Over Abundance

The pace of my life outside of the shop has picked up dramatically in the past week, and part of that is due to the romantic nature of spring I admit. A larger shift in my social life is the sudden burst of invitations and events to attend - Movie nights are a favourite with my friends. (Viva la nuit de film!)

But last night we took place in a larger gathering, for our beloved Stephanie (Yarn Harlot) was here in Portland for Earth Day and came to brief us yet again on the state of knitting. I really feel like Stephanie and Granny Weatherwax have a lot in common. Both unofficial leaders of groups that will stand no leader, both aware of human foibles, and both willing to brave the darkness - one for the sake of the universe, the other for the sake of wool or a beer. Both are admirable goals, as I’m sure many Portland Knit Bloggers will agree.

Her talk was only overshadowed, for me, by one joy. The guy from the last post came with me, and it may be noted that he stayed for the entire talk - laughing with us, and even smiling confusedly when the rest of us were dying with laughter and he wasn’t sure why. I must say, this business of non-knitters attending to knitterly needs is refreshing, and just the change Stephanie is talking about when she speaks of The Plan That We Do Not Have, No, Never Mind Us, What? We Just Like Yarn, Go Back To Your Television And Ignore The Maps.

World domination, pshaw. . .

I saw many good friends there who do not make it to the shop much, so I do not see them as often as I wish to. It’s a shame, really, to have so much of my social life based out of work. I have nothing to do on my days off. Bobbie was there, as was Duffy. Monica who keeps me company when I can’t sleep via Ravelry was there and still not sleeping on a schedule. Larissa showed up with Sebastian, who was too shy to come to me so I had to go to him to give him some tickles. My Dear Anon Friend always manages to catch some fantastic knitting design before the rest of us have even heard it whispering along the pathways of knitting, and she showed me the beginning of a fantastic sideways-knit jacket(?) in Felted Tweed. Delicious.

I list so many bloggers because, my dears, I FORGOT MY CAMERA and I don’t want you to miss any fantastic photos that these girls might’ve caught. Edited to Add: By the way, Michelle got some funny shots of me with that wascally sockmonkey of hers.

Did I mention that Duffy sang a special song? I’m sure you’ll all be hearing “It’s my travellin’ sock”‘ on the radio any day now. Well. You would if knitters ran the world anyhow.

This week at the shop we’ll be having Annie Modesitt whose work I admire, and whose blog I try to keep up with. Sometimes I feel like her rigorous class teaching and active home life are too much to handle, even second hand, but she seems to be a woman of fortitude which she is going to need if she goes out with Stev and Heather. I can only hope and pray that the car doesn’t have to be detailed afterwards like last time Stev took a teacher out.

Dearest Knitting,

I know that you are well, and I hope that we can catch each other for a moment today as I know it’s a busy one but know that I love you and your wooly touch still gives me tingles when you lay your stitches just right. You know the way I mean.

I wanted to send you a heartfelt note of gratitude for the trials you’ve helped me through lately, particularly those involving that ever-touchy topic: Boys.

Sometimes I move so fast that I forget my purpose, to gain the moment I lose touch with my final goal. You and I both know that as cuddly as the stash is, its not such a good kisser and I think that maybe some of the stash would be better suited to a lovely admirerer who has perhaps less technical appreication than myself. (Sorry to the sock weight in the suitcase, I didn’t mean to stare but your twist was so interesting..) To that end we’ve been going on dates.

Of course I realize that you may find my behaviour on dates strange. Certainly you feel when I set the purse you hide in on the seat next to me, and you must wonder why you do not immediately see the blessed light of Outside. Or if you do come out, why do I only knit a little bit before putting you away? I’m sorry to have played at you, you deserve committment and somebody with stamina for the long rows ahead. I can be that knitter, but I have been so torn until just the other day.

When I pulled you out in that coffee shop to wait for him to show up, I thought it would be like the dates before. But when he sat down, I felt no compulsion to explain why I’d brought a friend. I didn’t feel like perhaps you were out of place. Knitting, I felt like he liked us. The way you moved so smoothly through my clever fingers entranced him during the lulls in conversation. Especially that little flip we do with the left pinky finger, that little trick I think was magnificent on our part.

