Since I'm heading to the post office early on Monday to mail off the first round of subscriptions (yay!), I have to stop taking orders at midnight tomorrow - 11:59 PDT on Sunday June 30.  If you're wavering on whether or not to get Cosmo, that will be your deadline to decide.

I will be opening up a shop at the end of the 4-month yarn club, either on Etsy or via my own website (depending on how sales go and if I can afford/justify web hosting costs).  Cosmo will be available for purchase again sometime in November.

Holy Crap!

I posted a picture of the Cosmopolitan colorway to a few different places on reddit, and suddenly the blog is exploding with pageviews!

Pretty much my face right now, my outfit's not nearly as cute.

Hope you all like what you see, and please use those handy share buttons on the right to let your friends know!

So bummed right now

Beware: This post has absolutely nothing to do with yarn or knitting.

I may have mentioned this in a previous post, but my husband and I just moved from San Francisco to Portland last month. We're still unpacking some things, but as we do it's becoming increasingly more obvious...

I have lost my Gargoyles comics :(

David Tennant knows how this feels.

I loved that show when I was a kid, so when I found the comics as an adult I was stoked.  The comics pick up the storyline after creator Greg Weisman's final episode, 3x01 The Journey, and completely ignores the whole "Goliath Chronicles" debacle that was the rest of season 3.  Weisman had so much more planned for series - including this whole time travel arc for Brooklyn, and a spin-off that takes place in the future and stars a descendant of Goliath and Elisa.  Alas, he will almost certainly never complete them, because even though Gargoyles was his creation, Disney owns the rights to it and they charge a whole bunch of money for licensing.  Not that Disney is ever going to touch the Gargoyles franchise again - they just don't want anyone else to touch it.

Anyway, sad face. Miss my Clan Building books.  I hate having to re-buy books when I lose them. Rar.

YOU HAVE SPOKEN AND I HEAR.

So the poll has been up for 5 days now and the results are 5 to 2 in favor of posting a preview.  Well, okay, one of those "yes" votes was me, so it was really 4 to 2, but the fact remains that there are slightly more people who want to see Cosmo pics than do not.  However, I am a kind and benevolent blogger, so I'll place the preview pics behind a jump so that those of you who want to maintain the surprise can do so. And if you're reading the blog but haven't signed up to receive yarn, maybe these pics will encourage you, so I'll put the PayPal button after the jump as well.

Also, can I just say how awesome it is to marathon Sailor Moon while winding yarn for hours on end?  I don't really have to look at what I'm doing unless something gets tangled, so I'm free to read the subtitles and wallow in nostalgia.

These little babies will be going in the mail in less than a week! Are you excited yet????? 

Click to see previews...

All skeined up and nowhere to go...

I finished skeining and labeling the first kilo of Cosmopolitan yesterday... and I'm torn as to whether to post a preview or not.  I'm one of those people who always shakes her Christmas presents and begs for hints, but I know I'd be pretty bummed if I actually knew what I was getting.  Everyone who signed up for subscriptions has done so totally blind - which is a stunning show of faith in me, by the way, and I thank you profusely for it. So I have to ask: do you want the colorway to remain a surprise until you open it in the mail, or do you want to see pictures right now?

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We now have a Ravelry group!

If you haven't heard of it already, Ravelry is an absolutely amazing resource for knitters, crocheters, and fiber lovers in general. They have a plethora of patterns (most free, some for a small cost) for all skill levels, and you can share your projects, progress, and questions with other users.

And now Tipsy Sheep has its own group! And I have absolutely no idea what to do with it!

http://www.ravelry.com/groups/tipsy-sheep-yarn

Maybe we could share patterns and photos of what you all wind up making with the yarn?  And if you, oh I dunno, feel like promoting/sharing this with your friends........

Knee-deep in balls right now...

I've decided to use any profits from the first round of subscriptions to get a second yarn swift with a built-in counter, because my current set up is a little, uh, exhausting.  Protip: If you're going to be measuring large amounts of yarn, get a good yardage counter, not a dinky little plastic thing.  I got this little guy for under $10 at KnitPicks:

I broke all my nails when we moved and they still haven't forgiven me.

You should have seen their former glory.

And he's a little bit "special."  The yarn has to be fed in at a very specific angle for it to move the little wheel inside, so I need to use one hand to keep tension on the yarn and guide it in.  And I need to use another hand to spin my ball winder, and unfortunately lack the necessary third hand to spin my swift (holding the enormous kilo skein) to keep it from catching.

It's also supposed to secure to your work surface with these little suction cup things:

That sketchbook is where the magic happens. ALL OF IT.

Which are a joke. They don't suction, no matter what kind of surface I try them on.  So I have to hold it to keep it from moving.  My hand hurts from being in this twisted claw formation for 6+ hours yesterday winding yarn, holding the feeder strand with my ring and pinky fingers and the counter in place with the rest of my fingers.  I was basically Spocking for most of the day.

I also suspect that it doesn't keep very accurate yardage, based on the fact that when I reached the count that was supposed to be 100 grams according to the yarn manufacturer, I would weigh it to find it only at 80 grams. WTF? So I'd take it off the ball winder (still attached to the giant skein) and run it through again, to find it 30+ yards short the second time!  After I wound up on those 30 yards the weight was more like 97 grams, which was much better, but I'm still very confused as to how that's happening.

Anyway, after many hours of winding, I have 8 enormous balls of yarn off the big skein, ready to be turned into cute little skeins of their own.  Yay!

This really is my "yay dance." For reals.

I found a table-top swift with a built-in counter that measures based on turns of the swift rather than yarn passed over a wheel, but it's pretty expensive so... tell your friends to buy yarn :)  Still 15 slots left for July!