I Think I Found It!

Project 365 - Photo #87
Originally uploaded by Elabeth.

Is this the future home of Stringtown Yarn & Fiber? I went down to check out this space today. They're offering me a really sweet deal on the lease so I think I'm gonna take it tomorrow. It needs a LOT of cleaning up, but it'll be great.
The last renter took every light fixture in the place, so I'll have to go get some track lights and maybe a few lamps, but during the daytime you don't really even need many artificial lights anywhere but in the basement.

It's Big and Scary and Totally AWESOME.

I'm giving my 2 weeks notice at the day job one week from today. I
just canceled my health insurance and filed papers to switch it over
to a different company associated with Steve's work beginning April
15th. If things play out smoothly, my final day at the day job will be
Friday, April 13th. I start full time yarn store owner duty on Monday,
April 16th.
I'm getting nervous about making the big leap to being self-employed.
Yes, I'm totally excited and happy and all of that, but I'm also
totally anxious and afraid to let go of the small degree of security
the day job provides. Sure, the day job is no fun at all, is not in a
climate controlled environment, and requires me to wear steel toe
shoes, all of which have been making me want to poke my eyeballs out
with pencils since almost the day I started it, but it pays pretty
well.
I'm looking at the controllable and familliar hell I already know vs
the unfamiliar, unknown, and completely possible hell I can't really
predict. Of course, Steve is there with his own self-employment to
catch whatever slack develops in the budget and chances are the store
will do fine, but it is still a big deal to me to make this drastic
change. It means I have to let go and trust that he can pay everything
for a while. That's huge for me.
People used to live with this uncertainty all the time. There were no
big companies or factories to go work for back then. It was every man
for himself and if you sucked as a craftsman or as a salesman or a
farmer, or whatever then you just didn't eat. If I think of it that
way it isn't so bad because at least I know there is cheap stuff
available to eat, plus we do own a huge pile of camping equipment so
we could always run away and go live in the national forest if things
got super bad. We could come into town once a week, panhandle for a
day, load up on ramen, rice, and beans, and hightail it back to the
woods. Is it bad that my backup life plan is being a farty hippie? I
thought so. haha

This Is For Scout

nataliedee.com

Spring!

I'm still a little coughed up, but I feel a lot better than I did this
time last week. YAY!
I'm still not knitting any more on the sock or the sweater right now
though. I have to finish a project for a swap I signed up to do like
three months ago. I'm halfway done with an extra thing I was going to
stick in the box and everything has to be mailed by the end of next
week so I don't have time to mess with anything else. I can't even
show you what it is until it's off in the mail because my swap person
might read the blog, so I'm going to be totally boring and knit-less.
Store things have hit a point where I can't really talk about it so
I'm just waiting around.

Garden Stuff:
Spring has kind of snuck up on us here. My yard is still a total mess
and I don't have the garden boxes ready to plant stuff in or anything.
Steve and Ian mowed up the old leaves and did a little work out there
last weekend, but I was too sick to go out and breathe dust so I
stayed in the house. It is supposed to rain off and on all this week,
so I'm using that time to plan stuff.
I think this year I'm not going to try to plant a lot of crazy stuff
like I did last year. (which was the 1st year for the square foot
garden) I'm going to plant more of the stuff that did good and leave
out the wacky white eggplant that never made fruit and the broccoli
that the bunnies kept eating etc. I'm even gonna leave out the
cucumbers even though they did really well. I don't like them all that
much, and I felt pressured to eat the damn things all summer. haha
So, Box #1 gets 4-6 heads of Lettuce, a bunch of Onions, and two
trellis things of Peas this weekend. The rest of the boxes will have
to wait a month or so to be safely past the last frost date for this
area. When it's time, box #2 gets 8 Okra plants, 4 peppers, and 4
tomatoes. Box #3 gets 6-8 Yellow Squash plants, and 8 square feet of
bush type Green Beans. Ian wants to put corn in box #4 again. Last
year raccoons or giant rats or something totally ripped it to shreds
before we even got one ear started so I guess we can try it again.
I've got plans for a more sturdy fence around each box. Hopefully
that'll work to keep out the beasties.
In the front yard potato pot we have potatoes already coming up. We
must remember to dump that thing out this year. I'm afraid of what
might be in there right now so we're just gonna let them grow. I'm
also going to plant some more Canna Lilly bulbs in the cursed flower
bed under the big window (nothing wants to grow there) and some
Gladiolus in the big pots. Maybe the squirrels won't run off with them
all this time.

Rockin Socks!

Project 365 - Photo #74
Originally uploaded by Elabeth.

Here is the progress on the Rockin Sock Club sock that I made while in Eureka. I haven't worked on it all week due to the sick.
I got a huge migraine yesterday, then threw up my migraine meds so it wouldn't totally go away and it came back this morning. This week sucks rocks. I'm tired of being sick. I'm tired of coughing, and I'm tired of migraines. bleh.

