In Process

So Much Fun Stuff: New Website, Mini-Skein Club, and a Shop Update Too!

By Stephanie

There has been so much going on here — so much! — that I feel I am about to burst!  And it’s all just about ready…  a-a-almost there…   So today’s shop update will be a mini-update so I can quickly get back and finish all this up and share it with you.  More on that update at the bottom.

But right now, let me tell you what I’ve been working on…

The Website

First, a new website!  I’m really excited about it because it’s beautiful, everything I’d hoped for.  But the reason that’s really cool for you is that it’s going to allow me to a whole bunch of new things that I couldn’t do before (one of them is my new club, which I’m going to tell you about in a second).

But there’s a really important thing you need to know about this website change.  If you subscribe to my website via my mailing list, you don’t need to do a thing.  But if you subscribe via WordPress, you’ll need to change over to the mailing list — and that’s super easy to do.  Just click here to join the mailing list.  See?  Easy and done!  (If you want to ensure you don’t receive duplicate emails during the transition period, you might also change your WordPress settings, like this.)

Mini-Skein Club

Remember that Super Secret Thing I was telling you about?  Oh, I am so excited about this…!  And if you’re addicted to hexipuffs, dreaming about the BeeKeeper’s Quilt, falling head over heels for the Babette blanket, or any of the other wonderful mini-skein patterns that are cropping up everywhere these days, then you will be super excited too!  The SpaceCadet Mini-Skein Club is coming and it will not only be a regular supply of those addictive little skeins, but also give you the perfect opportunity to try out all those wonderful SpaceCadet yarns and colourways that you’ve never used before.  Think of it as a mouthwatering knitters’ and crocheters’ sample pack, delivering yarny goodness to your door every month…

The SpaceCadet's Mini-Skein Club for Knitters and Crocheters

I cannot wait to get the Mini-Skein Club started!  If you can’t wait either, make sure you’re on the mailing list to be the first to hear when it goes live!

The Ebook

The ebook is with the editor and is so close to being finished, I can taste it!  I know a lot of people aren’t sure how to approach knitting or crocheting with hand-dyed yarn, so I’m hoping this ebook will help ease any nervousness.  It’s  an introductory guide to hand-dyed yarn: how to use it, how to care for it, how to understand it so you can dive into hand-dyed without fear.  If that sounds just right for you, then get on that mailing list to be sure you hear when it’s ready for download!

Oh, and this is really cool — the editor has been blogging the process of putting the ebook together.  Check it out! 

Shop Update

And finally, here’s the shop mini-update I promised you, two yarns that I am just crazy about…

First is a colourway that I’ve called Inlet, because I see all the colours of shimmering and shallow water — blues, greens, grays — with the glint of something precious resting at the bottom.  I absolutely love this colourway!  The yarn is 70% superwash merino, 20% bamboo, and 10% nylon, so it has that lovely glossy sheen.

SpaceCadet Inlet Yarn for knitting or crochet.

And another yarn in that same lovely bamboo base… This colourway is Contrary and I just love the intensity of those cool, cool blues…

Merino/Bamboo/Nylon yarn in Contrary.

So, lots of stuff going on. It’s been crazy busy but soooo exciting! And if you’re excited too, keep checking back to see if the website has changed. Once it has, the ball starts rolling on everything else too…

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Gimme Gimme Gimme Your Questions About Hand-Dyed Yarns!

By Stephanie

I’ve been working on a lot of things that have got me pretty excited lately — things that I hope will help us to bring you more of the best and most beautiful yarns that we can create.  And, for one of those things, I really need your help….

I’ve been putting together an eBook, a little guide to choosing and using hand-dyed yarns.  Because they can be really special things, hand-dyed yarns, can’t they?  Beautiful, enticing, intoxicating, and… sometimes overwhelming.  When you first see them, you want to dive in the colours.  When you hold them, the colours change as they catch the light.  And when you cast them on, the results can be absolutely spectacular…  or sometimes terribly disappointing.  Yep, there is a real art to using hand-dyed yarns!

hand-dyed yarn, yarn, knitting, crochet, indie dyer
Celeste Yarn in Garden In Spring

So, as I’m putting this eBook together, I’ve been trying to look at my yarns through the eyes of my customers.  I’m asking myself the questions that they have — that you have — when picking yarns and choosing colourways.  And, as I was trying to put myself in your place, trying to come up with these questions, it suddenly dawned on me… why don’t I just ask you?

