Platformnine Designs

I don’t actually have time to blog about everything I should have written about in the last month. Fail, Mary, FAIL. So, instead for now, I’ll give you a tiny summary of what’s been going on at the Platformnine HQ.

• May’s Phat Fiber box came. It was awesome, as usual. I am now addicted to Milk fiber, thanks Roo! I will have a review post up soon… I swears >__________>
• GOT MY BUNNIES!!!!!!!! Love ‘em! They’re goofballs. Keva and Carine ♥ They will be getting their own intro post of disapproval soon.
• Got some spinning done, woo! Pictures, or it didn’t happen!
• ALMOST done with two gift packages. One’s for a Spring exchange, one’s for the swap I run, KFSKS.
• PAID OFF MY CREDIT CARD. HELL. YES. I am elated about this, because for about 6 months I lived in fear of creditors and debt. That shit is fucking SCARY.
• Got the shore house open. Been going down every weekend/every other weekend when I can! After my summer job starts (as a nanny) I can guarantee that I’ll be down every weekend for sanctuary.
• Ordered a crapload of fiber. Love it all. BeesyBee, Moonwood Farm, Sheep Shed, Gritty Knits.
• Made 6 sales in the shop in the past week!! YEY!! It was really really exciting because 2 of the sales were HUGE orders!! And one was a custom order!! My name is getting out there and people are enjoying my products :D
• Signed up for Tour de Fleece, Team Lantern Rouge 2009! I’d love to spin everyday (and, being the type of person I am, would probably have signed up to spin with the Hopelessly Overcommitted), but that’s a pipe dream if there ever was one LOL!
• Got a Blackberry Curve 8330. Love it more than anything. Addicted to it.
• Have a new man in my life. He’s a sweetheart. He has a classic car. He likes Disney. Does it get any better than that? XD

I think that’s the vast majority of things, in no particular order. Tune in later for some more updates and posts without bulleted lists!

I’ve been a busy bee again! I don’t know why I always say that, since I’m never not being a busy bee haha! While I’ve been hammering out my May samples for the PhatFiber Box (see pictures below for a preview of samples), I’ve also been finishing up my first, for-realz-actually-sat-down-and-did-it knitwear. Nothing terribly exciting (well, it is to me), just a cute little shrug/bolero/cropped jacket thingy. Why are there so many names for them? It was a seriously quick knit, I love it! The pattern I used was Shoulder Holder. On top of all of that (and school, family, my meager social life, etc) I was hit hard by the design bug last night. I was re-watching Leverage season one before the new season starts (May 25th!!), and the character Sophie was wearing this positively adorable long sweater vest at the end of the second episode. I did some detective work (ie: got out my photoshop and doctored some photos so I could get a closer, in detail look at the vest), and I sketched up a few mock ups of some ideas I have for the sweater. I’m way excited about it :D

Sample preview for May:

2 different handspun samples, each a different colorway and different weights. Spring Showers and Hyacinth.

1/2 oz fiber batts. Twice carded cotswold locks with angelina blended in.

(For the rest of the pictures, and the full sized versions, go here!)

When I saw on the Rav Phat fiber group that some of the contributors started to get their boxes I bolted for my mailbox! Sadly, it wasn’t there yet :c It finally arrived at 4:40PM!!! My mail was SOOOO late today! Anyway, I brought the box in, but I couldn’t crack into just yet - we sat down to a really early dinner today.

As soon as I finished eating I ran up to my room and grabbed my camera. Excuse the poor setting (the dog cage turning into a rabbit cage, LOL), I was too excited to go anywhere else. When I first opened up the box, this is what I saw:

First of all, the little card holder is SOCUTE. I love it. LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT!!!! It’s my new makeup bag for my purse! Then I peeled back the tissue paper (also cute!) and ZOMG STUFF!!!! I was hit with STUFF overload and I didn’t know what to pick up first!

First I opened the brown paper bag from Farm Girl Chic and I found some awesome wool/mohair locks mixed with some cotton and ribbon strips! It’s sooo soft and silky! Another big bonus is that there is hardly any VM in there! The last time I bought locks (from a different place) it was filled with VM :c

Then I oogled and molested the samples from Natchwoolie (yellow - peeps colorway) and Smoky Mountain Fibers. The packaging for the Natchwoolie sample is so adorable! The colorway (peeps) is a very lovely muted yellow that is a 90% Wool / 10% Mohair blend. The SMF sample is a gorgeous blend of blues and greens. It’s called beachglass and it’s a 100% merino roving sample that’s about a 1/2 an ounce! It looks like it’s going to spin up in sections of color, so I’d better learn how to navajo ply!

