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6/16/11
I am back from TNNA! Alisha Goes Around yarn will appear in 20-something new yarn stores over the next few months. TNNA was incredibly exciting, the booth was packed, and my "duh, knitting" stickers were out of stock by the middle of the second day. I've reordered stickers, which will be for sale soon, I've ordered thousands of skeins of yarn, and soon I'll be up to my shoulders in steaming dyepots and lovely yarn.
All of my existing dyed yarn remains in Columbus for Knitters' Connection. If you will be in Ohio for the event, Alisha Goes Around yarn can be found in the Buffalo Wool Company's booth until June 19th.
My yarn will come home with Buffalo Wool Company, and I will travel to Dallas to pick it up next week. Until then, the Etsy site will remain on "vacation mode," since I don't know what will sell and what will come home. We will begin relisting yarn once it is back in our hot little hands.
In the meantime, if you'd like to pre-order yarn, contact me at alisha@alishagoesaround.com
4/25/11
The Etsy shop is in decent shape and I've taken photographs of some of my core colorways. Because my website hates me and because I've been home with a sick child all day, I've uploaded the colorway photographs to Flickr. There's a handy dandy link in the Colorways section to the left. Further investigation of the Alisha v. Website difficulties will commence when I am sick-kid free and not ready to throw my computer out the window.
Also, I will be out of town May 2-8 at a spinning retreat with Judith MacKenzie McCuin (!!!! I cannot believe it myself!). The Etsy store will remain open and updated, but nothing will ship until I return home and unload the car. In addition, nothing ordered after April 30th that needs to be custom dyed will be dyed until I return, unless you want my husband to take a stab at the dyeing, drying, twisting, and labeling. Your choice, really. He'd probably put a sticker on it and get it done promptly, but then he is colorblind, so there's no telling what you'd get.
I'd wait.
4/22/11
Just finished a marathon session of Etsy-uploading. Pulchritude MCN DK, Raft (BFL/Silk) Fingering, and Tracks (Superwash Merino/Bison Down) Fingering are listed.
I plan on photographing Bevy DK and Fingering during our remaining sunlight, and that will complete the majority of the missing yarn. Stock is comparatively low right now, but there are lovely yarns everywhere I look.
4/19/11
The back-to-back Fiber Fests are done! I'm home, I'm back at work (after one mimosa-fueled Sunday brunch and a long, mimosa-fueled nap), new yarn is on the way, arrangements are being made for events in May at Mo Ranch, Shabby Sheep in Dallas, and Loopy Yarns in Chicago, and in between those I'll continue to fill wholesale orders, develop colors for Fall and Winter, and make plans for the June TNNA in Columbus, Ohio. Simple, no? No.
4/10/11
I'm home! I am very, very, very tired, but I'm home. After I sleep, get the kiddo to school, and sleep some more, I will inventory my remaining yarn, take the Etsy site off vacation mode, list some new items, skein and dye yarn, then I think I'll eat some breakfast. Or not.
I want to extend a huge thank you to everyone who worked so hard to pull off the DFW Fiber Fest. I had a great time, loved the people I met and spent time with, especially the board members, volunteers, everyone who stopped by my booth, everyone who liked the peacock, my wonderful and amusing booth-neighbors at Two If By Hand, Madelinetosh,and Spinning Straw into Gold, the two shops that picked up my yarn (Shabby Sheep in Dallas and Whirled Fibers in Duncanville), the ladies with whom I drank wine and vodka tonics, my friends who drove from New Braunfels, my friend, Alyson, who helped me in my booth (and who I may have worked to the bone each day), the teachers I was lucky enough to spend time with, including Mary Beth Temple, Anne Hanson (in an actual class, no less), Linda Permann (I know you'll see this in your Google Alert, gatekeeper), and Christina Adcock-Azbill, and a special shout out to Dr. Pepper, Starbucks, and my Wine Cube. Couldn't have done it without you.
