Huh. This sounded like such a good idea in theory. Something has gone awry. Either I need to boil some of the water out of my dye baths so I get a more concentrated color or I need to add more of the raw material to each dye bath/jar to get a stronger color. They look so vivid in the jars and in the dying bowls!

Here’s what they look like after they’ve been heat set and rinsed.

This is some of my merino sock base dyed with beet juice, blueberries and hibiscus flowers. The beet juice/hibiscus is the lavender color and the blueberries is the sort of sickly peach. Not a fan.

This is a lace weight merino/silk blend dyed with tumeric, hibiscus, blueberries, beet juice and black berries. I like the yellow from the tumeric. That’s about it.

I’m trying to decide whether I should list these for sale in my Etsy Shop as is or soak them again and attempt to over dye them with stronger concentrates of the dyes. I don’t do pastel, but I’m sure someone somewhere might. So I pose the question to you guys, do you think these are pretty as they are or should I try for deeper colors? I feel these defeat my entire ‘for the bright at heart’ motto.

I will tell you what doesn’t defeat my motto:

This beauty right here is currently for sale in my etsy shop (you can click the picture to be taken directly to the listing). I’m calling it ‘Silly Love Songs’ after the Paul McCartney/Red House Painters song. It’s so pretty and delicate while still being robust and bright. It’s going to make some mighty sexy lace knee highs (I recommend Cookie A’s Baudelaire from Knitty.com) or maybe even some hot fingerless mitts. (perhaps the Delicato Mitts from KnitSpot which have been languishing in my Ravelry queue for quite a while.) Anything you do with this red on shades of red yarn will delicious, sexy and soft. This merino base is ridiculous. It’s so squishy I kind of want to just pile it on my bed and sleep on it.

Since I’m in a sharing mood I will give you a sneak peak of one of the yarns I’m doing for the Phat Fiber Store. But only a peek! The rest of these yarns should hopefully be making their way to Jessie at Phat Fiber on Monday or Tuesday along with my samples for the February box. Cross your fingers that I have time this weekend to dye the last five hanks I need to do for her. Knit Las Vegas is open on Sunday this week so I don’t have my usual dye day available, so it’s either going to be a very early morning on Sunday or a very late night.

Sneak peek!

First things first: I’ve decided to open up a one month membership for the Rock Your Socks Off club. There is now an option at the bottom of the club page that offers a buy now option for 1 month. This is how I figure it will work. If you purchase the 1 month membership any time before the 10th of any given month you will receive that months box, if you purchase it after the 15th, you’ll get the next months box. I’d like this club to be as accessible as possible. Which is why I’m also going to allow the 3 month memberships to be on a rolling basis as well, so if you buy the 3 month membership the same thing will happen, if you get it before the 10th you’re membership will start with that month, if its after it’ll start with the following month. This means that you do not need to wait until May to sign up for the next 3 month stint. If in April you want to get a 3 month member ship you’ll get May –July for example.

The caveat to this is that if at some point I get too many people for any given month I will close the sign ups for that month and re-open them again the following month or which ever month isn’t full. At this point because I am a one woman operation the most I can safely say I can handle at once is 25-30 participants. I don’t want the quality of the color ways, dye jobs or goodies in each box to go down because I’ve over extended myself. At this point though I don’t for see this being a problem any time in the near future. I’m happy with my small group of dedicated participants and I’m hoping we can carve out a little community of music/yarn nerds together.

I’d love to hear what people would like to receive as ‘goodies’ in the shipments. If you have any ideas please comment here so I can start looking into them. I’ve got everything I need for the first shipment to go out including the boxes they ship in, so I feel pretty good that I’m not going to be rushing at the last minute and I’m trying to get everything together for months 2-4 as well so I can stay ahead several months at a time.