And when he did comment, he was full of admiration for my skill and of course your loveliness. That made me smile, and you may have felt it in the way I stitched for the rest of the date. Though we left the coffee shop and hung out for many hours afterwards where you hid in the purse, I confess to you that he let me browse knitting books and even told me to buy one I was hesitant about!

Oh knitting, if only I’d known before what a good judge of character you can be I would have brought you on so many dates before this. But no regrets, because we’re going to make dinner with him tonight and I think that after dessert I can get a few rows in. I’ll see you then,

Love,

Rodger - Your True Knitter

Now that I’m taking a break from school, I get to have days off again and I’m enjoying it quite a bit. Yesterday I woke up at 10 and stayed in bed until 2 finishing a book. I ate cake for breakfast in my bed.

Remind me of these days the next time I think about eliminating all of my free time, okay?

Onward! This past Sunday we all closed the shop and paid a visit to Central/Eastern/Eastern-Central/Central-Eastern Oregon. (There were several minor disputes as to the actual location of the place we were going to. Now we’re all right, yay for backslashes!)

We got to meet the sheep that grow some of the yarn we carry. Imperial Stock Ranch has been in operation since 1871. They’ve had four owners, the most recent one being Dan Carver and his wife Jeanne who have been there since the year I was born. Making this their 20th year.

Dan and Jeanne are such welcoming people that I was immediately homesick for the small town I grew up in and around. Sometimes I forget that there are places where complete strangers will say “Hey, how are you?” and not want your change or to sign petitions or to try and preach their crazed religion to you. Knitters are the only people I trust instinctively. Besides, they can’t mug me if their hands are full of yarn.

Anyway, we got to see lambs, and shearing. They shear once a year, and we were there the 1 day they do it. 364 other days we would not have seen shearing. But we are lucky if nothing else.

My favourite part of the whole shearing process? Um, the shearers. But that’s just me. Andres had a go, and so did Jayme. Both much braver people than I, for sure.

Jeanne told us all about the history of the ranch, which is really fascinating and also fraught with different tragedies. I think what struck me most was the continuity. The building they shear in has been sheared in annually for over 100 years. She showed us hand-shears, and then where they had mounted a drive shaft for the very first mechanical clippers, and then finally the building got electricity for electric clippers which have gone through an evolution of their own. But think about it. The sheep there are descendants from the very first sheep to be sheared in that building. That’s about 12 generations of sheep, all on the same piece of land, all eating the grass that just keeps growing. It awes me every single time I think about it.

There was a man there, Andy, who has been shearing sheep for 20 years. That means he sheared the grandmommas of the lambs that were born this year. Very cool, if you ask me. Anyway, this is a video of him shearing a whole sheep in under 3 minutes.

And, um, these are lambs. LAAAAAMBS! Oh my GOD they are so cute, you seriously want to stick one inside your coat and steal it home with you. They’re incredible. Loud. Cute. But loud. Each lamb had a very distinct voice, and Jeanne told us that sheep are actually quite quiet most of the year and that they usually talk the most just before birth and while their lambs are growing. Interesting, non?

These are the things I like about Imperial Stock Ranch.

1. They use minimal processing to make their yarn. They shear, skirt, and then take the fleeces to a full-service mill in Alberta (The closest one they could find that can handle the volume they have.) They don’t use chemicals, or carbonise their fleeces so they retain a lot of their natural softness.
2. Their sheep never get a single shot. No injections of any kind are given to these animals. They are guarded by two Italian guard dogs that have completely eliminated any predator problems. Jeanne told us they used to lose 40% of their lambs to coyotes. These guard dogs are environmentally friendly, cost-effective, and best of all keep the lambs safe. The ranch has not lost a lamb to a predator in 8 years since they got the dogs. These sheep? They are loved.
3. Jeanne and Dan are NICE! Seriously, folks, they’re nicer than heck and so giving of what they have to share it makes you want to visit all the time.
4. Their yarns are a lot like stuff that Schoolhouse Press offers, and you all know how much I love Elizabeth Zimmermann. Well here is a local source of yarns that are really similar to the stuff that dear ‘Liz used. Their pencil roving? So similar to the Unspun Icelandic! The 2-ply, 4-Ply, and Lopi style yarns are all very close to various yarns. The 2 ply especially reminds me of a softer version of Bartlett’s. They have a sock yarn, which we will be getting in as soon as their yarn is done being processed and shipped to them,

