It's funny, I always think I've updated 'just the other day', and I'm always surprised to see it's been 4, 5, 10, however many days since I last posted.  Time flies when you're having fun, I guess!  So, as an effort to combat that, I'm going to start doing a few entries a week from preplanned series.  I started the Dirty Little Secrets entries last week, and I'm going to try and keep that up and also add a weekly goals entry.  

So, for this week's goals:

• Add this week's DLS entry.
• Plan for next week's DLS.
• Finish my first listing for a pair of Simply Luxury Cashmere socks
• Modify my sock bands for my Simple Luxury line (a line about ninjas just doesn't seem appropriate...)
• Start and finish a pair of Simple Luxury Alpaca socks to replace the ones that sold this weekend.
• Start redoing the 'shop' area on my website.

That all sounds doable, but we'll see how well I do!  I'm almost half way finished with the SL Cash socks, so I'm pretty sure I'll at least achieve that.

I went up to my craft room yesterday after snapping a few pictures for my newest listing, and decided to take a picture of a dirty little secret of mine.

So?, you might ask, 'It's a pile of remarkably well knit artisan tabi socks! What's so dirty about that?'  Well, if you look a bit closer, you'll see bits of yarn hanging from the socks.  Some of these socks have been listed in my shop for months, and I still haven't gotten around to weaving in the ends!

So that's my secret.  I hate finishing my socks.  As much as I love to knit them, weaving in the ends is a torment.  Something takes over my brain right as I'm finishing a pair that says 'Hey! here's another idea for some more socks!  If you start that pair, you won't need to weave in the ends on this pair!'

The only problem with that is, almost always, a pair will sell before I get around to finishing it, and I have to sit down at midnight to weave them in to get them out in the mail the following morning.  It should be the slow season for knitting, but I hope airing these dirty little secrets will give me enough accountability to take action.

I'm imagining knitting away all summer and having to weave in the ends of my entire inventory as winter orders start coming in.  AAAGH!

Share your dirty little secret with me here!

Yup, this is what I feel like right now.  The mail came today and I took delivery of a delicious 20 lb box of yarn.  It's the largest yarn order that I've made in some time, and I'm completely overwhelmed by the new colors and textures.  I'm so distracted that the 'chai latte' pair of tabi that I'm working on now are being sadly neglected.  I could have them finished in a few hours, if I didn't keep running upstairs to confirm color combinations.

I've got a bunch of new blues, a new purple, some eye scorching reds, and more black so that I can make more sizes of the most viewed item in my shop: Chrome and Black Tabi.

Hopefully, I'll be able to sit down tonight and crank out this current pair of socks.  I'm close to halfway finished, but the colors upstairs are calling!  I almost wish that the delivery had been slower!

My stashbusting has been going pretty well, but I've spent a lot of time knitting up my 'favorite' flavor.  It kinda defeats the purpose of clearing things out, so I'm going to spend this week working on using up some not-so-favorite yarns that I've been ignoring.  I don't have a ton of it, but it's just going to sit in my craft room closet unless I give it away or knit it up.  Since it's a washable wool blend, it's probably not a bad thing to knit for the shop.  

I'm currently working on a pair of cut-off gloves for my husband, but I hope to have them finished by the weekend.  I've got two balls of alpaca that I haven't been able to find a use for, so the gloves count as stashbusting, too. :)  Woohoo!  Progress.

Since I've been doing so well with the clearing out, I decided to place a big order of yarn.  I'm reaching the bottom of the barrel on my stock yarns and it's the slow season for my stuff, so I figured this was a good time to make a big order.  I ordered plenty of my stock yarn, but I'm going to be introducing some cotton blends (they're amazingly soft) that will be more suited to warm summers than my straight wool blends.