Are you hungry for some more fiber? It’s very good for your body. Click to see the names of the new colorways. I’m digging on Daisies.
I’m all caught up with my orders so now’s a good time to grab me if there is something you want. Just leave a comment or e-mail me from the shop.
Has anyone else been playing with this? I love how you can put in tag words and Stumble along and find different websites. I’m Scoutj of course! I was looking at my shop stats and saw all of these hits from stumbleupon.com and had no idea what it was. I guess Bruce tagged my website and people came over to see what he was talking about. I found a few of you already but if anyone else is over there let me know!
My kids are the luckiest kids in the whole wide world as they are the recipients of the cutest knitted items ever. These are the Fiber Trends Pattern I posted about a while ago and they are now the biggest craze at our shop. Everyone is making them. (Well, not me of course since I don’t knit right?) Franzi made a few and I loved them so much she just gave them to the kids. The shop added a class for them too and it immediately filled up. My kids now go to bed with their hedgehogs and Ugly Dolls. Thank you again Franzi for making my kids so happy!
I also dyed a new colorway last night. It was one of those I got from seeing some yarn in the shop and I literally had to do it last night at a really inconvenient time before it excaped my brain. Over the past few months I’ve become friends with Tina & Kaci of Blue Moon Fiber Arts. They make me laugh on a daily basis and I can’t wait until I meet them in person. Although Kaci might kill me when I try and waker her up at 6:30am….. I hereby name this colorway - Color Queen after the master-dyer Tina. If you want some you know the drill.
And this was what I saw when I woke up this morning. I know you all love my sky pictures so I’ll keep posting them. I figure It’s like having my morning espresso with you when I take a picture knowing you’ll all get to see it.
I’ve been super busy the past few days. Village Wools was closed for inventory on Saturday and I could barely see straight after 6 hours of counting yarn. And I wasn’t even there the whole time. I was up to my eyeballs in dyeing yesterday but am pretty much caught up with orders. I made one mistake with an order which means I have one skein of 1,000 yards of hand painted, laceweight yarn in the Rosalie colorway. It’s super soft and so pretty. This one is a bit more muted than the superwash in the picture on my shop. The first person who wants it can have it for $25.00 plus shipping. And if you get it fast I could even put it in the mail today. I’m bringing all of my orders to the P.O. after Supergirl naps. You’d have it by Wednesday!
I’m also in love with this new colorway Christy and I created called Hot Tropics. It’s for her friend who is an author. Her new book is called Hot Tropics Cold Feet and Christy wanted to give her a little something. I almost don’t want to part with this. The merino tencel makes it even prettier. Delish.
And these are the other pretties that kept me busy yesterday. I need to put them in their envelopes and send them off to their new homes. Isn’t that merino tencel shiny? I have to make some socks with it. I guess that would mean I’d have to knit then huh?
I’m bringing you my Saturday Sky a day early since I’ll be gone all day tomorrow as it’s Inventory day at the shop. This picture was taken at about 6:45am looking directly east at the Sandia Mountains. I love when it’s clear enough to see all of the radio towers.
I think this might be one of my favorite ones yet. (Click all of the pictures to see the bigger version.)
I also bring you three new colorways I’ll be adding to the shop. The first one was ordered by Tara. Since knee-highs are all the craze right now she wanted a custom colorway for a pair based on this picture. I love the name we came up with. She said earlier today, “The thought of me wearing knee highs in a conservative office (with my pinstripe suit and tweed skirt) caused one friend to say the knee highs were very “Barbie goes Corporate”. So we decided on Corporate Barbie. The colors are shades of gray-blue, light gray and dark gray. I can’t wait to see her rockin’ these knee-highs in a tweed skirt!
The next colorway was designed by Craftylilly. Now that I have laceweight she wanted a skein of that and tencel in a colorway we’re calling Water Nymph. It was an overcast day when I took the picture so just imagine this much more vibrant! The top is the tencel and the bottom is the lace. (1,000 yards)
And finally, the one T. said is his most favorite to date, was dyed for the Lime & Violet girls. They were so sweet in their podcast last week I wanted to thank them by giving them a colorway. They loved it and are going to be doing some sort of contest soon so make sure you are subscribed to their blog. I should have stuck the snake in with the yarn since they seem to really like snakes. Or maybe just SNAKES ON A PLANE!!!