Now, I say goodnight. Goodnight. I am a very lucky girl.
4/7/11
We are off! If you are in the DFW area, come see us at the Fiber Fest in Grapevine. We're running early-bird specials (look for the peacock and his cache of Easter eggs) from the ungodly hour of 8:30 AM (when the convention hall opens) until 10:30 AM. People with military, government, or foster parent IDs will get an egg no matter the time.
We will close the Etsy store if Wi-Fi is not reliable at the show. Right now, we hope to keep it open and up-to-date during the show weekend.
4/5/11
The Etsy Site is stocked! To browse yarn, head over to the Alisha Goes Around Etsy Store at the link to the left.
I'm headed to the DFW Fiber Fest this weekend, and the Yellow Rose Fiber Fiesta the weekend after that. The Etsy site will be shut down during those events (so I don't double-sell skeins), but will be back online the Mondays following each show. Thank you!
Update 3/6/11
Every wholesale order is dyed, one needs to dry, and then I will sleep for a week.
In the meantime, my helper, Alyson, is taking care of listing yarn on Etsy. There's a link over there <----- that will take you there.
Meanwhile, I'll continue dyeing yarn for the DFW Fiber Fest in April, as well as the Yellow Rose Fiber Festival the following week. I'm already working on the next TNNA -- sure seemed to come around quickly.
Update 2/23/11
Many, many orders are complete and on their way this week. A few are already delivered an on store shelves, so there is plenty of forward progress. Most of the yarn I need has arrived - I'm missing about 10 pounds of yarn to complete a few orders, but even that should be here within the next ten days. By Monday, 75% of yarn will be out the door.
Tracks of Bison continues to be a bear. The yarn is here, the skein winder is here, but I have yet to find an easy, non-yarn-killing way to turn a 1 kilo skein into 10 100g skeins. Swifts are not made to hold 1 kilo skeins, or at least, not any swifts I've found. Our first two attempts were disastrous, but as of yesterday we're onto a third method that, although it is slow, seems to be working. Even the electric skein winder is protesting -- last night it started throwing pieces of itself at me. We're now waiting for the glue to dry before we start again.
Website updates are on track for the first week of March.
Update 2/9/11 - Alisha's birthday
For my birthday, I am twisting and labeling skeins and trying to get orders boxed. No dyeing today, I don't think, since my hands and arms need a rest. Party time in New Braunfels!
Nice cold snaps we keep having, eh? What I wouldn't give for a month of summer right now. The dyeing is not the problem, the drying is. Wet skeins turn into frozen skeins, and no one likes their cashmere encased in ice. Very difficult to knit. Hard on the hands.
More yarn keeps coming in, but nothing has left us yet. Richness, Tracks, Tittering, and Panoply Worsted have made their appearances, some just today, and Marmalade Lace and Tiding shouldn't be THAT far behind. I've got an electric skeinwinder on the way for Tracks, which should be here within a week. In the two weeks since the yarn started arriving, I've dyed at least 600 skeins (there were a lot of snow/freeze days where I couldn't dye or dry) and the twisting, labeling, and packing is ongoing. No single order is complete, but some are aaaaalmost ready to go.
Thank you to everyone reading this. This last month has been a whirlwind. As I told the husband, it is as if I waited for rain for a year, but now I'm caught without an ark.
Update 1/27/11
Want to know what 300 pounds of skeined yarn looks like? Think a stack of boxes the size of a VW Bug. The terrifying thing is that there are another 500 pounds on the way within the next 3 weeks (some bases were waaaay backordered). My house is nearing Collier Mansion Status, but with yarn. I've told the people in my Tuesday and Thursday pottery classes that, if I don't show up, it is because I'm buried under wool. Not a bad way to go, but I'm trying to avoid it. I'm dyeing at least 10 kilos every day (100 skeins) with the hopes that by the time Tracks, Tiding, Tittering, Richness, Marmalade Lace, and Panoply Worsted arrive (staggered between the 31st and the 10th) I'll have a first round of orders dried, twisted, labeled, and shipped.
