sweetgeorgia

Top 5 for 2010

It’s “year in review” time again and this year has been especially exciting for me as I watch this little yarn company grow towards my vision. This year, in SweetGeorgia Top Five tradition, I’d like to share the top 5 learning experiences of 2010.

Learning how to dye outside the box

Vancouver being both the host of the 2010 Winter Games and also a hot spot for Hollywood film-making afforded me a few choice dyeing commissions earlier this year. Despite having a full dye schedule, I squeezed out extra hours to some how dye yarn for the Red Riding Hood film that is coming out next year. For the film, I did some ikat-style tying and dyeing on blank singles wool yarn that the film buyer had shipped express to me. I had to tie and dye it and send it back the very next day. Talk about dyeing under pressure. I am grateful for these special opportunities and the chance to push the boundaries of what and how I dye. (And I’m grateful for my dehumidifier too).

Learning to pack up and go

We attended the FibresWest show in Abbotsford for the first time ever as a vendor and found it to be immensely rewarding to meet and greet knitters and spinners first-hand. It required packing up what felt like the entire studio — all the shelving and all the yarn — and transporting it to Abbotsford. It’s not easy. And I discovered that my tiny Ford Focus is of no use in these situations. I’m ever so grateful to James and Teresa for designing and setting up our booth and for my parents and Dan for helping out during the entire weekend. It gives me hope that I’ll be able to do this again for 2011 and that hopefully it won’t be as much work as last year.

Learning not to be cheap

Well, I’ve heard people say that you should have a bookkeeper at the ready on the day you start your business… and well, I didn’t. In between freaking out about my studio rent, paying my mortgage, and having enough cash flow to buy supplies, hiring a bookkeeper wasn’t the first thing on my list way back in 2008 (or 2005, if you want to get specific). But it should have been. I think this is one business lesson I might need to learn over and over again… Surround yourself with good, smart people. Don’t scrimp on talent. Stick with what you’re good at and hire for what you’re not good at. I think I’m going to need reminders of this all year long.

Learning not to be shy

Over the years, I seem to have become intensely introverted. I sort of blame social media. Being “present” on Twitter, Facebook, Ravelry, or even this blog allows me to connect with others in the knitting and spinning community while still sort of hiding a lot of my insecurities. Going to visit Lettuce Knit and meeting Megan, Laura (Cosmic Pluto), Denny, and Stephanie (Yarn Harlot) was wonderful and fun, but it also revealed to me how shy I’ve become. It’s going to take a big, big push, but I’d like to finally find a local knitting group that I can attend so that I can actually talk to other knitters about knitting, rather than simply tweeting about it.

Learning to ask for help

The absolute scariest thing I’ve done all year is hire someone, but honestly, it’s been one of the most rewarding. All year, my mother has been helping me out at the studio, nearly every day since her retirement. If you’ve visited the studio this past year, it’s likely you’ve met my mom… she who is eager to show off her newly finished shawl or who is busy braiding and packaging your fibre club deliveries. But even with all her help, we’ve been literally swamped with yarn. And so, when it became a possibility, we asked Carina to come on board and help too. Carina was a long-time customer and weaving student and spent a lot of time at the studio last year renting my Spring loom. Since she left her job, I’ve been very grateful that she’s agreed to come to the studio and help twist, tie and package our yarns. I still have great fears about not knowing too much about “management” but it’s something I’m learning and eager to learn more about.

I have so much to be grateful for. Not a single day goes by that I’m not reminded how incredibly blessed I am to be doing the work I love to do. Every day, our studio is filled with colour and fibre and all the things that I’ve loved for the past six years. Looking forward to more.

Year One

Technically, today is exactly one year from the grand opening of the SweetGeorgia Yarns Studio. It’s been four years since I started dyeing yarn as SweetGeorgia Yarns, a year and two months since I moved into the studio and exactly a year since we had our open house. It’s been a whole series of learning opportunities and growing pains, for sure, but I imagine that we’ll always be changing and learning. With my personality, there’s a lot of attempting to run before walking and a lot of falling on my face in this business. But there is also the joy of discovering new things and meeting amazing people in the process.

One of the first challenges I had was trying to define or describe this space to people. Located on the fourth floor of a live/work building, it’s not a typical retail environment. It is an industrial-looking workspace, complete with concrete floors and walls, where we make hand-dyed yarns and spinning fibre. But I know that people came to the studio expecting to see every single yarn in every single colour and often I received (and still receive) phone calls asking if I carry Rowan yarns. No, it’s not that kind of yarn store. Maybe one day, but not today.

And so it was very important this past year for us to begin working with real, beautiful yarn stores again. I so much want for people to be able to touch and feel the yarns in person and to be able to experience that in their local yarn store. Nowadays, when you come to our studio, you will very often see (and smell!) yarn drying, yarn in the middle of being packaged or yarn being dyed. There actually is just a little bit of yarn on hand for retail sale. Most of what is in the studio now is being made to go out to shops. I love that the yarn shops can focus on beautiful displays, great customer service and keeping their shelves nicely stocked. And I love that by working in this way, I can focus on making beautiful yarn for those shops.