The Weekend & Stuff

Go here to see pictures from my weekend at the 1st Annual Arkansas
Ghost Hunters Conference ~
http://www.flickr.com/gp/65665739@N00/91D897
It was held in Eureka Springs, AR at the Crescent Hotel. If you watch
the show Ghost Hunters on the Sci-Fi channel, you might remember this
is where they caught the image of a man in the basement on their
thermal camera which couldn't be explained. I didn't get that lucky,
but I did get lots of pictures of weird orb things, and I got a good
bit of knitting done on the Rockin Sock Club pattern for this month.
I'll have pictures of that later tonight. People were fascinated with
the sock knitting on the teensy size 0 needles.
The freakiest things that happened to me directly at the hotel this
weekend were feeling like I was being tapped on the head during one of
the presentations in the conservatory, and the door chain swinging. We
were all in one of the rooms which they say has lots of ghost activity
going on all the time. My friend Elissa left the room to go back to
our room to get something, and the chain on the door kept swinging
steadily for several minutes after she closed the door. One of the
other girls in the room said "That needs to stop now!" and it
instantly stopped as if someone had grabbed the chain to stop it. We
all said "Thank You!" and that was that.
I wasn't feeling so hot on Friday when I left for Eureka, but I
thought it was just allergies or something. By Sunday when I came home
I was feeling downright sick and crappy. I ended up having a fever
Sunday night, going to the doctor Monday morning, and being told I had
the beginnings of a case of pneumonia. Staying up till 3 or 4 AM two
nights in a row and spending time in basements probably didn't help me
any. haha I got some antibiotics, decongestant, and the really good
cough syrup so I feel halfway Ok now. I'd be better if I could stop
this coughing.
Oh, and if you're my new Secret Pal 10 person, the questionaire is
either waaaay down at the bottom of this page or over in the archives.
I posted it not too long ago so you shouldn't have too far back to
hunt for it. :)

Tattoo Meme!

Project 365 - Photo #65
Originally uploaded by Elabeth.

This picture is to show my tattoo because Scout really really really wanted to see it. haha

Yarn School

I'm going. Are you? You totally should!

http://harveyvilleproject.com/yarnschool07/index.html

I figure by September I'll need a nice long weekend away. As of right
now I'm planning on just driving up there (cause secretly I think I
have long haul trucker genes) so if anyone local or between here and
there via Hwy 71 would like a ride just let me know cause I'll be
going that way.

New Store Blog

This weekend I bought a domain and made a new blog for the store. The site is super boring right now, but hopefully I'll have time in thenear future to jazz it up a little. You can go check it out at http://stringtownyarn.com/ if you're interested. Local people, leave me some comments over there so I don't feel like I'm talking to the wind.
I still plan to do my personal blogging over here, and I haven't linked to it from there yet because I haven't decided whether I want to or not. In case you haven't noticed, I kind of have a potty mouth on occasion over here. I need to work on breaking myself of that habit when I speak because I have to be all retail-friendly again. 10+ years of working in a factory has contributed to my bluntness and bad language in a big way. I don't want to go running people off when the store opens because I talk like a teamster. I know some of the people won't care, but probably just as many would freak out never to return.
The blog over there is more for stuff like pictures of the store as we get it set up, pictures of the yarn & fiber as it arrives, and then once we're open it'll have pictures of new stuff as we get it in, sale announcements, class schedules, finished objects from local knitters, and then eventually there will be an online store too.

I'm A Joiner

This is my Faux Fair Isle Raglan from a pattern in Spin To Knit by Shannon Okey. I've had my eye on this pattern since I got the book, and I kept thinking I'd make one someday after I finish up some of these other half-done things I have going. Then Nikol made a super cute one in like two days, I saw another one on someone else's flickr, and I couldn't stand putting it off any longer.
The colorful yarn is handspun from a brown sheep mill end roving and a handpainted merino roving I bought somehwere. It was the first yarn I spun on my Louet Victoria. The black is Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride. I already love this sweater. If it ends up not fitting like I want it to I can use it as a shop sample for the store since I'll have lots of Lamb's Pride and spinning supplies.
Speaking of the store, things are going pretty much on schedule. I've heard back from most of the companies I contacted. Now comes the hard part where I have to decide what to get and what to wait on for later or not get at all. I also need to pay down a few credit cards in preparation for going to the bank to get my home equity loan on the rent house. I have to wait until after our taxes are done for that, and it's KILLING ME. Now that the store plans are so specific I'm the most impatient girl ever. haha It doesn't help my patience to have yarn reps calling almost every day to check in with me and see how it's going. I appreciate them being so on top of stuff, but I scream inside just a little bit every time I have to hang up without placing an order.
Oh well, It's the first of the month and all the yarn/fiber clubs I joined are sending out the goodies so that has cheered me up quite a bit. I got this awesomeness from Scout's Indie Swag Club last week -

& today my PO box held this from the Spunky Eclectic Fiber Of The Month Club -

I expect a Blue Moon Rockin Sock Club package any day now. Hopefully all this stuff will give me something to do with my nervous energy while I wait for the accountant to finish the damn taxes. :)