Knotty Mouse

Blah blah blah yarn blah blah blah handspun blah blah *cough sneeze* blah blah. Yes, I’m still sick and its making me miserable. If you’re expecting a package from me (not an order.. just a package.. ) they haven’t been mailed yet because I’m still in the “curl up under a blanket in the corner” phase.

The photos above are hand-painted Corriedale from Spunky Eclectic’s shop which I spun into 132 yds of worsted weight 2 ply…. The label says its “Rocky Mountain High” - which I’m sort of confused about since I lived in Colorado for 2 years and can’t place where green and wine ( I wrote “whine..” lol) come into play.. For the record, I’m calling it “Rose Garden” and it will be in the shop within the week. The stuff in the right hand corner on the bottom is my spinning in progress - a sport weight merino single in very bright colors.. which reminds me of Rainbow Brite.

I would have knitting to show you but apparently my gauge was WAY off and the Felicity hat wouldn’t even fit my son. Unfortunately I realized my error about 5 inches of stockinette into the hat so the whole thing is going to be frogged. My father in law has requested a hat (in black.. yawn..) that covers the back of his neck, so I’m in the process of either finding or tweaking a hat pattern to work for this. I found the Blue Hills Hat but unfortunately its bulky weight yarn and its just not cold enough for that here in GA… except for today.. because its 34 degrees outside and it was snowing this morning when I took Munchkin to the bus stop. Its supposed to be 66°F later this week. *boggles* No wonder everyone is sick.

Thanks to all of the comments I decided to keep Mousie Masala as the shop name and use “Two Paws” as the name of the yarns. I’m now having issues with Ravelry and its yarn system because I’d like to have photos of each individual yarn.. so I may end up naming things by colorway after all. *grumble* Its definitely not their system that is the problem.. its the fact that its set up for commercial yarn with set yardage, fiber type, etc. and all of my yarns vary from skein to skein. The actual problem is that I can’t get the page and the database to do what I want it to do.. best laid plans of mice.. and all that.

I wanted to thank everyone for their two cents regarding the Ravelry/yarn naming post.. I’m still working on emails from comments because (to put it mildly..) I’m sick.  Actually, I’ve spent the entire week doped up on cold medicine and  barely alive because I was hit with THE CRUD that has been going around Atlanta.  It started out with waking up last Saturday morning to the tune of yet another case of strep throat and the addition of some sort of sinus/ear infection and buckets of snot (was that TMI? you’re welcome).  If I blow my nose or sneeze one more time.. I’m going to cry. I don’t do well with adult cold medication (it makes me loopy- even at low doses) so I’ve been chugging grape kiddie cold medicine, eating cherry cough drops,  and walking around in a haze.

I have gotten a lot of spinning done because I lack the concentration to knit - so at least something good is coming out of this cold.  The above photo is about 55 yards of 2 ply worsted/bulky weight baby alpaca/silk blend handspun from roving that I picked up at Maryland Sheep & Wool 2 years back. I wish I would have thought to get more than an ounce or two but at the time I was a spindle spinner and didn’t think in ‘bulk’ roving.  Fortunately I have another ounce or two of a fawn colored alpaca/silk from the same MSW vendor that I could play with.  I definitely enjoyed spinning this fiber - its SO soft! Even my husband commented on the softness of this skein when I shoved it in his face and demanded that he pet the yarn - he’s pretty much used to living with a fiber addict at this point. I’m not sure what I’ll make with this because of the yardage.. but I’m definitely keeping it for myself.
Speaking of fiber addiction.. I’ve put my spinning ‘in progress’ up in my Ravelry projects list so it shows up on the sidebar.  My wheel has taken up permanent residence in the living room and my nightly routine has been to spin while watching ‘CSI:Miami’.  I’m hoping to have a few yarns for the shop available soon as I picked up a couple really nice rovings on Etsy from a favorite vendor.  They’re totally out of my usual color preference (purple.. purple.. & purple..) but I’m enjoying the change.

1. Ms. Kitty, 2. cheshire, 3. knitty kitties, 4. bastet, 5. buddha kitty, 6. brush stroke cat, 7. green cat & whisker jar, 8. egyptian cat

(clicking the links will take you to bigger photos on Flickr with descriptions)

C is for: Cats, Cats everywhere!  These are some of my favorite cat things around my house.. the ones that jumped out at me first anyway!  (Including Ms. Kitty.. who stopped to pose on the steps.. as if to say “You’d better include me in this cat collage or you’ll be sorry tomorrow!”) Looking around my office I spotted about 5 more things that I could have taken photos of - including a few ‘knitty kitty’ cards that aren’t up on the wall yet and my other plush cats (Artemis & Luna plush from Sailor Moon) that are on the bookshelf.

The other thing that didn’t make it into the collage is the cat that is constantly with me.. the tattoo on my arm of Bast taken from the D&D deity book illustrations.  Its my largest tattoo (taking up my right arm from shoulder to elbow..) and also the one I’m least happy with, hence the reason there are no photos here of it.  The artist and I clashed on the piece (regarding colors & his “artistic freedom” on MY skin) after the outline was completed and it was never finished.  I haven’t had the money to go to another artist and have it re-worked.. but its my first priority as far as tattoo work goes when the money does come through.

