… because I’ve been making all of this happen.

With a little help from the local retail genious (otherwise known as my husband)! I think he did a fine job with the new setup, don’t you?

See you at Clermont this weekend?

On March 21st I was sitting on the beach worried about getting a sunburn:

This week there’s talk of snow! I also had an interesting drive to the yoga studio on Wednesday that threw every possible form of precipitation at me in the course of the 1st 9 miles. And then the sun came out. O.o Gotta love New England!

Speaking of summer, would you believe that I finally finished a pair of socks I started *last* summer? The day after Christmas!

Medallion Lace Socks

Pattern: Medallion Lace Socks
Yarn: Zarzuela’s Fibers Chromatic in Navy
Needles: US 2.5
Knit: 7.29.2011-12.26.2011

This pattern was the first selected pattern for SOS last year and my delay in finishing them is by no means a commentary on the pattern. It was lovely to knit in fact but obviously life got in my way a bit. I remember at the time there were many complaints about how the pattern puckered when it was knit, but as you can see a gentle blocking took care of that.

The astute among you may also notice that my mind was apparently not with me when I picked these up after a long hiatus to try and finish them.

Uh. Yeah. Oopsie! You will also notice that I’m calling it a design element of my own creation and letting the socks live.

The yarn is my own hand dyed Chromatic Sock which is a 100% superwash BFL with a nice hard twist. It really makes a great sock yarn but as you can see in this Ravelry search there are other good uses for it too. I’m hoping to do a shawlette with my Vishuddha colorway sometime soon.

In shop news there’s only a short time left to get in on my next three month round of the Fiber Club! The first three months have been a blast so far for me and my customers and I’m looking forward to the next three months.

If you want to see my work in person I’ve also got two shows coming up. On April 21st (with a rain date of the 22nd) I’ll be at The Chancellor’s Sheep & Wool Showcase in Germantown, NY and on June 9th I’ll be at the Squam Spring Art Fair in NH. I love meeting customers in person so if you’re nearby to any of these events please come out and say hello!

I hope to have a few more knitting projects to share next time but it seems like my knitting pace is pretty slow these days. I’m grateful though because I’m teaching 4 classes at the studio and starting to find some private students as well and I couldn’t be happier with the work I’m doing. It’s really nice when the universe seems to listen when you ask for what you need.

See you next time!

Just in case you haven’t seen it elsewhere, I’m having a sale in my Artfire & Etsy shops this weekend!

Use code “THANKSGIVING” for free shipping on everything in both shops excluding the 2012 fiber club. That includes the sale section on Artfire which makes for some great deals.

Happy Shopping and I hope y’all had a great Thanksgiving! More knitting to come next post.

Bet you didn’t expect to hear from me again so soon, eh? Well I’m announcing a contest for the shop today and thought this would be a good place to explain it in depth since other forums only allow 140 characters. So here it is!

Contained in that tote bag is a wonderful fiber/yarn related prize for a lucky winner (and you get the bag too)! That lucky winner could be YOU! The prize has at least a $50 value, possibly more depending on how entries go. It might also be adjusted depending on whether the winner is a spinner or a knitter (or maybe both). This contest begins today (November 1st) and will run until December 31st with a winner chosen on Jan. 1, 2012.

So how do you get your chance to win? You can enter in several ways:

— Tweet, Plurk, G+, Facebook, Blog, post on Ravelry or find some other way to promote this contest to others. Make sure I see your entry and EACH time your name will be thrown in the hat.

— Make a purchase in either the Artfire or Etsy shops from now until Dec. 31st. Do that and your name will be thrown in the hat THREE times.

— Do a random act of kindness and send me an email at Zarzuelasfibers [at] gmail [dot] com to tell me about it. What’s a random act of kindness? Something you do for someone that you may not even know without expectation of reward. Pay for the coffee of the person behind you at the drive through. Give someone you don’t know a gift. Donate to a food pantry. The possibilities are endless! Do something like this and tell me about it and I’ll put your name in the hat FIVE times.

Why am I doing this? It’s been a great year for Zarzuela’s Fibers and for me. Without your support none of what I’ve accomplished would be possible. The best way I know to express my gratitude is to give something back to you. And if we can spread that good will throughout the fiber community and beyond, what could be better? This is the time of year to look back and remember just how lucky we are and give something back where we can. Won’t you join me?

Wishing you and yours a spectacular end of 2011 and beyond!

