New on HandMadeNews.org, my Fiber Friday column in the Inspiration Department!

Starting today and running every Friday for the foreseeable future. Enjoy!

I have been negligent in blogging as of late. My apologies. A couple of things have conspired to keep me from being able to post regularly; mainly I’ve been super busy dying, drum carding and knitting that I haven’t had the opportunity! The drum carder I bought last month is certainly being put to good use and I am definitely getting my money’s worth out of it. Which brings me to my first big announcement for today:

I’m starting a batt club! Unlike the sock club the batt club will not be in the ‘rock n roll’ theme but will offer much broader based appeal (I’m hoping) to a wide variety of types of spinners. I plan to follow the same basic principle as my sock club however and send extra goodies with each package and a story of why/how the batt you’re receiving came to be. I really love to know what inspired hand crafted items, so I like the idea of sending along plenty of information for the spinner about the fibers they are getting. I’d also like to offer either recommended listening or watching with each shipment, either music, a podcast, t.v. show or movie to accompany your spinning fiber. This batt club will be offered in various quantities to suit a variety of different spinners; there will be 2, 3 and 4 oz clubs offered in 3, 6 or 12 month increments. I think the 12 month one is going to be an every other month subscription instead of every month. (Obviously the price will reflect that) because I know some spinners just don’t need new fiber every single month. If you are interested in this club please email me or leave a comment here indicating your interest so I can get a rough idea of whether this idea is one that has wings or needs to be reworked more before implementing. If you have any suggestions on how this club could or should run, feel free to let me know. In all things fiber I’m still feeling my way around, so any suggestions are always greatly appreciated. I plan to roll out sign ups for the club in late July for the first shipments to be in August. This club will probably ship near the middle to end of each month, since the sock club ships at the beginning of the month.

Speaking of Rock Your Socks Off, July’s yarn is done! And it’s beautiful, if I do say so myself. We had low membership this month and so I decided to open this one month up to a limited run of ‘yarn only’ listings in my shop. I’m adding a limited run of 5 more hanks available for one off purchase through my ArtFire shop, these listing will only get the yarn not any of the extras that go with the club membership. (Sock Rockers! Do not click that link, spoiler pictures of your yarn is up there.) This is probably the only month I am going to do this and the only reason I am doing this is because the way the yarn was dyed this month; each hank that is going out to the club members is one of a kind and unique and the ones available in my shop are too. So everyone is getting a completely one of a kind hank, there’s no diluting of the specialness of the club offering. In my opinion at least. Next month marks the clubs 6 month anniversary so I’ll be sending along a very special extra goodie to our current members. Remember if you’re not currently a member or you’re due to renew now is the time to do it; I’ll be raising the price effective August 1st to the initial intended $115 (for the 3 month subscription) however if you are a current member or sign up before August you will always get the price you signed up for at. Always. It never changes. That is my promise to you since those members who signed up from the beginning and/or in the last 6 months took a chance with me and this club and I really appreciate it.

Other things that are going on at Chez DaniDo as of late: I will be participating in the Tour de Fleece which is a spinning challenge to spin every day the Tour de France rides. I’ve even started a team, Team Should be Committed which is a team for those of us who a) take on insane challenges like this one even though we have plenty of other stuff on our plates and b) will probably freak out at some point during the Tour and want to chop our spinning wheels into kindling to use as a sacrifice to the Fiber Goddess. If you feel like you fit the bill and want a challenge, please join our team. We have no extra requirements other than to try not to have a nervous break down during the challenge. Tour de Fleece starts Saturday July 4th and I will be kicking off the start of the tour with bestie Christina Marie; we will be spinning, listening to albums and recording reviews/arguments for upcoming Indie As podcasts. We may even set up the webcam and video conference with other spinners if I can figure it out in time and get my work space clean enough to broad cast on the internets.