The website will get attention later - I have a photographer lined up for the core colors, and once I'm in a better order-filling place, the website will be a priority. I wish I could get it in faster, but I am not a website maker and it takes me a lot of time. Someday I'll be able to hire someone, but "controlled growth" is hard.
Update 1/17/11
I'm back from TNNA in Long Beach, California. The show was amazing, and I am still exhausted. My mom and I drove both ways from Texas, assembled and manned the booth, and we're still recovering. The website is getting a reboot, but since it is just me working on it, it will take some time. Over the next few weeks my focus will be on dyeing my wholesale orders and getting AGA yarn into all our new shops!
Update 11/27/10
Sale time! Use the coupon code "Alisha20" by November 30th for 20% off your purchase price. Yay! If you spend more than $100, you get free shipping, too.
I'll update the site on Sunday, November 28th some time after 2 PM and before 7PM Central time.
Update 11/14/2010
Kid n Ewe was more wonderful than I'd hoped it would be -- a huge THANK YOU to all the people who visited, bought yarn noms, or took photographs of the birds and mice! I was surprised by the number of people who'd heard of me, and even more surprised by how much traffic we saw in the booth. I suppose being located between the alpaca babies and the bathroom didn't hurt.
In General:
I'm preparing about a dozen patterns for release, some of which incorporate knitting with other crafts, and some that are straight knitting patterns.
From April 8th through 10th, 2011, Alisha Goes Around will head to the Dallas/Fort Worth Fiber Festival in Grapevine, Texas.
The following weekend, April 15th and 16th, 2011, AGA will be at the Yellow Rose Fiber Festival in Seguin, Texas (just NE of San Antonio).
We're streamlining our offerings and hope to make ordering easier, both for retail and wholesale customers. I killed my website, but things are almost back to normal. Phew!
I am back from TNNA! Alisha Goes Around yarn will appear in 20-something new yarn stores over the next few months. TNNA was incredibly exciting, the booth was packed, and my "duh, knitting" stickers were out of stock by the middle of the second day. I've reordered stickers, which will be for sale soon, I've ordered thousands of skeins of yarn, and soon I'll be up to my shoulders in steaming dyepots and lovely yarn.
All of my existing dyed yarn remains in Columbus for Knitters' Connection. If you will be in Ohio for the event, Alisha Goes Around yarn can be found in the Buffalo Wool Company's booth until June 19th.
My yarn will come home with Buffalo Wool Company, and I will travel to Dallas to pick it up next week. Until then, the Etsy site will remain on "vacation mode," since I don't know what will sell and what will come home. We will begin relisting yarn once it is back in our hot little hands.
In the meantime, if you'd like to pre-order yarn, contact me at alisha@alishagoesaround.com
4/25/11
The Etsy shop is in decent shape and I've taken photographs of some of my core colorways. Because my website hates me and because I've been home with a sick child all day, I've uploaded the colorway photographs to Flickr. There's a handy dandy link in the Colorways section to the left. Further investigation of the Alisha v. Website difficulties will commence when I am sick-kid free and not ready to throw my computer out the window.
Also, I will be out of town May 2-8 at a spinning retreat with Judith MacKenzie McCuin (!!!! I cannot believe it myself!). The Etsy store will remain open and updated, but nothing will ship until I return home and unload the car. In addition, nothing ordered after April 30th that needs to be custom dyed will be dyed until I return, unless you want my husband to take a stab at the dyeing, drying, twisting, and labeling. Your choice, really. He'd probably put a sticker on it and get it done promptly, but then he is colorblind, so there's no telling what you'd get.
I'd wait.
4/22/11
Just finished a marathon session of Etsy-uploading. Pulchritude MCN DK, Raft (BFL/Silk) Fingering, and Tracks (Superwash Merino/Bison Down) Fingering are listed.
