf works up, which makes it a great gift for the holidays (which are fast approaching!). And if you’ve never worked hairpin lace before, you’ll be shocked at how versatile it is.
This class is also happening at Fibre Space on the 6th, and would be a great way to spend your Saturday afternoon!
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Colorwork Backwards, Forwards and Sideways is my inaugural class I’ll be teaching at the Knitting Boutique. I’m so excited to teach this killer class! This class features a fun pattern (exclusive to the class) to demonstrate how to do jogless stripes, work with stranded knitting, and how to use slipped stitches in stunning results!
I decided to work my sample in traditional fall colors, since cool weather is right around the corner. And this quick cowl simply flies by!
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I’ve been gobbling up Seanan McGuire’s The Winter Long, which is the 8th book in her Toby Daye Series. I’ve talked about how much I enjoy Seanan’s writing; so much so that the scarf I’m using to teach this weekend, One Salt Sea, is a nod to one of her books. A mix of urban fantasy, folklore and mystery, I’ve been waiting the last year to read this book. While the genre might not be everyone’s cup of tea, I love the book for the strong plotted elements. Like the Harry Potter series, or even the Outlander series, there are strong threads seeded in the first book that come to fruit in this book. It’s amazing to behold.
Now that I’ve read the book, I’m thinking I might just have to get the books on tape and marathon the entire series, just so I can take my time and appreciate what McGuire has been building for the last few years.
I’ve also been listening to a lot of other things on audio. I’ve talked before about my love of RadioLab, but I’ve also been marathoning Welcome to Night Vale. Night Vale is a fake radio show highlighting a rather strange town out in the middle of a desert. Both strange and hopeful, frightening and contemplative, it’s not the sort of thing I’d normally enjoy, and yet I do.
I’m actually thinking that I want to decorate my house as a tribute to Night Vale for Halloween. As if I don’t have enough to keep me busy.
What’ve you been up to?
Let me just start this by saying that Mr. Turtle has a habit of obliviousness when it comes to fibers. See the acrylic hotpad and the felted hat, amongst other examples.
One of the lesser joys of owning cats is cleaning out the litter box, and most days, Michael and I compete to see who has to do the job (the tradeoff is you have to feed the cats in the morning and
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| One of the possible suspects. We brought them in for questioning. |
forgo that extra 5 minutes of sleep). The other day the chore fell to me, I had the unfortunate surprise of realizing the cat’s had left some… presents outside of the litter box, on the rug we have underneath the box to minimize the spread of cat litter. I’ll spare you the details.
Anyway, after the “presents” were taken care of, I thought it was probably a good idea to give the rug a good wash. After all, we have an ultra-powerful washing machine and a hot water heater that has more enthusiasm than sense!
The rug had been a find from my grandmother’s house, and the tag with the care instructions was long gone. But it felt like cotton, and definitely did not feel like wool – so warm wash it was with a good dousing of soap.
In between the first wash cycle and the second (I opted for the super-wash cycle, considering I wasn’t sure if it’d EVER been clean), I took a quick glance in – and it was looking OK, so I nudged the water up to hot. I was really feeling like this thing should be boiled within an inch of it’s life. It was a sturdy rug, and I didn’t know when it would be cleaned again. Off I go back to work.
That evening before dinner, I had my hands full with a particular piece of knitting, and I remembered that the rug needed to come out of the wash. Again, thinking it was cotton, I asked Mr. Turtle, who was heading out to the washroom anyway, to throw it in the dryer.
You can see where this story is going, can’t you?
After dinner, Mr. Turtle hears the buzzer to the dryer sounding, and goes to get it out of the dryer. Moments later, he comes back in, saying he needs my help.
My stomach sinks. I’m thinking the same thing you are. I’m thinking the rug was actually wool, and now it’s a felted mess.
No.
Instead, the entire dryer is blue/black. Where there should be a white drum, there is not.
The rug, mostly in shades of yellow, black and red, REALLY did not have colorfast dye. When I ask dear Mr. Turtle if he’d noticed as he was transferring the rug from the washer to the dryer
he said that he’d noticed some black on his hands. He thought it was dirt. (Why a rug would be emerging from the washer dirty I have no clue… but. I digress).
