sweetgeorgia

Shiny + New

So many people had such a rough 2008, I’m happy to see that 2009 is finally here. It’s with great excitement that I start this year and start in a direction that I have long wished and waited for. For years now, I have been asked to teach dye classes and such, and for years now, I have wanted to be able to offer lessons, classes, workshops, and dye days. So, now with the new studio in place I am offering classes this spring. I’ll be teaching a series of essential dye classes for dyeing protein fibres, cellulose fibres, and also using natural dyes. Take a single one or take them all. They are a pre-requisite for signing up for open studio time or for the future advanced dye classes that I will be offering.

Also on the schedule are classes in drop spindling and wheel spinning! A few years ago, I realized that the commercial yarns I fell in love with were too expensive for me to buy and so I learned to dye and spin my own yarns to my own preferences and specifications. Learn to make your own handspun and you’ll be able to create exactly what you want, starting with the materials and colours you love. Ultimately, you free your creativity. I have included Louet Octo Drop Spindles in the drop spindle class, but you can always upgrade to a Schacht Hi-Lo Spindle if you prefer. And in the wheel spinning class, you are welcome to bring your own wheel or use one of our wheels — a Schacht Ladybug, Louet Victoria, or Louet Julia.

We’re also running three special spinning classes in spinning for sock yarn, spinning luxurious and exotic fibres, and also colour for spinners. Colour for Spinners is something I’ve always wanted to run… a full day of playing with the drum carder, combs, blending solids to get marls, and stripping handpainted rovings for self-striping yarns!

• » See the complete schedule of classes on our Google Calendar
• » Register for classes online here

Also new this season is our SweetGeorgia Fibre Club! We are currently taking a limited number of club members for this February to April offering of unique hand-dyed fiber. Each month, an exclusive colourway will be delivered to your doorstep for your handspinning (or felting) joy. I’ll be setting up a little blog, Ravelry and Flickr groups for this, so keep a look out for it.

Being snowed in by crazy (CRAZY) Vancouver weather over the past few weeks has actually allowed me time to work on my own projects. I’m actually slowly back to knitting and I started this tiny little February Baby Sweater over the holidays. It’s knit in two strands of SweetGeorgia Superfudge yarn, a light fingering weight yarn, that has been kettle dyed in lac. Similar to another natural bug dye, cochineal, lac is a small scale insect that can be found on Ficus trees. It gives a more muted colour than cochineal and results in a beautiful rose or burgundy colour. The EZ pattern is (pithy and) dead easy which also helps.

Finally, thank you to everyone who responded to my last post on gratitude. I am very pleased to announce that Sulicat, self-proclaimed fibre enthusiast and creative dork, was our randomly selected winner for the bloggy, yarny prize.

Following Elizabeth Zimmerman’s short letters and instructions, I was delighted to read her closing words… “Keep knitting and stay calm.” With all that is shiny and new this year, there is also excitement and nervousness… I am anticipating good things… and will keep knitting and stay calm.

Top 5 for 2008

Year by year, we grow. We grow into ourselves. Hopefully with each year we grow more and more into authentic versions of ourselves. For me, this year has been an incredible opportunity to express the most authentic version of myself. To craft whenever and however I like, not necessarily being tied to the popularity or push of knitting, but unconciously choosing an older, slower form of craft in weaving. To choose this textile, craft and art as a means and way of living. Maybe the concept of “authentic version” of yourself is quite selfish… maybe it translates into being able to do whatever you want, whenever you want, with whomever you want… including sometimes choosing snowboarding over working at the dispensary. But I think the concept has more to do with being honest with yourself and creating balance… being true to yourself. And every day, I meditate on how intensely blessed I am to be able to do this work that I love.

Over the past four years, I have noted my top five thoughts, ideas, favourites, whatevers… and this year, I am thinking about all the things that I am grateful for. Every day has truly been a gift and every trial has been an opportunity for me to grow. For these opportunities I am grateful.

