Here’s hoping all goes well. I redesigned the thumb about 3 times to get a good fit. Not many mittens use DK weight yarn and so it was harder than I thought it would be to figure it out. Sharon, who works at Tangled Purls, gave me a good rule of thumb and that turned out to be the thing I needed. It turns out that the frequency of the increases controls the way the thumb drops onto your palm (the way it fits when you tug them on).

I want to clean out some colors so I can dye some new stuff for the fiber festivals coming up this season. I’m also hoping for a few new customers and to promote the new Love in the Time of Camelot mitten pattern, which will be available tomorrow through the sale. I’ll get it up on to Ravelry by Monday I swear. I’m just kind of going through the thumb again to make sure I like the way it’s been written now. And I keep finding tiny things to fix. What I really wish is that I’d held onto just one skein of Guinevere so I could do it up more as a valentine’s day pattern, which is what I had in mind. Still, if you want that lovely red, I can always custom dye it for you.

There’s no snow here in Philly, but it’s cool and it looks like winter. I’m hoping that there will be a little snow in New England when we’re there in January, for our child’s sake, but even there, the guarantee for a white Xmas is not very good.

We’ve somehow managed to come up a little short handed for our Xmas gifts, and so will do a little shuffling and scrambling this morning with IOUs and the like, but it will work out and no one here will mind.

The big winner here is our daughter, who is by far the youngest person in the household and who had to start opening her Xmas presents last night for the sake of decency! Being 2, she opened for a little while and satiated her curiosity, even listening when we said that the rest of the presents were for tomorrow. I think the fact that we had 3 presents under our tree for most of December helped our credibility.

I’m working on a pair of self striped socks in trying theory’s continuum. I’m about
to move over to the heel and toe yarn. I’m not sure if I’ve done toe up socks two at a time on two
needles before, so this should be fun. Of course, it means I’ve been at the heel for more than a month. Anything I knit these days that requires and even vaguely complex direction requires a lot of extra time.

It’s very exciting to be able to put in photos using the iPad, so I’d expect more full color illustrations in the future.

I took on festivals, craft shows and trunk shows and have taken up a good amount of spinning fiber. (This will only get cooler next year.)

Out went lachesis sock, bamboo sock and chione aran. I flirted briefly with oriethrya sport and a silver sparkle sock (now nearly gone). In came oracle bfl, oracle merino, selene sock and fiber. Prices for the silk hankies have normalized and I thank you sincerely for being patient during this crazy season. It went from very very high demand to an even demand and I was able to lower the price as the season went on.

The result was kind of haphazard pricing and an inconsistent approach to pricing for sales and a really horrible (it would make any accountant think three times before taking me on as a client) looking set of books. I’m not looking forward to straightening them out and it will probably take years before all the stock is gone that makes it so horrid! I’ve been cleaning up my act slowly, but surely and am doing my best with the new wholesale accounts to take a more consistent approach to pricing and also to colorways!

The shop will close Friday until January 11, 2012 for break. I’ll probably leave up a nice pretty set of hankies, but do notice that I won’t be able to ship anything until I return from my holiday travels.