Okay, so we’ve got another video for you as well:

Laura finished her blanket, I show off my handspun mug wrap and I get cut off when I tried to scream ‘Mothballs!’ at the end. It’s a reference to my wonderful boyfriend Mike who was recently on Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

Here’s the finished mug cozy:

There will be a detailed blog post coming soon about the natural dye baths I’ve mixed up, how much I hate picking pieces of blueberries out of merino and more follies in handspinning. Tonight I’ll be attending a local meetup for Vegas bloggers called Beer ‘n Blog, so I’m sure I’ll have something to say about that as well.

Our winning color way entry was from Sharon Rose, for her description of a fantastic Johnny Cash color way. I just loved the idea of the slashes of Junes lipstick in an otherwise dark yarn. It’s just so….Johnny Cash! The descriptions for Ring of Fire and Walk the Line were fantastic too. She’s been notified by email already but I wanted to publicly congratulate her as well here. Sharon has decided to keep herself warm with my Tsunami wool from my shop but I have a feeling we’ll be seeing her color way description in an upcoming month of the Rock Your Socks Off club.

The winner in the random drawing was Turtle. She will win a set of stitch markers and 20% off anything in my Etsy store. 

We didn’t have any takers on the third prize category yet,though that will be ongoing, so if you get someone to sign up for the club make sure they email me at daniella@danido.com and let me know that a) they are for sure going to be apart of the club starting March and that b) you convinced them to join. If you get someone to sign up I will send you an item from my ridiculously large stash. I have 8 cones of sock yarn sitting on my formal dining room table because I don’t have room anywhere in my craft room to put them. My bedroom has become over run with spinning supplies because I don’t have room in the craft room. I need to make room in the craft room.

In other news: I dyed the first half of my commissioned order for the Phat Fiber store and I’m very excited about them. I don’t want to show pictures of them yet, but I can say that I love them all and don’t want to give them up. As soon as my yarn meter comes I’ll be breaking up the cones into hanks and will be able to dye the second half of the order for them and then they’ll be on their way to Jess to put up in the shop!

I also tried my hand at dying roving yesterday.

This is some merino roving that I bought a while ago from Wooly Wonders here in Las Vegas before I even knew  how to spin. It was an undyed roving, and it just sat around for the last few months until I finally decided it was time to make it something I’d actually spin up. I’m waiting for it to dry because now I really want to spin this up!

This is a little tiny bit broken off from the larger coil of roving that I dyed first before I did the whole thing:

I just wanted to see how the different colors looked on the roving, and I decided I liked the blues and greens best. This horrible little braid will probably be gifted to someone at some point even though Mike says he loves it.

Also I finished BunBun v.2 (a.k.a Bunneh!)

You may remember part of Bunneh from the last Loud and Mouthy vlog. (We’ll have a new vlog up soon, Laura has finished her blanket finally!)

I’d also like to formally introduce a new collaboration between Christina Marie and I. It’s called Mouthy Maries and I will warn you now it is the brain dump for both Christina and I’s liberal, feminist ranting. If you’re not into that sort of thing, I strongly encourage you to just keep staring at Bunneh because that is a happy place and Mouthy Maries is not a happy place.

Okay, I think I’ve about got this down. I’m still having some issues and the roving gets away from me and gets sucked up into the orifice on occasion but I am managing to produce actual knit-able yarns so I’m going to stay I’m at the “knit and purl stitch scarves” stage of spinning. Hopefully with practice I can get to the “lace work and cables” level of spinning.

This is a bunch of random rovings and fibers that I got in the Phat Fiber sampler. It’s a bit lumpy because I haven’t blocked it yet. I kind of like how it turned out, it’s weird, but it’s interesting.

This is the Vines ‘seaglass’ BFL and some random purpley roving of unknown origin that was given to us when we bought the wheel. I’m not a fan of the purpley roving, and probably won’t use the rest of it.

I wish they made text books on audio so I could listen to my chapters while I knit and spin, I hate wasting precious spinning/knitting time by reading boring Political Science chapters. But until they figure out how to do that, I’m forced to sacrifice my craft for my college education.

Also I just wanted to give a shout out to a new friend of mine, Amber, who is my very first fully paid member of the Rock Your Socks Off club! Remember the contest runs through tomorrow night, so if you still have any color way suggestions be sure to leave a comment! I will get together with my ‘committee’ tomorrow night and we will pick a winner. The winner will be notified by email no later than Tuesday morning.