1. I am grateful for all the wonderful, eventful, and memorable times with friends this year including everything from snowboarding at Whistler and Cypress to river rafting in Clearwater, the Pemberton Music Festival and Whistler weekends in the summer and more. Everything from the big events to the small, quiet evenings with friends.
2. I am grateful for the health and safety of my family and friends. Into the new year, I pray that each and every one of them will find peace, happiness, joy and bliss.
3. I am grateful that I have a place to live and means of transportation (even though it failed me at the side of the highway in Kamloops in the summer and is now buried under snow). After hearing about the local woman who accidentally set fire to herself trying to stay warm, I have no excuse to whine about my place being chilly. None at all.
4. I am grateful for the opportunity to try to make an honest, hardworking effort at bringing SweetGeorgia Yarns into existence, both online and in-person. This is completely new for me and I know I am making mistakes left, right and centre… missing things and missing out on things… but I will continue to do my best to make this opportunity work.
5. I am grateful for the continued support of friends, family, readers, knitters, weavers, customers, and fellow crafters. Sometimes, I am frustrated with myself for not being able to move forward faster and stronger, but this is the best that I can do with the energy and the resources that I have now.

That’s already five, but I’d also like to add that I’m grateful and excited that Kim Werker nudged and convinced me to go to TNNA in San Diego in January… I’ve never been to either. Actually, I’ll be flying to Los Angeles a few days early and driving to San Diego, possibly stopping for some surfing or yarn stores along the way. We’ll see. Having never left Vancouver for an actual yarn industry type activity, I know no one… but I’m hoping to meet a few of my heros including Cat Bordhi, Maggie Casey, and Stephanie Japel…

I am also looking forward to starting to offer spinning and weaving classes during late January and February. There are currently a ton of hand spindles in the studio, and three new spinning wheels are on the UPS truck to me. The shipment should include a Schacht Ladybug wheel, Louet Victoria, and Louet Julia spinning wheels plus a bunch of small looms. I am nervous and yet so very excited about 2009.

In grand holiday tradition, our Top 5 has become a yearly blog contest… Tell me what you are grateful for this year and maybe what you are looking forward to in 2009. Of course, I will be sending one randomly selected responder some lovely hand-dyed yarn. Please post your thoughts via the comments box below by Monday, December 31 at midnight PST.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and yours, sweetgeorgia (aka Felicia)

Second Chances

A while back, there were a couple girls who emailed me requesting special orders of some handpainted yarn. They wanted the “Kill Bill” colourway on some non-superwash wool yarn. Now, “Kill Bill” is a pretty high contrast colourway… it’s deep heavy blacks sharply painted on a bright clear yellow backdrop with distinct blood red droplets. Somehow I knew it wasn’t a colourway that was going to work on the wool yarn… the nature of the colourway and the nature of the wool itself were incompatible. But my desire to please these girls who wanted this so badly somehow overrode the part of my brain that knew this was not going to work out.

Well, it was a bit of a mess. The blacks wouldn’t take in the yarn and the excess kept running out into the yellows, making everything a bit grey/green and hazy… The red dots bled (of course, silly) and ended up being huge salmon-coloured splotches. It was devastatingly ugly. AND then I had to apologize to the girls for the yarn not turning out. All because I was too chicken to say “No” and too optimistic to think it wasn’t possible.

So the ugly abandoned yarn sat in an ugly old cardboard box with some other ugly yarn disasters, never to see the light of day.

Then this year, during the move to the studio, I excavated all my yarn from the old house… the good stuff, the undyed stuff, the old stuff, and the ugly stuff. It became so obvious that I should overdye the yarns or that I should weave them for charity things… or both. The yarn was still fabulously squishy and it was still 100% fine merino wool … in face, nothing was “wrong” with the yarn at all. It was perfect and ready to be made into something.

So, I absentmindedly dyed one skein of disaster “Kill Bill” in fuschia and another two in a kind of spruce green kind of colour. It’s kind of my fall back… overdye everything in hot pink. Hot pink saves the day. If you dye, you’ll know that overdyeing with acid dyes never knocks out the other underlying colour. It’s more like a glaze… so whatever you put on top will still allow the underlying colour to shine through. So fuschia over clear yellow gives clear red… it’s pretty exciting (to me at least). And green over yellow gives… well yellowy green. Maybe it’s the pending holiday season working its subversive and subliminal charm on me, but somehow, I ended up with the cheesiest, most cliché colour combination: holiday red and green.

