Back.

I am.

I hope.

The wonderful thing about having a knit shop of your very own is that you can sit in several hundred square feet of yummy, yummy fiber goodness.

For a little while.

The un-wonderful thing about it is that if you are an entrepreneur with a very small business (as I am), with no investment capital except for some very modest savings (which I had), and no real ability to hire a full-time employee to assist you daily instead of a part-time person to babysit the store when you simply cannot be present yourself, and also not even enough income to hire a part-time bookkeeper to help with the onerous bits of running a shop so that you can devote yourself fully to giving classes, developing yarns, promoting your shop and so forth ....

well then.

Turns out you spend three years of your life working obscene hours to keep the hounds away from the door, and having precious little time to knit for yourself, at all, and having no time whatsoever to blog.

All of which are more depressing that I can describe. And I have not been this tired, day after day, since the year or so after Hurricane Katrina hit.

But now.

Now I am moving my shop into a slightly smaller space, with much lower rent, within an artists' and craftspersons' co-op, so there's a bookkeeper and other people to share the shop-minding duties, which frees me up to accept a certain amount of reliable, paid non-knitting work in my regular field of work, and still have time to blog, knit, spin and design.

I hope.

I may be just slightly over-ambitious, but perhaps less delusional than I was when I first opened my shop. It is exceedingly difficult for a yarn and spinning shop to function as a one-person show, even if you have the most excellent part-time help.

This new co-op bunch at the shop downtown is a great cluster of human beings. I am keenly looking forward to working with them.

New address:

Knitting Asylum

447 3rd Street, Suite B

Baton Rouge LA 70802

Phone number and website to be announced soon ... and it is downtown, baby! Downtown, in our downtown, which, like so many cities, is in a state of "recovery." Downtown, amid the artists, wine bars, loft renovators and sort-of-independent hotels. Downtown, where massage therapists, Irish pubs and sushi bars are bravely reclaiming our old, glorious and decrepit buildings, buildings which spent far too many bleak and colorless years just sitting there, abandoned, while people fled to the suburbs.

It is refreshing to watch people reclaim our downtown: riding bicycles, walking dogs, carrying messenger bags and buying half-caf mocha low-fat soy cappuccinos (no sugar, please) at the independent coffee shop. I am so happy to see people actually spending money downtown that I will not even grumble about the apparent uselessness of such a beverage. Go ahead, buy as many of those concoctions as you want, you enviable wisp of a girl.

Solar panels are sprouting from the rooftops of former small department stores, and adventurous young couples are bashing out walls and installing bathrooms and kitchens in former warehouses. Art galleries appear spontaneously in buildings once thought hopeless, and brand-new restaurants and pubs are hanging out freshly painted signs. There is live music outdoors on nice days, and the farmer's market -- dozens and dozens of vendors -- occupies Fifth Street every Saturday.

Hope springs abundant in our former shattered shell of a downtown.

So moving into this co-op is an adventure. It's like being a post-apocalyptic pioneer, only with indoor plumbing.

We shall be open soon. Very soon.

And, outside of downtown and the shop ... just to spice things up a bit ... between now and Christmas, my mother has requested a plain, very plain, camel-colored cardigan sweater with pockets. Maybe with an interesting motif around the hem and cuffs, but otherwise perfectly plain...so it goes with everything, you know?

Because my mother has a strong proclivity for "girlier" things, I suspect that she thinks this request for near-Amish simplicity will somehow make the knitting "easier" rather than mind-numbing, but, because knitting skipped her generation, she does not quite realize what "perfectly plain and tailored looking" means in a grownup-lady-size cardigan of sockweight alpaca, done mostly in stocking stitch.

Check back with me on Christmas Eve. I will either be in custody for stealing all the Valium from the nearest mental hospital, or I will have achieved perfect enlightenment through all of that camel-colored stocking stitch, and I will be next in the line of succession to be the Dalai Lama.

Meanwhile, don't touch that dial. I will be posting our grand re-opening date one day this week.

New Year, New Things.