Thank you to everyone who has participated in this contest. I look forward to having more contests in the future.

(Little Kat Williams reference for those of you not familiar. He’s hilarious, even to this silly white girl who knits all day.)

Okay so in addition to the awesome boxes you can get every month from Phat Fiber, and the wicked give aways on their blog NOW the geniuses over there at Phat Fiber have brought us a forum.

Phat Fiber Forum

Here’s the great thing about it: it’s open to anyone. If you’re a contributor and want to see what people thought of your stuff, it’s for you. If you think you might want to contribute but aren’t sure what other people sent in, or if anyone liked it, it’s for you. If you got a box and want some place to share your spoils and what you did with the samples, it’s for you. If you didn’t get a box but want to see what everyone else got, it’s for you. If you’re not sure what the box is all about and you want to see what people got and how they feel about it, it’s for you! See how that works, sheer brilliance. It’s just starting out so it need people to tell Jess what they’d like to see in upcoming boxes, it needs people to tell the contributors what they liked (or didn’t, we’re all grown ups and would love the constructive criticism) about the samples they received and most of all we want to see what you’re doing with all those wonderful little bits and pieces.

Now, since I’m already pimpin’ pimpin’ let me just wax poetic about how much I love the combed top rovings from Vines. I am an extremely new spinner and hers are the first full sized rovings that I’ve bought. They are very high quality and beautiful, but so reasonable in price that I could feel safe to ‘play’ with them and not worry about wasting a crap ton of money if I screwed it up too badly. I bought two full sized braids from her as a result of winning a sample braid from the Phat Fiber blog awhile back. (So, see! Contributing to Phat Fiber DOES work!)

The rovings I bought where a BFL combed top in the colorway ‘Seaglass’

A small portion of this got spun into this:

last night. I only did a very small amount because I’m still very new to the wheel spinning thing and I was worried it wasn’t going to look okay or that it would be so lumpy and splitty that it would be impossible to knit, so I was judicious in how much of that wonderful roving I was willing to sacrifice to practice.

However, the yarn that it produced is soft, even and gorgeous! So I will be working on spinning up the rest of the braid here in the next week or so to make several hanks of hand spun for myself.

The other roving I got from Vines was this beautiful rambouillet braid in ‘Pink Pistachio’.

I am thinking I’m going to buy this batt:

To spin and ply with the Pink Pistachio. This batt (click on the picture to take you to the listing) is from one of my spinning mentors and co-contributors in the Phat Fiber boxes, CJ from eXtreme spinning. I think the two would look lovely together and I happen to know that CJs fibers are beautiful and soft since I got some samples of hers in my Phat Fiber box (and also because she sent me that gorgeous hank of undyed soy silk/wool that she spun for me to dye as seen in a previous post).

As a matter of fact I just changed my mind and purchased this before I posted this blog, because I don’t want one of my greedy readers (yes, YOU!) to snap it up before I have a chance. So it’s mine, but do check out the rest of her gorgeous fibers and hand spun yarns.

I gotta tell you guys, the wonderful stuff I have discovered in that Phat Fiber box is going to lead me straight to the poor house. I keep telling myself I can’t buy any more fiber or yarn, but then the next thing you know: whammo! More fiber shows up in my mail box. It’s totally worth it though to have completely one of a kind custom yarn that I made myself. I can’t believe I didn’t learn how to spin years ago!

Maybe if you’re lucky (and you signed up) I’ll include some hand spun yarns in the Rock Your Socks Off club boxes. Who knows what you’ll get in there!