Next I was really excited to find the soap sample from Smoky Mtns Apothecary! I’ve never been huge on minty smells, but OH MY GOD the peppermint smells SO GOOD. All of the girls in my family are clamoring to have it in their bathroom! And I also got a sample of 80/20 merino/bamboo from 1,000 Petals. It’s really soft and shiny! And sparkle fiber from Enchanted!!! I love sparkle, so yaaay glitz! And a YUMMY yellow/pink/brown 70% Merino SW/30% SeaCell top from Knit It Up. This. Feels. AMAZING. I’ve been so excited to try seacell, but have never gotten around to it yet - here’s my chance!

And here is where I literally jumped around my room for a few minutes! I GOT A KIP BAG!! I’ve been so excited about these since I saw the samples of them for the March box. I can’t believe I got one!!! It’s from Ruddawg, and it’s sooo adorable! Next I found a gorgeous roving sample from Infinity Yarn & Fiber! It’s a beautiful superwash merino dyed in shades of green. Then I pulled out my first yarn sample from the box, a gorgeous organic merino fingering weight sample from The Unique Sheep in a gorgeous shade of green! This box is soooo working for me, I LOVE GREEN!!!

The next batch of samples I pulled out was a clever button from Wildhare and Fiber, a gorgeous laceweight sample from The Twice Sheared Sheep, and a very cool handspun sample from Coolclimates. The button makes me giggle because it says “Shop ‘til you drop” with a picture of a drop spindle on it! Clever, clever! The lace weight sample is absolutely gorgeous. It’s a really pretty shade of light blue. Another bonus is that it’s from recycled yarn! The Coolclimates sample is this really cool chunky homespun (what I call thick and thin, it’s just so chunky!) that’s got gorgeous colors in it. It’s a thicker single with greens and pinks and deep purples plied with a thin single that’s a really pretty violet color.

The final samples that I pulled out of the box was the awesome hank of Tulip yarn from My 8 Kids Mom, which is totally awesome and looks like it’s a really generous sample! I also pulled out the really pretty dreadlocks yarn from Giffordables, and the soft cotton sample from Katsara Luxury Handpainted Yarns. The sample from Giffordables is a squooshy yarn that I think would make a really cool bag. It has gorgeous shades of green in it, and it’s plied with a beautiful ice blue lace weight single. The Katsara sample is positively dreamy! It’s SO soft! I just keep holding it to my face and going “Mmmmm” haha! The colors are spectacular, too! It’s a wonderful blend of muted greens, blues, and purples. It’s beautifully dyed!

Finally, last - but most definitely not least, I pulled out the Merino/Silk sample from Corgi Hill Farm. Oooooh my god. That’s all I can say about this sample. I literally melted to the floor for a second when I opened it. It’s unbelievable soft, and all of the firestar in it makes it SOSHINY! The colorway is simply gorgeous. This is one of those things that you would describe as “BUTTAH” ♥ It came with candy too! I haven’t tried any yet, but it looks cool!

Note: for larger pictures, click here to see them!

All in all, I loved the box! It was my first one, so yay! (I tried for a March box, but it was stolen from my card twice!) I can’t wait to send in my samples for the May box, I think you guys will really enjoy them! I took pictures yesterday, so later on today I’ll be posting some previews of the handspun and batt samples!

Another note: Halfway through writing this post I went out for drinks and didn’t get to bed ‘til about 2:30AM. I had fun :D

I have had a really rough time over the last few weeks. First, it was my birthday, which always brings on the heart palpitations (of the bad variety) and the fear of growing up and growing older - thoughts of my bills and such running frantic through my head. And my friend brought me the cottontails. Sadly, the gimpy one didn’t make it through his amputation operation :c Then a week later, my friend’s cat got another little bun from the same litter, so I nursed him back to health. I had a home set up for them, and they were just about ready to go when the girl I was taming them for said she wants a dog instead. A lab. With a 3 month old baby in the house. Riiiiiight. So now I’m sort of stuck with these boys until I can find a good home for them. Now that I’ve tamed them, they can’t really go back in the wild. Anyone want bunnies?

Then I was really excited to be getting Jersey Woolys. I was adopting from a litter that was due last week. The litter was born, but none of them made it :c Apparently that happens sometimes with first-time moms!