Halloween is a wonderful excuse for spooky celebration for people of all ages in the United States, but its true roots are in the Celtic New Year, Samhain, the one night of the year when the veil between the tangible world and the Other Side parts, and those who died during the year have an opportunity to pass on to the next life.

If you have read my past Halloween posts, you will know that Trick or Treat originated in Ireland, with people leaving cakes and ale on their doorsteps to appease passing spirits (it didn't take adventurous young folks long to figure out that they could get a little tipsy and also have a feast of sweets if they braved the night and absconded with the offerings for the dead). And the Jack O'Lantern was set out to light the spirits' path on their journey.

This New Year is bringing some new things to our family. Some planned, some not. One of the downsides of having a yarn store is having almost no time in which to blog, but I am trying to amend that.

Unplanned: our bathroom floor quite nearly collapsed the first week in October, and for the next few weeks we made do with the half-bath to wash ourselves up (and an occasional shower at my Mom's apartment) while the bathroom was gutted. Our old molded plastic tub had been leaking onto the floor below from inside the drain -- without our knowledge, of course -- for quite some time, and had rotted through the subfloor and joists. We were literally about to fall through the floor! It was a lot of hard work, but now we have a lovely new bathroom with a tile floor and tub surround, and a piece of granite left over from someone's much larger and much more extravagant kitchen as our bathroom countertop. There is also a good, solid cast iron tub. I will boast just a little and admit that I designed it myself to best take advantage of space and storage. I will post pictures soon.

Planned: we must choose to part with a dear old water oak which is immediately behind our home. It is an old and dear friend, but it is sick, and near the end of its life cycle. It is over 90 feet tall with a great deal of rot in its core, and we fear it will come crashing down through the house if there is a big storm. We take ending a tree's life every bit as seriously as euthanizing a dear pet, but we plan to make amends to its spirit by planting a trio of young cypress trees in its place.

Planned: The next thing is: a complete rearrangement of the Knitting Asylum to make it more cozy: new and better shelving that will hold MUCH more yarn, cushy old chairs rescued from thrift stores, and I am slowly starting a new selection of yarns for the fall and winter. Updates with photos will follow soon. My loyal employee Wren, and a few loyal customers are helping me re-design, and we are using a lot of Feng Shui principles for good traffic flow and also for good luck, because, quite frankly, I need it. The store will also be much more snug and welcoming for those who wish to sit and knit for awhile. I am very pleased at the progress we are making and slowly but surely it will be snug and cozy. We are even planning a tea station.

Also planned this month: a huge garage sale with my dear friend Diana to unload clutter from our homes and earn enough for some pocket money and maybe a dinner out with her family, my family and a couple of friends.

I am trying to get back on a quasi-normal blogging schedule. There will be lots of neat new information about the store, very soon -- and just in time for Christmas knitting, too!

More to come soon...

Dez

Publish Post

Aloha, Baton Rouge!

Fiber artist, designer and knitting instructor Lisa Louie of Maui, Hawaii (who is also my dear friend and occasional guest-blogger) will be on the mainland during the last week in April with featured work in the “Art Healing Lives” art exhibition at the Minnesota Textile Center, and during the first week of May, teaching classes at the Knitting Asylum here in Baton Rouge.

When Lisa is not teaching knitting and creating fiber art, she teaches at an educational support center on Maui for kids struggling with learning disabilities and for adults working on getting their GED.

She will be making a stop in Baton Rouge for a few days to visit and teach classes at the Knitting Asylum.

Classes to be offered are:

Gauge Games: Unveiling The Mysteries of Gauge

Gauge Games will be taught informally on Thursday, May 6 at the regular Knit Night activities from 6:30 till 8:30 at the Knitting Asylum. There is no set fee for this class. Instead, Lisa requests that attendees make a donation in the most generous amount they can afford (be it $5 or $500) for the Battered Women’s Program. There will be an alternate location if too many people sign up to fit comfortably in the shop. “Gauge Games” is a fun, highly interactive class. Bring yarn and appropriate-sized needles, and a notepad and pen. Details for a small “homework” swatch to bring to the class will follow soon.