So, some helpful information for those people who have discovered their dryer has turned interesting colors, or who finds themselves with a not-so colorfast rug:
Dye can be cleaned off of a dryer with liberal application of bleach, providing you’re careful about where you’re inhaling. Please do not take this as a recommendation to inhale bleach fumes while you’re head is stuck in a dryer drum. But it does work. So next time I put white things in my dryer drum, they won’t be coming away blue. But as a note: after I finished, I wiped the drum down with a wet cloth, to make sure that I also didn’t get bleach on my clothes next time I used the dryer.
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| Citric Acid. One of my favorite household multipurpose things. |
Liberal application of citric acid (or vinegar, though you have to use a lot more) or any other household acid, though those are the two most common can help the dye become more colorfast, though you’ll probably still get bleeding. I noticed instant results. Just to be sure, on the last wash I added Borax, to make the wash more basic. Why? Because overly acidic solutions over time will degrade fibers. I just wanted to get the fibers to a more neutral Ph, because I’d washed the rug in several fairly acidic washes.
The results? Well, the dryer is probably the most clean it’s been in ages.
The rug?
The colors are more muted. You can see in places where the flowers used to be bright red. The yellow is definitely not yellow anymore. But it’s clean. And really, the cat’s don’t care what color their rug is.
It’ll do.
Today has been the day of socks. I had to get the knitted sample of a design I’m working on for Sockupied off by 3 – so I was knitting the afterthought heel into the sock the entire morning. (It was in Anzula. It wasn’t exactly a hardship.)
In other news, I’ve got some serious pattern writing to do tomorrow. So if my blog post on Friday is light, you’ll know why. My brain will be wrung out.
Lastly, I’ve been having a great conversation in the Designer Forums on Ravelry about work schedules, Flow, and staying on task. It’s particularly enlightening.
Last night we opened up the house and turned off the air conditioning. I left the fan on, and halfway through the night I awoke to turn the fan off; the air circulating through the house was cool enough. In the wee hours of the morning I woke up again to pull the fleece blanket out over the sheet. This morning, as I climbed on my bike, I wore long workout pants and a sweatshirt.
Tomorrow the morning will be warmer, and I doubt I’ll need the sweatshirt. By Wednesday we’ll probably close up the house as the humidity and heat climbs. But it’s happened – I’ve seen my first glimpse of Fall through the haze of summer.
I’ve talked before how I’ve always been an Autumn Girl. The smell of hot cider and the curve of a pumpkin reside someplace to the left of my heart. Halloween is anticipated with the same excitement of a birthday.
Maybe it has something to do with the weather cooling and the hand-knits coming out. Maybe it has something to do with the start of school, the crisp feel of unlined paper, new school supplies, and a potential for learning.
This upcoming Fall has a special highlight – I’m teaching at Rhinebeck. There’s so much to do before the date! I’m working on class samples, and trying to squeeze in the time to make a Rhinebeck Sweater (
which, unfortunately is looking less and less likely).
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| Finish This: One of the Classes I’m teaching at Rhinebeck |
I’m really excited because I’ve been dreaming of teaching at Rhinebeck for several years. This is where you come in – if you’ve been thinking about taking a class, and haven’t decided yet – you really should! Many of the classes I teach need to meet minimum enrollments – so if you wait unti
l the last minute you might miss out. New York in the fall is simply beautiful, and many people I know are making a trip out of going to Rhinebeck, and taking some time to enjoy the Fall foliage!
https://www.tinkingturtle.com/2014/08/last-night-we-opened-up-house-and/
My family and I spent the last two weeks in the Mediterranean. It was my first time going, and it was a wonderful time. Perhaps one of the things I’m most excited about is the additions I made to my lace collection. There’s 4 pieces total, one crochet, and one Burano traditional needle lace.
ll the difference between handworked and machine (at least when it came to this example of embroidery). I’m afraid I got a very angry look on my face and dragged my brother, who was with me, out of the store.
For me, it was important to know that the crafts and the lace were the real thing – because I hate when something that isn’t handworked is “passed.” In an age where most people are unfamiliar with the traditional crafts, it’s important to me that people’s hard work be appreciated for what it is.
