Shop update! + I am so all over the place right now

First off, I just clearanced out the remaining handful of destash yarns in my etsy shop, so now’s the time to pick up some CHEAP yarn for holiday knitting.

Next, shop update! Lots of dyed fiber and both commercial and handmade samplers. More to come all week, along with my new The Year of the Brain 2011 calendars.

I’m also adding a Vintage section today. I’m going to raid my wardrobe and finally admit all (okay, not all, but many) of my beautiful vintage dresses WILL NEVER AGAIN FIT. It’s depressing, but it would kind of be more depressing for a bunch of lovely frocks to go unworn forever and ever.

ln other news, I can’t seem to focus lately. I hate it when I’m like this. I wake up feeling antsy pantsy and stay busy all day but accomplish almost nothing, then I look up and it’s nighttime already and I don’t know where the day went.

Also, it’s really winter now. Yuck. We had a couple stunning but really windy days. The wind blew the covering off half my greenhouse and flapped it into shreds on one side, but with the help of a gazillion staples, a ton of duct tape, and a poly feed sack, I was able to patch it up.

But, man, the greenhouse really works! Even with my crappy DIY setup, it does the job. I stuck a wireless weather station out there. And I didn’t check in the middle of the night, but right now it’s 25ºF outside and 44°F in the greenhouse. The only heat it’s got is a 250 watt flood I turn on when it’s going to be in the 20s overnight (and off again in the morning). I’ve seen it get to the 80s on a mid-40s day before I vented it.

In the springtime, I’ll strip the whole thing, pull out all the old staples and nails, peel back the chicken wire and hardware cloth that’s still around from its coop days, and recover it with fresh greenhouse film. I wonder if I could bend some think wood around the top of the hoop so I’d have an extra surface to help secure the film. The duct take more or less does the job, but it’s so fracking ugly.

Oh, I forgot to report back! Okay, I did lose a number of fruit (maybe a third) to that hard freeze, but most came thorough just fine. The frozen ones I picked and refrigerated over the course of the week as I saw that they were looking funny. They’ll become sauce, jelly, or chicken food in the next couple days. The herbs are fine, and while the vines are all solidly dead, most of the tomatoes were mature green, so assuming the lows stay reasonable, they’ll be able to ripen naturally.

Spinsters was on Sunday and it was so fun! I didn’t actually spin (I knit), but it was great to see everyone and chat and joke and snack. We also do our annual yankee swap and I got a luscious ounce of pygora cloud plus some super soft dyed kid mohair locks. I had to steal from Denise to get it, but that’s the nature of the swap.

I also made Marilyn model my recent knitting.

Here’s the First Hat pattern I wrote for Quick Hats class in the Last-Minute Gifts Extravaganza (at the Wicked Stitch). It’s a bulky pattern knit entirely on circulars. There’s a decrease at the crown, but it’s cinched at the end, so you don’t have to switch to dpns or magic loop, making it fast and easy for beginners.

There’s also Susan Chang’s Wham Bam Thank You Lamb!for the Cozy Cowl class, along with my new Leaning Cowl of Pisa (apologies for the name).

All in all, there will be 2 days of 2-hour classes on last-minute gifts. I’ll put up the link when Jennifer puts registration online. Speaking of, I’d better go browbeat her about that.