8 new batt sets

Here's a sneak peek at the latest batch of batts,

which will be hitting the shop tomorrow!

Moonlit Titania

Moonlit Titania batts are in the shop!

I wasn't able to capture the colors as accurately as I usually do. Still trying to get the hang of taking photos in my new space with its different light sources, windows in different places, etc.

I ended up with a lighter blue wool than I originally had in mind. The result is that they're very similar to my Water colorway from the Elements series. Which isn't bad I suppose, just not what I had intended. Moonlit Titania is Merino/Bamboo (Water was Domestic/Mohair/Bamboo) and uses a lighter, more cornflower colored base blue wool. The bamboo is lighter, has some aqua, and uses peach instead of dark gold. So, similar, but not quite the same. Moonlit Titania is also repeatable, whereas Water was a one-time dye job I'll never be able to replicate exactly.

If you'd like some, you can find them here.

Namaste

The great thing about dyeing is that if you're rushed or distracted and don't end up with exactly the beautiful color you were going for -- you end up with a different beautiful color. Then you grab some more wool & dye the color you wanted in the first place, and you end up with twice as much stunningly beautiful wool. It's a low stress job. ;-)

One of my red dyepots took an unexpected swerve into fuchsia this week, resulting in a decidedly Om-like color. So I carded it up with some bright fuchsia, dark purple, and stunning gold bamboo and tencel, and decided to call it Namaste.

Think of it as Om's sophisticated older sister.

Get it here.

Phat Inspiration Photos

This month's Phat Fiber theme is A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I'm going to try a couple hand-dyed silk scarves in the shop.

One similar to the wrap in this photo:

And one similar to the flowing sleeves of Titania's dress in this photo:

My contribution to the box will be batts inspired by a vision in my head of Titania at midnight, standing in the moonlight in a light and dark blue silk dress, with moonbeams setting her pale skin aglow.

New things!

New batts in the shop!

Also, the Art Club is taking new subscribers this week (at a reduced price!),

and there's a brand new batt club!

The Choose Your Own Theme Batt Club allows you to do just that --

Pick any theme & get a custom series of batts just for you!

I'm also starting two newsletters: One for Serendipity Shop News,

and one for Small Biz Tips & Resources.

You can click the links to sign up, or click the pages at the top o' the blog!

Sale!

These beautiful batts are on sale!

Come take a look!

Shiny new things!

It's Box Drop Day for the Phat Fiber community!

This means a teensy shop update of limited edition batts!

Grab 'em while they're hot!

Snag your fave here: Serendipity

Spring Scarf Sale!

Spring has sprung down here in the South,

but if it's still nippy in your neck of the woods,

grab yourself a handmade knit or crocheted scarf while they're on clearance sale!

All scarves are marked down 40-50% to make room in my crafty space for new spring things.

My spring cleaning is your opportunity to keep yourself warm & snuggly!

Element Batts

Element batts now available in the shop!

Little shop update

These things

Are here.

Coming up tomorrow:

Element batts

May Spin-Along openings

And I haven't forgotten about the second part of the series on start-to-finish batt making!

Weekend Color Explosion, Part 1

It's a beautiful sunny day with a bright blue sky. Which is extra-special, because we've had nothing but cold gray days for quite some time around here. The good weather couldn't come at a better time, because this weekend is going to be one of much dyeing and carding. On the agenda: ARTinis for future club shipments, Phat Fiber samples (OMG late! again! gah!), and if there's time left over, lots of yummy batts for the shop.

I thought I'd give you a peek into my creative process and let you see how batts come into being, from the white woolly beginning to the colorful batts you see listed in the shop. So. Here's what's going down.

I do all of my dyeing with Greener Shades heavy metal free professional acid dyes. They work great and I absolutely love them. They're one of the least toxic kinds of dye out there, so I feel comfortable dyeing with them in my kitchen, so long as I am careful. (Which for me means using gloves, a dust mask, and safety goggles when I mix the dyes, and NEVER using any of my dye implements for food).

My dyes are acid dyes, which means they'll dye any protein fiber. Protein fibers include all animal fibers (wool, mohair, angora bunny, silk, etc.) and a few synthetic fibers (Soy Silk, milk fiber, and nylon, which means both firestar and the nylon that's used to make socks more durable).

What my dyes don't do is cellulose fibers, which means natural fibers from plants (cotton, linen, hemp, flax, etc.) and a few synthetic fibers (all forms of rayon, which means Tencel, viscose, and bamboo fiber, which are all almost identical, but differ in what they're made from and are sometimes produced using slightly different techniques.) They also don't do any other synthetics, like polyester, acrylic, acetate, spandex, etc.