Huh!  Now there’s an idea!

Fingering Yarn in Bamboo, Superwash Merino, and Nylon, in Translucence

So, when you bought your first hand-dyed variegated yarn, what questions went through your head?  Were you confident in choosing a pattern for it, or did you have trouble?  Were you worried it would pool, or did you not care?  Or maybe even hope it would pool?  Did you shy away from wildest colours or gravitate straight to them?  And did you do anything to tame them …or did you just let them rock?

When you work with beautiful, wonderful, variegated hand-dyed yarns, what are your biggest questions?  What perplexes you?  What do you wish you had a little guidance on?  Go on and tell me!  Put your questions in the comments below and you’d really be helping me out.

And if you have answers to any of the questions, leave them too!  Because I suspect that the answers are actually just as individual as the yarns that inspire them…!

hand-dyed yarn, yarn, knitting, crochet, indie dyer
Fingering Yarn in Bamboo, Superwash Merino, and Nylon, in Juicy

(Hey, by the way, I’m not guaranteeing I’ll have all the answers.  But if life is about the journey, then the journey has to start with the questions, right?  Hit me!)

Cadet Credits, With Thanks to You

By Stephanie

The first few days of January are probably supposed to be about looking forward, but I cannot help looking back.  2010 was a great year here at SpaceCadet Creations — it’s been exciting, it’s been educational, sometimes it’s been a bit scary, it’s always been colourful!…  And most of all, it’s been successful.  And ladies and gentlemen, I know that success is entirely down to you.  You’ve been encouraging me, supporting me, talking to me… and buying my yarn and fiber.  I am incredibly grateful.

For a little while now, I’ve been thinking about how I can show you my thanks, how I can make it real.  And so I am very excited to introduce SpaceCadet’s Cadet Credits, a way to reward my loyal customers and let them know how much I appreciate them.  Here’s how it works:  I will give you a $10 credit every time your purchases accumulate to $150 (minus discounts, taxes, and shipping costs).  Your credits will never expire, you can use them right away or saved them up to be used all together, and they can be used on anything in the SpaceCadet Creations shop.  It’s my way of showing you how much your support has meant to me throughout 2010.

And that last sentence up there…  that’s not just some kind of marketing waffle to make you feel good.  I really mean it.  So I’m not going to implement Cadet Credits from just today onwards, I’m going to give credit to my customers for all their purchases throughout 2010.   Don’t worry — you don’t have calculate a thing.  I’ll kept track of all the numbers and will be emailing you shortly to let you know how much credit you have, or how close you are to earning one.

And with that, it is time to look forward to 2011 — it’s going to be an exciting year!  There are a lot of great things planned here in the SpaceCadet studio — some I’ll tell you about as they develop, and some that will stay top-secret until they’re ready for their reveal.  I can’t wait to get started.

But you…  You can start celebrating 2011 right away.  So go on!  Go spend those credits!

For full details of the Cadet Credit Programme (it’s not complicated!), click here.

Shop Update: From Flat on My Back

By Stephanie

You may have noticed that there was no shop update on Monday, as there usually is.  Nor on Tuesday, which is when I usually do the update if Monday gets too busy.  There were yarns ready — drying, or in the process of being reskeined, some weighed, some tagged…  But I was not ready.

I was flat on my back in agony and holding as still as I possibly could.  Over the weekend, my neck and shoulder had seized up completely and, man oh man it hurt!  I mean, they’ve seized up before, a few times in my life, but never like this.  Imagine, if you will, me lying on my back in bed, with no pillow, nothing to contort my spine away from the support of the mattress, and I moved my foot — just my foot! — and it sent a spasm of pain shooting up through my shoulder and my neck and wrapped right around over my skull all the way to my eyes.  That kind of agony.