I recently built solar ovens to heat set my yarn and fiber in, so starting with this months Rock Your Socks Off yarn; all of my yarns and fibers will be heat set using completely natural energy for at the very least the duration of the summer. I figured; really, I live on the face of the sun basically and I know it gets at least 120 degrees in my adobe and tile courtyard so it really wouldn’t take much to concentrate that heat into a single space to get it hot enough to cook yarn. And I was right! I built my ovens for less than $50 and I have enough room to do between 30-50 hanks of sock yarn at once. I will probably do a tutorial on how I built them, but it’s so silly ridiculous it’s not really worth the space it would take it. They’re tupperware containers lined with black trash bags and have cooling racks in the bottom so any condensation will run into the bottom of the tub instead of sitting on the yarn/fiber. I toss in my probe thermometer and clamp the lid on and set the buckets in the center of my courtyard in front of a glass window so that it gets both direct sunlight and the reflected rays from the glass. This week the temp in the ovens got over 160 degrees. The yarn set beautifully with absolutely no run off. There you have it; between the Greener Shades natural dyes, powdered citric acid and now solar heat setting, any DaniDo Crafty yarn or fiber is processed in as natural a way as possible. The wonders of living in the desert!

In knitting business I am currently working up Cabled by Hinke in a purple angora/acrylic blend. I’ve made quite a few mods, of which I will detail in length once the sweater is finished and I know the mods worked. For now, here’s a WIP shot.

And lastly, but certainly not least, on the writing front I am excited to announce I’ll be having a special column every Friday on HandMadeNews in the Inspiration Department just for fiber related things! The column debuts tomorrow and is titled Fiber Friday. Check back every Friday for articles that combine inspiration and my love of all things fiber related. If you have an idea for something you’d like to see featured in the Fiber Friday section please email me at daniella@danido.com and let me know! Also, just in case you’re ever looking for a way to kill a few minutes be sure to check out the Word Find Wednesdays and Get Crafty Crosswords which come out on Sundays. Both are always tons of fun and a great way to kill time, if you’re not knitting of course.

The Rock Your Socks Off yarns will ship today or tomorrow morning, so the playlist, photos and video will be up early next week!

Announcing:

I can do batts now! Click on the picture to go straight to the Fiber section of my Artfire Shop. I also have a few batts up in my section on the Spindies shop as well. I don’t cross post, so be sure to check both places for all the goodies. I am no longer adding new items to the Etsy shop either, I’m going to be moving my entire operation to ArtFire and Spindies.

Since my ArtFire shop is finally somewhat stocked I’ll be having a Grand Opening Sale for the next week. Everything in the shop, including sock club memberships AND brand new batts will be discounted by 15% for the first few days and 10% the last part of the week. So if there’s something you really want, be sure to snap it up as soon as possible. Also remember since I’m not going to be able to dye July’s Rock Your Socks Off yarns until next Thursday you can still purchase (or renew) sock club memberships between now and then and get in on July.

Also, I ran across this other super awesome yarn club that I think you guys should check out. It combines two of my favorite things: coffee and yarn! Click here for information about the Unique Sheep’s Sip n Stitch club.

So some of you may listen to the fabulous Lime and Violet podcast or keep up to date with their one stop shop for all things fibery site The Daily Chum, well last month I was chummed and as of yesterday I was also mentioned in their latest pod cast. At length. And yes, I squee-d all over the place and forced friends, family and other assorted loved ones to listen to the podcast multiple times. It’s the closest to famous I’ll ever get, I had to savor the moment. You can hear the podcast, titled ‘In Which We Become Pro Whale Exploders’ either on the blog or by searching iTunes for it. It’s pretty fantastic if I do say so myself.

In writing news: I’ve got a few new articles up on Handmadenews.org in the Inspiration department that may be of interest to some of you. The Place You Live and Social Networking for Creative Inspiration. The Inspiration Department also sadly said goodbye to our editor Paula Picard of Picard Creative but has welcomed Marjorie Dawson who was a fellow columnist as our new editor, she has a shop selling beautiful art dolls that is definitely worth checking out. I wish Paula all the best in her future endeavors and am sad that our time working together was so short. I am looking forward to continuing to write for the Inspiration Department with Marjorie as our new editor however and encourage all of you to check out our department regularly for new content.