[Sorry for the radio silence. Life has been, in a word, BUSY! I'd bore you with the details but let's suffice to say that the yoga gig is picking up, my Dad had another procedure but he's doing really well and now it's time to prep for show season. So how 'bout we just get back to the fiber stuff and call it day, eh? This post has been written for awhile and I forgot about publishing. Guess that's just par for the course lately! Enjoy!]

It’s been finished for quite some time but I’m just getting around to posting about it now!

Dahlia Cowl

Pattern: Dahlia Cowl by Jesh
Yarn: Handspun from Zarzuela’s Fibers polworth in the Flora Colorway
Needles: US8
Knit: 4.25-5.13.11
Mods: None

I believe I will maintain until the day I die, no matter your skill at spinning, there is absolutely nothing like knitting with handspun yarn. Especially your own handspun yarn! My skills as a spinner continue to develop but even when I knit with yarns I’ve spun a long time ago, there’s just nothing better! And I do love when I can spin a yarn and immediately know what I’ll be knitting with it as was the case here. You may remember that this was what the roving looked like:

And the final yarn:

And now the cowl!

This was such an enjoyable knit. I was afraid that the p3togs would be difficult but they really weren’t. And Jesh’s patterns are so complete and well written that there was certainly nothing to fear. She even gives hints in the pattern for making those p3togs easier!

This polworth was a joy to spin too (and I’m not the only one to have said so)! I find it easier to spin than merino but with a similar softness and loft making a yarn that is super cozy next to the skin and something you may just want to sit and squish in your hands for a while before you knit with it! I was lucky enough to find some glass buttons that were a perfect match to the colorway at an LYS too!

I’m looking forward to cooler weather and being able to make a lot of use out of this cowl.

If you’d like some of the Flora colorway (or the original Dahlia colorway) they’ll be coming back to the shop soon so stay tuned!

Sometimes a yarn can be pretty too! I’m particularly fond of this one that I finished spinning recently:

It was spun as an example of what can be done for the next Zarzuela’s Fibers SAL on Ravelry. We’re going to be making striping (or not) sock yarn!

I made mine from BFL using one length of fiber dyed in a vivid green, magenta and violet and the other two dyed in my Purple People Eater colorway. I spun one length on to each bobbin, plied the three together and came out with this yarn.

Hopefully it will knit up just as pretty into nice warm socks for ME!

Have a great weekend!

Any requests? And yes, that is yarn in some of those buckets!

… to PREORDER this year’s Tour de Fleece special colorway!

Lantern Rouge!!

The lantern rouge is the last place in the race. They may be in the back of the pack with the masses sweating it out, but their eye is always on that prize yellow jersey in the front! This colorway pays tribute to this position with rich reds and browns and a shot of yellow to keep your eye on the prize as you spin along! You can order on etsy or artfire until Saturday when Tour de Fleece starts!

And speaking of Tour de Fleece, what are your goals this year? What team have you joined?

For myself I’m on Team Crankypants once again.

My goal is pretty simple. Spin for me. I’ve been doing a lot of work toward shop goals lately so I think I deserve to spin a bit for myself and the simple pleasure of it. I do have part of a CVM/Romeldale fleece that I split with Our Annie at Rhinebeck last year that I’m working on now and a bunch of shetland too. If I could get both of those made into yarn so I could start planning a Rhinebeck sweater it would be nice, but I’m not holding my breath.

Just spin. That’s good enough for me.

What are you doing for TdF this year?

P.S. I just realized that this weekend is the 3 year anniversary of Zarzuela’s Fibers!! I think this calls for a free shipping code(!) so make sure you follow me on twitter or join the Ravelry group to get it when it posts tomorrow! And check out the new logo too!

ETA: Or you can find the code on the new Facebook page!! I’ll post it there too. Hope you “like” it!

Thanks for the comments on my apple sauce post! I’m glad I tempted some of you to give it a try. I hope to be sharing more food related posts with you as time goes by.

That post was also intended to give you a little something to read while I was away last week. I just returned from spending most of the week assisting with Lakshmi Voelker Chair Yoga Teacher training at Kripalu. It was a wonderful experience that I feel very lucky to have been allowed to be a part of since I just got certified in March. I plan to tell you more about it later.

In the meantime, one quick shop related update – did you see that I added links to the etsy shop AND the artfire shop up there in the header? That normally wouldn’t be newsworthy but what I think is really cool is that if you click the artfire link you can buy things from the shop without leaving the blog! How cool is that?! I hope you’ll have a look.