1. relief, 2. closet in progress

The photo on the left was taken earlier this morning and those trash bags are filled with clothes from my closet bound for charity.  At the moment its up to 4 trash bags including one not pictured with clothing that went directly into the trash.  The box at the front is now completely filled with shoes for donation. The photo on the right is my closet in the process of being organized - the clothing is hanging freely with moving room as opposed to its usual ‘crammed’ state. The floor is now empty except for a line of shoes and two small laundry baskets of stuff that didn’t get sorted because my back finally gave out on me.

The big deal about this being “eye candy” for me.. is that I’m very attached to my clothing and pretty much unwilling to part with any of it.  People who know me joke that they would NEVER sign me up for something like TLC’s “What Not to Wear”  because I’d probably try to off the hosts when they either tear up or try to throw away my clothing.  I’m sentimental about my clothing, I’m also cheap and refuse to get rid of things that are still “perfectly good” even if I did purchase them at the thrift store’s 99 cent day.  Now none of this would be a bad thing if the mess that is left from having all of these clothes (aka- nowhere to put it “away” or possible way of ’storing’ all of it) didn’t make me stressed out - but seeing it all makes me crazy.  I’ve tried to get rid of stuff in the past.. and succeeded in removing a few items here or there when they become unwearable but it was never enough to even put a dent in fixing the problem.

I’m sort of stunned that I had so much in my wardrobe that either didn’t actually fit anymore or was in such bad shape that I didn’t even consider it worthy of donating to charity and instead it went into a trash bag.  I’ll be taking the bags of clothes to the thrift store tomorrow.. and I honestly can’t WAIT to be rid of it all.  I actually walked into my closet ( a feat in itself) today and was looking through the hanging clothing and saw more things that I could part with - which is something I never find myself thinking. I’m hoping that its the motivation that I needed to jump start a huge house-wide purge of clutter. I’m also finally feeling like I could get this all under control soon, which makes me very happy.

I’ve sort of been off in my own little world lately and have been doing a lot of thinking about where I want my business to go and how I want to get it there. Admittedly I try to keep the ‘business stuff’ off of this blog because I’ve been told before that people don’t really like when someone’s blog is all about their business. I can totally understand that but I also really love reading blogs that are written by women with their own shops & crafty businesses where they talk about their daily routines - be it cutting a million squares for quilts or knitting tons of hats for their craft show booths. I have a ’shop blog’ but I barely use it… its on blogger and I actually forget that its over there half the time. Its mostly a ’shop update’ announcement place anyway. I’ve been kicking around things about the business lately and when I got frustrated by having to explain so much to a non-knitting or spinning husband I was told that I should ask “the blog”- which is hysterical that he’d suggest something like that. (and he doesn’t even read Yarn Harlot.. lol)

So.. where was I? Oh yeah.. shop. I’ve decided that I am going to list myself as a “yarnie” over on Ravelry b/c I have been selling my handspun for a while, its likely that someone might have it in their stash, and I’d really like to pursue that part of my business further. I recently sent out a skein (in the photo) with the name “Two Paws Handspun” because its the name that I have all of my handspun yarns listed under on Ravelry in my own stash - and the name seems to have stuck. So this is where I get all confuzzled… In Ravelry you have a Brand name which also comes up under your user name in the “yarnies” section (say “Lorna’s Laces”for example) and then you can have different sorts of yarns (and LL has Shepard sock, Lion & Lamb.. etc) and you get a line that says where the person bought the yarn (”Knitch yarn shop” for example) or you can add in a website address. I’ve been sitting here for DAYS trying to decide how I want to list everything in Ravelry because I know that its a data base and would be a big fat mess to try and edit once its been done.. so I want it to work properly.

What I’m getting at here is that I basically need help deciding what name I should use. I could list the “Brand Name” (which would also be my Yarnie name) as Mousie Masala & then list ALL of the yarns as Two Paws Handspun - the whole whack of them regardless of plies or type. OR I could list the “Brand name” as Two Paws Handspun - then come up with catagories and names for the types of yarn I am selling/will sell (single, two ply.. art yarn.. etc). I really want to use Ravelry’s system to see IF anyone and how many folks have either stashed my yarn or used it as projects.. so I really don’t want to name each individual yarn by its colorway as I’ve seen some folks do. I have looked through Ravelry’s Yarnie section so many times that I’m starting to recognize people’s icons without looking at the names.

Where do I stand? I’m confuzzled to say the least. I’m not sure how I want to be “known”- whether I should go with my shop name of Mousie Masala that’s been out there for a few years.. or use the Two Paws Handspun as my brand (because Mousie Masala is technically the SHOP itself.. and Two Paws is the yarn..) and hope that people make the connection but then have to “name” all of my yarns. I’m totally over-analyzing this but I also want to be able to come up in the search thing when you type in a yarn. I *have* however changed the banner on my Etsy shop to reflect this name addition.. so I’m pretty committed to the name itself.

So, I’d really love to hear your opinion. I know there are some Rav Yarnies that read my blog too so that would be helpful to hear from y’all as well. Thanks in advance.

The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
–Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems (1916) “Fog”
US biographer & poet (1878 - 1967)

for more information on the silent poetry reading in honor of St. Brigid : go here

♥ ♥Also.. its my 10th wedding anniversary. ♥ ♥

Casting on for a pair of Fetching mitts in Zitron Avanti - I really love the colors of this yarn.