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!

A few weeks ago, I participated in a thread about branding your products.  It was interesting to hear how people identified their products and I got some ideas for the future.  Then I forgot all about it. ;)

Today, I noticed that I had an unusual number of views, consistent throughout the day and decided to check it out.  I found that my orange tabi were in the 'related items' section at the bottom of this article (which is as interesting as the original thread!)

It's spring/summer so I doubt I'll get any sales from it, but it made me smile all day to see my views climbing and the few extra hearts spread around.  Yay for nice surprises!

As you might have noticed, I did a bit of tweaking on the website.  I changed the layout and color scheme to something a bit less stark.  

I liked the 'clean' look it had, but I realized that wide expanses of white with a touch of black and orange probably wasn't the most welcoming.  I hope the red and gray is somewhat warmer.  I still need to go back and redo the colors of some of the text to make them match the new color scheme better, but that can wait a little while.

The Shop section also now has a full range of custom listings, where you're able to pre-purchase a pair of socks and then communicate with me on the colors.  I have a few other ideas for making that slightly more user friendly, but it'll do for now.  Depending on how well I'm able to maintain stocking my etsy, 1000markets shops, and consignment sales, I'll probably add some pre-knit items there, as well.  More organized than it currently is, hopefully!