We had two more people sign up for the Rock Your Socks Off club this week (SQUEE!) which is wonderful. I’ve decided on what the first goodie will be, I’m very excited about it. It’s not candy, or tchotskies or anything silly like that. I’m not going to say what it is, but they will be both useful and cool. The poll for who you guys want to see as the first band is running pretty close. The Smashing Pumpkins are currently winning by just one vote followed closely by the White Stripes and the Killers. I already have color ways planned for each of these bands, but I must say the Smashing Pumpkins have long been a favorite band of mine (even though Billy Corgan and I had to break up in 2007 because of a lackluster performance where he lost his freaking mind and played the entire Machina album and completely skipped over anything from Gish-Mellon Collie. NOT COOL BILLY!) Anyways, sorry for the mini rant. I would be thrilled to be able to do a Smashing Pumpkins sock yarn. Be aware though I do not recognize the current incarnation of the band as neither D’Arcy nor James Iha is present and Billy keeps letting Jimmy Chamberlain play the guitar. (Again, NOT COOL.) So there will be no Zeitgeist era yarns from me, though you may see the single from that album on the set list simply because I do like that particular song, but the rest of that album is dead to me.

Okay, sorry again. Seriously, the Pumpkins rant is over now. I apologize, rock n’ roll is a topic close to my heart, and the Pumpkins sit at the very center of that love. I get a bit riled up.

Color ways I am considering for Smashing Pumpkins yarn:

• Cherub Rock
• To Forgive
• Porcelina of the Vast Oceans
• An Ode to No One
• We Only Come Out at Night
• Siva
• Perfect
• Starla
• Bullet with Butterfly Wings
• 1979
• Today

There are so many great ones. I could do the entire Mellon Collie and the Infinate Sadness album song by song, but I have a feeling we’d lose some people if I did that. I want to resist the urge to do only the singles or popular songs, I think most bands have really great songs that aren’t radio singles. I will try to keep my music snob in check though and try not to do the really out there ones. (So maybe I should take An Ode to No One, To Forgive and We Only Come Out at Night off that list…)

I have a special affinity for 1979 and Perfect because of the music videos that go with them. Bullet with Butterfly Wings and Today are probably some of the most recognizable as Pumpkins songs, but To Forgive is one that got me through a lot of morose teen age angst. I’d also love to do ‘Beautiful’ from Mellon Collie, because that’s one that I want played at my wedding and/or funeral.

Well I’ve got a little time before I have to figure out a specific color way. Maybe I’ll put all of those in a hat and let my boyfriend pick which one we do.

In other news the people who purchased Phat Fiber boxes are starting to get them in the mail and so far the response from people has been good. I’m looking forward to putting together my samples for February. I’ve already dyed the yarn, I’ll be contributing samples of my merino sock base which is soft and squishy in February-esque colors. I’ll also be contributing some of my hand made stitch markers as well. I have another question for my readers though, if you were to receive a sample of something on a ‘try before you buy’ basis would just enough to see the colors and feel the yarn be enough or would it be better that it’s enough to knit up a 4×4 swatch so you can see how the stitches look? And also what would it take to turn that sample size into a full sized sale for you? Are you looking for softness? Color selection? Type of fiber (wool, cotton, bamboo, etc.)? 

I’ve got great reactions to the samples I sent in, but so far none of those samples have turned into sales yet, so I want to be sure that the samples I’m sending out are effective enough to inspire people to want to buy the full sized version. I’m also being super impatient, boxes got to people just in the last two days, I’m sure they’re so overwhelmed by the box of awesomeness that they haven’t had a chance to fully explore everything they got yet.

Yesterday Laura and I dyed another batch of sock yarn for Knit Las Vegas. I must say, Laura is an excellent dye assistant. (Also free labor is always good.)

Here’s the color ways from yesterday. These are all exclusive color ways on 100% wool fingering weight yarn dyed specifically for Knit Las Vegas. My personal favorite is the Rocket Pop! and Sierra. Sierra would make not only great socks, but also simple lace work for a shawl or scarf. The Sprout and Verde color ways are just variations on the same colors, so they’d be beautiful in lace work too. Melon Ball and Rocket Pop! are perfect for striped socks or mittens. This wool base is 92% wool, 8% Acrylic which makes a washable wool (I wouldn’t recommend the dryer, but the acrylic would probably make them gentle cycle washing machine do-able.) And check out those awesome new tags I got in the mail this week! They’re mini-moo cards from Moo.com.

