If your walls are splattered with dye gone awry…

... you might be a Yarnista.

If you paint your utility room your favorite shade of brown...



... you might a Yarnista.

If your foyer is wholly ensconced in bins containing a rainbow of colorways...



... you might be a Yarnista.

If you have an entire external hard drive full of yarn pictures...



... you might be a Yarnista.

If you spent 350 hours fixing up your studio so you would have a place you would be happy working every day...









... you might be a Yarnista.

Or, you could just be really, really weird.

The Office.

Not the TV show. Working at a place like Dundler Mifflin would make me want to become a flammable mammal. I would sooner hurl myself off a persimmon tree.

But I do like my office at the studio. It has brown. A nice warm brown makes me happy.



My computer is brown, too. I couldn't resist. Black is unthinkable when brown is an alternative. This is the truth of the universe.  Brown is much more common in the natural world, and the superior color in nearly every way.

Obviously.

If you do not agree, that matters not. One does not have to agree for something to be the Truth.

Plus, the wall is already brown, so it's too late to argue with me anyway.



I love this drawing done by one of my employees. Little skeins of yarn in a rainbow circle. Sign me up.



I believe my middle daughter to be a talented artist.

I love the directionality of the water and the texture of the scales on the fish. And I like having pictures that my kids made me on the wall.



This is one of the winding stations where we help make sure that your yarn minds its manners and behaves itself when it arrives.

The door on the right goes out to our "garage". Outside of that door is a small storage area that leads to a large bay door meant for people who get cargo container-sized deliveries. Unfortunately, the pink wall you're seeing directly in front of you is blocking the bay door. Even if someone wanted to deliver a cargo container of something, they'd have to squeeze it through the regular sized door on the right.

You can see the white board that I've started covering with pictures and notes. I have lots more to print and put up now that we have our super duper photo gallery.  It warms the valves of my little heart to see people enjoying the yarn and to read the lovely words of thanks and encouragement that people send. My peeps also like seeing these -- because most of them are not knitters, it can be hard for them to envision what something looks like knit up.

What you can't see in these pics, because I am lame and neglected to photograph them, is the couch and coffee table that I'm standing in front of, the microwave that we use to heat our sustenance, and the DVD player that I used to occasionally entertain my children. Being a yarnista only takes a five year old so far. Sometimes Princess Ariel is warranted.

We are running out of space in the studio! If I keep this up, soon I will be blogging from the top of Mt. Yarnimanjaro.

Anyone want to join me? Anyone? Anyone?

The magic room

Inside this room is the magic powder.



The magic powder is very messy.

The magic powder is not for people with OCD. It would make you twitchy.




Inside this little room, the magic powder is mixed with water and other magic powders to make stock solutions. Stock solution is the cocktail of dye, water, and auxiliaries that we use to dye our yarn.

Once the stock solution is ready, it gets poured into smaller containers for ease of use.



These are much easier to handle than a gallon jug when you want 1/8 of a teaspoon of something.  But when a small container like this gets dropped, it can send a splash all the way up to the ceiling. Now imagine a gallon jug of dye on your floor.

Yeah, it's happened to me. Royal blue, 2008. You never forget.

No one ever said being a yarnista was for the faint of heart.

Day is done…

Gone the sun

From the lake, from the hills, from the sky

All is well, safely rest

God is nigh.



One solitary skein left after a hard day's work. One skein left all alone for the night. Shiftless. Worried.


Sorry, man. It's not that I don't care about you, because I do. Really, it's not you, it's me.

You can just take a nice little snooze here on this nice little bed.

I know, I know, I have to go now, though, OK?



Did you hear Taps? At the beginning of the post?

The day is done, dude.

GONE THE SUN.

GOD IS NIGH, that means I gotta go to bed, all right?

I'll come back and hit you with some color in the AM, you feel me?

Man, the sun is not even in the HILLS! Or the lake!

OK, all right, we cool? OK.

You rest safe. I'll come back for you, I promise.  No, forreal forreal. I'll be back, back tomorrow. Rest safe and sound, safe on this nice, fluffy little bed. 

G'night, man. It's gonna be OK. Forreal.

Look what I found.

Right outside the studio door, in a splotchy remnant of our Christmas snowfall.



I almost didn't pick it up, because it looked fake, and I realized that I had never before found a cardinal feather on the ground.



When I looked closely, I could see the imperfections.  The tiny places of asymmetry -- those were the most beautiful part.




Its irregularities made it real. 



I can't bear to throw away this tiny, real, thing. Should I keep it in a special place? Should I set it free, like the feather in Forrest Gump? 



Maybe there's a reason this little feather made its way to my door.

I'll think about it.