As always, I’m too busy to update the shop so simply e-mail me if you would like anything. I currently have 6 different yarns in stock ranging from laceweight to worsted weight. I’m off to wind yarn. Have a great weekend everyone!
*peeks head out from under a pile of wet, rained on, yarn*
If you haven’t already seen this, the Red Scarf Project 2007 is about to start so go on over to Norma’s blog and read about it for the details. It’s near and dear to her heart so use up some of that pretty red yarn you have in your stash and take part in this wonderful charity knitting project. Everyone who knits a scarf and posts a picture on the blog could be the lucky winner of a skein of Scout’s hand painted yarn. It will be a beautiful skein of 400 yards of 100% worsted weight merino in shades of red and a touch of denim blue. Again, just head on over to Norma’s for all of the details.
Here is a button I made. You know the rules. Stealing other people’s bandwidth is super bad Karma. Save it to your own server, slap it up on your blog and get knitting.
How To Add A Button To Your Blog Tutorial!
For those of you who don’t know how to add buttons here is a quick tutorial. If you need help just let me know. I’m no HTML expert by any means so if anyone who is sees something that needs to be changed or can think of a better way to explain it let me know and I’ll fix it.
1) right-click the button you want and save it to your OWN computer.
2) (this is the trickest part for some of you) You now need to upload the button back up to your own space somewhere online. Depending on your ISP (internet service provider) you should have space online where you can upload pictures. Go to your main account and see where they have ftp access information or directions as to how to do this. Otherwise, you could upload to a flickr account and that could work too.
3) once you have successfully uploaded the image you need to figure out the image URL. For example this image above is - *http://scoutj.com/images/red_scarf_project.jpg*
4) depending on your blog host, you then have to find where your sidebar HTML code is so you can add the button HTML. For example, in Wordpress you go into presentation>themes>theme editor>sidebar.
5) The first thing you should do is copy the entire HTML code and save it on your computer in case what you do messes it up. Always backup your HTML code!!
6) decide where you want your button to go and all you have to do is use this HTML code and take out the spaces before and after the < arrows> and because Wordpress is being a pain you need to delete the X they are sticking before the src and href.
< img xsrc="place your button URL here">
7) sometimes you have to play with your HTML and add some additional code to center/right/left/justify it so you like how it looks. There are a cajillion HTML tutorials online to help with all of the code you may need. Just remember to back up FIRST so you can always just copy and paste your original code back in if you mess it up.
8) for those Mensa students, you can then make your button a hyperlink (where you click it and it takes you to another site) by simply adding one more piece of code. Remember to take out all spaces after & before the < arrows > and the x’s.
< a xhref="the url link where you want the button to take you" >< img xsrc="place your button URL here">< /a>
OH
MY
GOD.
Okay, not snakes plural but it doesn’t matter. A snake in my HOUSE. T. just spent the last 30 minutes trying to find a little baby snake that he almost stepped on in our guestroom. You do not know how afraid I am of snakes. As in absolutely freaking terrified. Like, scream bloody murder afraid. Like, won’t go in the reptile section of the zoo afraid. Like fast forwad through the Snakes on a Plane commercial afraid. Like would barely go out near the woodpile for fear of seeing snakes afraid. You get the picture? Oh wait! When we moved here Superboy got invited to a party at the RATTLESNAKE MUSEUM in town. Uh yeah. Pass.
I just spent the past 30 minutes hiding in our bedroom on the bed with goosebumps on top of goosebumps until he found it. He had to look through my STASH to find it. MY STASH!!!! I don’t know if I can ever go back into that room again. Or touch that yarn. Maybe I’ll give all of my yarn away. I’m traumatized. When he came out and told me he finally found it I cried. Then I didn’t believe him. I thought maybe he just said he found it because he gave up. He swears up and down he found it and would never do that to me. I just told him I’ll clean up the closet tomorrow because I’m not stepping foot in there right now.