We also dyed this great hank of hand spun soy silk/wool that CJ at Extreme Spinning spun for me.

We also did up the hanks that will be split into samples for February’s Phat Fiber box, but those pictures are secret for now. They’re pretty though and very um, February-ish.

Speaking of Phat Fiber I am working on a very special project for the Phat Fiber store front. Jessie had the brilliant idea of offering limited runs of certain items from her contributors between boxes. The first project is a collaboration between Moonwood Farms and Lote Tree offering up a great hank of handspun alpaca and delicious hand balm. I’ve had the extreme privilege of fondling some of Roo’s (the fiber mastermind behind Moonwood Farms) hand spun alpaca and I can personally attest to how soft, buttery and luxurious it is. I highly recommend it. Go buy the collaboration before I do.

The semester starts for me tomorrow (technically today, but my first class is tomorrow) so they daily and/or twice daily blog posts will probably slow a bit. I can promise I will stay on top of anything having to do with the Rock Your Socks Off club and more videos will be forth coming from the Loud and Mouthy gals keeping you up to date on what we’re knitting, who we’re internet stalking and how our crusade at becoming internet famous is going.

In the mind time, keep the contest suggestions coming in, keep checking back and be on the look out for hot new bands that I need to know about.

Okay, so my brilliant plan to have reservations cost 20 cents on Etsy and then send out paypal invoices for the full price of the club in mid February has come to a bit of a standstill. I received an email from Etsy today telling me that that wasn’t allowed. So I took down the Etsy listing for the reservations and have added a listing for the full purchase price at the bottom of the Rock Your Socks Off club page. If you would like to participate in the club but cannot buy the full subscription right now please email me at daniella@danido.com or join the mailing list here on the site (it’s in the left hand side bar).

Those of you who already purchased the 20 cent listing through Etsy will still receive an invoice in mid February from PayPal unless you choose to just buy the listing here on the site ahead of time. Please! If you do this email me immediately so I do not send you an invoice as well! I do not want to double bill anyone.

Currently we still have 15 slots available out of the original 25. While I would be absolutely over joyed if all 25 of those slots where filled up and I was ‘forced’ (twist my arm why dontcha!) to offer more, I highly doubt that will be the case in this first offering of the club. I am so excited to see that people have taken an interest in the club and that we’ve sold the 10 slots that we have. I am very excited to get started dying for our first month, which should happen mid February. In addition to the goodies that will go out in the boxes I also plan to do a little video each month explaining why I chose the band or artist I did and telling a little bit about the story behind the musician represented. I am a big music nerd so the more often I get to show off my inane trivia skills the better for me. This video will be available to everyone not just the club subscribers, and while you may see images of the yarn going out to the subscribers the goodies will remain private until the subscribers themselves reveal them if they choose.

Also, keep in mind that the contest that is currently running through the 26 has several categories of winners! The main winner will be chosen based off their winning description of a musically inspired colorway, however there are other ways to win as well! If you blog about this contest or the club itself on your blog email me a link and you will be entered to win a secondary prize (see this post for specifics.), only one person has emailed me that they mentioned the contest on their blog! So if you have, be sure to let me know so I can enter you in the pool for the secondary prize. The third way you can win is if you get someone to sign up for a spot in the club (which means at this point that they email me with intent to purchase in Feb.) you will be assured a hank of yarn from my stash. This is good for as many people as get someone else to sign up, all they have to do is mention your name and email address when they sign up for the club. I will then contact you directly to get shipping information to send you your free hank of yarn. I have to clear out my stash anyways, so if 15 people all convince a friend to sign up for the club, I will give away 15 hanks of yarn from my stash. I’ve got some great hanks of Berroco Peruvia that are earmarked for give away, as well as some Lornas Laces, a hank of Malabrigo Worsted Merino and some Berroco Jasper too.

Okay enough pimping of the sock club. On to more ridiculous with Loud and Mouthy!