I think that’s all the new stuff for right now! I’ll be having another contest coming up shortly featuring hand made socks from Christina Marie out of some of my hand dyed yarn. Yup, the socks are already knit so all you have to do is put them on and enjoy! I’ll come up with some kind of fun hoops for ya’ll to jump through to try and win them.

So, I’ve been super busy this last week but I’ve got some new announcements that I would like to share with you all. I’ll also be sending out a newsletter to those on my mailing list in the next day or so with the same announcements, so if you read this and get the newsletter my apologies for being redundant.

First of all I want to personally thank the current and past members of the Rock Your Socks Off club, you guys have been incredible and have really helped me develop as a dyer and small business owner. Thank you all for taking a chance on this new club and making it a success. You are wonderful.

When I first started the club, I offered it at a discounted price to get it started. Now that we are established and have developed a solid base; I am going to be raising the price of the club membership to the original $115 for the 3 month membership that I had initially intended on selling it at. However there are a few exceptions: a) the price change will not go into affect until August so if you buy a club membership of at least 3 months between now and August you will get the lower price. b) any current member will ALWAYS get the price they signed up with at, plus I usually offer a 15 % discount on renewals during the last month of your membership. This means that if you are currently a member and plan to renew, you do not need to worry about a price hike, this is my gift to you for being early adopters and believing in me and the club before it was established.

Starting in August I will no longer be adding the stitch markers to the packages either. I doubt anyone will be horribly heartbroken by this fact since I’m aware I am not the worlds best stitch marker maker. I will continue to add extra goodies to all the packages and I’m hoping that by cutting out the stitch makers that I will be able to add BETTER goodies. You may still receive stitch markers in packages, but I will probably buy better ones from the wonderful artisans I know who do a far better job of making them. I’m hoping that by cutting out the time I spend making the ones you currently receive I will be able to develop patterns or other fun things to add to the packages to make them more complete. My initial idea for this club was to be a well rounded package that you were excited to get each month, I think I’ve done okay in keeping with that idea but I would like to really make it an exciting package every month that you would be stalking the mail man for.

Truth be told; I hate making stitch markers. When I started the club I liked them because it was something new and honestly I just like going to bead shops. In reality, the stitch markers are what hold me up almost every single month and they are my least favorite aspect of putting together the club packages every month.

Some of you may have gotten “Don’t Stop the Rock” notices with your club shipments this month, if you got one it’s time to renew your membership to still be in the club for July. There is a discount offered on that notice, so when you renew you’ll automatically get the discount refunded to you. Dying for July will happen later this week so if you want to secure your spot for July you’ll need to renew or purchase your new membership before Thursday of this week.

July’s band is going to be Concrete Blonde. I didn’t get any suggestions for other bands and I have a wonderful idea for a color way for this band, so I’m going to see that one through. Our July goodie is pretty special too and has been commissioned by one of my favorite fellow Phat Fiber artisans.

In other news: please check out Spindies the online fiber festival that I participate in. Also, I’ve got some great new articles up on Handmadenews.org that you should check out and keep an eye on indieas.wordpress.com for blogs and video reviews of this years CineVegas Film Festival that Christina Marie and I recently attended.

My Etsy Shop and my Artfire Shop will both be updated with new hand spun yarns and hand dyed fibers in the next week as well.

I got a lot accomplished yesterday and because I was all moosey-faced and feeling sorry for myself I completely failed to mention some of the things I’ve gotten done lately. Namely, the June Rock Your Socks Off packages. They’re going to the post office in about an hour. I’m going to go ahead and put a picture up here so if you want to be surprised and you’re in the club; LOOK AWAY!

