Nevertheless, I'm really happy with these yarns which are inspired by sea glass and sea life.

Seaglass sock yarn-Superwash Falkland.

One of my favorite fruits is the mango. I don't know how that relates to sea life. As Uncle Walt Whitman said, "I have contradicted myself? Very well. I am large."

More semi-solid and thoughtfully variegated sock yarns.

Now to fire up a pot of tea and set to skeining and packing boxes.

Classified as sportswear, her clothes are some of the few that fit me perfectly right off the rack without alterations. Which is good, because by alterations I mean glue, staples and tape. Sadly, my mother, who is an excellent seamstress and ran her own tailoring business from the glassed in front porch that is now the yarn studio, was never able to teach me how to sew. We've tried many, many times, but I just can't get the hang of it. Also, I'm terribly afraid of sewing machines. Machinophobia? Puncturingfingersphobia?

At the monastery I was assigned to the sewing group, even though I respectfully asked to be on the gardening crew. The irony of the situation was not lost. The monk in charge of sewing quietly asked me if I would sew, not could sew, but would. I whispered back, "Do you mean without a sewing machine?" He nodded. "Yes, I can do that." Handsewing is afterall, just knitting with a very small needle, kinda. Even so, I managed to take 30 minutes to sew a cushion pleat to itself instead of closing the gap where the stuffing went in. The woman next to me was running a sewing machine and I guess the sound of it was making me jumpy.

I get Eileen Fisher's seasonal planner which beautifully lays out in watercolor and pen-and-ink sketches what the upcoming colors, fabrics and outfits will be from now until June. If there's one complaint I have, it's that there's not enough color in the collection. EF has a lot of black and neutrals, but the texture and cut of the fabric keeps the clothes from looking drab. And they are a perfect foil for handknits.

For early 2010 EF will have the usual black, 10 shades of gray, gray-browns and taupes, khaki and white, with a limited palette of clear watermelon pinks, oranges, and an unusual mustardy green she calls chicory and I would call bronze. You'll see many of these colors with my tweaks on the Butternut Woolens fine gauge sock yarns-Super Sock Bluefaced Leicester, Super Sock Superwash Merino and a new line of Super Sock Superwash Falkland.

Getting ready for two large wool shows at once looks like this: The cupboard where we keep all of our clean dishes.

Silkie ready to be labelled.

Homegrown wool from North America.

Super Sock yarn.

For the first time in several years, I'll be offering raw angora fiber for sale. This is prime German and German-hybrid angora with a staple length of 2 1/2-3 inches, grown by farmers in Oregon and California. There's white and colors this time and I have several pounds of it. It'll be available by the ounce.

The Butternut Woolens yarn store is now closed, and I'll re-open the first week in March with a limited inventory.

See you in Tacoma and Santa Clara!

Come see the new yarns and colorways and stop and say hi.

I'll be taking the online store temporarily off-line for the month of February beginning this coming Monday, Feb. 1. If there's anything you want to buy from the store, now is the moment you've been waiting for. See ya!

Erika, a reporter now with the Kalispell Daily Interlake and formerly with the Chicago Sun-Times wrote a good article about My Year of Doing Nothing blog and dye work. Nathan of the DIL took some lovely pictures. You can read the article with colored photos here.

Butternut Woolens Silkie 60% merino/40% silk, single ply aran weight. Available at the Madrona Fiber Arts Festival, Tacoma, WA Feb. 11-14. After Madrona, it'll be available here on the website.

More Silkie in mango-y/papaya (I swear I don't know how these colors got in the dye pot. I'm trying to dye rock colors. Rocks are generally not the colors of tropical fruit.)

These Thick n Thin yarns are still available. Click on Thick n Thin on the sidebar to the right and specify in the messages section of your order that you want a yellow one. The blue-greens are already posted in the store. There are 6 of them.

Crystal finished her River Scarf in a slate blue-gray. Last Wednesday was the first time she had even held knitting needles and she jumped right in with this scarf worked back and forth on a long circular needle in Feather-and-Fan or Old Shale. She called me last Sunday morning.

Me: Hello Crystal!

Crystal: I have a knitting emergency and I don't know what to do.

Me: What's the problem?

Crystal: I have no end.

Me: Huh?

Crystal: There's no end any more.

Me:?

Crystal: You know how when I left your house the scarf had two ends?

Me: Yea-ah.

Crystal. Now it doesn't. It's a circle.

Me: Ooohhh....

I saw Darlene's husband Jeff at the post office just before knit night.

Jeff: So, knitting tonight huh?

Yep, you coming?

Nah, when you have ribs and beer, then I might come. Did Darlene tell you what happened to her scarf?

No, what?

The dog undid the whole thing right when she was at the end. I'll let her tell you the rest.

Despite knitting her scarf twice, Darlene finished in one week, too.

Crystal brought wine, I set out beer and cookies and many a bawdy tale was told involving Cabin Fever Days at a log cabin bar in Backwoods, America, about 5 miles up the [trap]'line as we say, from Rural, a barstool slalom race, and mouse races in which someone, I won't say who, was picking up the racing mice by their tales in order to sex them before the race began. She had to be reprimanded by the MC with the bullhorn, "Blonde girl, put down the mice. The race is about to begin. Blonde girl! You! Put down the mouse!" Mice that had already raced were skittering all over the floor because after each race the owner of the mouse would simply turn it loose in the bar so it could go back about its business.

I'm not sure Erika will come back after an introduction like that. We're shaping up to be a rather unusual knitting group I think.

Warning, the photograph below is grisly, it's going to make some of you queasy, some you might faint. Some of you, like me, might say explicatives in front of your minor children. You'd better sit down.

For you non-knitters who need a translation, that's the last 3 lbs of newly dyed Homegrown wool yarn wrapped around the washing machine agitator. The yarn is felted nicely. It'll have to be cut out with the sharpest shears I can find later tonight, after I've had some adult beverages.

Because I don't have a winter studio with a water source, I've been soaking the newly dyed skeins in cool water in the washing machine, then spinning it out and hanging the damp skeins on the drying rack in front of a big fan. Except for this batch which is the last of the homegrown I have had. I won't be able to get more before the Madrona Fiber Arts Festival.

The water was cold, the yarn room temperature, the agitation time about 4 minutes, or the amount of time it takes to listen to Boy A's sad tale of his brother's cheating ways and the subsequent scolding of Boy B for trying to pay his personal debts out of the Monopoly bank's coffers. In case you wanted to know.