But that's okay, because those aren't used much for spinning anyway. The only spinning fibers that I frequently use in batts that I can't dye myself are the rayons (Tencel, bamboo, viscose). I can dye my own milk fiber, but it's easier to dye with the same kinds of dyes used on rayon, and is kind of a pain to dye with acid dyes. So I usually buy these fibers hand-dyed by other fiber artists who are set up to work with these kinds of dyes.

And of course I can't dye angelina sparkle fiber, because that's a kind of plastic that can't be dyed by mere mortals. It has to have the color added during the production process while it's still molten. Once it cools and solidifies, the color can't be changed. This is also true of a few other things, like Ingeo corn silk fiber and EcoSpun fiber made from recycled soda bottles.

But I can dye almost everything I'll ever want to spin with myself, so I'm pretty content with that. And it gives me a good excuse to buy beautiful hand-dyed fiber from other fiber artists. Which I did recently! I snagged some amazing bamboo from LushMommy on Etsy. I wanted a lot of different colors in fairly small amounts, so I snagged 2 oz. each of four of her delightful multi-colored colorways. And I love the fiber I got. Her colorways are amazing, with nice even dye jobs in a wide range of colors. You should totally check her out.

These are the colorways I picked up:

They are, from left to right: Brook, Last Call, Electric Boogaloo (light), & Faerytale.

These are going to be incorporated into several different types of batts,

so the first thing I did was separate them out into individual colors.

And now I'm going to go dye up lots and lots of wool to go with them.

Check back in a couple days to see the batts they've become!

Goings On

Things are afoot. There have been secretive goings-on.

And there still are!

Lately, I have been doing some planning. Not your everyday, garden-variety planning, mind you. Hardcore planning. With paper and calculators and calendars. And hope. And caution. And back-up plans. The kind of planning you do when you are hoping to pull off some big cool things, but aren't sure yet if you'll be able to swing it.

So. Many plans for many potential endeavors are slowly forming and shifting and taking shape in my brain.

And I'm not going to tell you what they are yet. Because they might not happen. Or they might not come to fruition when I expect them to, and instead go down at a totally different time. So they will stay under my hat. In my brain. Percolating.

But I can tell you one thing that's going to happen.

Over the next few weeks, my shop is going to experience a renaissance.

Over the last several months, I have been neglecting my shop a bit. When I moved in August, it was really stressful (because moving is always really stressful for me, and even though I ended up in awesome new digs, this move was insanely un-smooth). I felt off-kilter for a while, and it showed in my dyeing. I found myself dyeing different colors than I usually do, and drawn to different textures than I usually am. It wasn't bad, per se, but there was less variety in my shop.

And right as I was starting to find my way back to on-kilter (because if you can be off-kilter, I for one maintain that you must be able to be on-kilter as well), my aunt died. She was sweet and kind and lovely. And it hurt. A lot. I scaled back my fiber commitments for a while, because I just didn't feel up to dealing with much of anything.

And when I started getting back to all my fibery pursuits, I still didn't feel good. I did all the things I do, dyeing and carding new batts for the shop, answering convo's and emails, hanging out on Twitter and Ravelry, and trying to find my rhythm again, but I didn't feel well.

My artistic spark was gone. I didn't feel drawn to it, I didn't feel driven to create, and even colors didn't matter to me the way they usually do. And it snowed. We had one of the snowiest winters we've had in years. Snowfall after snowfall, with the sky always gray and overcast and the light always slanted and dreary and the wind always bitter cold.

I'm not sure what happened. It was no one thing, but rather several little things, and the passage of time. Whatever it was, I'm starting to feel better. I still miss her a lot, but for the first time in a long time, I have my spark back.

Colors are amazing again. I am overflowing with ideas for new colorways and new series of themed batts. And I'm feeling drawn to the colors and textures I haven't used in a while. My old favorites, like old friends I haven't seen since last summer, and new combinations sizzling in my mind's eye waiting to soak into wool for all the world to see.

So I can tell you one thing.

I bought 10 lbs. of wool.

And, at least in terms of dyeing, I'm back in my groove.

So these are the before pictures.

(The wool is bigger than I am!)

The after pictures will show up in my shop over the next few weeks,

in the form of dozens of new batts.

Yes. Dozens.

Yay!

Spin-along

Hey everybody,

I am thinking of doing a spin-along. I've never done one before, but they look like lots of fun. Basically the way it works is everyone gets a batt set that's designed just for the spin-along, and everyone receives their batts at the same time. With your batts, you'll also receive a link to our Ravelry thread, so we can all chat and post pictures of our progress as we spin. The goal is to finish up your spinning by a certain date (usually a month from when you receive your fiber), and there is generally something cool for folks who finish.

Sometimes it's a coupon to use in the shop, sometimes it's an entry into a drawing for a free batt set, and some spin-alongs even have prizes for various categories like "most creative" or "most evenly spun," etc.