All in all, not a bad way to spend a Sunday.

I just did the math, and if I knitted 40 hours a week, at a pretty consistent pace, and without having to rip back, I could do something like 60 sweaters a year. Can you imagine? 60 sweaters. That’s like 40 more than I will ever need in my whole lifetime - barring huge fashion shifts, the loss of any of my more favored limbs, or huge changes in body shape. (HA! I’ve seen pictures of my older relatives, I know right where I’m heading.)

Instead of doing that, I’m starting a new project. Today was the 2nd day off that I’ve had in 3 months, and I took advantage of that fact to do copious quantities of laundry and tidy up a bit. Not that you can tell. I end up making more messes by getting up and walking away from the cleaning mid-rearrangement. It makes it easy to go back later, at least. I was admiring my wonderfully hideous scrapghan that I am making.

I love it. I love how random it is. I love how grossly beautiful it is. It goes so far into ugly that it goes out the other side into something beyond beautiful.

It inspired me to start something similar that will be done much faster.

I just finishing reading knitalong and have decided that this desire to do something scrappy and crafty can be combined with the need to spawn a knitalong of my own.

So I invite you, my fellow crafters, to pick up your string and implement of choice to Cover Something. I present my victim of choice.

And my materials of Covering.

As you can see, my apartment is something of a hotbed for hooking lately. I blame the Yarn Harlot. That neck reinforcement was totally the gateway to my current lifestyle. Thank goodness I have my Big Red Cardigan to knit on in public, lest people realize my shay-dee ways.

When you plan on having a fiber festival the same weekend as a book launch party/book signing, you think “Gee, maybe we should have extra staff.” and “This is gonna be keen!” also “Golly I’m glad we got so many books!”

You never think:

• We have too many people on staff.
• We got too many books.
• This stinks.

Today was full of mayhem and excitement. I have not seen 7:30 AM from the waking up direction in a very long time, and it is just as icky as I remember it. Setting up vendors was pretty thrilling since I got to see all the beautiful stuff that they brought.

Oh, and hey, if any of you are ever worried about what happens to people when yarn shops go out of business (Heaven forfend, saints preserve us, and all that jazz) let me tell you about a man I met today. His name is Russell. He was one of our vendors. He is 85. Yeah, you read that right, EIGHT-EEE-FIVE. He’s been in “the yarn business” as he says for over half a century. (57 years, for those keeping score at home.) Do you know what that means? He’s been at this since he was 28. Let’s review.

After so many positive responses to my last post, I thought maybe I would share the thing that consumes the most of our resources at the shop with you all in more detail.

Have you ever wondered how this yarn gets out onto the shelf for you to look at?

Have you ever thought, “My golly this is a lot to organize.” when perusing a yarn store’s stock?

Did you know that every single skein you see in the entire store has been touched by at least 3 employees who work there: One who received it, one who labelled it, and one who stocked it. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but we have all touched some of that yarn.

Yarn starts out its life on a sheep. Fast forward a bit: Blah blah spin blah blah wind blah blah ship blah blah arrive. Now it’s at a yarn shop where it looks something like this.