I plan on photographing Bevy DK and Fingering during our remaining sunlight, and that will complete the majority of the missing yarn. Stock is comparatively low right now, but there are lovely yarns everywhere I look.
4/19/11
The back-to-back Fiber Fests are done! I'm home, I'm back at work (after one mimosa-fueled Sunday brunch and a long, mimosa-fueled nap), new yarn is on the way, arrangements are being made for events in May at Mo Ranch, Shabby Sheep in Dallas, and Loopy Yarns in Chicago, and in between those I'll continue to fill wholesale orders, develop colors for Fall and Winter, and make plans for the June TNNA in Columbus, Ohio. Simple, no? No.
4/10/11
I'm home! I am very, very, very tired, but I'm home. After I sleep, get the kiddo to school, and sleep some more, I will inventory my remaining yarn, take the Etsy site off vacation mode, list some new items, skein and dye yarn, then I think I'll eat some breakfast. Or not.
I want to extend a huge thank you to everyone who worked so hard to pull off the DFW Fiber Fest. I had a great time, loved the people I met and spent time with, especially the board members, volunteers, everyone who stopped by my booth, everyone who liked the peacock, my wonderful and amusing booth-neighbors at Two If By Hand, Madelinetosh,and Spinning Straw into Gold, the two shops that picked up my yarn (Shabby Sheep in Dallas and Whirled Fibers in Duncanville), the ladies with whom I drank wine and vodka tonics, my friends who drove from New Braunfels, my friend, Alyson, who helped me in my booth (and who I may have worked to the bone each day), the teachers I was lucky enough to spend time with, including Mary Beth Temple, Anne Hanson (in an actual class, no less), Linda Permann (I know you'll see this in your Google Alert, gatekeeper), and Christina Adcock-Azbill, and a special shout out to Dr. Pepper, Starbucks, and my Wine Cube. Couldn't have done it without you.
Now, I say goodnight. Goodnight. I am a very lucky girl.
4/7/11
We are off! If you are in the DFW area, come see us at the Fiber Fest in Grapevine. We're running early-bird specials (look for the peacock and his cache of Easter eggs) from the ungodly hour of 8:30 AM (when the convention hall opens) until 10:30 AM. People with military, government, or foster parent IDs will get an egg no matter the time.
We will close the Etsy store if Wi-Fi is not reliable at the show. Right now, we hope to keep it open and up-to-date during the show weekend.
4/5/11
The Etsy Site is stocked! To browse yarn, head over to the Alisha Goes Around Etsy Store at the link to the left.
I'm headed to the DFW Fiber Fest this weekend, and the Yellow Rose Fiber Fiesta the weekend after that. The Etsy site will be shut down during those events (so I don't double-sell skeins), but will be back online the Mondays following each show. Thank you!
Update 3/6/11
Every wholesale order is dyed, one needs to dry, and then I will sleep for a week.
In the meantime, my helper, Alyson, is taking care of listing yarn on Etsy. There's a link over there <----- that will take you there.
Meanwhile, I'll continue dyeing yarn for the DFW Fiber Fest in April, as well as the Yellow Rose Fiber Festival the following week. I'm already working on the next TNNA -- sure seemed to come around quickly.
Update 2/23/11
Many, many orders are complete and on their way this week. A few are already delivered an on store shelves, so there is plenty of forward progress. Most of the yarn I need has arrived - I'm missing about 10 pounds of yarn to complete a few orders, but even that should be here within the next ten days. By Monday, 75% of yarn will be out the door.
Tracks of Bison continues to be a bear. The yarn is here, the skein winder is here, but I have yet to find an easy, non-yarn-killing way to turn a 1 kilo skein into 10 100g skeins. Swifts are not made to hold 1 kilo skeins, or at least, not any swifts I've found. Our first two attempts were disastrous, but as of yesterday we're onto a third method that, although it is slow, seems to be working. Even the electric skein winder is protesting -- last night it started throwing pieces of itself at me. We're now waiting for the glue to dry before we start again.