But first; I finished spinning 2 of the batts from the Serendipity Fiber Arts Batt Club that I recently joined. This is a blended batt that included recycled Sari silk fibers. I absolutely adore how it turned out and I’m so glad I joined the club, because I never would have picked these batts out for myself.

This is just the spun single, I didn’t ply it because it was perfect just by itself. I think this would be gorgeous as a little scarflette, or as edging on a larger item. It’s not super soft, not necessarily ‘next to skin’ soft for people who are really sensitive to fibers on their skin, but I absolutely love this. I haven’t decided if I’m going to put it up for sale or knit it myself. It’s one of the more unique yarns I’ve spun and I’m still kind of in love with it. I’m really looking forward to the batts I get next from Serendipity, she’s got a great eye for color and fiber combinations!

Okay, now the RYSO club yarn. I did Alkaline Trio this month, song: Nose Over Tail because it’s Mike and I’s song and it’s one of my favorites. I actually asked him to name the colorway and he thought about it for awhile and decided on that one. I was torn between Nose Over Tail and Take Lots With Alcohol, which is another favorite song of mine and one of the few songs that Danny sings lead on instead of Matt Skiba (or The Skeeb, as he’s known around here) that I actually like.

I finally got a real true red. And all with Greener Shades dyes! So it’s 100% natural! Genius! I dyed enough of this this month for my sock club members AND one for myself (to make Mike a pair of socks with of course) AND to send a hank to Miss Violet and Miss Lime of Lime n’ Violet fame. I actually sent one hank of this, and one hank of Aprils yarn, my very own personal hank of the Cure colorway In Between Days. All because I lubb them so much! Also, I was chummed a few weeks ago and it kicked up a few sales for me, and I feel thankful. Though technically I should be sending the yarn to Bunky Bobo’s because she’s the contributor who chummed me. Maybe she’ll get some yarn in July. Also, while on the topic of music; Christina Marie and I started yet another blog together, this one devoted to being music snobs. You may remember our long running joke that we’re Indie As F*ck. Well, guess what the name of the new blog is? Check it out, it’s funny and we’ll teach you all how to be music snobs as well. Right now it’s just a handful of blog posts featuring mostly “An Open Letter To…” style rants, but soon there will be video and podcasts of us flailing our arms around and openly mocking trashy pop music. I swears, it’s good times.

Speaking of! Ideas for the July band? Anyone? I fall in love with bands so quickly and often that it’s hard for me to be partial about picking the bands to do for the club. I REALLY want to do a Concrete Blonde one and if I don’t get any other/better suggestions I’m going to lean towards them for July. I have this great idea for a “Still in Hollywood” colorway.

In addition to yarns, I’ve also been making stuff for Pale Soap as well. Yesterday Amy and I finished up 3 of our signature soap blends (which are curing and not very pretty to photograph yet.) but also some body scrubs.

That’s our ‘Man Scrub’ but we’ve also got a great Lavender Sweet Scrub for the ladies (or girly mens). Also, of course, we’ve got the lip balms up there for sale as well right now. As soon as the soaps finish curing those will be listed as well. We’re aiming for later this week to have those up.

Oh, and also, did I mention that I’m officially accepted to UNLV? Yup. Official. Have to go meet with my advisor later this week and I’ll be there full time in the Fall. Pretty stoked about that.

I’ll leave you with some great Handmadenews.org articles I really dug this week: New Pathways to Inspiration – A New Hobby (by me, of course), Sock Knitting Today Pt. 1 (there’s a part 2 up as well.) from the Craft Trends department and another in Amy’s series Performing A Green Audit.

Which is not good. Since I write about inspiration for handmadenews.org, or rather I’m supposed to write about inspiration. Lately I’ve been sort of stuck in a rut. I’m trying to keep things fresh by trying out new hobbies. Like say, starting Pale Soap with Amy. That has helped, but I’m still not getting much done in the way of knitting, spinning or dying. I did get Junes Rock Your Socks Off club yarns done, and I’m about 3 sets of stitch markers away from being able to mail them out. (Tomorrow, they’re going out tomorrow in case anyone was wondering.)