A SNAKE in my HOUSE!? I’m calling our pest control guy first thing in the morning to ask him about potential snake nests/eggs. Do they breed/hatch like spiders? WHAT DO THEY DO!?!? I might have to move. And Chris? That’s the room you’re staying when you come to visit in a few weeks……do you like snakes?
I can not shake this freaked out feeling. Just thinking about it again gives me goosebumps. UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh yeah. Did I mention that T. saw a rattlesnake on a hike with the kids last weekend? There is also no way we can tell the kids. The boy would flip OUT. Supergirl would think it was cool. BARF.
Over the past few weeks I have been working towards making my business legit. As in, my friend who is a lawyer is actually doing the paperwork and all that jazz to make Scout’s Swag a real company. Exciting stuff for sure. As sappy as it sounds I thank all of you out there for supporting me and loving my yarn because without you this wouldn’t be possible. In a continued effort to get my shop link out there I come to my support system, aka YOU, for a favor. If you don’t already, and don’t mind, could you please put this
button on your blog with a link to the shop? (You know the whole save it to your own server and don’t steal bandwidth spiel) Since my entire business thus far, relies completely on word of mouth, it’s the only way I get business. I know how important it is to have the proper meta tags and use words like, hand, painted, yarn, dyed, sock yarn, superwash, etc…… But when you don’t have an Etsy Shop or advertise in a magazine you have to just hope people love your yarn and talk about it. So far you haven’t let me down. I even got a mention on the hilarious Lime & Violet podcast. Bev e-mailed me to tell me about it so I listened to my first podcast ever. Those two are a riot. SNAKES ON A PLANE! (A movie I will never in a cajillion years see as I’m terrified of snakes)
Have you seen some of the things being knit out there with Scout’s Swag? Look at these amazing socks Karen made with Appletini. Or these finished Illinis by Julie. Marisol, one of my most supportive customers, has one Stormy Chaos done and boy is it gorgeous. Look at this one out of Tarzhay! Who am I forgetting? Comment and I’ll add links. I love showing off what y’all have done.
Oh! Also, I just got in some lace weight yarn and it’s super pretty. I already have a few orders with it but just know I can now dye any colorway in laceweight too. I’m planning on selling 1,000 yards for $25.00. As always, you can just e-mail me to place an order for anything you see on the shop. I’m so busy doing that I don’t know when I’ll be able to actually put some into the shop. Trust me, I’m not complaining. I’d rather dye for orders rather than put stuff up in the shop that just sits there. I’m off to make a dent in the 15+ skeins of custom orders I have for this week so far.
One final thank you. Especially for linking me up with a button to the shop. You rock. Yes you! And you. Oh yeah. You too.
(Wait. I forgot to tell you that Village Wools is having the annual pre-inventory sale where everything in the store is 15% off through Friday. We started the sale yesterday and dang was it nuts in there.)
I love it when the balloons come right over our house.
Click to see the balloon up close.
Pretty cool huh?
*** Now we’re up to 1333 1670 just today. Ewwwwwwwwww! Make it STOP!***
In the past 24 hours I’ve gotten over 4,000 hits for having a certain little girl’s name mentioned on my blog back in March. You know the guy they have just arrested in Thailand who has admitted he kill the little blonde girl from Boulder? (No WAY am I mentioning her name again) Yeah. That one. I already deleted it but back in March I said a picture of Supergirl with her pink cowboy hat on reminded me of something you-know-who would wear. It seriously creeps me out that four THOUSAND people have been to my website and must have been extremely disappointed to find knitting content and not…… well I don’t know what. I rarely look at my sitemeter and just happened to yesterday and holy crap was I surprised. I checked out the referring links and they are all from Google looking for images of that girl. When I went back, I saw that the picture I referred to on my post shows up on the second page of Google images for this girl. I can count on one hand how many times I’ve hotlinked and this was one of them. See what happens? Acutally, I didn’t hotlink! I just had a link to that picture. Which is even creepier.
Just, plain, weird.
18 shots of espresso