Stella yarn in Faded Garland

The doctor is satisfied that it is muscular and not skeletal (I was worried), and I now have some painkillers the size of horse-pills that are working a small miracle.  Bit by bit, I am gaining more mobility — and having to remind myself not to rush it, that everything can wait…  even though I am desperate to get back work.  There were so many exciting things happening this week, and so many wonderful yarns!

Celeste Yarn in Stewed Cranberry

And so keen was I to get them in the shop that I took advantage of those pills and pushed myself a bit too hard yesterday.  The result is that there are now some lovely yarns in the shop    …and, I am flat on my back again today.  Not anything like before, but just a little reminder from my muscles they are not to be trifled with and I must respect them and take things slooooowly.

Luna Laceweight Yarn in Rapeseed

But I did get some really exiting stuff into the shop…  There’s enough Megan’s Frost to make a sweater — with two more skeins of Frost waiting to go into the shop as soon as I’m able.   And there’s four skeins of Stewed Cranberry, with two more in the studio ready to be reskeined.  A beautiful skein of Laceweight in the most amazing golden-yellow.  And a skein of Stella in a lovely, quirky colourway called Faded Garland.  Enjoy!

And please keep your fingers crossed for me, ok?

Celeste Yarn in Megan's Frost

 

Dyeing for a New Design

By Stephanie

Do you remember the fabulous crochet patterns I featured last month?  Do you remember this shawl by Sharon Silverman?

© Sharon Silverman, Used with Permission

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Sharon is the author of Tunisian Crochet: The Look of Knitting with the Ease of Crocheting and the creator of some really beautiful patterns.  She and I got talking, and it turns out she admired my yarns as much as I admired her designs.  And I was so flattered when she asked if I would create a colourway for her to use in a new design!

(I think this is the thing that I like most about the fiber arts community: the way that people work together — and really want to work together — to create beautiful things.  Fiber people are great people.)

I began to think about colours — I wanted to give her something really special to work with.  In my mind, I was seeing something lovely to drape around the shoulders, over a beautiful evening dress…  something as soft as mist…

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Sharon sent me a sneak peak at the design this week, and it’s as light and as gorgeous as the yarn it’s made for.  I can’t share the design with you yet, but I can give you a quick glimpse of the yarn.

This is Evening Fog, a delicate mix of soft greys and the lightest misty blue, in Luna Laceweight 80% merino/20% silk yarn.  And, if you like it, it will be in the shop in time for the pattern’s release.

Scenes from a Fiber Life: the Art and Science of Hand-Dyeing

By Stephanie

Years ago, when I was a corporate buyer, I remember my boss explaining that buying was both an art and a science.  I didn’t really understand what he meant at the time — surely it was just a matter of knowing how much should be in stock and plugging in the numbers, wasn’t it?  It was simple.  What was he on about “art”?

I didn’t really get it until I’d been in the job for some time, and I found myself explaining some of the basics to our intern.  She was plugging in the numbers — just plugging in the numbers — and coming to conclusions that I knew would spend our money in all the wrong places.   And as I explained that there was more to it than just the number, that was the moment that I realised what my boss meant by “art”.  Over time, I’d been quietly and unconsciously learning to follow to my instincts as well as the numbers, learning to apply both art and science.  And when I watched that intern making those simple, novice mistakes, I began to understand the value of staying tuned into both.

Today I tried to duplicate Westerly, the beautifully shaded colourway from the Tradewinds quartet that I showed you last week.  And there I was, duplicating the recipe exactly when…  I just suddenly didn’t trust it.  My instinct told me the colours weren’t right.  My instinct told me to add a bit of this, mix in a little more of that…

My instict wasn’t right.  This is what came out of the dyepot…

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It’s beautiful for sure, but it’s not Westerly.  And though I think I’m going to love it when it’s dried and reskeined…  there’s no denying that it’s not Westerly.

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Which just serves to remind me that, even though dyeing is undoubtedly an art as much as a science, and even though a dyer’s colour sense is borne of instinct, it’s important to remember and never to forget the first rule of the second dyelot: even when you want to follow your instinct…

FOLLOW THE RECIPE!