with the promise of a giant snow storm and the shop going down before we can get there after christmas next weekend, 12 and i piled into the car early this morning and drove on down to staunton, va to bid a sad farewell to my all time favorite yarn shop. on the lamb (yarns dot com) is literally selling everything- the yarns, fixtures... even the building itself, which is a beautiful classic victorian home. i will dearly, dearly miss this shop. as i mentioned before, this is where we were going to have the knitted wedding held at. this is also where scores of designers (big names, like modeset, jang and more) as well as a more famous class of knitter (julia roberts, oprah) have come, taught, knit, made friends and enjoyed the lovely yarns. i feel like we are losing a national treasure.

to show our support, we drove down and did some final days shopping. we spent several hours with joe and angel (the two responsible for at least a quarter of my entire stash, truth be told) and had laughter and tears. and cookies. delicious cookies. gods bless them. i know we will all keep in touch, but it just breaks my heart.

onto the joy.

tilli tomas sample hanks. not enough for much actual knitting, but if i so chose, i could get a choker out of each of these. they are just what they look like- mini hanks of yarn to showcase the fibers with their beaded or sequined adornments. all of the tilli tomas samples i have are silk, and therefore i don't have color names or dye lots for you. some of the tags were missing, and since i have no plans of using this for actual knits, i don't feel the need to hunt them down. instead, these have a very, very special purpose. they will be put into a wine glass or a martini glass with one of the knit olives in it for the wedding. we were planning on offering "sock yarn" cocktails with gorgeous hanks of sock weight yarn artfully showcased in the glasses, but now that the wedding itself can't be held in this glorious shop, we are going to have a special glass with these silken beauties inside. i will also provide the business card from the shop in the glass, and this way we can still have "on the lamb" with us at the wedding.

( silky goodness from tilli tomas )

( kettle dyed merinos from plymouth and malabrigo )

for now, i just want to hug them and quietly mourn the loss of one of the best yarn shops in the entire country.

tonks

the good news! okee. well fine. the good news is also sort of bad news. i've taken a break for a few weeks in an effort to make some extra income. i've made no secrets about my mental health, and what income i'm capable of getting is greatly needed! as such, the only bad news is that it's removed me from the wedding knits for a bit. but, here's the rewards! i've charted out tons of geeky mittens for purchase on my etsy shop. i've also been trying to work out a new web layout for unhinged knitter dot com- which is being transfered from the old site (weavingroses.com). slow work, but hopefully over the next span of months i'll get productive about it.

the second bit of job related news is very, very excellent as far as the wedding knits go. my girlfriend takes care of her grandmother, and since she's picked up a night job, someone has to stick around and keep mrs. fabulous granny company. it's an overnight gig only a few times a week, and when grandma is racked out for the evening, i'll have nothing to do but sit on the couch and knit. this will open up tons of extra focus time on the wedding! huzzahs all around.

bad news again- flickr is being stubborn about posting photos to livejournal. i have no idea how to fix this problem, and it's been going on for weeks now. if anyone knows what the deal is, or has had similar problems, please do let me know!

i'd already mentioned that the shop we were going to host the wedding at is going under. this absolutely breaks my heart, and i see that the photos i posted in my previous entry about this very subject are missing (flickr, of course.) so, here's a direct link to the batch of photos from the shop.

good/bad news- modifications to the clothing plan have been made. the tux jacket has been scrapped in leau of something a bit less stuffy. i'll update the sidebar to reflect this shortly. i am very happy about the changes i'm making, and think that the new decisions will pull a more cohesive look together for the two of us. after all, the name of the game here is "whimsy", and axing the tux will help embrace that concept.

fabulous news- the knitting calendar i made, complete with holidays, solstices, noteworthy dates in the world of knitting and info about major fiber festivals around the world has been released to amazon dot com!! i can't believe that lulu, the self publishing site where i made the calendar at, has picked my calendar to publish. i'm so excited about this that i spent a good five minutes bouncing around my house like an idiot. :)

more to come soon! i hope to get some of the food items banged out, and provided i can figure out how to get flickr to stop being so evil, pictures will follow along.

keep knitting!

tonks