So instead of any real blogging here I’m just going to lay out some images that I’ve become attached to lately, I’ve either used them in HMN articles, wanted to, created them myself, or felt some sort of connection to them. I just need to put some pretty in the world today I think.

(Lip balm from Pale Soap)    

   (The Buhunkis.)

(Sheep!)  

(baby brother modeling his first knit scarf)

(Medusa from MyMagicMe)    

(Handspun Mug cozy, kits available)

Okay. Those are things that are making me happy today. I’m going to go get more coffee and maybe try to get a few rows knit on The Love Blanket.

First of all we ended up having a three way tie for winners! Victoria, Lesley and Sally all three had the exact same amount of entries. Each of these ladies went above and beyond to help promote the contest AND the Handmadenews.org website during the week we were running the contest. Victoria and Lesley have each picked a prize (both wanted roving from my shop which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy) but Sally picked a beautiful necklace from the Risky Beads shop. I’m really glad each of these ladies won because they have all been very supportive of me, my business and my writing on the Hand Made News website. Please take a moment to visit each of their blogs they are all very talented and incredible women who I admire. (Also, Sally is from my hometown, Anchorage AK and also works at one of my favorite yarn/quilt shops in town The Quilt Tree/The Yarn Branch, which is right next door to my favorite toy shop and right down the road from my old high school. These were once my stomping grounds.)

In other Handmadenews.org uh, news I want to share with you a few of my favorite articles from the last week or so; first up is this the premiere article from Wonder Webmistress Amy who is now officially my co-worker in THREE different ways (Knit Las Vegas, Handmadenews.org AND we’re starting a skin care line together for super sensitive skin types), Amy writes for the Green Wise department which is wonderful because she is one of the most natural, environmentally conscious without being annoying about it types I’ve ever met. Her article is titled Performing a Green Audit and gives great tips on how to ‘green’ your life up without it being a pain.

The second article I found particularly interesting this week was this one from the Marketing Department which is an interview with the owner of Pigtopia Studios about her marketing strategies.

Every few days or so I’m going to try to bring you a few links from articles on Handmadenews.org that I found particularly interesting. I know that it’s a big site with a lot of information and sometimes the really good stuff gets buried, I’ll help you dig it out. If in the meantime you find (or write) an article that you think deserves special attention send me a link at daniella@danido.com and I’ll do my best to bring it up on here. Since I’m already plugging articles, why don’t you guys check out my latest article in the Inspiration Department on how to get ideas from unusual places: Odd Couples.

Under the ‘and then some’ category I’ve got a few announcements as well. I’d like to formally announce the opening of a cooperative fiber shop that I am participating in along with 2 of my spinning mentors and a handful of other insanely talented fiber artists; Spindies. It’s one stop shopping for all the spinning goodies you could possibly want. We’ll be restocking regularly and will feature both fiber and hand spun yarns. We’re just getting started so not all of the contributors have stocked their shops, but keep checking because new items will be added daily. The items I am listing on Spindies will not be available through any of my other shops and will all be one of a kind items.

For those of you awaiting news of Junes Rock Your Socks Off yarn well, you’ll have to wait just a bit longer. The yarn is dyed and dried and ready to go, I just need to put together the packages and get them in the mail. As soon as they’re off to our members than I will post pictures but I’m quite pleased with the results this month. Very bold and different than the last 4 months of the club thus far. I’m excited, I even dyed an extra skein for myself so I could knit Mike a pair of socks.

As I was typing up this blog post my big yarn order from my wholesaler came so you can hopefully expect new additions to the диваниEtsy Shop and my Artfire Shop in the next few weeks. I’ll also be running a ‘I need tuition money’ sale in late July as well since I’m making the jump from relatively inexpensive community college to ‘holy cow 10k a semester!?! really?’ university. In the meantime, if you’d like to keep this broke college student in tuition and text books won’t you consider signing up for the Rock Your Socks Off club?