And this past weekend my Poppop, who is the strongest man I know - and was a longshoreman, was admitted to the hospital for severe breathing problems. He hasn’t been the same for the past year since they put a stint in his heart. They thought he had a clot there, so they opened him up. They decided the clot was definitely not as bad as they thought - it was considered normal blockage - but they decided to put the stint in anyway. Now his kidneys are only working at 64% and there is something wrong with his diaphragm, and his whole left lung doesn’t work. The whole thing sounds like a major malpractice suit to me, but we just want him to get better. This weekend he couldn’t breathe so we admitted him to the hospital. He’s been coughing up little bits of brown phlegm, but he tested negative for pneumonia. On Monday, when I was there, he had a breathing scare because he couldn’t breathe just going from his bed to the bathroom and back again. Nurses and doctors rushed in and my heart was pounding. He couldn’t get any air, but when they tested his oxygen saturation level in his blood, the numbers read as perfect. Textbook. This keeps happening, but it’s obvious that he’s not getting air. None of his doctors (the thirty or so that he sees) have been able to figure out what’s wrong with him. I wish Doctor House really existed :c They put him on steroids, and now he’s much much better (not better than before the stint, but better than he’s been in the past two weeks), and he might be coming home today. It’s SO hard for me to see him sick, because he’s my rock. I’m so close to my whole family, especially my Mommom and Poppop.

And as all of this was going on, I think I’ve been let go form my job at the rescue center without actually being told. My boss ignores my calls unless she has an emergency and needs me to foster (I feel so used :|), and she won’t talk to me about scheduling. I understand she can’t afford to pay me as much as she used to (not that I was rolling in the dough from what little pay I got) because of her budget, which she frivolously spends paying her office BFF Debbie - a middle-aged woman with grown up kids that sits on her ass all day and pretends to answer phones. For $16 an hour. While I got $8 an hour for doing six million things.

I got a little depressed for a while, because life had just been crapping on me over and over again. However, now things seem to be looking up for me! I have another job lined up - nothing fancy, but it will certainly pay the bills! Plus, I can knit/spin/dye while I do it! (I’ll be nannying for my cousins - who both want to learn to spin/knit/dye/etc) AND another Wooly breeder finally got back to me - one that has kits ready to go! I’m waiting to see if she’s keeping the two REW does (white ones), which if she doesn’t they’re mine and if she does I think I’m getting a grey doe and the tan one, if it’s a doe. Either way, I’m getting two does. Another plus about getting the Jersey Woolys from her is that she’s MUCH closer to me than the other lady was! Also, I got a message on Ravelry the other day from CanarySanctuary - she wants to do a little designer spotlight thing on me for my indie designs! I’m so geeked and flattered about it! It’s inspired me to pick up some of the designs I put on the back-burner and work on finishing them! The most recent thing I finished is the Beckett Beret, based on Det. Kate Beckett’s beret on ABC’s new show Castle (if you have not watched this show yet, WATCH IT! You’ll love it!). I was curious about CanarySanctuary, because she sounded familiar, so I stalked browsed through her profile today and saw that she is actually one of the designers I fangirl love! I have just about every one of her designs in my queue! I also checked out her blog, and aside from finding some really great designers I didn’t know about I fell in love with her blog! So, yay, new blog to follow! Go check her out!

I’m so excited! I’m contributing a huge variety of samples to April’s box (themed “Green” - color/eco-friendly). Yesterday I designed and printed the project cards and recipe cards and packaged them. Today I dyed the roving that I’m giving and the roving I’m spinning for my handspun samples - that’s all drying now. I’m calling the colorway Little Mermaid because it reminds me of Ariel and her home under the sea XD. I also dyed a 2oz roving to sell in the shop in the same colorway incase someone really likes the sample and wants enough for a sustainable amount of yarn. Tonight and tomorrow I plan on finishing up my other samples. Hopefully I’ll have them in the mail by Wednesday at the latest. I have to make a trip to the post office anyway, since I have two gifts to send.

I also received some roving from a friend that she dyed. She was going to learn to spin with it, but ended up not learning. She offered to send it and I offered to spin it for her and send it back! That’s going to have to wait a few days though, so I can finish these samples and a bag I have to sew by 4/3 for the HSKS7.

I’m also organizing the first Kiwi Spinners Fiber Kit Swap! There’s a group for it on Rav, sign ups are going on now!

And somehow I still manage to get straight A’s!