There’s some talking about politics (as I type this I am watching former President Bush fly away in a helicopter and just wiped away the tears of joy from watching President Obama be sworn in), another little shout out to Stephanie from Handknit Heroes, I show off the little bunny I knit up by Heather at Joeys House and of course we talked more about how awesome the Phat Fiber box was.

Here’s my Bun Bun:

He’s knit from Noelles Noodles in her Nightshade colorway (I purchased this yarn from Eat.Sleep.Knit) and I am already knitting another one from some scrap Lornas Laces Shepard Sock I had lying around.

First of all, Laura (the ‘Loud’ in Loud and Mouthy) and I hung out for a bit last night at the yarn shop. Laura is on a making videos binge so we did a brief little video together in which we talk about Handknit Heroes, my boyfriend Mike being on Who Wants to be a Millionaire this week and of course how awesome the Phat Fiber box that I got was. Her camera makes it sound like we lisp. We don’t.

Also, some of the Rock Your Socks Off club reservation slots have been snapped up already, but there are still 18 slots left. If those slots fill up before mid-February I will open up a few more slots but they will not be at the currently discounted price of $95, so if you want that lower price snap up a reservation now!

I also wanted to share the finished shawl that Jaybird Designs worked up in the custom Mardi Gras yarn I dyed for her a few weeks ago. It’s beautiful!

I love how all the colors work together so well and the open work is just gorgeous! Hopefully she’ll get pictures of the recipient of this lovely shawl wearing it during the Mardi Gras celebrations in a few weeks.

This is the first time I’ve seen some of my hand dyed crocheted. I’ve knit a few samples myself out of my hand dyed, and my friends who have bought or been gifted my yarns have also knit some from them, but never crochet. I’m glad to see they look good in either medium. Maybe I should break out the hairpin lace loom again and see how they work up that way. Hmm.

The spinning experiment soldiers on. I brought the wheel that Christine and I own home, but thus far haven’t had a chance to do much with it. Tomorrow is Sunday and I have no where to be all day so I’m hoping to get a few hours of quality time in with the wheel, but I’m still plugging away on the spindle as well. Which is easy to do while I’m at work. I spun up some singles out of a sample from The Painted Tiger that I got in my fabulous Phat Fiber box. I’ve ordered more full sized rovings too from Vines (remember the really pretty light blues and white mini hank I spun up last week? That was from a sample of her roving) that should get here in a few days that I’m very excited to work with. I also ordered a pound of natural colored roving along with my big purchase of base yarns for the Rock Your Socks Off club. I’m hoping to use that to experiment with hand dying the roving myself to see how I do. Since I’m still very new to spinning and don’t really have a good idea of how fibers spin up, I have been sort of leery to dye my own roving for fear of ending up with really horrible colors in the finished yarn. We’ll see what I can come up with though, I’d love to be able to start selling hand painted rovings as well as my hand painted yarns.

Remember the contest is still running until the 26th, so if you have any more ideas for bands that should be colorways, get them in now! There’s 3 prizes available. Also, definitely keep checking back over the next few weeks because I will be having more give aways here on the blog in order to de-stash a bit. I have 21.7 pounds of sock bases coming and a very small space to store things in so I need to clear out some of the stash that will probably never be knit to make room for inventory. Some of the nicer stuff (hand dyed, hand spun, high end items) may be put up for sale in my Etsy shop at deeply discounted prices too, so check there as well.

The contest is still ongoing but I’ve made a decision about what the first 3 months are going to be.