Hot Stuff: Knitwear for Steamy Climates --
10:30 - 2:30 Saturday, May 8

Ever laugh your head off (or look enviously at) the long-sleeved cotton “summer sweaters” designed for people who live in climates where it actually cools off in the evening? We Southerners all know that the only real use for a worsted cotton garment in our beastly summer climate is on the back of your desk chair in an overly refrigerated office. Lisa will teach you to substitute cotton, soy, bamboo, linen and other warm-weather fibers to their best advantage for your own spring and summer designs, and to adapt or modify existing patterns for realistic use in our beastly summers -- for example, a worsted cotton cardigan modeled on a beach in Maine can be converted to a highly wearable shell top for office or casual wear. Bring a pattern or two that you’d like to adapt for hot-weather wear, and a pen and notebook. Class fee will probably be $25. A yarn sample pack for swatching will be available for under $10.

Art Knitting: How to get Art in your Craft --
2:00 - 4:00 Saturday, May 8.

Lisa will guide students through creative exercises designed to infuse your own designs with your unique style. Class description details and fee will follow. Fee will probably be $25.
Expanded class description and materials description will follow soon.

Please sign up by replying to this post with your name and the name of the class that you are interested in.

This post will be edited periodically to provide additional details as soon as they are known.

I hope you all consider participating in this unique opportunity!

Knit Happens.

And this is what happens for Covenant House in New Orleans when it does.  Here, deployed on the floor of my shop, are the dozens of hats, scarves and gloves donated for Covenant House in memory of Gail McHugh.  Sincere and heartfelt thanks go out to the many knitters who made this possible, and please give yourselves a round of applause:

I didn't have enough unoccupied space on the floor of my little shop to spread everything out so the items could be viewed individually, but do know that each and every item was deeply appreciated by Covenant House and that dozens of homeless teens will be warmed and cheered during our erratic winter months.  The Asylum plans to do this Christmas garment drive again next year, but remember that I accept donations for Covenant House year-round.  

I am so amazed and humbled by the exquisite detail that went into so many hats -- so many were true works of art -- and I am overwhelmed at the generosity of certain individuals who made about two dozen hats each.  Again, thank you.

Remember, every time you bring in a handknit garment for community knitting, you get 20% off that day's purchase (except for spinning wheels and looms, as the manufacturers won't let me do that).

Here's a peek at a few things around the shop.  In the entry room, we have hand-dyed sock yarns from Morandia, Wool In the Woods, and St. Paul's Catholic School, as well as Sockotta, needle sets, feathery "Birdman" yarn on closeout and consignment items, including Christmas stockings from Knitivity, and a shrug from Jules LeBlanc:

The shop is tiny, so I'm taking advantage of doors for needle display and I am hanging hanks of hemp yarn from chain suspended from the ceiling:

In the main wool room, we have yarn and patterns from Lily Chin, Mission Falls 1824 wool and cotton, and more needles on that door, as well as some miscelaneous designer closeouts in baskets...

Also featured are hand-dyed mohair yarn from the Knitting Asylum, smashing rovings from Creatively Dyed Yarns, and bin after bin of rovings, locks and batts, both in natural sheep colors and in a spectrum of distinctly non-sheepish colors, some hand-dyed right here at the Knitting Asylum and some dyed by other artists:

In between the yarns and rovings are spinning wheels and small looms, of course. That's an Ashford Tabby Loom and an Ashford Traveler tucked among the bins and shelves (I am still working on the Louet dealership process).  There are alpaca yarns and rovings directly from the source in South America, and a selection of knitting and spinning tools and accessories, from dye and niddy-noddies to ball winders and drop spindles:

Space is tight, so even the floor earns its keep holding baskets of ready-to-spin English Leicester, Corriedale, merino, Romney and alpaca roving...

That's an Ashford Joy in the center of the photo ... I do love that wheel.