Okay, I’m actually writing this really late on Saturday night and I won’t lie: I’m a little tipsy. I went to a birthday party and I’m really tired and I’m not a big drinker so all of those things add up to a slightly more than tipsy DaniDo.

So, Sundays cue (the last one!) is going to be kinda weird, because I’m in a weird mood. Find me an article with a picture of someone with tattoos. Or of something related to tattoos. As some of you may know, I have tattoos and I even have a knitting tattoo and I’m sort of obsessed with them. So that’s what I want. I found at least one, so I know there is at least one. I won’t tell you what department.

That’s it! Our last scavenger cue for the big Handmadenews.org hunt! Tomorrow I’ll notify the winners of the contest.

Happy hunting ya’ll! Thanks for playing along, it’s been fun.

A bit late I know, I forgot to set this up before I went to bed last night. My apologies.

Today we are looking for an article that gives advice, tips, or strategies for someone pursuing their own crafting business.These types of articles are scattered all over the site but focus primarily in the Craft Business section.

Tomorrow is the last day of this contest but I want to thank all of you who have participated in this contest this week. On Monday I’ll email the winners and then announce them on the blog. However, just because the contest is ending doesn’t mean you should give up on Handmadenews.org, I hope that this contest has given all of you a chance to really dig around on the site and see the depth and breadth of the knowledge, passion and experience of the hard working editors and columnists over there. Dozens of articles get posted every single day so there is always something new to read.

Speaking of, if you haven’t seen it yet, I have a new article up this week as well; Expanding Your Horizons.

Happy Friday to you all! Today is going to be a bit trickier for you, I’ve been lobbing low and easy ones this week so far but today I’m going to make you dig a little. Here’s what I’m looking for: I’d like an article written by a columnist who is not from the U.S. This is going to require that you click on the little bio links at the tops of each of the department pages. I happen to know of at least 2 columnists who’s bio’s I’ve read recently who state very clearly that they’re not American so I know they exist. Please be sure to cite the article you found (link it in the comments please) as well as a note on where the author is from.

Also, for those of you on Twitter you may know about this little thing the Twitterverse does called Follow Friday (#followfriday), well today I’d really love for you all to follow Handmadenews.org on twitter! This way you’ll get great updates via twitter when a new and interesting article is posted on the site. Their twitter name is handmade_news, the underscore is very important. Also, if you tweet about this contest tomorrow and use the hash tag #hmn or @handmade_news I will award you double entries! (You gotta let me know somehow though.)

This baby is winding to a close quick, the hunt will be over on Sunday so make sure to get your entries in now and to tweet, plurk or otherwise promote the contest or Handmadenews.org in general for those extra entries.

We will be awarding 3 different prizes:

1st place prize will go to the person who did the most scavenger cues (starting on Monday and going through Sunday) and extra entry opportunities (so the person with the most entries in general) 1st place gets to pick which one of the prizes they’d like first.

2nd place will go to the person who has the second most entries and will get second pick of prizes

and 3rd place will be randomly drawn by the random number generator (but 1st and 2nd place winners will be removed from this drawing) and will get 3rd pick of the prizes. There are 5 prizes currently up for grabs so there will still be a pretty good selection even for 3rd place.

To recap what our fabulous prizes are:

1) A hank of my hand spun or hand dyed yarn or rovings (see my Etsy shop or my ArtFire Shop for examples)

2) A hand knit mug cozy or scarflette (again, see my shops for examples of these items), this item will be custom made for you based on your preferences for color/fiber.

3) A copy of The Intentional Spinner by Judith MacKenzie McCuin, brand new. (This is a fantastic book, I just happen to have a spare copy)

4) Fellow Inspiration columnist and jewelry maven Lori from Risky Beads is offering a free pendant from her shop as well!

5) My editor, Paula, of Picard Creative, has graciously donated 2 handmade art journals that are pocket or purse sized.

So there you have it!

Happy Hunting!