Chickenlips Knitting

Taking a break from doing yarn to blog. This isn't all order fulfillment, either--I've still got yarn soaking for two more colorway lots. But I'm going to shamelessly implore my tired, hard working hubby to assemble my Ikea bookcase this weekend, as I am running out of room for all this yarn! Hey, life could be worse, because yarn is one of the things I love, it's right up there with chocolate cake, Rush, and baseball. The observant reader will note that I didn't go for the obvious joke and say "sex" because, well, that's a given. My point is that there's no way I can rassle with that 700-pound box the bookcase parts are in, and as a yarnie with a growing business I'm starting to have organization problems. Orders in progress need to be separated from inventory, and short skeins for sending samples to yarn retailers and designing also need to be kept separate. And oh yeah, I might need the dining room table to, uhhh, actually *block* something! Like an FO, what a concept. Believe it or not, I'm still knitting, plugging away on works in progress.



My production of kettle dyed worsted continues slowly, an experiment or two per week. While I love handpainting, and I can see improvement with each batch, I'm discovering I can get predictable results. That's a good thing, as I want to keep making and selling my sock colorways. However, the dyepot is where the real challenge and mystery lies. Mixing custom colors, whether I am actually blending dye shades or letting the mix happen in the pot, is a variable that I can't fully control and am willing to accept as part of the fun. Here are two I did individually, trying to get them to come out the same. Even though they didn't, I think they'd be pretty knit in alternating rows.





I don't keep stock mixes on hand; I dye and mix colors intuitively. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But for a big batch, say a sweater's worth, I'd use the same mix throughout.

Well, enough of that, or I'll have to change my blog title to "Chickenlips Dyeing" and that just doesn't have the same ring to it. I do have a story, though, about my illustrious brother. You may remember I was really mad at him last October. He hasn't exactly been forgiven, but I can't stay mad at the ass clown. This week, he and the wife were at the neighborhood watering hole at happy hour, and as he put it, "we got happy". At home, he put on some disco and started dancing on the furniture. He fell, and to avoid falling on his wife, he artfully turned his body in mid-fall and ended up with a sprained ankle. Is there a message here? Not really, I was just going to wish everybody a great weekend with one of my favorite expressions from the 80's, which is "boogie till you puke" but really, puking's no fun. Neither is getting a sprained ankle from dancing on the furniture when you're bombed.