When we get this order, it usually comes in boxes. The order you are looking at is an order from Cascade Yarns, our largest account and one of our favourite companies. We make VERY LARGE orders from them. This is why we do not order your yarn the moment you place a backorder. We tack it onto a regular shipment to save money on shipping, money that we then do not have to charge you. We order from Cascade about every 3-4 weeks, so depending on how close to our ordering time it is you may get your yarn in a few weeks to a little over a month. That’s if they ship it quickly and they don’t have to backorder your yarn to the mill. By the way? This photograph is not the entire order. The entire order filled 15 Boxes that all came up to my waist and were too big for me to encircle with my arms. We like Cascade, yes we do.

After the yarn has arrived, we take the shipping list that they (hopefully, I pray every time because it could not be there..) put in one of the boxes. Guessing which one is part of my fun, especially when there are 15 boxes to choose from. A boy’s gotta have options, ya’ know? The shipping list is a list of everything we ordered and if they shipped it or not and in what quantities. For instance, one line might read: Cascade 220 - Coral….2….0

This means that we ordered 2 bags, but they didn’t ship any. There are a whole slew of reasons why, all of which I have no control over so I don’t worry about them unless somebody asks. After we check the shipping list to make sure that what they sent us is what we ordered and that the missing things, if any, are accounted for we get to start processing the order on the computer.

This is POSIM’s Inventory Analyzer. If we have ordered this yarn before in this colour, it’s very simple you just open a working purchase order, check all the stuff we received, create a processed purchase order, receive all of the yarn electronically, blast off some labels and settle in for a nice session of On Your Ass Time.

If we haven’t carried this yarn or it’s a new colour, you get to create a new Item Card. Frankly, unless it’s a class or a new pastry in the cafe, I hate doing this part. It’s detailed and complicated and I always screw it up unless Hannah is watching me do it which defeats the purpose of having somebody else do it anyway. This screen is what I stare at when you ask me how much of something I have and I don’t know. The window that’s open at the very top is the search I get to play with to see what crazy thing the item card for your yarn got filed under. Sometime in the past, somebody decided to name all the colours of certain yarn lines names that were different from their official names. This gives me fits and hives every time somebody asks how much of those yarns we have left. Thank god we sold most of them off and don’t want them back, thxvrymch.

I mentioned labels. Ah, yes, the labels. Every time you come in to buy something and I try to scan it before typing in the barcode because the scanner is a fussy snit, think of this. All the yarn on the shelves has a label on it. All of the labels are put on by hand. Try to calculate the hours it takes to do something like this when usually only one person can be spared to be working on it at any given moment. All of the labels are printed on a continuous strip. A strip of one Cascade order is enough to mummify any NBA player AND his best friend PLUS their two “lady companions” if they all stand close enough to each other.

After it’s labelled, the yarn is put on the shelf or into backstock. We have a back room where we keep all of the extra yarn that won’t fit on the shelf. We need more shelves back there. We need more shelves out on the floor too. I think we might have too much yarn.

Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at your favourite yarn shop? Do you ever think how nice it must be to knit all day? If you’ve ever considered getting a job at a yarn shop, this is the post for you!

Below is a summary of how my day goes, start to finish, on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. These are the 3 days I work from open to close at the shop.

Wake up late, get dressed, drive to work in really terrible traffic.

Get the story ready for business by cleaning and feeding/watering the bunny. Also field pre-open phone calls from vendors, customers, and telemarketers. The phone calls do not stop throughout the whole day.

10 AM, unlock the doors and begin serving customers. People are, literally, standing on our doorstep most days and it is very strange to be vacuuming while people stare at you wondering why you won’t let them in. Why? Because I am cleaning, and also discussing business things with my boss and manager. Things that concern the running of the shop, any problems we faced the day previous, and also making sure that my manager has had enough coffee to function appropriately.

From 10 until we close, I do some mixture of the following.

