Murphy's Law has struck me, and my site update that was supposed to be done a week ago is taking much longer than anticipated. If you'd like to purchase a pack of Wabisa-Beads, please email me at natasha@grittyknits.com! I will bill you through Paypal, or give you a discount coupon to purchase them directly through me when I get the kinks worked out.

Give me Wabisa-Beads or give me death!

The web update should be coming any day now… once we sort out a couple of bumps along the road. When the switch happens, www.GrittyKnits.com will take you directly to my store, but you’ll still be able to get to my blog by clicking around. If you’d like to get a discount on some of my grand opening merchandise, be sure to sign up for my mailing list. I’ll be bribing you to buy from me with coupons and what not.

I managed to swing by the vendor area at DFW Fiber Fest today. Since this is my last April in Dallas, I figured I better check it out while I can. There was some good stuff there but not a lot I felt like buying, other than this awesome hand-carved crochet hook made by Dodo’s Designs:

There were many others in the shape of flowers & animals, but this one was my favorite.

I finished my first pair of wearable socks this month and have already started on another pair. (“Business Time” socks, inspired by Flight of the Conchords, which I am currently obsessed with.) I’ve never been much of a sock knitter but since they’re small enough to keep in my purse, I always have a project with me. I had no idea that I had been wasting so much free time not knitting; it only took me a week or two to complete the pair.

I am VERY excited that the Woolie Ewe will be hosting 3 full days of classes with Lucy Neatby May 6-8. I will be working those days, so hopefully when the organization and customer wrangling is done, I will be able to catch most or all of the teaching. I am also putting hot pink & purple streaks in my hair, and encouraging other attendees to do so as well. If you’re a Lucy fan and a Ravelry member, come join my Neatby Knitters group.

I have a love/hate relationship with super-coiling my yarns. I love the concept of the yarns and I love the way they look when I'm finished. But I feel so wasteful. It sounds silly, I know. It's the same amount of fiber either way, but compressing a full bobbin that I would estimate has no less than 300 yards into 35 yards seems... unfair. Here's the result of the silk & alpaca fiber (which I already spun myself out of and went to buy more, and which is also currently for sale.) Doesn't it look like an abby-normal brain? Haha!

I would have had it done a few days ago, but I came down with some sort of super-duper allergy/bug at the beginning of the week that had me huddling under the covers with a box of Kleenex for most of the day Monday. Around 4 o'clock I started getting restless but still felt too crummy to do much, so I made some batts from mystery fiber that I got on sale. So anyway, the store has finally been updated with the stuff I've been meaning to post forever. Check it out.

Adam and I are feverishly working to get some major updates done to this website. The ultimate goal is to convert this site over to one that is mainly a store, and get a more sizeable inventory. (I will still keep a blog, though it will be secondary.) I will eventually be selling commercially manufactured yarns in addition to my own handspun/hand dyed stuff, and I'd also like to have items from other designers on consignment. (Though it will be a couple of months at least, go ahead and email me if you're interested: natasha@grittyknits.com)

I bought some great new fibers the other day at the White Rock Weaving Center. Some really great, lofty alpaca/silk roving, a bag of rainbow-dyed locks, and 8 ounces of yak. Ren & Stimpy fans, sing along now: "Our country reeks of trees; Our yaks are really large, and they smell like rotting beef carcasses..." Here's the yak blended with the alpaca/silk:

Here's some (NON-handspun) baby llama drying in my shower:

And here are my first and second attempts at spinning the uncarded locks. First, I spun blobs into natural merino roving to get the hang of it, and then I spun the rest of the bag into one giant furry skein (in rainbow order, of course):

Let's see, what else... Adam and I saw Cloverfield today. I really liked it. The only complaint I have is that the shaky handheld camera work made me almost as queasy as I was after seeing the Blair Witch Project, so I wish I'd had my knitting with me to have something to look down at when I needed a break from looking at the screen. Sadly, my movie shawl, which I began knitting for this very purpose, has gotten too big to haul to the theater. It outgrew the purse I keep it in, and I must now finish it at home watching rented movies and tv. The most recent stripe was completed during... wait for it now... AMERICAN GLADIATORS. <head hangs in shame>

This year at the Woolie Ewe's end-of-year sale, I only bought one bag of yarn!

...except that it was a garbage bag filled so far beyond capacity that it almost wouldn't close. How can you resist 50% off? Sale day was 9 solid hours of frantic yarn selling, so I rationalized that I deserved all that new yarn as a reward. And I believe we had our earliest customer ever this year--the line formed at 10pm the night before.

For Christmas, Adam got Rock Band for the xbox. I always thought I was a crummy singer, but this confirms it beyond a shadow of a doubt. I will leave the singing to professionals from now on, such as the Old 97s, whom we are seeing on new year's eve. Yay!

I signed my first autograph today! I feel silly even mentioning it, but I was totally flattered that someone asked me to sign their Son of Stitch 'N Bitch book.

Oh yeah, and also happy birthday, Hollie!

I did something tonight I have never done before: I filled my bulky flyer past its capacity. I felt so stupid, yet so liberated. I was like Cosmo Kramer when he and the car salesman drove until they were out of gas. I filled it to its usual breaking point with yarn, and made a last minute decision to en-boucle-fy it by plying it with thread. Except I forgot that yarn magically blooms to larger than it's previous size when I ply it, so halfway through the skein, my flyer stopped sucking the yarn in. I had to spin a foot or two, stop the wheel, manually turn the bobbin, then spin again. It even overflowed out the sides by accident a few times and I had to squish it back toward the center. Behold: