As I mentioned in my last post, I've been making an effort to turn over my stash, and trying use up more yarn than I usually do before making another purchase. I've gotten to the point, now, where I'm down to a few colors of my stock tabi yarn, and I'm trying to decide how to proceed.

I've been trying to fill my shop for the holiday season, but it's tough to feel motivated to do that when things are soooo sloooow during the anti-knit season. I've been sticking with it, making breaks for my own projects and experiments, trying not to burn out, and have made pretty good progress. I'd hoped to have more listings, but I still did better than I expected.

It's now to the point where I should start ordering more yarn, but I'm a bit stuck on colors, even after looking at color and fashion predictions for the fall. I know I need some more traditionally feminine colors (purples, pinks), and came to realize that I need more greens (which I'm totally not feeling), earthy tones, blues, and yellows.  

I just need to shake up the whole set, and that's tough for me. I've spent the past few weeks poking at the Pantone Fall Color Report, and it really gave me a place to jump off, and I encourage anyone currently struggling with color to check it out. What colors are looking for this winter and fall?

For the past couple of weeks, I've really gotten into scrap stripes for my tabi socks. While winding out yardage for my latest pair ('Firepit'), I realized how much of a dent it was making in my stash and how much old yarn has been made into finished objects.

I usually buy a minimum of two skeins of each color when I make an order. I always have enough to make an extra pair, if one pair sells quickly or another size is requested, without having to reorder. That logic has worked out well for me over the years, but it's also resulted in stagnant skeins of accent colors. Usually, these are neutrals: grays, creams, tans, blacks, etc. Colors that work really well as a 'base' for stripe combinations.

It's nice to see the 10-20 yd scrap balls in my scrap bag being incorporated into new socks, and it's equally nice to see the neutrals being given a punch of color. I know lots of people like neutrals and single tones, but they don't inspire me like contrasts and complementing colors do. This has turned out to be a great, useful project.

Of course, now it looks like I'm crazy stripe lady!

Jennifer of Mewes Mountain Arts is our handmade artist, this week.  She lives in the beautiful Rocky Mountains of Colorado where she's able to look out into her backyard and see the self-proclaimed family mountain.  Always a black sheep, she's bounced from the fine arts, all over the country, and finally settled on information technology as a career.

Her jewelry is colorful and textural, as you can see by her Red Foilage bracelet above.  With this piece, she's combined several different types of red beads into a lovely, fall arrangement for your wrist.  

Jennifer is very influenced by her religion, and has a giving spirit.  For example, the lanyard below proceeds breast cancer awareness.  She's know many people touched by this cruel disease, and is working to make a difference.  She's combined various silver elements into a useful, pretty piece.

I needed a bit of break from my socks last week, so I decided to knit up a pair of one of the most-loved knitting patterns -- Fetching.  I started another project with cables on the cuff a few months ago, and I've been itching for cables since then.  I need to tidy up the cuff and finger openings up a bit, but they came out pretty well.  They're for a sick friend who has cold fingers. :)

While photographing these, I discovered how freakin' difficult it is to take pictures of your hands.  I have a new, deep admiration for all of those sellers who make and model their own fingerless mitts.

Linda (Raedawn), owner of Dreams and Echoes, has spent many years as a visual artist, living primarily in Maryland with periods in Oregon in New Mexico.  Her daughter, Amy, started beading, and Linda saw another opportunity to explore her creativity through it.  She learned the basics and hasn't let go since.

Each of her pieces is a journey and an invitation to explore different styles, from romantic to primal, contrasts, and different symbols.  The piece below, titled The Goddess Protects, includes a well-known character, very prominent in many peoples' spirituality.

Linda has an active, interesting blog, so make sure to check it out.  She regularly features other artisans, and shares details of her learning and creative process -- always very interesting to me!

Don't do a thorough arm workout on days you're working with very tiny needles!  It's good for preventing repetitive stress injuries and awesome for toned arms, but it's wicked difficult to knit with shaky hands. 

Good thing the socks are for me! :)

Apologies to both lisianblue and trusk4u!  I completely scrambled this post up, initially.

Many people are sucked into the world of artists after finding one medium that captures them.  While they may maintain interest, cultivate, and perfect that medium, very rarely does the journey end there.  Inevitably, it snowballs and other crafts are learned and explored.