• Check a shipment to make sure the company sent us what we ordered, and not what some crack monkey thought we wanted.
• Label and stock new yarns. Our shop is 3000+ square feet, or so I’m told. This is a LOT of yarn.
• Restock old yarns.  Ditto square footage and amount of yarn above.
• Answer questions about knitting, yarn, patterns, gauge, blocking, finishing, screw-ups, mistakes, and also why I don’t have something in the exact same shade as their grandbaby’s eyes.
• Picking up the phone to field vendors, customers, orders, troubleshooting the website, inquires about our hours, yarns, patterns, classes, and sometimes wrong numbers. (I once got asked “Is this Nova Outpatient?” and I said “No Ma’am, nobody here wants to recover from our addiction.”)
• Running messages to my boss and manager.
• Handling problems such as “I backordered my yarn yesterday, why isn’t it here?” and “All your yarn is itchy.” (It is not. There are summer breezes itchier than some of my yarn. I admit I am very defensive about my yarn.)
• Continuously greeting customers as they come in.

Somewhere in the day I am usually told to go eat something before I faint, or I whine incessantly about my poor imploding stomach until I am sent off to consume some nourishment. Somewhere in the day I will get to go to the bathroom at least once, I hope.

In this day, I will probably talk to over 80 people, I will disappoint at least 3 people by not having what they need, I will delight approximately 4 people by having exactly the thing they were thinking of, 2 people will find the exact yarn their pattern calls for in a colour they love, and more people than I care to count will walk out without having bought a thing or asking any questions and I hope it’s not because they felt neglected since I almost feel stalkerish in my tendency to follow people around sometimes.

Some days are busier than others, but to be honest ever since Heather bought the store last year I don’t think I’ve had a truly lazy day. There is always yarn arriving that has to be processed before it can be labelled and that can take hours, and it’s not something I’m trained to do so I get to restock, and help customers, and clean, until finally I get to do all those things and help label 15 boxes the size of several small children worth of yarn.

The perks for all this work? I love helping people. I love my regulars and my coworkers like family. It is so easy to thrill somebody by handing them a skein of cashmere to touch that it gives me giggles and goosebumps every time. The yarns we get are interesting and beautiful, and I get to share them with all of my best friends - That would be You. So I love my job. I love coming to work. But I work very, very hard. And most of the people I work with? They work even harder than I do. I can’t fathom it, lest I start to feel ill. So if you think it’s nice to be able to knit all day, come hang out at the shop with me, have some lunch in the cafe, and enjoy my favourite place to be while you knit. I probably won’t be able to sit with you much, but I will like having you there all the same.

James over at subdue it with a sweater just gave me the “You Make My Day” Award, which I am of course happy to accept. The caveat of this award is that you must pass it on to people who just make your day when you read them. Here is my list, which does include some non-famous, non-knitting people because, well, I’m a multi-faceted person, dammit.

Robbie at KnitXCore is pretty amazing, as he says.

Erin at Dress A Day always has something to ponder or make me laugh about the way we choose to attire ourselves. Erin is a strong proponent of a dress-and-skirt wardrobe for the people who want it. Don’t worry, if you don’t like wearing dresses (I don’t!) Erin is still funny and insightful. She isn’t out to convert you. Plus she finds beautiful gowns that take your breath away.

Alicia at Posie Gets Cozy always inspires me with her artful photography and beautiful home. The devotion she shows towards her family and friends is really lovely, and I am glad to call her a fellow Portlander though we’ve never met.

VeganYumYum makes vegan food not only delicious, but intelligently. There is no attempt to “fake” things that are not vegan so that you cannot tell, there is only the effort to make a truly delicious vegan dish. Sometimes she attempts to duplicate non-vegan things (i.e. Madelines) but in a savvy way that seems more honest than when people try to disguise meat substitutes and the like. I really like her writing style for its clarity and wit.

Lolly Knitting Around is kind of quirky, in a way that I can’t describe. She writes about topics other than knitting, such as living green and sustainability, but her knitting posts are always full of a great confidence mixed with wild curiousity. I love this kind of knitter, because they will try anything!

Crazy Aunt Purl isn’t for everyone, but for me Laurie’s story of divorce and the subsequent creation of a new life has been inspiring. I bought her book and read it in one night. Her humour, her insight, and her insane ability to come out alright in the end gives me hope when stuff hits the fan.

