tl;dr: scroll down to skip my introspective blather and cut straight to the EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENTS!
Hey, remember the good old days when I used to be… a blogger? I mean, a blogger who actually BLOGGED now and then? Pretty often, in fact – rather to my own surprise, because I remember thinking when I started out that there might be enough time in the universe to do things, or there might be time enough to write about them, but I couldn’t imagine how there’d be time for both. Which struck me as sad, because both are necessary to me. Over the past couple of years I seem to have turned into a true prophet on that one, alas. But it has to change. It just HAS to, because there is so much to do and so much to say. So I keep getting back on the blogging horse, and every time I promise myself that THIS time I am not going to fall off.
Actually, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, I have been blogging continuously during this seemingly fallow period. Seriously! I have been telling you all about my adventures in knitting and spinning. I told you when I got aweaverated; I told you all about how I fell down that rabbit hole, and about the huge loom I acquired that is now waiting for a doorway big enough to let it into the room in the house where… oh yes, and I told you all about the work I’m having done on that house. I told you all about the awesomeness of teaching at Sock Summit. I’ve been keeping you posted on my preparations for Rhinebeck. I told you about my new sock pattern, Glomerata, the moment it was published in the current Knitty. I showed you pictures of the amazingly gorgeous Delphinium colorway Betty dyed for it in my new base yarn, Tsilk Tstocking. (Oh yes, and I announced winners of the naming competition.) In fact, I showed you lots and lots of pretty pictures of dozens of marvelous yarn colors. And just a few days ago I told you all about my whirlwind trip to SOAR.
I did! The only trouble is… I did it all in my head. And now I find they haven’t perfected the plug-in yet, and all those words I wrote, all those pictures I took… somehow they failed to flow out of my head and into the computer, and there they still are, floating around in my head with no obvious mode of egress – and here meanwhile is the actual real-life blog lying dusty and neglected. Sigh. Back when I was a programmer we used to speak of the grail of coding, the two-line program that translated “All bugs off; do what I’m thinking” into living-color real-time action. Apparently that one hasn’t been perfected yet either.
So I actually still have to TYPE to get these things across!
Well, then, type I will. And there will be pictures, eventually. Real ones.
For now, though, time is short, and I need to hit the bullet points.
RHINEBECK!!!!!
It’s THIS WEEKEND! And we will be there, in a big spiffy new booth. Building C, space 9/10. Come and visit! play! hug! (And also, you know, ogle stuff, and buy stuff, and order stuff.)
- We will have the first of the new kits. Mostly fine old wines in brand new bottles – that is, new editions of some of the tried and true classics with gorgeous new yarns in wonderful saturated colors. New colorways for some of them… with much, much more to come along those lines.
- We will be opening sign-ups for the 2012 season of the Tsarina’s Art for your Feet Tsock Club! It’s been a long time coming, and we have some exciting plans. Enrollment is strictly limited (this is the shakedown cruise for the new team, and we don’t want to kill them in the first year), and there’s a special deal if you sign up at Rhinebeck: $25 off the regular subscription price (which is $250, plus the usual increments for large size and/or overseas postage), plus a custom-dyed skein of the new sock yarn and a free pattern download of your choice. (And yes, this is a sideways way of hinting that in the coming months a number of my older designs will become available as standalone patterns. More on that later.)
- Betty has been one busy lady. In addition to the above-mentioned Delphinium and the new colorways for the above-mentioned kits, she will also be there with some of her own Moose Manor Hand Paintscolorways.
- We’ll also have some special sock fibers from Gnomespun – including but by no means limited to the colorways associated with Glomerata. If you’ve been watching Dan’s Rhinebeck preview tweets without drooling, there might be something wrong with you.
- Proud to say we will have some of Leslie Wind’s work – shawl pins, knitting tools, and knitters’ jewelry.
- Support spindles from Habetrot.
- Stitch markers from Holda.
- NO batts from Enchanted Knoll, alas, because Josette broke a finger loading out of SOAR. Next time, though!
Because, you mark my words, this is only the beginning. Art for your Feetis BACK, kids!
New web site is teetering on the brink of being ready to launch – not quite in time for Rhinebeck, because life keeps happening, but very soon thereafter. That is where you’ll go, in future, for all things Tsock including actual purchases. (If I weren’t up to my ears in being in four places at once, what with Rhinebeck breathing down my neck, this is where I’d be singing the praises of the wonderful new Tsock Team making all this happen, because you can bet it isn’t going to be ME getting things assembled and packed up and sent out in timely fashion… but all that is going to have to wait for another real-life blog entry – deserves its own, in any case, not just a throwaway mention in a rambly All The Things post like this one).
Meanwhile, though, go HERE to sign up for the mailing list, because I will be sending out announcements every time anything happens – new kits and designs coming out thick and fast as soon as we survive the weekend.
Ack! The weekend! Must go be in four places at once!
See you there.