Luckily, my mother was at the studio and helped me wind the back beam of the loom on Wednesday. It’s best done as a two-person job, but typically in the past, it’s been me scurrying around from the back to the front and back again repeatedly. And the back beam looks perfectly and evenly packed and solid. All my most recent weaving has been mixed up, messed up warps and so seeing this even, consistent warp has been kind of refreshing… and reminder that, yes, I can actually put on a normal warp.

Disasters can be remedied. Every yarn is still a perfect and beautiful thing. It just needs to be cared for and used for its best qualities. There are delicate subtleties in the colour of the yarn that I can’t even describe… they just have to be seen and experienced. Wonderful things can happen when you give things a second chance.

Superwash Sunday

I’ve been dyeing up some of our original colourways over the past few days and they have been posted in the shop as of about 5 minutes ago…

It’s an ALL Superwash Sock yarn update today, including our original colourways: Fondant, River, Stillwater, Snapdragon, Firefly, Rainforest, and Boheme. These colourways were fun to dye up again and I sort of miss them… it was a reunion of sorts.

Sample Knitting | Also, if anyone out there is interested in doing some sample knitting and also has a bit of experience with “loom knitting” please drop a line to Martha Burley at marthab@quarto.com.

Knit + Spin | Remember also that our little knit-in/spin-in is happening at the studio this coming Saturday from 1 pm to 4 pm! We’d love to see you there! Just drop me a line to RSVP.

Monday Meanderings

It’s Monday and my brain has become complete mush since I worked until midnight last night. Without the requisite amount of sleep, everything, and I mean everything, makes me exhausted. Even flipping through my keys to find my house key is exhausting. Sometimes I wish I had an extra arm… maybe that would make things easier. But it’s all good because the work included massive updates to the online shop:

• Speed Demon Sock yarns in both handpainted colourways and natural kettle dyed colours
• Superwash Sock yarns
• Spun Silk laceweight yarn
• Heartcore Heavy aran weight mohair and wool yarn
• Handpainted Lace yarns
• Schacht weaving shuttles, warping tools and more weaving things (we have these in-stock at the studio)

There is also more fibre and more CashSilk Lace to come, but it’ll take me some time to get those photos done and posted.

Studio Space + Rentals

The most exciting thing here is that we are now starting to take reservations for dye workspace and floor looms at the studio. You can have a look at our new one-pager site with all the details and rates. Also, you can subscribe to our Google Calendar which will show all our open hours, including exceptions to the general hours, plus upcoming events. If you are in the Vancouver Lower Mainland, we’d be happy to help you reserve a floor loom or rent a spinning wheel.

http://www.sweetgeorgiayarns.com/studio/

Knit + Spin Afternoon

And finally, I’ll be hosting a knit/spin-in on December 6th. Come spend a relaxing afternoon at the studio with your knitting or spinning! On Saturday, December 6th from 1pm to 4pm… Bring your spinning wheel, your knitting project, your questions or ideas… Feel free to browse through our resource library upstairs or play on one of the floor looms.

Over the next few days, I’ll be making up a blanket warp with “seconds” of my hand-dyed yarn. The yarn itself is still fabby, it’s just that the colours aren’t quite what I’m willing to sell… We’ll have one of the floor looms warped up for the blanket and you are welcome to come and try weaving a shot or two or twenty. Once the blanket is finished, we’ll be donating it to a homeless shelter in the Vancouver Lower Mainland. We’d love to have your participation.

Please RSVP by email to info [at] sweetgeorgiayarns [dot] com since I’ll need to know how many chairs we should supply… if you’ve seen the studio, you’ll know that seating is kinda limited, so please RSVP soon.

Dye Workshops

Soon, soon, in January, I will be offering a number of dye workshops at the studio. Everything from the absolute basics of dyeing on wool to handpainting yarns to natural dyeing. If there is something in particular you are interested in learning, drop me a line and I’ll see what I can accommodate as I put together the lesson plans. Ahh, now back to work.