Our first sub-theme is going to be “Top 40”, this will encompass 3 bands that you would hear on normal radio channels (like your local rock and/or alternative stations). Some examples may be: The Killers, Paramour, Kings of Leon, Smashing Pumpkins, Oasis, Snow Patrol, Fall Out Boy, The Ting Tings, Bloc Party, Rise Against, The White Stripes and/or the Raconteurs, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs (but I will not be repeating my ‘Date with the Night’, ‘Modern Romance’ or ‘The Sweets’ colorways.) I will not announce who the actual bands/artists will be but this gives you a better idea of what you might get in the first 3 month installment. I’m going with Top 40 for the first installment for accessibility for the majority of the group. As we progress the bands/artists will take on a much more indie/underground bent because I’d also like this to be an opportunity for

So my ‘Rock Your Socks Off’ club think tank (okay, it’s myself and Christina Marie) had a little meeting last night and we decided that it would be a good idea to come up with a list of the themes for the next few months worth of clubs. This way if you really want join but can only afford maybe one of the 3 month memberships, and you really just want the ‘Brit Mope Rock’ series and don’t really care about ‘Female Vocalists of the mid to late 90’s’ you can plan ahead. No band or artist will be repeated in any given calendar year (so I may do a Fiona Apple yarn this year, but then I won’t do one again for at least a year) so if you see bands/artists listed more than once in a variety of categories it’s just an example.

So here’s the plan:

March-May : “Top 40” (see above)

May-July : “Female Vocalists” (Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Mazzy Star, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Rilo Kiley/Jenny Lewis, Sleater Kinney, Paramour, etc.)

Aug-October : “Rockin’ Hip Hop” (Possibilities: Black Eyed Peas, Santogold, MIA, N.E.R.D, Gym Class Heros, Flobots, etc.)

November – January of 2010: “Brit Mope/Indie Rock” (The Cure, The Smiths, Joy Division, Morrissey, The Kooks, Snow Patrol, Cold Play, etc.)

This is just an estimation. I’d like this to go the way the club members indicate, if I have ongoing members who are really chomping at the bit for some Cure yarns, I will do as the people demand! And may move them up the schedule, but as it stands this is the tenuous schedule.

The other thing I will be doing is that in the last month of each subscription (so again in May) I will run a contest similar to the one running now where I will ask for submissions from readers with suggestions for the upcoming months sub-theme. Each 3 month subscription will have 2 bands/artists that I and my cohorts pick out and then 1 month will be the winning colorway from the readers. The prize for the winning submission will be a hank of that colorway sent to the winner. (Not the whole 3 month subscription, and none of the extras, but a hank of the yarn they described) I really am aiming for a very user friendly, fully interactive club here.

I just placed my first big wholesale order and I will be receiving over 20 lbs of yarn in the next few weeks. I’ve ordered some really great sock bases including BFL, a merino/bamboo blend, and some super soft superwash merino. I’ll be placing an order for some of the goodies soon as well including pin back buttons, stickers and maybe, just maybe, some chocolates from a chocolatier that I really love. That’s if I can convince her to sell me bulk fudge.

Also, I wanted to put this out there, if you are a pattern designer, hand spinner, stitch marker maker, baker or anything else you can think of that would go great with sock yarn and music, please email me if you’re interested in collaborating on this project and adding something to the boxes. I’d really love to have as much hand made indie stuff as possible in the boxes and I’m avoiding going to a big box store for the goodies if I can.

I’m getting so excited about this club! I’ve got so many idea running around my head and so many bands and musicians I want to put down on fiber. I’ve even thought of a great Yo-Yo Ma yarn! (Brilliant classical violinist/cellist) as well as a whole run of Wizard Rock bands (Oh yes, there will be a Draco and the Malfoys sock yarn and it will be called “Party Like You’re Evil”.) 

I’m also offering this now officially, the first 3 months of the sock club will be $95 instead of $110. This basically covers just the cost of supplies and shipping, but I’m not doing this to get rich, I just really want to do it. I figure if it means more people can participate then I’m willing to cut the price. Also if you are local to Las Vegas and want to join the club email me at daniella@danido.com for a lower price and dates when you can come pick it up from Knit Las Vegas. 

Okay, I think that catches us up on all the sock club news, keep the suggestions coming in for the first contest that’s running and remember if you get someone to buy one of the reserved slots make sure they mention your name and email address in the ‘notes to seller’ section and you will be entered to win some of my very special stash yarns. I have to destash like crazy now because I have to figure out where I’m going to store 21 lbs of undyed sock bases!