Website updates are on track for the first week of March.
Update 2/9/11 - Alisha's birthday
For my birthday, I am twisting and labeling skeins and trying to get orders boxed. No dyeing today, I don't think, since my hands and arms need a rest. Party time in New Braunfels!
Nice cold snaps we keep having, eh? What I wouldn't give for a month of summer right now. The dyeing is not the problem, the drying is. Wet skeins turn into frozen skeins, and no one likes their cashmere encased in ice. Very difficult to knit. Hard on the hands.
More yarn keeps coming in, but nothing has left us yet. Richness, Tracks, Tittering, and Panoply Worsted have made their appearances, some just today, and Marmalade Lace and Tiding shouldn't be THAT far behind. I've got an electric skeinwinder on the way for Tracks, which should be here within a week. In the two weeks since the yarn started arriving, I've dyed at least 600 skeins (there were a lot of snow/freeze days where I couldn't dye or dry) and the twisting, labeling, and packing is ongoing. No single order is complete, but some are aaaaalmost ready to go.
Thank you to everyone reading this. This last month has been a whirlwind. As I told the husband, it is as if I waited for rain for a year, but now I'm caught without an ark.
Update 1/27/11
Want to know what 300 pounds of skeined yarn looks like? Think a stack of boxes the size of a VW Bug. The terrifying thing is that there are another 500 pounds on the way within the next 3 weeks (some bases were waaaay backordered). My house is nearing Collier Mansion Status, but with yarn. I've told the people in my Tuesday and Thursday pottery classes that, if I don't show up, it is because I'm buried under wool. Not a bad way to go, but I'm trying to avoid it. I'm dyeing at least 10 kilos every day (100 skeins) with the hopes that by the time Tracks, Tiding, Tittering, Richness, Marmalade Lace, and Panoply Worsted arrive (staggered between the 31st and the 10th) I'll have a first round of orders dried, twisted, labeled, and shipped.
The website will get attention later - I have a photographer lined up for the core colors, and once I'm in a better order-filling place, the website will be a priority. I wish I could get it in faster, but I am not a website maker and it takes me a lot of time. Someday I'll be able to hire someone, but "controlled growth" is hard.
Update 1/17/11
I'm back from TNNA in Long Beach, California. The show was amazing, and I am still exhausted. My mom and I drove both ways from Texas, assembled and manned the booth, and we're still recovering. The website is getting a reboot, but since it is just me working on it, it will take some time. Over the next few weeks my focus will be on dyeing my wholesale orders and getting AGA yarn into all our new shops!
Update 11/27/10
Sale time! Use the coupon code "Alisha20" by November 30th for 20% off your purchase price. Yay! If you spend more than $100, you get free shipping, too.
I'll update the site on Sunday, November 28th some time after 2 PM and before 7PM Central time.
Update 11/14/2010
Kid n Ewe was more wonderful than I'd hoped it would be -- a huge THANK YOU to all the people who visited, bought yarn noms, or took photographs of the birds and mice! I was surprised by the number of people who'd heard of me, and even more surprised by how much traffic we saw in the booth. I suppose being located between the alpaca babies and the bathroom didn't hurt.
In General:
I'm preparing about a dozen patterns for release, some of which incorporate knitting with other crafts, and some that are straight knitting patterns.
From April 8th through 10th, 2011, Alisha Goes Around will head to the Dallas/Fort Worth Fiber Festival in Grapevine, Texas.
The following weekend, April 15th and 16th, 2011, AGA will be at the Yellow Rose Fiber Festival in Seguin, Texas (just NE of San Antonio).
We're streamlining our offerings and hope to make ordering easier, both for retail and wholesale customers. I killed my website, but things are almost back to normal. Phew!
Questions? Email Alisha@AlishaGoesAround.com