For now let’s rewind to May 14th when I got to experience my very first NH Sheep and Wool Festival! I have to say upfront that I was *very* impressed by this show. Maybe it’s just my prejudices showing, but I really hadn’t expected much. Small state small show right? WRONG! HWJF and I walked in right when it opened and walked to what would turn out to be the back of the fairgrounds. I suddenly looked up and it appeared that the ground was moving! Then it finally registered, SHEEP! There was an ENTIRE HERD of sheep running in the back field. Unfortunately I didn’t get within camera range in time, but it turned out that we had found the sheep dog trials!

We spent a bit of time watching and it was very interesting to see how the dogs worked and obeyed orders from quite a distance at times. We also got to see the contrast between and older and younger dog. Experience sure does help!

After that we strolled through the various barns and vendors. Ok. We went through all of them at least 3 times. But it was worth it! Believe it or not, I didn’t buy a thing other than food because I just couldn’t decide (and lord knows I need more stuff around here like I need a hole in my head). There was that much to see! The good news is that at least one of my missions for the day ended up completed. My CPW is now safely in the hands of Dave Paul at The Merlin Tree for a little bit of TLC. I’m looking forward to getting it back this summer with a couple of extra bobbins and a drive wheel that won’t throw the band every 2 seconds. Sadly Golding didn’t show so I will need to send my spindle for repair in the mail.

I think the most fun of the day was going through the animal barns. This was a VERY bunny friendly show and it was hard to resist taking one of these little buggers home!

I remember when someone else was that small…

There were lots of alpacas!

And sheep of course!!

I’ve officially decided that I think Cheviots are just the prettiest sheep. Look at that handsome face!

I’m also happy to report that finding a vegetarian meal wasn’t difficult at all. There was a booth that said it had “Egyptian” food. I don’t know about that but I sure did enjoy my falafal, grape leaves, hummus & tabbouleh!

One other thing that was endlessly entertaining and has been since we moved to NH was the license plates. I don’t know what it is, but I’m pretty sure this is the highest amount of vanity plates I’ve seen per capita ANYWHERE. Everywhere you look someone has one. Seriously. Ev-ery-where! The festival was no exception to this rule…

I wish now that I had gotten more pictures of the grounds, but you’ll just have to go check it out for yourself! It’s worth the trip!

I have so many things to share with you right now that I’m just going to have to break it up into several blog posts or y’all will be snoring by the end. So! Let’s start with a couple of big announcements!!

First, Zarzuela’s Fibers is now on Artfire! I’ll be maintaining both the etsy and Artfire shops simultaneously now. Why Artfire? I’ve been hearing very good things about it, especially from Our JessaLu, and decided to take the plunge. What it offers shoppers is more ways to pay (I can now take Amazon payments in addition to PayPal and hope to be adding another option soon) and some interesting features. What it offers me is another venue for exposure, some new options and some great functionality. I hope you’ll head over there and have a look!

Second, I’ve announced the next Zarzuela’s Fibers SAL/KAL! We’ll be spinning up yarn and knitting up the Dahlia cowl by Jesh!

Dahlia is a beautiful little cowl using 4 oz. of Polworth fiber spun up at a worsted-ish gauge to give you a soft and lovely cowl that shows off handspun beautifully! You can reserve the pattern in a digital download as well as the fiber for just $17 + shipping if you do so by May 5th! You have two choices for colorway. There is, of course, Dahlia:

And there’s also Flora:

You’ll find full details and links to order yours from either Artfire or Etsy in the Ravelry group thread. If you aren’t a spinner and would like to join us for the KAL part I have a lovely worsted weight superwash merino yarn that I can dye in either colorway for you. Send me a message or leave me a comment and let me know!

Here’s a peek at my cowl in the Flora colorway:

I hope you’ll join us!

And speaking of joining us, the news that I know some of you have been waiting for is finally here. Summer of Socks 2011 will begin on June 21st!

We’ll be keeping it fairly low key again this year as many people seem to have appreciated that (myself included!). One little twist will be that we are hoping to feature a different pattern and designer for each month of the KAL. No one will be required to knit the pattern that we selected, but those that wish to knit all three featured patterns and post pictures of their finished pairs will be entered into a drawing for a prize at the end of the KAL.

If you’d like to join us, want to have your pattern considered for being featured and/or could make a new button and banner for us (the one above is just something I whipped up quickly) please head over to the announcement thread in the Ravelry group for full details. Here’s to another fun summer of sock knitting! And please spread the word!

And now it’s time for me to get ready to go to an alpaca sheering at a local farm! Who wants to place bets on how much fiber I’ll be coming home with?