The day I took these photos, it was dark and relentlessly rainy, so the lighting wasn't good enough to show off  my fantastic yarns from Knitivity, and stitch markers and sock yarns from local artists, but tomorrow promises to be sunny, clear and cold, so we'll have another photo shoot for a close-up look at the wonderful yarns from Knitivity, Darn Pretty Needles, and some other special items around the shop.  

Arts Market Update:

I will be at the Arts Market (corner 5th and Main, in the parking lot adjacent to the Farmer's Market in downtown Baton Rouge, LA) from 8:00 am until noon tomorrow (Saturday the 13th) with handspun yarns and spinning demonstration.  

New yarn: a wool/hemp worsted in natural, and also dyed in shades of onion-skin yellow, denim blue, and black. This is a fantastic yarn for bags, totes, etc.

I will be back at the Knitting Asylum shop by 2:00pm (perhaps a bit earlier if the Traffic Goddess smiles upon me).

And, when I return here, there will be an update on life in general, and snow in particular.

Yarn Therapy at the

Knitting Asylum

Tonight we are having the first monthly Knit Night at the Knitting Asylum.  I'm calling it Yarn Therapy, and it's going to be the first Thursday of every month from 5:30-8:30.

I can't believe how fast the past month has gone by and how very little time I have had to blog while getting this shop set up, but there is an enormous process of applying for wholesale accounts, and waiting for things to be shipped, and sussing out how to fit everything I want to offer into less than 600 square feet of space, or about the size of a small one-bedroom apartment.  

I am about half-stocked but new merchandise is coming every day.   I have a good selection of hand spindles, wheels, fibers, carders, and roving ... knitting yarns from Lily Chin, Knitivity, Wool in the Woods, Sockotta, and a variety of closeouts, as well as bamboo needles, small weaving looms, and (so far) a modest supply of knitting books and some crochet items, as well as my own handspun yarn and hand-dyed batts and roving.  Something for everyone who makes things with string ....

An update will follow after Knit Night!

(And yes, there will be pictures.)

Coming Up For Air...

I am remiss

It has become my bloggerly tradition to write something thoughtful on Halloween, something about the flow and rhythm of the most ancient forces within us. 

But this Halloween, I was doing something else.

I was opening a yarn and spinning shop.

And even though I am only sparsely stocked so far, I decided to open anyway, and to invite my knitting and spinning friends and arts market customers, and to offer refreshments, and see what happened.

Enthusiasm was generated... 

Fun was had.  

Socks were modeled...

...and I closed up the shop after dark so we could all get home for our respective plans for the rest of Halloween evening.

And then ...

I woke up November first with a raging case of the flu, so for the past two mights I have banished myself to the couch so I could shiver, sweat, thrash around and be miserable without making anyone else sick.  But the fever broke today, and back to the shop I go, to continue with getting inventory in, and getting credit card machines set up, and suchlike.

By mid-November, I should have a presentable inventory, but you are welcome to drop in and watch the shop take shape before them if you are so inclined.

Knitting Asylum

Yarns and Spinning

8231 Summa Drive, Suite B

Baton Rouge, LA, 70809

10-2:30 Tuesday

10-6 Wednesday thru Saturday

I will be open, but under-stocked, this week, but I should be better stocked next week (Novemver 11).

Summa Drive runs parallel to the Interstate between Essen Lane and Bluebonnet.  

My shop is in the Camden office park, a few blocks from Essen, near Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center (the hospital you can see from space).  The shop is in the rear of the office park.

There is so much to do in the next few weeks .. yarn and fibers to order, spinning wheels and spindles coming in the doors, along with a small selection of weaving supplies.  There will be handmade soaps to discourage moths from your stash, hand-tooled needles, and jewel-like stitch markers from local artisans.  

I am not planning to try to carry every available yarn in the universe -- Knits by Nana already has a vast selection of excellent knitting yarns, and my shop will largely be chock full of spinning wheels and fibers.  However, I will be carrying several yarns that Nana's does not carry, and I will also offer good finds with discontinued yarns and mill ends.  More details are coming on these yarns as my accounts get approved.