Anne Hanson at knitspot is the woman you can blame for my secret obsession about lace. I love it so much. I love to look at it, all laid out perfectly, and also swaddled around that beautiful man of hers in her photography! Her blog is funny, smart, and has a technical edge that makes the geek in me squee like a fanboy.

Marie Grace - Yarn Slayer is a mother of five (I think) children whom she homeschools while also being a knit designer who sews, cooks, and otherwise maintains a very full household. Her recent move to the country had interrupted her blogging for a few months, but she is back with vigor. She amazes me, quite simply, and her designs are all about thoughtful details. Love it.

yarnstorm is a blog where you can find the small parts of everyday life elevated to a place of intellectual and emotional stimulation. Her sense of history combined with a devotion to the arts of domesticity astounds me and gives me a deeper appreciation for everyday things, like the reading of good books and the making of good foods.

In other news, the Big Gray Cardigan is going to get frogged again. I should knit it into a swatch with intarsia: Thou Shalt Not Add Ease Nilly-Willy Without Checking Yardage First.

I shop online frequently, for clothes and yarn mostly. Men’s clothes are easy to buy online as long as you’ve shopped that brand before and you know what size you wear. Pants are especially hard for me to find in stores, since I am now small enough to be a fairly common size, so I order online.

When I buy online…well, lets just say it’s not the immediacy of the shopping that makes me shop online. Yarn, especially, can get me a little crazy. So when it takes more than a while to get my shipment notification, I can end up thinking some pretty vicious/paranoid thoughts. “Somebody bought it out from under me and they’re going to try and sneak me something else! WELL! THEY CAN’T DO THAT TO ME!” or similar. Yeah, it’s sad. So when I finally get a notification I usually go “Oh, alright, well that’s good then.” But most recently, I was ashamed by the notice I got. It was handtyped by Leanne Hayne of Beaverslide Dry Goods, in which she said..

Hi Rodger,

Kind regards from the cold and snowy Northern Rockies,
Leanne Hayne
Beaverslide Dry Goods

This nice lady even hoped that it would arrive soon! How nice is she?! And she was working her butt off to help all those people! Oh god, now I feel like a stupidhead. Dammit.

Maybe I should resolve to be more forgiving and kinder?

I have knit this hat several times in several ways. It is very easy to modify. I knit the first one, which this pattern is based off of, in a sock-weight yarn.

Pompette.

Invisibly or Provisionally Cast on 54 or enough stitches to make your hat the length you like best.

Row 1. Knit until 2 stitches remain, turn work.

Row2. Knit to the end of the row.

Row 3. Knit until 4 stitches remain, turn work.

Row 4. Knit to the end of the row.

Row 5. Knit until 6 stitches remain, turn work.

Row 6. Knit to the end of the row.

Continue working in this manner, leaving an additional 2 stitches on your left needle before turning the work to knit to the end of your row. Do this until you have turned the work a total of 10 times. If your hat is deeper than mine i.e. you cast on more stitches, you might want to do this a few more times depending on how snugly you like your hats to fit.

The following can be substituted for any other short row method that you prefer.

Knit until 20 stitches are on your left needle OR you arrive at the last place you turned. Do Not Turn Work!

1. Insert your left needle into the stitch from the row below on your right needle, catching the stitch on your left needle.

2. Knit this caught stitch together with the 20th stitch.

3. Knit 1 stitch, turn work.

4. Knit to end of row.

Repeat these 4 steps at each gap, incorporating 2 additional stitches back into the work at each gap.

When you have incorporated all 54 stitches back into your row, you have completed 1 wedge. Repeat this process an additional 7 times in order to complete your hat. You may require more or fewer wedges, depending on your particular row gauge and your head’s circumference.

I knit my first sideways hat following the ZeeBee pattern, but I didn’t like how loosely it fit and mine turned out kind of boxy with only four wedges, so I decided to refine it a bit and here is my own take on this concept. I found out about a book today called Going Straight: A New Generation Of Knitted Hats that is all about hats that are knitted sideways. I am really looking forward to it.