sweetgeorgia

The Sweat Shop.

There’s this running joke among my friends where everytime someone mentions “The Sweet Shop”, someone else will say “Oh, you mean ‘The Sweat Shop’?” Tease as they might, the DH, my friends and my family are always so supportive of my wacky ideas. When I first opened shop in September, Jen was one of the first to send me her congratulations and it’s a message I go back and read from time to time.

I can’t really say that I’m a one-woman dye/spin/design operation because I just couldn’t exist without the support of the people around me. From Glenda (also a knitter!) at the print shop who printed all my new yarn tags so I wouldn’t have to continue hand-trimming each and every one… to my bookkeeper who has worked through my exasperating pile of receipts to get things ready for my accountant… to Richard who re-skeined yarn pretty much every evening last week and tied the yarn tags… to Michelle who stayed up with us until about 10:30 pm on Sunday night helping us package the yarn orders for shipping on Monday. I owe her a really good beer.

If you bought yarn on Thursday, you’ll see the new tags… with the colourway written in Michelle’s delightful handwriting. I took the opportunity to print tags for some new base yarns too… so look for up to seven new base yarns (silks, silk and merino, kid mohair lace, yum yum yum…) coming to the shop in the next few weeks.

By the sweat of my brow, I am grateful everyday.

Shop, shop, shop

Phew! As of this morning at 2 am, the shop is now sold out!

My server and I were completely overwhelmed by the response at 12 noon yesterday — in fact, the server crashed and I had to call the server guys to get them to reboot it! He seemed mildly amused that the machine was conquered by yarn shoppers. I didn’t find it particularly amusing though — I was freaking out.

Hmmm, I’m going to need to find a way to prevent future tech issues. It may involve moving the shop site to it’s very own server and allowing for more connections, or maybe a server cluster, or… or…

In any case, I really appreciate everybody’s support and enthusiasm for these yarns! You guys make me so happy!

Coal Harbour Socks

I’m having a most miserable week… so tired all the time but feeling very wired. I keep asking myself, “Have I had too much coffee? Have I had enough coffee? Am I hungry? Am I full?”… I just can’t tell anymore. This could all be attributed to the fact that the office two doors down from me is being renovated and the constant drilling is driving me insane. There is sawdust everywhere which has made the whole floor smell like a hamster cage.

There’s also some low-level craziness around here as Jet Li and Jason Statham are filming in and around our building and also at Brioche bakery & café across the street. In fact, if you walk by the café today you’ll probably see the funky little bamboo shutters and the little Chinese entrance they added to the front of the café. Very odd. It’s kind of disappointing that with the renovation of the suite on my floor, the production people opted to use a different floor for one of the scenes… otherwise, there’d be Jet Li fighting evil in front of my door!

Anyway.

Maybe I will feel better today because I am wearing new socks.

These socks are so new that I haven’t even darned in the two ends yet. I put them on this morning for their photo shoot and they were so comfy, I just couldn’t take them off (plus we were running late) but maybe I can bring myself to weave in the ends tonight. Richard was very amused watching me take pictures of my feet.

Coal Harbour Socks

• Pattern: Wendy’s Generic Toe-Up Pattern
• Yarn: SweetGeorgia Yarns Superwash Sock in “Coal Harbour”
• Needles: US 1 / 2.5 mm Addi Turbos
• Notes: No changes to Wendy’s pattern. I knit a 6 inch leg and still had 18g of each skein leftover. So if I had more patience, I could have knit a way longer leg. I was also a little impatient with the foot, so I could have knit about 1/2″ more foot before starting the short-row heel.

And in Sweet Shop news, the next big shop update will be Thursday, April 6th at 12 noon PST! There will be about 20 skeins of Superwash Sock, 35 skeins of Speed Demon and 10 skeins of Handpainted Sock yarn. Of course, I am still working out kinks with this new setup and I really appreciate everybody’s wonderful feedback and suggestions. One of the changes is that once yarns are sold out, they won’t appear in the product listings anymore — this way, you only see the stuff that’s available. Yay. There’s a new page that shows all the sold out yarns only.

Ok. I’m off to get more coffee from the film set… I think.

New Year, New Site, New Yarns

It’s a new year, a new start and a new website and mailing list for SweetGeorgia Yarns! After a bit of encouragement from Blossom I finally decided to practice what I preach and set up a website that displays all the colourways I’m dyeing on a regular basis now. I also set up a mailing list so that people can find out when the Etsy shop is updated.

You can see the new website at http://www.sweetgeorgiayarns.com. Eventually, I’ll move all the shopping from Etsy to this new site, but in the meantime… you can special order any of those colourways in either the Speed Demon superwash sock yarn or the regular non-superwash sock yarn.

Visit the updated Etsy shop today too for the new sock yarns in SLAYER, WILLOW, RUSTED, DRAGON, FIREFLY, JETSET, VIOLETS, ROCK GARDEN, and GRAPEFRUIT. There are also two skeins of worsted weight wool dyed in RIVER.

More stuff will be posted soon!

Speed Demon.

We can’t all knit as fast as Cara. And lately, I’ve been feeling like the slowest knitter in the world! My Jaywalkers? I’ve just turned the heel on the first sock… and I started nearly three weeks ago. So, I was positively giddy when I received a shipment of superwash sock yarn to dye. See the yarn dyed in Fondant:

These are toe-up socks knit on US 6(!) / 4mm Addi’s and I’m getting 6 sts/in. The socks are 46 sts around. What does that mean? That means super-fast knitting! That means socks in a day! So I wanted to share the joy joy joy and so I’ve posted a couple skeins of this new “Speed Demon” sock yarn in the Sweet Shop for you. The best part? They are superwash, so no worries about felting. Happy day all around.

My horoscope said I would be productive these past few days and look, see, I’ve been productive:

I spent the weekend dyeing about ten pounds of yarn! Much of it is up in the Sweet Shop today — there’s Slayer, Willow, Elf, Coal Harbour, Marina, and more… for most colourways, I dyed at least two skeins. And there is lots more coming in the next few days. By the way, go check out Kira’s beautiful Misty Garden scarf that she knit out of a skein of Marina…

Oh! And those of you that requested skeins of River or Fondant be set aside for you, I have skeins of both in superwash or non-superwash for you to pick from!