Hat Season Returns

Last year at about this time, I realized that hat season was back and with it the need to have lots of hats available to my gallery customers.  At that time I challenged myself to knit 30 hats in 30 days.  I did - plus kept knitting untill I knit about 50 hats between early November and Christmas.  I'm hoping to do the same this year.

I spent a bit of time last weekend making up hat kits.  Matching yarns to patterns of my own design, I can now grab a bag and knit a hat. I got a headstart, having knit about 6 hats already this week.  So this weekend, I'll start a spreadsheet to log my production.  I brought a kit to work today - a pink & teal 'Show Off' hat.

If you are short on things to do, keep an eye on this site to track Hat-a-Thon 2011. I'l be posting my progress toward my new lofty goal - 50 Hats in 50 Days!

Enough With the Hats Already

My 30 Hats in 30 Days challenge continued well into December, even picking up the pace to 21 hats in 16 days.  I will deliver another dozen hats today to my best customer.  After that I'll be taking a wee break to do a bit of my own knitting. 

I ended as I began, with hats for guys, particularly my ubiquitous 'Boyfriend Hat' and several variations of the new 'Skater Boy' series in solids, color blocks and even with a brim, shown here in blue, but badly edited just to be visible.  The room was too dark!.  Some are close fitting, some over-size, but they are all destined for heads around town and points distant.  One of the glories of living in a place that people like to visit, is that the market doesn't get saturated.

I also worked on the design of a new felt hat.  For years I have knit a deeply rolled brim that looks good and fits right and even sells quite well, but is a total snooze to knit.  So I started on a cloche style.  I think I finally got the pattern right (after 6 prototypes), so we will have to see what the market says.  No pictures yet. 

With the semester over, grades in and no begging students in my office ( I guess I got the grades right this time!), I'm happy to take a few weeks off.  I'll be spinning and knitting (for me!), dancing, traveling, cooking, and visiting with friends and family.  I plan to read some good books, watch some good movies and generally take some time off.  I MIGHT bring home a stack of journals, but no guarantees that I'll actually read them.  I certainly don't read them here!  

I'll put the Etsy shop to bed for a few days too.  I'd like to develop some new colorways or create some carded batts, but for the mean time, it will go a bit dark.  Let's let the creative juices take a break too!

Success: 30 Hats in 30 Days!

I set a challenge for myself to knit 30 hats in the month of November.  With my hats in 3 shops, I need to keep my production up for the winter hat shopping season and this was a way to stay on or even ahead of schedule.  I did it!  It was close at the end, but I managed to knit a-hat-a-day.  On November 29th, with all 30 hats completed and logged into my handy dandy Excel spreadsheet, I cast on for a felt hat in a style that I've never made before.

I also made an effort to knit from the stash as much as possible and tore through several hundred yards, so I knit down the stash too.  However since part of knitting down the stash required me to purchase more yarns to go with the stash yarns, I didn't get too far out front of that.  But all in all, a fine effort.

Only one tiny problem - a good problem to have.  Almost as fast as I have been making hats, I have been delivering them to stores and they are selling!  Of course that is the point - I can't sell them if I don't have them!  Nor do they sell piling up in a nice stack in the studio.  And as I backed off the spinning, I have very little hand spun yarn to knit my always popular guy hats - so I am still a wee bit behind.

Thanksgiving weekend was busy here at the world headquarters of Smoky Mountain Fibers.  In addition to manic hat knitting, I did a bit of dyeing and carding and spinning.  I also visited a couple of my favorite local yarn shops (one on Black Friday - Hey, 30% off and I bought some lovely silk-merino spinning fiber for a sweater for me!), spun at the Locally Grown Gallery and shipped a healthy number of orders for the Etsy shop (Thank you very much!).

I also painted my bedroom, including 2 coats on the dreaded popcorn ceiling.  I'll spare you pictures.  Although I am very happy with the results, photos of dingy off white with drywall mud over the cracks  and photos of fresh off white aren't really that exciting to anyone other than me.

Tonight is spinning night at Friends & Fiberworks.  I'll be spinning some over-dyed blue-green that looks like a really iridescent peacock. A colorway that will never be duplicated, I can assure you.  Hope the yarn is half as pretty as the roving!

A Singleton's Holiday Weekend

I admit that I am a single woman of a certain age. I like myself very much.  Yes, I wish I was taller and smarter, but in the great scheme of things, I am just fine.  This Thursday is Thanksgiving here in the USA.  Now Thanksgiving is pretty much my favorite holiday. The focus is on gratitude, food and family.  No excessive gift giving, though you can shop if you desire. Even the football really is optional.

But as my sweetie is out of town and my family lives far away, I treat this holiday as a deeply personal one.  I long ago realized that spending Thanksgiving alone is okay.  I have frequently accepted invitations to people's homes when I should not have.  I love my friends and their children, but I don't want to be tied into other family's traditions and time tables.  I want my day to myself.

So this year I decided early on that I would turn down invitations and be thankful on my own.  I will cook and eat a special meal - I even bought the smallest turkey breast I could find.  I will take a walk in the woods, enjoying being out in nature.  But I'll do it on my own terms.

My do list (in no particular order...

