Life as an Indie Dyer- My Week Part 2

Thanks for the great comments I received on part one of my week and the series as a whole! I'm so glad you're enjoying the posts (or post for that matter). Sometimes I'm not sure if it's something people really care about or I just find interesting. To be honest, this is a great exercise for me as well. Living through it, I know I'm busy, but after writing and re-reading my post from yesterday, I thought, 'WOW, no wonder I'm so tired at the end of the day and feel stressed!'

Believe it or not, when I posted the Monday post, I realized I forgot a huge portion of last Monday that is very important and ongoing at the moment for me. Last Monday, I received an email from a sock designer who's current ongoing series of patterns has gotten me excited. On a Ravelry message board I mentioned how much I liked the patterns she's designing. What patterns you ask? She's designing sock patterns based on the Hunger Games books/movie(s). She currently has a pattern for Peeta, Gale (she hasn't released the pattern yet but it's soon!), and almost the rest of the cast! If you look at her project page you can see her updated photos for each. Anyway, back to how Candy Skein has anything to do with it. So, I loved her pattern for Peeta and Gale, and mentioned on a Ravelry Hunger Games board that I hope she does one for Effie. That's when she emailed me, asking if I was interested in partnering with her on a few patterns. She wanted certain colors for her idea of an Effie sock, and also wanted to know mine. Monday we worked back and forth, describing our ideas of what represents Effie, what colors to use and we came to the conclusion there would not be one Effie based sock, but TWO different patterns, both with Candy Skein yarn. Exciting, right!? I was BEYOND excited. So that's how far it got on Monday. Now onto Tuesday!

Tuesday: Tuesdays are hit or miss on the busy scale. It really depends how much I get done on Mondays to be honest. Due to the upcoming Fiber Festival, I don't have a day that isn't busy right now. This past Tuesday was no exception. I received 4 new orders, so I had to re-skein, pack and print out the receipts for those. Luckily, one of them was for one of my friends that goes to my crochet/knitting group on Tuesdays so I just had to get her stuff ready to take with me, as later we were meeting.

I'm sure you're wondering why I always say I have to re-skein them. I'll get more into that in a later post focusing on the re-skeining process, but for now, I just wanted to point out that normally, I do have everything re-skeined once it's listed on the website for sale. Due to the amount of dyeing that I've had to do, I was about 80 skeins behind on the process last Tuesday. Yes, you read that right, 80. Now that's just an estimate from me, but if anything, it's probably more than that, not less (more on that as well, at a later day). Anyway, back to my day. While getting orders ready, I of course had yarn in the pots. I ended up dyeing about ten skeins last Tuesday if memory serves me right. Ten is a good day when I'm not getting ready for a festival and an okay day when I am. At this point, I just need to dye as much as possible.

I also did a little research on patterns that we could use for the Effie socks, while the designer, Yavanna, was coming up with her ideas. This was my first time working closely with a designer and I love the process. I knew for my Effie sock ideas, we were going to be using the April Sock Club colorway, Butter Mints. For her design, she wanted more vibrant colors to show the other side of Effie, so we decided on a bright mix of Royal Rock Candy and Grape Fizz. I wanted to dye them for her, so that they came out just as she wanted, so instead of taking from the skeins already dyed, I dyed a few to her liking. Fun, right!? I can't tell you how excited I am for the pattern, and I'll fill you in on the rest of our process later in the week.

My crochet and knitting group (a separate group from Monday except for one other member who is in both) meets every other Tuesday at a local Panera Bread from 4:30-7:30. The great thing is, it's close to a Michael's Crafts and a supermarket that carries just the colors I need for dyeing...If you can imagine the weird looks I get with the vinegar, imagine the comments when I walk to the checkout of a market with $35 worth of Kool-aid! I usually can't get by without explain what I use it for. I've gotten 'wow, you must sure like Kool-aid', to 'big party tonight, huh?' thinking that I'm mixing them with alcohol a la J-ello shots. Again, I think I disappoint them when I tell them the real reason, or sometimes they even look at me stranger. I also get tips from them, like last week, a girl mentioned that she uses the Lemonade sugar free Kool-aid to clean her dishwasher. Who knew there were so many uses for Kool-aid, right?

I had to leave the house early to hit those places, plus the post office again (do you notice a theme here), before heading to the meet up. Sure enough, it took just the right amount of time, and I was able to get to the meet up just as everyone else was arriving. My Monday night group (which meets every week as mentioned) is about 30 minutes from my house, but luckily, the Tuesday group is about 10-12 minutes away. It's an open group (on meetup.com), so we never really know who will show up. It always keeps us on our toes! I started the group with a friend of mine about a year and a half ago, Sharon from Ami Amour. We have a great time, despite not always getting a ton of knitting/crocheting done during it. There are many days I forget to eat lunch when Tuesdays are concerned if it's a meet up day, so I try and get in a snack at Panera before dinner later in the evening.

That day, I had an order for one of the members of the group which I brought along, as well as skeins of Butter Mints as they had yet to see it. See, work and play does mix! Sharon and I stuck around talking until around 8pm as we like to talk about how each of our companies are doing, when I met my husband for dinner. It's our night where we tend to go out to dinner since I haven't been home to cook anything and my group meets close to his route home.

We got home from dinner around 9pm, when we then had to feed and walk the dog. Normally I do that around 6, but on Tuesdays when I have group, I leave way too early to feed him. I then came back from our walk, updated my books, checked all my sites and sat down to write the Work in Progress Wednesday post. I try to get to the post earlier in the day, but lately I haven't had time until just before bed. I took the picture, finished up the post and scheduled it to post at 12:01am Wednesday morning like I do each week. It was around 10pm at that point, and I still had to wash out the day's yarn. I did that and hung it to dry. It was about 10:30 by the time I finished everything, and ended my day reading in bed before sleep.

Not as hectic as Monday, but I still worked (or did work related items) between 9am and 4:30 and then again from 9:30pm to 10:30pm.

Come back tomorrow for Work in Progress Wednesday, and later in the day, Part 3 of my week!