Now that Alaskan Ice Tea has begun its migration to freaking everywhere, it's time to look toward the new colorway mailing out January 1: Pretty Rickey!

The yarn is a soft blend of lush peach tones, from blush to light apricot, with pops of rich cherry red and bright lime green. Overall the colorway is very delicate and feminine, with the lime green providing a strong contrast that keeps the yarn from becoming too "girly" (think of the Pink Nightmare from A Christmas Story). The cocktail itself is a blend of tequila, elderflower liquer, lime juice, and muddled maraschino cherries, with a little bit of club soda to make it sparkle and fizz.

Within each shipment you will find:

• 100g (approximately 463 yards) of soft, durable, and machine-washable fingering weight yarn in a blend of 75% superwash merino and 25% nylon.
• A peek into the process with dyers notes about how the cocktail's ingredients translated into the colors used, and funny anecdotes ... and, yes, me drinking the inspiration.
• Learn an interesting new technique (such as fun cast-ons and edge finishes).
• Learn to make the signature cocktail yourself - the recipe is right inside the yarn label!
• I am addicted to candy, and you should be, too. Allow me to enable you.

You can choose to receive just the current month, or sign up for 2 months and get one ball of new yarn each month until February!

If you go for the 2 month option, you will receive:

January: Pretty Rickey - pale peaches and pinks, rich cherry red, and flecks of lime
February: Tequila Sunrise - a smooth gradient of sunny yellow to orange to pinkish red

Each month is $25 for US customers, with the 2-month option being $50 - it includes everything listed above plus shipping costs. International customers, please select the international option from the drop down menu. All yarn goes out on the first of each month! Sign up soon, as only a limited number of skeins are available!

January (Pretty Rickey) Only $25.00 USD 2 months! $50.00 USD INTERNATIONAL January (Pretty Rickey) Only $35.00 USD INTERNATIONAL 2 months! $70.00 USD

Slots remaining for January: 10

As mentioned, shipping is included in the cost of the subscription. Should you choose to purchase other items from the Tipsy Sheep Shop, additional shipping for those items will be added as they ship separately from the subscription mailings.

Countdown to shop opening!

Are you excited? I'm excited. The Official Tipsy Sheep Shop (say that 5 times fast) will be launching at midnight tonight.

The polls showed that most of you wanted the shop to either be integrated as part of the blog or launched as its own tispysheep.com website.  In fact, it was split 50/50 between the two!  For the sake of simplicity and continuity, I'm going with the "integrate into blog" option, using PayPal to handle the transactions. Some day soon I would very much like to have a real website with a real domain name, but it's unfortunately not in the cards right now.

Early tests of the shopping card have been successful, with all the shipping calculators working out just fine. I've yet to figure out how to do automatic inventory tracking or  allow you to purchase more than one ball of yarn with a single click. I expect to work these kinks out before launch, but just in case, know that I'm working on it and it will all be ironed out soon.

Don't try clicking on that shiny new shop link up top just yet - it won't take you anywhere until 12:01 am November 1!

Poll! How should the shop be set up?

Hey everyone. As you know, I'm planning on opening a real Tipsy Sheep shop in November for those who didn't or couldn't subscribe to the monthly mailings for round one.  Originally I was going to set it up on Etsy, but I've been looking around at other options and suddenly am presented with too many choices. So I'm going to leave it up to you.  Here are the shop types with their pros and cons:

Keep it on the blog - I would set up a shop post where each yarn would be listed, and allow PayPal to handle the shopping cart end of things
Pros: No outside linking, minimal fees per transaction, no listing or hosting fees, easiest thing in the world to set up, PayPal is amazing, great seller protection
Cons: Don't know how shipping would work for multiple items, some people find a blog shop less trustworthy, not too much client communication, anyone who doesn't know about the blog would probably never see the shop

Etsy
Pros: Pretty easy to set up, well known, decent seller protection, easy client communication, shipping calculations are super easy, could reach people outside the blog
Cons: Lots and lots of fees - monthly listing fee for each item plus they take a percentage from each sale, practically zero visibility in the Etsy marketplace due to the sheer number of fiber artists, very little customization or control

Big Cartel (website for artists to build free shops)
Pros: Gosh they look pretty, site doesn't take percentage fee per sale, no listing fees per item, they calculate shipping
Cons: Monthly hosting fee for more than 5 products, PayPal would still take a cut of each sale, I've never used it before so it might take longer to set up

A real tipsysheep.com website with shop - it would be nearly the same thing as having a shop on the blog, but with a real domain name
Pros: Lots of room for expansion, complete customization, trustworthy domain, could integrate the blog, no listing fees
Cons: Monthly hosting fees, additional fees for PayPal or whoever we use to handle transactions, harder to reach non-blog customers, will take a while to build as I would design/code it myself

So. There are the options.  If you have other suggestions, please leave them in the comments - otherwise, use this poll:

surveys & polls

Now taking subscriptions for July!

I've had "June is Busting Out All Over" stuck in my head for the last four days, which can only mean one thing: it's time to officially open Tipsy Sheep for subscriptions!

Each shipment will consist of:

• 1 100g skein  (approx 464 yards) of hand-painted yarn in a colorway inspired by the cocktail of the month.  The yarn is a fingering/sock weight in a 75/25 blend of superwash wool and nylon that is SUPER soft but has enough strength to make for a good sock.  And because it's superwash, it's machine washable, which was a must for me as I was shopping for yarns. (I loathe and despise handwashing.)
• Dyers notes about how the cocktail's ingredients translated into the colors used, and funny anecdotes about the dyeing process which, yes, includes me drinking the inspiration.
• Instructions for an interesting technique (such as fun cast-ons and edge finishes).
• The recipe for the inspirational cocktail, which will be printed on the yarn label.
• There may or may not be candy. Just sayin'.

For now, there's a cap of 20 subscribers per month, because I've never produced this volume of yarn before and can't really understand how much work it will be until I'm elbow deep in dye and tears.  You can subscribe for just this month or for the full 4-month planned run, which is as follows:

July - Cosmopolitan
August - Mint Julep
September - White Russian
October - Kir de Reddit (a variation on the Kir Imperial suggested by reddit user SewHappyKnits)

One month's subscription cost is $25, which includes everything above plus shipping. Your package will ship on the first of the month (or the first weekday of the month, no post on Sundays) with all of the goodies above enclosed.  So the first cocktail (Cosmo) will ship on July 1, Mint Julep on August 1, etc.

After 4 months, I may continue to do a monthly yarn club mailing to introduce people to new colors as I develop them, or go straight to a store model, or maybe some combination of the two.  It really depends on you guys and what you're interested in.

After each month's shipment, subscriptions will open up for the following month and will stay open until all slots are filled.

Current slots for July: 13

Just pick your option from the PayPal button:

July (Cosmopolitan) Only $25.00 USD Four Months $100.00 USD