Absolutely, you can come visit our studio and see work in progress. And absolutely you can come see colours in person and make a custom order. And definitely, you can request dyed-to-order yarns and fibres from our studio online. But I encourage you to visit the fine local yarn stores that are now carrying SweetGeorgia Yarns… including L’Oisive Thé in Paris, France… our first time in France.

So this is kind of why we didn’t host a big party at the studio on this very rainy Vancouver Sunday. Well, because the studio floor is being taken up by yarn racks and bins of undyed yarn.

Instead, we are celebrating our Year One anniversary with a brand new website, a Free Shipping over $100 sale (for US & Canada), and a new pattern in Twist Collective featuring our Superwash Sport yarn. I’m sure that in the upcoming year we’ll have a few more falling-on-face-type experiences, but we are committed to focusing on developing more beautiful yarns and fibres, distributing our yarns and fibres through our website and fine retailers, and also designing more knitting patterns to inspire you. Happy anniversary.

Literally exploding with colour.

The studio is seriously oozing with colour. I finished dyeing the March Fibre Club this past week and it looks like a million gummy worms have taken over the studio. I love that. AND, I’m in love with this handspun merino/silk yarn. I spun it to worsted-weight and it looks like there is 50g of the greens and 75g of the reds. I am so tempted to spin more of this fibre and weave a humongous merino+silk blanket to live in.

And I’m so excited to present this series of semi-solid colourways for the SweetGeorgia sock yarns as a dye-to-order series. Available in the Superwash Sock or the slightly thicker, Superwash Sport, we’ll be dyeing as many skeins of these colours as you like. Over time, I’m looking to expand the series and also add back our more variegated colourways. I know that knitters want what they want when they want it, so I’m hoping to provide this option to many of you.

From left to right: China Doll, Raspberry, Pistachio, Saffron, Tourmaline, Orchid, Boysenberry. As for the colours, I think I was subliminally inspired by the Visit Mexico campaign that has been omnipresent in Vancouver buses. I’ve never been to Mexico, but my love for fish tacos seems to make me think I might like it.

SweetGeorgia Studio Opening!

Thank you so much to everyone who took the time out of their busy days (it was civic election day!) to come down and visit the studio this past Saturday. I was overwhelmed with the support of old friends, new friends, old weaving classmates, pharmacy colleagues, dancers, online knitter friends, and family. Half an hour into the opening, we were standing pretty much shoulder-to-shoulder in the space and my heart was so happy but also racing. Here are a few photos from the afternoon:

I feel so very blessed to have such wonderful family and friends… none of this would have been possible without them. My mom baked all the cookies and cakes and prepared all the nibbles and drinks so that I could focus on getting all the new loom equipment built and arranged. Friends came over to help label yarn, move the heavy things and fix up the studio. It was really quite amazing.

Finally, after all these years, Kim Werker of Interweave Crochet and Crochet Me fame and I met up for the first time. She is hilarious, generous and so engaging… especially the bits about Joss Whedon. I’m looking forward to hearing her interview soon!

Donald from WeaveThings also came up from Washington to visit me! I’m humbled by the efforts people made to come visit for the afternoon. Thank you so much.

###Shop Update!

Lest you think I have forgotten about the online shop, never! I’ve just posted an update today and you can find some of the new yarns and fibres that I’m going to be stocking regularly:

Superfudge: The ultimate super skein. It’s 100% superwash merino wool. It’s 1/2 lb… that’s 1120 yards in 225g of light fingering weight wool. Make some super long knee socks or knit a substantial and squishy shawl or scarf.

Heartcore: A huge 1/2 lb (225g) skein of light worsted or DK weight yarn. 55% mohair and 45% wool with approximately 485 yards per skein. Knit a hat and matching wrist warmers… or some warm, hardwearing socks for winter.

Superwash BFL: It’s superwash. It’s Bluefaced Leicester. It’s the best of everything rolled in one. And it’s seriously the softest and fluffiest fibre I’ve ever seen.

As for the studio, I will be posting about the facilities there soon. We’ll be offering the space up for people to reserve dye workspace, the new Schacht Baby Wolf loom, the Leclerc Nilus 36″ loom, and all the carding and warping equipment.

For now, if you would like to come visit, we are officially open on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 9 am to 6 pm. Come visit us at 4th and Main.

Revamp

The dust is settling now… I think. I’ve been reworking the blog, trying to drop in all the ideas that I’ve had for a while now, but managed to break nearly all the photo links and things. I’m working on fixing it all! In the meantime, if you haven’t yet changed your subscription settings, the sweetgeorgia feed is now at http://feeds.feedburner.com/sweetgeorgia. Sorry for the inconvenience… and don’t breathe in any dust.