I will also have gently used spinning wheels, spindles and knitting books and supplies.

There is so much more ... classes to plan, displays to create .... and it will be so much fun to watch this grow.

I am looking forward to seeing my readers at the shop, whether you live nearby or you stop in while traveling.

P.S. -- a note to the Knitivity contest winners.  I had planed to pack up your goodies and get them in the mail Saturday morning, but I decided against touching the prizes until this bug has past.  I don't want to send you the flu through the mail.   I am sure you don't want this bug -- trust me.   Hopefully your macadamia nuts have arrived by now, to keep you busy while you wait.

Grab Bag Typefaces! And Also, Surprise Text Sizes!

Bear with me?

I have no idea what size or typeface this text will come out in.

Thanks so much, Lisa, for stuntblogging. That's a huge help for the next few days.

Thing the first: I can access my email, but I cannot post normally or import photos because my old Compaq computer is dying. My computer guy says it was probably damaged by a power surge (even through the surge supressor) during Hurricane Gustav, when falling trees pulled down the power lines and made the nearby transformers explode, which sounded a lot like being in Iraq, only wetter, and with more wind.

Come on down for a visit next August .. we get free fireworks and entertainment along with our hurricanes!

This happened even though the computers were turned OFF and I'd thrown the breaker to the whole house shortly before it got scary outside. Apparently, Dave's surge supressor is better than mine, because his computer, albeit older, semi-incompatible with Blogger and slower, still works.

So my hard drive is locking up because it's semi-fried, and a crash is only a matter of time. I had to break down and buy a new computer, and I ordered a MacBook through our computer wizard, Jake. I could have had instant gratification and gone to the Apple store in the mall ... but I hate the mall with the exact same intensity that Khan hated Captain Kirk, and, more importantly, Jake is a noble dude who deserves our business even if he has to order things in (he is primarily in the computer-fixing business, and when he does sales, he usually outfits custom office systems, and thus he orders as needed instead of keeping inventory on the shelves). The short delay (I should have my computer by Monday or Tuesday) doesn't bother me, except that I can't post properly to my blog for a few more days.

I haven't individually replied to everyone who has emailed saying that they have ordered from Ray. I am simply saving your emails and I will draw from among them on the 16th for the grand prize. Hopefully I can update before then in a more normal fashion. So, as Lisa requested, please keep ordering from ...

www.knitivity.com

... and help a hardworking and deserving fiber artist recover from Hurricane Ike.

Sorry, but I can't make a hyperlink happen on my husband's computer, so just type the knitivity address in your window, or cut and paste, or whatever works for you.

Meantime, I am at my new shop space, setting up things and painting and waiting for various members of the Village People to show up with hard hats and tool belts so I can have lights and a phone and Internet access.

But, I am excited, for out of the post-hurricane chaos arises a spinning shop, with knitting yarns and crochet supplies and some weaving things and gifty things, too. It will be an adventure.

Your patience is always appreciated.

Yesterday, I bought shelving, hooks, rods and other display-type things, as well as an L-shaped desk that will make a good retail counter.

Today, I fill out paperwork for my tax ID number so I can buy wholesale.

Tomorrow, our friend Mitch will help me paint. Part of the space is a nice bright white, but the front room is a dull beige (someone back in 1992 probably thought it was a "neutral taupe") and that dirty tan just won't do. So, out with the paper-bag brown, and in with a crisp lettuce green, which I am told is also a good Feng Shui color for prosperity, which I'll need. It's also a happy color for me. I'm mainly a green kind of gal, with strong preferences for ocean colors of all kinds as well. This lettuce green makes me happy.

Meanwhile, if you want pretty things to look at, go on over to the Knitivty site and buy some yarn. I am adding a bag of Mello Joy coffee, dark-roasted in Cajun Country, and a package of jambalaya mix to the prize bin, along with a skein of my handspun, and some chocolate-covered macadamia nuts donated by Lisa Louie of Maui.

More soon!

Dez