New Colors! (and more to come)

This, frankly seasonable, weather has gotten me back into dyeing with madder (orange to red) and weld (bright bright yellow) in the hopes that their brightness will lift me out of the blahs. And so, here we are: two new colors that I love.

New colors make me ponder the issue of naming. Like many folk, I often mock the color names in clothing catalogues.  For this winter for example, JCrew (always a font of mockable color names) is offering a sweater in "retro orange" and "roasted cider", leading one to ponder which shade of orange is "retro" and how on earth one can "roast cider" (this is more evocative of a cooking accident then a color).   But now that I am on the other side, I find myself feeling a bit more sympathetic to whichever poor person came up with "spiced chartreuse" (again with the cooking accidents).   On the one hand, I could avoid the whole thing by just giving my colors numbers, which I was thinking may become an organizational nightmare due to my poor organizational skills, but if I assign each color a number, and then give each variation I end up with a second number, than it actually won't be that complicated.  On the other hand, it is much harder to get excited about "3-01" than "retro orange", which isn't all that far off from my new orange, which I think I'm going to call "tiger lily" even though the tiger lilies that grow outside my window have a slightly pinker cast than my yarn.

Mock away.

As for my new red color, I'm going basic, and calling it "vermillion", because it is.

Thank yous,The Big Chill, Wovember, and more (a bit of a round-up)

Firstly;  This site "went live" last week, and people amazing about forwarding it along to friends and family and facebook pages, and have just been generally amazing and supportive about the whole endeavor.  I have been remiss in thanking everyone for that, for which I apologize.  Thank you, thank you, thank you. Secondly, exciting news:  My yarn and I will be heading down to Portland Maine on December 3 to take part in The Big Chill craft fair at the Mayo Street Arts Center!  I am incredibly excited about this, both for the opportunity to sell my yarn, and to get a chance meet the other vendors, all of whom seem amazing.   I am also incredibly honored that Upton Yarns was featured on the Big Chill blog yesterday in a really lovely article.  The whole thing is just charming.  So, if anyone reading this happens to be in Portland Maine on December 3, please come by and have a look.

Thirdly, the ever awesome Kate Davies apparently shares one of my pet peeves, the problem of clothing companies marketing items as "wool" when in fact they contain very little to none, and has written about it far more eloquently then I ever could here.  Even better, she has created a web site devoted to encouraging a more honest use of the term "wool", including a petition and a wall of shame for those of us who need to vent our frustration at the egregious mis-use of terminology.  And, as a follow up to the debate about whether "wool" can also be used to refer to the fiber from alpaca and such, she did a bit of research on the history of the term "wool" and wrote a fascinating, here.

Fourthly: My first pattern is in the works.  I am hoping to have a couple of knitting patterns for the Big Chill.  Having a dead line is just the kick I need to actually sit down and write out the patterns.  I have found that designing and knitting is the fun part, and that actually writing the thing down is something on par with web site design in terms of my interests.  But, I do really love this hat, and the pattern for it really will be available by December third.

- Sarah

And I Believe I've "Gone Live"

There is a wonderful E.B. White essay (actually, most of E. B. White's essays are wonderful - and if you have not read them I suggest that you remedy this post haste) about his farm in Brooklin Maine, and about his many chickens, upon which he doted, producing so many eggs that he had no choice but to sell them wholesale to the local general store, and the resulting embarrassment he felt each time he brought more eggs to the store which the owner in turn was then forced to pay for a sell on to the public.  I often feel this way about the things that I make.  I like making stuff, but then, once the fun part is over, I have stuff. I like finding gorgeous fleeces, sending them out to be spun up, and dyeing them; I love the magic and anticipation of it all, but then I have yarn and I can only knit so much, and my weaving room only has so much storage and anyway the whole point of this exercise was to make yarn and sell it.  It's the "and sell it" part that I've never been good at.  But I love making yarn, and I love making yarn that I want to buy, and so with some trepidation and embarrassment, I am setting this site lose in the hopes that you will buy yarn, thus enabling me (with the worst connotations of that word) to make more. So here it is.  Please check back often. In addition to what is already here, I have patterns to post, and more colors of yarns, and dyed wool for felting, all of which will be making their way onto the site shortly.

Sarah

And now I have social media!

Because all the cool kids are doing it, Upton Yarns now has a twitter feed (@UptonYarns) and a facebook page (also under uptonyarns, or just click the facebook link in the handy bunch of glyphs that now appear after every post). I have no idea what to do with either account, although I'm probably not supposed to admit that.

Progress! (and this time it is on the website)

No more helvetica! And I have managed to make the shipping calculator admit that I am indeed able to ship to Maine! (It turns out that one needs to set up a whole other account with USPS to get their shipping calculator to work properly - who knew?) And if you live in Maine and order my yarn, I will be able to charge you Maine sales tax! (Sorry about that....) Basically, after too many days sitting here begging this thing to work, it appears to be working.  I never thought that starting a yarn business would involve so much time at the computer.

And so, in celebration of all of having a working website, and because it has been far too long since I played with yarn-

I made a lot of yarn very purple.

Hello world!

Well, here I am.  Finally with a blog, and struggling over the rest of the site.  Someday soon (hopefully by the end of the week) I will have filled this site with amazing photos and entertaining, informative text.  Until then, stand by.