There are a lot of variations on spin-alongs, and I've seen some really cool and creative ones out there. With some, everyone gets fiber that's exactly the same, and it's fun to see how different it looks when it's spun up by different people using different styles & spinning techniques. One person might do a thick & thin single, one person might do 3-ply laceweight, and one person might do a crazy art yarn filled with beehives. At the end, we all stand back and are amazed at the variety that came from one simple colorway.

Other spin-alongs send a different batt set to each participant, with all the colorways fitting a theme. They might all be inspired by different world cities, famous paintings, or characters from a book or TV series.

I have a lot of ideas for series that I've been wanting to do. So I really like the idea of having a spin-along where I get to do lots of different batt sets along a theme & whisk them off to happy homes across the world.

Because this is my first spin-along, I'd like to keep it pretty simple. So how about this: Everyone's batts will be inspired by a different semiprecious stone. This way there are lots of different color options, and you can let me know if you prefer pastels, bright colors, dark colors, or neutrals (white, browns, grays, black). You can let me know if you like your batts all one color, or made up of several colors. Or you can tell me you like surprises. (Which means you can't think of ANY color combo I could possibly send you that would make you anything short of gleeful.)

I think 50/50 merino-tencel blends lend themselves especially well to semi-precious stones. So that's what most colorways will be made up of. A few colorways might also have extra fiber in them, like tussah silk, bamboo, firestar, angelina, or bamboo noil, if I think those things go well with the texture or color patterns of that particular stone.

The default option will be 4 oz. of smoothly-textured batts plus a small specimen of the stone they're based on, for $24. If you want more or less fiber, or prefer chunky art-style batts, that can be easily arranged. Shipping will be 1st Class, so it'll be $3 for US orders, $4 to Canada, and $6 to everywhere else in the world.

Tenative timeline: I'll keep sign-ups open for a week or two, then order fiber based on how many people we have signed up. Once it gets here, the dyeing and carding will commence, & batts will ship out about a month from now.

So... what do you think? Love the theme? Hate the theme? Too long of a wait? Had your heart set on different fibers? Tell me in the comments!

The Bakery Analogy: Or, Why I'm Emily, Even Though My Name Is Rachel

A while back, someone who does not knit or spin asked me what I do. And I told him, but probably didn't do a very good job of explaining. Because I am not very good at talking about what I do to people who aren't involved in the fiber arts. Which is a thing I need to work on, but that's not the point right now. The point is, I explained to this person (who had never met a spinner before) that what I do for money is dye and blend unspun spinning fiber, and sell it to spinners who would like to turn it into yarn.

And he was confused. (And not just because he had never met a spinner before, but I'm sure that wasn't helping him any.) And he said to me, not in an unkind way, but in a truly baffled way, "But, isn't what you make available to your customers cheaper commercially?"

And I kind of froze for a second. And I said yes, and I tried to explain why there is still a place in the universe for the things I make. And he was still confused, and didn't look at all convinced, which is probably because I didn't do a very good job of explaining, because I am not very good at talking about what I do to people who aren't involved in the fiber arts. (Sigh.)

But today, long after the fact, I came up with the perfect analogy to explain to non-fiber folks why there is a place in the universe for the things I make, even though similar things are available cheaper commercially. Of course now I will probably never see this guy again, but that's okay, the analogy will still be useful. Because I get this question a lot.

Here's the thing. This would work a lot better as a comic strip, but I can't draw at all. So you're going to have to use your imagination. I know you have one, or you wouldn't be here. Ready? Awesome. Let's do this thing.

A guy walks into a small, independently-owned bakery. You know, the kind that is tucked away in a cozy little nook somewhere between a couple shops and owned by a friendly girl named Emily who does all the baking herself every morning and runs the cash register in the afternoon. The kind of girl who rides her bike around town with a loaf of French bread and a bouquet of red tulips in her bike basket.

The guy stands in front of the display case for a moment, taking in all the different breads for sale: white, wheat, sourdough, rye, oat, challah, baguettes, pan loaves, shaped and laminated breads, and he looks up at at Emily and says,

"Wouldn't it be cheaper for your customers to go buy a loaf of Wonder Bread at the grocery store?"

Emily blinks twice. There is a pause.

"Well, yes."

Another pause.

"But you can think of some reasons why they might not want to do that, right? They might want this instead."

The light bulb illuminates. He gets it. Because he is a person who has eaten bread before, he understands.

"You can't find as many kinds of bread at the grocery store. There are a lot of different brands, and they each have a white and a wheat, but they're all pretty much the same. And even when you do find a sourdough, it's flat and uninteresting. If you manage to find a challah, it'll be thick and gummy without much flavor. There's nothing at all that has a perfect crisp crackly crust like these rustic loaves. And none of it was baked this morning.

