As Bob Dylan said…

Times, they are a’changin’… 

 Two and a half years ago, I was given a blessing of an opportunity:  to open a yarn shop on our town’s historic Main Street.  It fulfilled so many dreams for me.  To own my own business, to have a yarn shop and to teach others to knit and help them enjoy the trade I love so much.  This has been an amazing journey and it is far from over.   My dream is growing and changing… but my little shop on Main Street just can’t.  I want to get back to what made me open the shop in the first place, my love of knitting, spinning and dying and refocus on deigning patterns and offering classes that use all of those elements.  

 Therefore, after the Beer Cheese Festival in June, I will close Sarabee’s Little Yarn Shop on Main Street.  It is my desire to continue to teach and offer great yarns and that won’t change.  My goal is to still be a presence in the community through other small businesses and festivals and offer classes throughout the community.  I also hope to have a studio on our family farm to be able to expand my spinning and dying and explore owning my own flock of sheep and processing their fiber as well.  

 So, the Little Yarn Shop isn’t closing… it’s just changing.  The Main Street location will be gone, but that’s never been the heart of my business anyway.  The heart of my business has been with the wonderful people I’ve met, taught, and learned from.  I love each of you and this opportunity has been amazing.  I thank you all for your support of the shop and hope that you’ll continue to support me in this transition.  Follow along as we share the journey of building the studio and change gears a bit.  Be watching Sarabee’s Little Yarn Shop facebook page for updates and sales as we get ready to change!  And make sure you watch Sarabee Design’s Etsy site for closeouts and other goodies! 

 Love you all.  Sarabeth

 PS… We are still going to stay involved with the Love Squares project… so continue to send them our way… just to our new mailing address:

 6950 Mt. Sterling Rd.  Winchester, KY 40391

The Love Squares Project

Hello friends! Sorry so long in getting this up there! SOOO much has been happening with this square project… I was not prepared for the amazing outpouring of love and talent that has come in!

So… just to catch everyone up. Early this month, Kentucky, Indiana and Tennessee were hit with tornados and terrible storms. West Liberty, Kentucky was one of the worst hit within our state and that night watching the news come in about the storms, I knew I wanted to do something, just had no definition of what it was.

The next morning, a friend of mine and fellow LYS owner, Stephanie Stratton of A Tangled Yarn posted that she was going to knit and collect squares to be made into blankets and taken to West Liberty. THIS WAS IT!!! I didn’t want to step on her toes, but emailed her to see if our shops located in towns on opposite sides of Lexington, could join together on this project and if I could help spread the word. She said “The more the merrier!!” and away we went!

Within an hour of posting the idea, I had over 20 responses, either on the phone or online! And here just a little over 2 weeks after the project launched, I’ve received squares from GA, UT, CA, MI, IN, TX, MA, WI, NC and KY… I’m sure there’s some I’ve missed… but I hope we can get some from every state!!

We are so amazed by the outpouring of support! Keep them coming!  Please “Like” us on Facebook!

 

 

Clean up…

Part of my “get your stuff together” list for 2012 was to get some of my creativity organized.  I’m supra-right brained, so organization is not my forte.  But… I’m completely capable of it.  There are those creative geniuses that simply cannot get organized… but for me, it’s about effort.  I like to do it just to prove to the left brained that it’s possible… just to show off.  I don’t stay that way long, but just to show that they aren’t better than me… I’ll put a little effort into organizing.  And just to be sure these left brained organizing ego maniacs aren’t real people in my life (my sweet left brained husband breathes a sigh of relief).  They are fictional people who’s presence I feel, but who are completely imaginary.  They are my Jiminy Crickets… my organizational conscience.  The voice that says “You should have this down by now… you should know better… did you save that doc before closing it just to get it off your screen?”  It’s the same voice that began following me in third grade when my teacher made me clean out my (very) messy desk in front of the whole class while I cried only to remember that I was absent on the day the missing paper was handed out.  But I’m in my thirties now… I was supposed to understand how important keeping receipts in the same place each time was.  I was supposed to remember in each moment how vital keeping a clean workspace is.  

But eh, I’m starting to realize that I need to find my own way.  I organize and clean when I need to… I have a filing system of my own and really… I don’t care if others can find their way around… why are they going through my stuff anyway?  I just don’t want to uselessly collect, no hoarding for this girl–I simply don’t have time for it… I want to be able to find what I need when I need it and I want to be able to present it in a way that shows who I am.

So… I’ve begun to go through all my digital files.  I’ve found that I collect junk even on my computer.  My designs are often quickly typed out or sketched out on paper and then left to wither away in my hard drive never to see needles or the light of day.

I’ve designed a pretty layout for my patterns and started getting everything all organized and shiny.  Making myself Ravelry and Pinterest ready.  If I’m going to design… then others should be able to see what I’ve made.  No more keeping myself piled in and secret.   So to show myself off… I’ve got to spit shine just a bit.

 

Designing myself…

Lately I’ve been having a lot of personal moments dedicated to trying to put into words “who I am”.  I’m 31… a mother of three boys… pastor’s wife… singer… yarn store owner… knitter… but I’m more than those words.  I want to be considered a “designer”… I design things, patterns, notions, ideas.  So… what’s stopping me from embracing the title?  I guess it’s been that I fear that other’s don’t define what I do as design.  I am in my thirties and still worry about what the cool kids think.  REALLY??

So 2012 is about me living into my designer manifesto.

I pledge to design more pretty things…

I pledge to then allow my designs to be publicly viewed… (or at least some of them :))

I pledge to stop trying to earn this title and simply live it out…

Hope is the dream of a waking man. ~Aristotle

And it’s with that hope that I start to live awakened…

New Year…

As we enter 2012 full of excitement and forward energy, I just need to post a quick quote from our dear Patron Saint of knitting… Elizabeth Zimmermann…

“Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn’t hurt the untroubled spirit either.”

