Yeah, I know, I wish!   Is it funny that I made my 1000th sale during the Super Bowl???

It was time for me to have a drawing and I couldn’t get anyone’s full attention!!!!  I guess it is a very blind drawing since they were all looking at the TV —

37 entries! Thanks everyone!  And the winner, in case you can’t quite read the slip, is “Phatfiberlady.”  Congrats Jessie!!!!

My 1000th customer is Rebekah from By Rebekah with Love. Thank you!  Watch for something special in your order!

I think there is some sort of significant here – a MILESTONE that should be noted – in reaching 1,000 sales.  On this day, February 5, 2010, my Etsy shop tells me that I have 990 sales.  Ten more and that is 1,000!!!!

What is the best way to mark a MILESTONE such as this in this virtual landscape of blogs and online shops?  Yes, it is  with a CONTEST!!!  A contest with a prize that sends actual fiber into your hands!

Here is the prize, a 4 ounce roving* of Lagoon in 60% superwash merino/ 30% bamboo (from Rayon)/ 10% nylon:

So, I need to tell you the rules, right?

Let’s see:

Post a comment on this post to be eligible to win.

Contest will run until the number of sales in my Etsy shop reaches 1,000.

I will then randomly draw a winner from the entries.

That’s it!  I have no idea how long this will run so it will be interesting!  And just one thing I want to note about the way Etsy marks sales; if someone buys more the one of the same item – that is only marked as one sale.  I’m not sure why, but that is the way they do it.

Oh yeah, and I should tell you, I’m sure there will some extra treats sent out in the package to the person of the 1,000 MILESTONE sale!

(* if you are a knitter and not a spinner – please do enter anyway – we can *talk* later if your name is drawn.)

I can’t even believe how the contest entries have poured in during the week! I’ll admit that my main goal in having a contest was to spice up the activity level of my poor little blog and it sure did work. (Now, of course, the challenge will be in maintaining…) Anyway, since the contest had so much more participation (I had almost 60 entries and I typically only get 2 to 8 comments per post) than I had anticipated (mostly due to being noticed by the blog called WiKnit), I felt a bit torn. I would be so happy to send a prize off to a regular reader and commenter, but wouldn’t it be nice to send a prize off to a someone new to me? What to do? What to do? OK, really not so hard to figure out — I’m sending out 2 prizes — a silver and a gold.

Agent K and I printed out all the entries and separated them into 2 piles. One for people who have been to my blog and commented before (many whom I know in real life too!) and one for newbie visitors. Then we drew 2 winners.

The GOLD prize goes to Nicole from Bookwrym Knits! Nicole has been reading my blog for a very long time and she comments on almost every entry that I write so this is a well earned prize (I know, oh-the-torture of having to read about all the strange insects in my yard!). Thank you so much Nicole! Coincidentally, you will see, if you go to her blog, that I recently won her contest. Seriously and really — just a coincidence! You will also see that she just partook in a read-a-thon. I should have done that today to get through the book I need to read for book group tomorrow night. It is a great book and I want to read it, only it is not a book that can be rushed.

The SILVER prize goes to Terri D. from Off Jumps Jack! Yesterday was Terri’s birthday too. What a great time to win a contest! After perusing Terri’s blog and her Ravelry page, I found out a few interesting things about her. She is an Obama supporter, like myself. (Ok, well, she is probably a little more vocal about it than I am, but I working up to it…) We have both made the following items: baby surprise jacket, coronet, multidirectional scarf, and a booga bag. She lives in the the city and has 3 children. She likes all kinds of colors (which will make choosing a yarn to send to her very easy!).

OK winners, I will be contacting you to get your mailing information and any additional preferences and/or allergies. Thank you to everyone else for entering. And to all my “newbies,” welcome and I hope you will “stay” for a while!

The class

The class was fantastic! I learned so much. The workshop portion of “Rhinebeck” started on Thursday and I drove out to take Spinning for Socks with Judith MacKenzie-McCuin. If you have been reading for a while, you know I’m a bit of a stalker when it comes to famous fiber artists and Judith was extremely “stalk-worthy.” There were a couple little glitches in the morning – I parked a bit far away from the class building and I was running late. I rushed to the class only to find that I need not have worried as the workshop was also starting late. The classes were held in a large building with the “rooms” divided by curtains so it was also a bit difficult to hear at times. Judith was recovering from a cold so I really had to concentrate to hear. The other thing I forgot was a notebook and so I found myself writing all that I could on little scraps of paper. Other than those few things, I thoroughly enjoyed my day.