Of course, there are times when you want those store-bought breads. Sometimes you are flat broke and don't want to spend $4.50 on a loaf of bread. Sometimes you'll be using it for a purpose where it won't matter if it's the very best bread -- like making breadcrumbs for meatloaf, or feeding the ducks at the park. And if for some reason you were to find yourself needing 15 loaves of bread that were all perfectly identical, you'd probably want 15 one-dollar loaves, instead of 15 $4.50-loaves.

But sometimes you want the very best bread. Sometimes you want bread that was made this morning.

Sometimes you want bread that's not quite like any of the breads in the grocery store.

Sometimes you're allergic to an ingredient, and want a baker who can make a loaf just for you.

And sometimes you find a little bakery that makes a certain kind of bread just the way you like it, and you come back for it whenever you're in town, as a special treat for yourself. Sometimes you're happy to pay more for it, because it's your favorite and you can only find it at that one little place.

Sometimes you want bread from a grocery store. And sometimes you want bread from me."

That's why I have customers. That's why my little shop exists. That's why it's not stupid for me to think that anyone would ever buy something from me.

Because sometimes you want mass-produced spinning fiber. And sometimes you want spinning fiber from me.

p.s. -- It is probably a good thing I didn't try to turn this into a comic strip. Turns out, Emily is as wordy as I am! Who'd'a thunk? ;-)

p.p.s -- If you do want spinning fiber from me, of course you can always find it here.

Let's get rid of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

I'm not sure I like Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Don't get me wrong, he was a great guy. And he did a lot of good in the world. But, I'm not sure it's a good thing to have a federal holiday for his birthday. For several reasons.

I'm sure he saw his work as more important than himself. If we're going to celebrate him, doesn't it make more sense to celebrate the anniversary of something he did or accomplished, rather than his birthday? (And especially rather than the third Monday in January, which is approximately his birthday?)

And honestly, I'm not sure we should celebrate him when we don't celebrate other people who also did a lot of good in the world. We don't have a federal holiday for Rosa Parks, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, William Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, Ghandhi, or Mother Theresa.

If you want to disqualify those last 5 because they made the world a better place but were foreigners, then maybe we ought to talk about the fact that while we have no federal holidays that honor women, American Indians, Latinos, Asians, or members of any minority, we do have one for Christopher Columbus, who was both a foreigner and a cruel and violent man. Also, he didn't discover America and wasn't unique in his opinion that the Earth is round. (I'm not wild about the lies that surround Thanksgiving either, but I like the idea of a day of giving thanks. And if you take out the happy friendly pilgrims & Indians and just give thanks, I'm down with that. But there's not really any part of Columbus Day worth keeping.)

Martin Luther King, Jr. did a lot of good work. Instead of celebrating him and his work, I think he'd want us to celebrate civil rights. I think he'd want us to remember the race relations problems our country used to have, and to take a moment to be grateful for the fact that a lot of them have improved. And then I think he'd want us to look at the race relations problems our country still has. And I think he'd want us to look at all the groups of people in our country who are still fighting for equal rights, even when those groups aren't defined by race. And I think he'd want us to sit down together and figure out what we plan to do about that.

And once we've solved those problems, I think he'd want us to look at all the other social problems we have. Like the fact that a lot of people in our country don't have access to affordable healthcare. Like the fact that there are people in our country living on the streets. Like the fact that our infant mortality rate is almost three times higher than Singapore's. Like the fact that the infant mortality rate for black Americans is almost three times higher than the infant mortality rate for white Americans. Like the fact that we have the highest teen pregnancy rate in the developed world. Like the fact that we don't have enough schools, and a lot of the schools we do have are in bad need of repairs. Like the fact that our prison system is overcrowded and overburdened. Like the fact that a disproportionate number of the people in our prison system are black or mentally ill. And I think he'd want us to sit down together and figure out what we plan to do about that. Because that was his thing.

Let's replace Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with Civil Rights Day. (New Hampshire kind of already does this.) Or even better, Let's Fix Shit Day. (We'll need to rename that one so it can be celebrated in elementary schools.)

And if we are going to add one of those days and still celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, let's make it a public holiday, but not a government holiday. If for no other reason than the fact that today, in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, my city drastically reduced the public transit service -- making it harder for poor people to get to work.

Discuss, people.

Look what I made!

Hey, people.

Time for another shop update.

My goal this week was to get 10 new batt sets dyed, carded, and in the shop, plus re-photo several older batt sets. Well... I fell a little short of my goal. Which is okay, because I knew it was going to be a stretch, and I am happy with what I've gotten done so far. I made several new pretties, and am now ready to start working on a few housekeeping things like neatening up my shop a bit and getting my act together to launch my new fiber club this weekend.

But until then, here are this week's awesomenesses:

If you think one of them wants to come live with you,

you can stop by the shop and snatch it up

and take it home with you

and turn it into beautiful handspun goodness.

:-D