So whether this new year finds you troubled or untroubled. lets see what this year unravels together.

Much love from your LYS…

All is still…

It’s a rare morning that I am up before my children in  the summer time.  Usually, I linger in bed… my two year old seems to find his way in sometime each night so the early morning snuggles are sweet.  It’s usually him who begs me to get out from under my blanket and go downstairs.  Just so you don’t think I’m as lazy or irresponsible as that may sound, this is all usually by 7:30 at the latest.

Now that it is August though, I’m needing to get my tail in gear.  This year there will be two little men to get ready for school each morning, not including the big man who will need to get out the door for his last year of seminary.  We are a family on the go.  I recently had my “breakdown” over watching my middle son grow to be a school supply consumer.  It’s going to be hard to watch them both walk into school each day, but I am excited as well.  Liam is hardly ever without Lukas… this will be good for him to both be with him and to also make new peer friends and  have some time to flourish outside of his brothers shadow.  They are each so wildly different and yet so watchful of one another.  They fight like the dickens, but if you were to ask them who there best friend is… it will be their brother every time.  I LOVE that.

So this morning my house is still.  I got up, had some quiet moments alone on the back porch swing, just me, God, a book and the breeze.

As far as a knitting bit this morning… I’ve actually got this going right now…

It’s a leafy lace scarf pattern that I’m hoping to finish off and get uploaded to ravelry soon.  I need to get a few other of my patterns gussied up and pretty-fied to put up there too.  Those will be free.  This one will be a few dollars to download, but it’s beautiful!  I am thinking of adding a ribbon accent to the edges… we shall see!!   It’s knit with the beautiful new Kentucky Blue Fiber Company local alpaca yarn I have in the shop.  Amazing colors!!  It’s so very soft and has been a dream to knit with.  Even as I’ve been working on this pattern and have had to rip out and start over, the yarn has kept it’s loft, it’s not felted up on me or gotten frizzy.  It’s great yarn!!   Anyway… there’s my knitting plug for this post.  I’m off to enjoy a second cup of coffee and seeing as my boys are still sleeping, I may just go read some more…

Uh-oh… is that little feet I hear padding down the hallway?… the day begins.

Spinning for myself… Time to Knit!

Here’s a shot on the spindle… this is earlier on…

And Here’s the ball wound up…

And here’s the start…

Spinning for myself… Like a Virgin…

Spinning with the intent to keep the yarn for myself is far different then when I spin to sell the yarn. When I am spinning for the yarn to be sold in the shop, I’m always thinking about the person who will buy it… always thinking ahead to how it will keep as a single ply, if I should ply it with a solid, or against itself… how it will handle.  Now I’m thinking… oh this color will be beautiful against the other in the knit… I can imagine how it will blend in the pattern (Which I’ve officially chosen BTW– The Hitchhiker a fave of my friend and knitting partner Sara– she has made a couple shawlettes with this pattern including one with one of my handspun yarns which kinda sealed the deal for me).

I still don’t know if I will ply this or not… I’m leaning towards not plying b/c I think it will knit up so pretty as single threads of color.  An homage to it’s name’s inspiratiion…

Either way, this spinning for myself thing has become a battle of the mind for me… constantly questioning myself.   I need to settle down and just spin…

Hoping that will come soon…

Spinning for myself… Getting to it.

My "distraction"... my sweet nephew Carter

Well… while on vacation, I forgot how hard it is to find time for yourself 🙂  Well, not exactly, but so far our vacation has been so full and so fun it’s been hard to find time to just sit. Visting family, getting to know my sweet new nephew Carter and visiting the local zoo with the family. And now of course I’ve been given a fiber-y bit of distraction.  My dad took me to a local llama farm and I bought a pound of roving… its gorgeous and so soft… can’t wait to spin this up… but it will have to wait just a bit.  If I start on this, I may never get a chance to spin my intended roving.

Speaking of my roving…

It’s a gorgeous cashmere blend.  Now, I didn’t dye this blend myself, I purchased it from friend and local fiberista Stephanie Stratton of LunabudKnits.  She and I met through etsy a couple years ago as we were the only two fiber artists at the time on our Bluegrass Etsy team.  She is an amazing dyer and spinner.  I bought one of her merino rovings through etsy which at the time was unnamed and she let me name the colorway.  “Monet’s Muse” was born.  So when I saw that the colorway was now on a cashmere blend… I had instant fiber lust.   It’s now mine… and has been sitting on my shelf for a little over a month, staring at me… wanting to be spun… so now, challenged to knit my own handspun for myself… Here I go!

The pre-draft has begun…

Vacation Challenge…Spinning for myself…

The gauntlet has been thrown.  Well… sorta.

I have been challenged a few of my knitters to knit for myself while on vacation.  Put aside the endless knits for the shop, set aside all my knits for gifts and loved ones and just enjoy knitting with myself in mind.  Not an easy task for me.  I had confessed that although I spin my own yarns, I have never knit one of those yarns for myself.  And I’m not alone.  Many people I’ve met through the shop love to knit, but have a hard time keeping the treasures for themselves.

I have knit with intent to keep many times, not my handspun mind you, but other beautiful yarns… all the time thinking I can’t wait to wear this/show this off… and almost as soon as I bind off, I know exactly who it’s supposed to go to, or exactly where in my shop I would display the item for sale.

This time I am pledging to be different. I am about to leave on vacation… shut down the shop in celebration of Independence Day and I’m taking this challenge with me I have a good idea of which fiber I’ll be choosing.  So I’m packin’ the kick spindle.  I’ll be perusing Ravelry for just the right pattern and I will spin and knit for myself.