She started by teaching us the attributes of a good sock yarn. She talked about top versus roving. This part was especially interesting to me as I’m never quite sure how to label things in my Etsy shop. I buy some fibers as roving and some as top. Most people search for handpainted fiber on Etsy by using the word “roving” so I always want to include that. What she taught was that once top, which has all its fibers aligned parallel and straight and is steamed and pressed, is hand dyed and washed, it is no longer top. It would have to be recombed to realign all the fibers to be labeled again as top. This was when I made a big “note to self” to only use the word roving in my listings for now on. It is a relief that I don’t have to worry about that technicality anymore.

As you can imagine, one of the attributes of a good sock yarn is strength. We talked about worsted spinning versus woolen spinning and discovered that worsted spinning would be a good choice for socks. Thus, much of the class was dedicated to learning worsted spinning techniques and I learned to spin in a way I had never tried before.

As we tried some different fibers, she went around the room helping all the students. There were 10 of us in all, though I have to admit that I only learned the name of my neighbor to the left (Cindy) and didn’t really get a chance to mingle much throughout the day. I discovered that I need to work on which hand I hold my fiber supply. Even though I’m right handed, I spin with my left hand and hold my fiber with my right hand. I’m not sure why this is, I did try both ways on Thursday to see if the switch would be easy, but my hands cramped. The question I have is if my hands cramped because they are not used to spinning that way or if the reason I spin with my left hand is to avoid the hand cramping and give them break from their usual roles.

We were all allowed to take enough merino top to make a pair of socks using a spinning technique called marling (not sure about the spelling on that). This is when you spin multiple colors into your sock yarn by holding 2 or 3 different color tops in one hand while spinning across the tops of each (yes, the tops of the tops) and then switching out the colors so you have 4 or more colors all together. It is not easy, but the effects are pretty. Here is a photo of a sample of my yarn (3 ply) and my fibers that I took at home the next day (the lighting in the workshop classroom was not very good for my camera).

We also spent a lot of time talking about plying. Multiple plies are good for socks and we got to learn some new plying techniques to add to our “bags.” I would highly recommend to any spinner to take as many classes as you can because there are some highly knowledgeable teachers out there and they have so much to give. You can never have too many spinning tricks in your bag and you never know what you are going to need to know for any given fiber, project, or situation. So take that class you have always wanted to take — it will be worth it!

So now, I’m off to go tell my Gold and Silver finalists the good news and visit some of your blogs! Thank you again for sharing your love of October with me. It is a great month!

It seems as if knitters agree – there is not much not to love about October.  After all it is the official start of the cool weather fiber season.  Of course, non-knitters also love October too — pumpkins, fall leaves, apples, Halloween – oh the fun!  So far, I’ve had an overwhelming response to my contest, but if you haven’t entered, yet, don’t worry – it doesn’t close until the 18th so go ahead and enter away!  Everyone seems to love thinking about the things they love in October (also sometimes known as Socktober and the month that contains National Rhinebeck Day).  I can’t help but wonder what would happen if I repeated this contest in March.  Can anyone think of three things to love about March except that it is one month before April when the spring Sheep and Wool Festivals start to hit?

Hey guess what?  This month is flying by so fast that I haven’t even had time to post about the spinning class that I am taking, AND it is tomorrow!  I have to get ready!!!!  I’m taking Spinning for Socks with Judith MacKenzie-McCuin.  I’m looking forward to the drive over to Rhinebeck – no highways and gorgeous foliage.  I have the audiobook of No Idle Hands to listen to in the car.  There are so many great spinning retreats and festivals this fall but a lot of them book up early and you have to plan way in advance which is not easy for a mom of 3 sporty girls and who sometimes works on weekends.  I feel very lucky to have found a class that I wanted to take that was not sold out and was not on a Saturday!  I can’t wait to go and tell you all about it.  I hope I remember my camera and remember to take photos.  I am not going to be able to go to the actual Sheep and Wool Festival this weekend, however. I have to work on Saturday and will probably just have too much stuff to do on Sunday, but I can’t wait to hear about it from all you you who will be going!

