Bright Colors & Soft Colors

Here are a few relatively new things, some newer than others:

All available at Serendipity, of course.

Gift Certificates, u can haz them!

It can be hard to shop for a spinner if you don't spin yourself.

You thought it would be easy, right?

I mean, how hard could it *possibly* be?

So you headed on over to Etsy and you searched for "spinning fiber"...

...And then you realized that there's batts and top and roving and clouds and sliver and silk hankies and loose handfuls of curly mohair or wool locks, and you're pretty sure that at some point in your searching you saw actual silk cocoons dyed with a worm quite possibly still inside them, and you have NO idea what a person would do with a silk cocoon dyed bright colors with a dead worm in it. Except that they must be good for something, because they're for sale and people buy them.

But you persevered! You picked a type of fiber. Batts. Or top. Or loose fiber. Whatever your choice, you made a choice. Go you! Mission accomplished!

...But, then you realized that there's wool and mohair and silk and alpaca and llama and cotton and angora and bamboo and flax and hemp and you're pretty sure at some point you saw actual camel fur for sale. And you figure it must be good for something, because it's for sale and people buy it, but there's a little tiny part of you that is afraid that it might not be a good idea to buy your loved one several handfuls of camel fur for Christmas.

It's not that you don't trust the shopkeepers, it's just that, you know, you're trying to think of a worse Christmas present someone could give YOU than several handfuls of camel fur, and you're just not coming up with much.

So you decided to keep it simple and go with wool.

Excellent choice.

...But then you realized that there are several hundred breeds of sheep, and apparently they are all different. Merino and BFL and Punta and Falklands and Corriedale and Cheviot and Targhee and Shetland and on and on and on... and then there are crosses that combine more than one of the breeds... and then there's something called "superwash" which doesn't sound like a kind of sheep at all...

...And now you're ready to buy a gift certificate.

Good news! Spinners love gift certificates! As a matter of fact, store credit at a fiber shop is pretty much the best present you can get a spinner. Your beloved yarn-maker gets exactly what he or she likes best, and you only have to click one button. Everyone wins.

So I decided I ought to make some for my shop.

And I did.

And they are here, and you can buy them if you want.

Yay!

New Pretty Things!

Just a quick peek at yesterday's teensy tiny shop update:

If you're into gift certificates, or if you're into my fiber & your loved ones are into gift certificates, they'll be listed in the shop tomorrow.

Cheers!

~Rachel

Scarves for the Gallery

I have been neglecting my Etsy shop a bit in favor of getting some winter scarves finished up & shipped off to the gallery. The funky fuschia scarf will be heading off to the gallery today, along with 4 others. I hope to have 5-6 more made and sent out in the next two weeks. Here's a peek if you're interested:

They're very simple scarves made with commercial yarn, so if you knit or crochet yourself, please feel free to check out my Ravelry projects section to find the yarn, stitch, & gauge info. You're welcome to make them for yourself or for sale, I certainly didn't invent double crochet or the drop stitch!

If you don't knit or crochet, or if you have so many projects going and so little time that you'd prefer to simply pick up a finished scarf, I'd be happy to make you one. The fuschia/black & gray/black drop stitch scarves are $45 each, and can be made in any color combination your heart desires. The crocheted scarves are $35 each, and a quick Ravelry search for Moda Dea Tweedle Dee will show you all the colorways this particular yarn comes in. Want to order a scarf? Got questions on how to make your own? Leave a comment here, or email me at SerendipityFibers {at} gmail {dot} com.

Funky Fuschia Scarf

One of my scarves just totally wrote a personal ad. I guess she's tired of living in my "Scarves to Send to the Gallery" basket. I'm not sure if there will be much interest for her here, since she's pretty different than the other things in my shop. I think my gallery customers and my Etsy customers are very different kinds of people who are looking for very different things. But she had a few hearts on Rav, and more people will see her on Etsy than at the tiny little gallery tucked cozily away in the mountains of North Carolina, so I decided to let her try to find her owner here for a couple weeks before mailing her off to frolic in the crisp mountain air. Which means if you want her, you should grab her quick. She looks like this:

And you can find all her details here.

I may add a few more scarves to the shop over the next few days. We'll see how it goes. Meanwhile, I'm still knitting on this amazing yarn from Cool Climates:

Which is in the process of turning into a truly amazing drop stitch scarf that shows off the crazy texture of this yarn in all its glory.

Have I mentioned how much I love art yarn?

Box Day Eve -- November

It is Box Day Eve. All of you Phatties know what that means. And all of you who don't know -- well, probably don't exist, because I am fairly certain that almost all of my blog readers, Twitter followers, Rav group members, and customers discovered me through Phat Fiber. But on the off chance there is anyone not in the loop on this, here, allow me to loopify you: www.PhatFiber.com. Go there. Read the homepage. Poke around a little if you want to. No, really. Go. You there, you too. It's okay. I'll wait.

Back? Yes? Excellent. Now you know how awesome Phat Fiber is and how much you want to snag a Phat Fiber Box of your very own. Good news! Tomorrow is the day you can do that! Or rather, tomorrow is the day you can attempt to do that. Every month there are somewhere around 200-250 boxes, and probably about a couple thousand people try to snag one. Good luck. May the Force be with you. Click quickly.

Here is a tutorial designed to offer helpful tips in maximizing your opportunity to snag a box by not making stupid n00b mistakes. And here is the Rav group where all the cool people hang out on the internets and gaze lovingly at each other's yarn and fiber. And talk about spinning and dyeing and knitting and crocheting. It's good times. You should be there. There's a multicolored felted sheep. I mean really, what more could you want in an online colorful fluff community? (His name is Shearlock.)

Okay, so here's the thing. I didn't contribute this month. Because I am a loser. Or rather, because October sucked. A lot. I had Bigger Issues At Hand, which totally threw my life off-kilter, and I didn't get my act together in time to send in samples for this month's Box. Boo. This sucks. Fortunately, I am working towards getting my life back on-kilter, and remain cautiously optimistic that I might manage to succeed at that despite not actually knowing what a kilter is. (Okay, okay. I couldn't stand it. I checked. And it's totally boring.)

So to make up for the lack of Serendipity awesomeness in this month's boxes, I'm taking part in a pretty crazy sale that's going on tomorrow. It was someone else's idea, and several of us Phat Fiber contributors have jumped on the bandwagon. Basically you go here and jump through a few fun little hoops, and get a pretty enormous discount on awesomeness from a wide variety of shops, including mine. But you have to jump through the hoops tonight, and you can only use the discount tomorrow. So go forth! Hoop jump!

ps -- Since I started moderating comments, there have been no comments. This probably has something to do with the fact that it's only been the past few posts (which have been mostly uninteresting) and this blog doesn't actually have, you know, readers. But it's making me wonder if the comment moderation thingy is doing what it's supposed to do. So to give me a chance to practice moderating comments, I will give a 5% discount to everyone who leaves a comment on this post, which can be combined with other discounts. (No, if you comment twice you don't get 10%. Sorry.) So if you have a 15% off coupon floating around, you'd get 20% off your order, or if you rack up a 25% discount from the hoop jumping, you could get a 30% discount. Okay? Awesome. Now go hoop jump. Then give me comments to moderate.