This week's artist, trusk4u, began with sewing, a craft she's still passionate about.  From sewing, Teresa has also found jewelry to her taste, and it's been her focus, recently.

Her jewelry style is very clean, feminine, and makes great use of colors.  I found several pieces that really caught my eye, but this stately piece made with a mixture of obsidian, onyx, jade, and blackstone really did it for me.  Not only is it a geology lesson in a necklace, but it's something that stands out.

Though jewelery is the main star of her shops, these days, you can still find pretty, functional sewing.  I love this pink batik purse set.  Not only do you get the purse itself, but it comes with a zippered bag and coin purse, too.  Gorgeous and summery!

Make sure to check out her shops for other amazing work, and also keep a close eye on her upcoming brick-and-mortar shop, Hollyhocks!  Now that's a labor of love.  

For the past three weeks, we've been bouncing back and forth between my mom and stepdad's and our house.  They live about 4 hours away, but needed help after my mom's surgery.  

She's doing great and I think we're home for good, now, but GAH.  I feel like I haven't gotten anything done.  i actually did a few more color sketches last night when we got home just so I could feel like I've done something.

Since my shop hasn't been updated in awhile, I may put the socks I'm making for myself (luscious hand-dyed yarn) on hold for a day to knock out my last idea.  When I've got ideas in my head, I tend to lose steam if I don't make some progress on them, and I'm full of ideas.  I've written them all down, but it's not the same.

I'd really like to get 50 items in my etsy shop before the end of the month, but I don't know if that's going to happen.  Guess we'll see!

I've been holding off on buying yarn, recently, in an attempt to work through my stash.  As a result, I've found myself stagnated and avoiding knitting for my shop; new colors and textures are what keeps me going.  It has been pretty productive, this avoidance, because I've been working on projects for me, my family, and finishing up things that have been hanging around for awhile.

But...I know I need to work on building up more stock!  I'm already starting to get a trickle of custom orders for the holidays, and I was dreadfully unprepared last year for my etsy sales.  Breaking down and buying yarn currently isn't in the cards, so I decided to whip out my bag of scraps and pull a couple of skeins of yarn out and see if I could come up with anything that suited my fancy.  My goal was to use up some of my scraps and to use up an idle skein.  

Last night in the HAF critique chat, someone mentioned 'sunset colors' in relation to my orange and pink ribbed socks.  I had about 5 yards of each of those colors in my scrap bag, so I pulled them out on the table and saw that a winey red looked quite nice with them.  I also had about 5 yards of that, so I wound off bobbins and have them paired with a skein of cream yarn.

When I finish the pair of socks I'm working on now (for me!), I'm going to get started.  I'm actually excited about it!  Maybe this'll keep me from splurging on supplies for a tiny bit. :)

This week has been a fraught of computer and networking issues, so I'm terribly behind on getting this feature ready.  This week's artisan is baublezptoa! 

A self-proclaimed ex-hippie, Carmen began her jewelry career right after high school when she found her local bead shop.  She strung for friends and family, but soon found herself drawn away when the local bead shop closed and school and work picked up in intensity.  Her talent laid low while she maneuvered herself through the corporate world, but it came into full bloom when she began searching for a new way of life.

Since she made that break from 'the real world', she's acquired more and more skills and explored her artistic abilities and talents in many different areas.  One of her more recent accomplishments was to gain her certification in Precious Metal Clay.  The below piece uses PMC as a base for two lovely peridot cubic zirconias.

Carmen's certification in PMC allows her to share her knowledge and skills with others.  I'm a pretty bad teacher and have a weird learning style, so I have a great deal of respect for anyone who's able to communicate with others and allow them to explore new things.  That said, she prefers to stay in the studio and design, sculpt, and tweak her pieces.  

The piece below really caught my eye.  The glitz of the cabochon is unbeatable and snazzy, and you can see how much care she puts into her pieces in the detailing around the sides and top.

Another part of her life is her animals.  She has a beautiful fur family, and I really enjoyed looking through her galleries.  Currently, baublezptoa is donating 30% of sales to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary.  Pet lovers will also love the paw print medallion at the top of the page.  Everyone will love at least one of the drool-worthy, fine-art pendants!  Absolutely gorgeous.

You can find baublezptoa's shop on etsy, as well.  She has a website here, and a blog where you can read about her crafts and other artist features.