OK, I better get going as I have a very busy day today but I just wanted to let you know about another thing that happens in October that I didn’t know about, and you may not know about either. Apparently, October is the time of year for baby snails!  Look what I found last week when I was cleaning up my solar dyeing bins:

There were hundreds of these tiny, itsy, bitsy snails all in my bin, on the edge of the bin, and on the bricks near our basement door  – I just thought they were little pebbles at first but when they were clinging to the bin, I was like, oh my, what kind of weird thing do we have now.  I was very happy when I looked closer and found they were just baby snails and nothing really yucky.

Here is a close up – they are really very tiny — just a few millimeters in circumference.

And here is the oddball snail. All of the other baby snails were regular snail shape but this one had a tall conical type of shell.  Does anyone know anything about snail genetics?  I’ve probably spent way too much time looking for clues on google but haven’t found anything that fits this situation yet.

Well – enjoy another wonderful October day and don’t forget to enter my contest if you haven’t already done so!

Hello and Happy Columbus Day! My favorite holiday! I wish all holidays could be like this one. There are no preparations, no decorations, no cards, no special foods, no presents, and no expectations. Columbus was one cool guy and I love him! I don’t care what he really did or didn’t discover because he just has one awesome holiday and that is it.

I haven’t had a blog contest in quite a while so I thought that to spice up your Columbus Day, it would be a great time to sponsor one. For this contest, all you need to do is to submit a comment on this post. Please include in your comment 3 things that you LOVE about October. The last day to enter will be Saturday, October 18 and I’ll throw the names in a hat and have a junior agent draw a winner. I’ll put together a special prize package tailored to the likings of the winner so also please include what your favorite hobby is (i.e. spinning, knitting, scrapping, eating…) if you would like something in particular. I’m also going to include a few gleanings from the OneThing CT Expo that we went to in Hartford yesterday.

Our BIG OneThing that we are going to do in our family is to sign up for CTCleanEnergyOptions. This means that we will choose one of the 2 clean energy providers that are available to us and that we will start paying them for our electricity instead of our standard electric company. All our electricity will be generated by either wind power or hydroelectric power. Now, it is a little confusing how this works – it is not like we will directly get that electricity sent to our home. I guess the best way to explain this is to post the info from their FAQ:

Q: If a customer signs up for the CTCleanEnergyOptions, does that mean that clean energy is being delivered directly to that customer’s home or business?
A: No. The clean energy that is being generated is being delivered to the electric system and this will displace an equal amount of electricity that would have been generated from traditional sources, such as nuclear, coal, oil and natural gas-fired generating plants. Once in the system, the electricity from clean sources (like the electricity produced from any generator) follows the path of least resistance and, thus, cannot be delivered to a specific location (home or business).

Ok, so I know what you are wondering – what is the catch. Well, there really is no catch except that it is a bit more expensive. But, it is not really all that much more expensive – only 8 to 9 dollars a month and I’ve already taken account of that in our budget and downgraded our Netflix account accordingly.

Quite a few towns in CT have joined the 20% by 2010 Campaign which mean they have made a pledge “to obtain at least 20 percent of the electricity for all municipal facilities from clean renewable energy sources by the year 2010.” If you live in CT, your town may also be participating. Also, for every 100 residents who join your town will get a free solar panel for municipal use.

Renewable energy programs have different names in different states so if you don’t live in Connecticut, you may still be able to do this. I’d love to hear about what your states have to offer if you know…

Just to show that there is fiber everywhere – these adorable sheep were part of an exhibit sponsored by the new Science Center of CT. They were so cute! We only caught half of the program, but I think they are Canadian Sheep (See how they are wearing earmuffs and hats?). They Told us about some great things coming up with windpower (I don’t know about you, but I think that wind turbines are graceful and beautiful) and hydrogen power. They were pretty funny actually – very expressive.

Ok, so I will leave you to think about what you love about October! Don’t forget that you can’t win if you don’t play! Here are some photos our local fair from last weekend for inspiration:

Agent B is somewhere in that band playing her trombone.

Librarysarie and I independently took photos of the same bunny!

Three of a kind!

IHA entered his hot peppers — his first fair entry ever in his 40 years of life. He won third place, but has big goals for next year.

Thanks for reading and have a great Columbus Day!