• Play with fiber - wash, dye, card, spin, knit.
• Paint the bedroom - taking advantage of this glorious opportunity of a long weekend.
• Read good books
• Watch a decent movie or two
• Get some exercise every day
• Call a contra dance at the Old Farmer's Ball
• Clean and organize a wee bit around the house.

There's plenty more, but not for public consumption.

I know this is not everybody's idea of how to spend Thanksgiving.  There is no travel, no picking the perfect wine, no family drama, no major overeating, no getting up at 3 am to shop on Friday morning.  But somehow I'll manage to survive - and in a newly painted bedroom  Besides, I still have a few hats to knit in the 30 Hats in 30 Days self-imposed challenge. Still on target!

Heathered Roving

I find that I love to dye and I love natural colors.  When they come together I get heather tones.  In my booth at SAFF, my heather colors sold first.  I also have good response to the oatmeal and sheep's grey roving.  This weekend I had fun dyeing oatmeal roving in the both warm and cool colors.

A few years ago I developed a line of colors that I call Andromeda Shades - colors based on the planets, and other heavenly bodies.  Two colorways are heatheres.  Mercury is blue and purple on a oatmeal base.  Uranus is orange and bronze, also on an oatmeal base.  Here they are drying on the line.


Heathered Pumpkin is just that: multidimensional orange on an off-white base.  People seem to like it for needle felted pumpkins.  It has a much more earthy feel - not even close to that international neon color that hunters wear in the field.

Oh, and hats?  Still on track.  Yesterday I knit #17.

Hats Challenge

The 30 Hats in 30 Days challenge continues unabated.  I'm having great fun in the design process - matching different yarns to make hats that look great and are fun to knit.  I'm discovering yarns in my stash and in a few different yarn shops in my local yarn shops.  I'm also spinning yarns that should work nicely in my hats.  In an earlier post, I showed off some yarns I was spinning.  Here are those yarns all knitted up.

This is the pretty, sparkly blue yarn in an all-garter stitch hat with a brim that you can turn up or not - your choice.  I added a darker blue stripe just because I had the yarn around and thought it would be pretty.  I'm wondering if both of these hats are a bit short.  I may adjust them longer - and I have the yarn.  Of course that means I have to pull out the crown and knit a few rows before I start the decreases, but I think I'll like them better.

The second hat is from the yarn I didn't like very much.  It was brown with a bit of yellow-y tan that I wished I hadn't carded in.  Guess what?  It's not bad at all knitted up.  Go figure!  Both hats are from the same recipe: all garter stitch. Just start knitting, decrease when it makes sense and don't stop until you are nearly out of yarn.

I'll continue knitting hats this weekend.  I'm still a bit ahead on my challenge, even though one day did not see a completed hat.  I spun instead.  I have a plan to go to the WNC Farmers Market this weekend and spin in front of my friend Sally's gallery shop, Locally Grown.  It gets me out of the house on quiet weekends and is good for both our businesses!

Also on the weekend's agenda - dying, delivering. working in the yard and attending a event to honor a local teacher.  Since I nominated her, I think I should go!

Really - It's not about me this time...

This Etsy treasury celebrates Appalachia and the items in it are wonderful representations of the mountains here in Western North Carolina and the whole mountain region.  The killer, handmade banjo is a great reminder of the old time music that I love - and love to dance to.  The apple butter shows one of the foodways that live on.  The pottery, quilts and baskets represent the handmade life that existed long before the craft mafia took over this here town.  Not that I am complaining, being a card carrying member of that gaggle of renegades.  Thanks fiftyleven,  for making me and my sheep's grey roving part of your thoughtful treasury.

The 30 hats in 30 days quest continues.  I'm a little tiny bit ahead.  Could be I'll take time for carding and spinning this weekend.  Of course, that's what got me into this hat deficit.  But if I'm going to use the yarn for hats, it's okay.  Right?

2 Days 2 Hats

The Challenge is on: 30 Hats in 30 Days.  As today is November 3rd, I have the first 2 hats to show you.  Both are the same pattern. but are different in fiber and size.

November One is my Windy City pattern in purple worsted with a band of Plymouth Expressions.  I like this multicolored soft, textured yarn.  Although I am usually not a fan of unnatural fibers, this yarn is 55% wool and 45% acrylic and is quite soft.  The colors are very nice - expect to see a good bit of it in the coming month.

November Two is Windy City again, but sized larger and in different yarns.  This time it's made of Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride and Ironstone Sunset, a glittery mohair blend.  The color is a deep red and super pretty.  Because most of my hats are for sale, I try to make some larger and some a bit smaller.  After all, people have different size heads. 

The hat for November 3rd? Already on the needles.  Don't worry, this month will not be a parade of similar hats. I'm keeping a spreadsheet (what a geek!) for myself, so I'll only show off the ones I particularly like.  I admit, I do make a lot of Windy City Hats. They are quite flattering on a number of women. Plus, two of the shops that carry my hats also sell the patterns.  A few nice variations on display help sell hats as well as patterns.  If you like this pattern and want to make your own, visit my Etsy shop. It's a great way to use up  30 yards of a pretty yarn already in the stash.

By the way, this hat is looking for a new name.  I originally called in 'Windy City' because a friend who wore hers in Chicago says it really stays on.  But there is another Windy City hat on Ravelry so I need to change the name.  Any ideas?