This summer has been crazy for Tinking Turtle – I’ve been traveling both domestically and abroad. (I’ll be sharing more about the cruise on my next post!) Finally, though, I’m home for a while, and I’m beginning to settle into a routine.
It’s got me thinking about the routines I have – specifically, for my knitting and crochet. These are things I’ve developed over time as a designer and as a stitcher to stay organized – or to make sure I don’t forget something important! I thought I’d share some of these systems I’ve developed over time, in case they might help someone else!
From the Business Desk is back. From the Business Desk is a semi-regular series that looks at some of the important factors in running a Small Fiber Arts Business. This feature revolves around market evaluation, and some tips to find the right niche for your business.
As any small business owner knows, it’s a fierce world out there to break into any market. Be it establishing a LYS, becoming your own design company, breaking into the teaching circuit, all of these arenas seem to have well established entities that have solid client bases that seem to have everything put together. How will you ever be able to differentiate your new business and your ideas from the existing market, you may ask yourself. One of the handiest tricks of the business trade to help you accomplish this is the SWOT analysis. Standing for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, this analysis can help you start to make sense of your business’s place in the market, and areas which you can develop to better differentiate and market your ideas.
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| SWOT Matrix overview. Image courtesy of wikipedia.org |
Fitting neatly into a 2 x 2 matrix (one of my favorite visualizations for many different business strategies), the SWOT analysis can help you identify some key attributes both about your business as well as the marketplace.
Strengths are the things that your business does quite well or has a key competitive factor; items could include physical location of a shop in a high-traffic downtown area, or having a well rounded resume of instruction at a variety of locations.
Weaknesses are known areas where you could use some improvement; an example of this could be that you don’t really possess a strong skill-set on computer tools like Excel or Microsoft Publisher as a designer.
Opportunities are areas that in your opinion the market or industry has not fully realized, such as there being a wealth of crocheters living in a particular town, but no dedicated crochet instructor.
Threats can be anything externally that stands the chance of impeding the growth and progress of your business. Threats can be micro, such as the fact that there is already a teacher who has been teaching a particular class that you want to start teaching at a regional fair, or macro, such as the overall state of the retail yarn market in a particular state.
Remember, these should be fairly high-level; while it’s good to have an in-depth analysis of your business and the market, for the first time that you do this exercise, try to distill it down to the top three or four attributes in each category.
Once you have developed your ideas and thoughts, it’s time to tweak the matrix to help understand how this can lead to a strong business plan development.
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| SWOT action item Matrix |
By combining each of these categories in a grid, you can identify specific action items that emerge from the attribute clusters. The two most important areas to be aware of and consider are the Strength-Opportunities and the Weakness-Threat quadrants. These two reflect the immediate areas for business development and defense strategy respectively.
Breaking down your businesses’ market position utilizing the SWOT analysis, you can simply and easily lay the groundwork for a comprehensive business plan that can help you take advantage of market opportunities. One final note about the SWOT analysis; it is not meant to be a static market. Over time, both your business strengths and weaknesses as well as your perceived opportunities and threats in the market can significantly change. It’s a good idea to review and update this grid on a regular schedule (here at Tinking Turtle we review our SWOT items quarterly and develop a new SWOT matrix annually). By doing this, you can ensure that you are aware of where you need to focus your business development objectives for the near future.
~ Mr. Turtle
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| Alpine flowers that needed very little to grow. |
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| I fell in love with the wood, how it was preserved, and what it looked like. |
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| I have very few photos I took of views (well, I’m still processing the panoramas), but there just wasn’t a good way to convey scale – everything is just so BIG. |
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| Flowers and Rocks – formations by glaciers. |
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| I looked like a road from a car commercial. |
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| Wood! |
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| Yes, it was really necessary to get in the lake. I had to know if the water was as cold as everyone was making it to be. |
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| Berries, and wood. |
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| Blue, blue Sky. And yet, so many different shades! |
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| A long, long, way down. It was hard not to get dizzy when you looked down. |
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| Playing with the capabilities of my camera. |
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| A quiet lunch moment. |
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| Flowers. |
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| I loved the stuff that grew on the trees – such a vivid green! |
