Monthly Archives: April 2014

First of all, thanks to so many of you who sent kind, thoughtful emails yesterday. Your words really helped me get through a tough day. Sometimes we forget that even bad situations are temporary. Thank you for reminding me.

I am working my way through 6 months of emails and trying to make sure that every order placed has been properly handled, which, as you can imagine, is going to take some time.  I thank you so much for your patience!

There are some really great things happening soon that we can look forward to, including the 2014 CSA Shares going on sale next week. Next month will bring the return on The Shepherd & The Shearer with two new lovely designs by two AMAZING designers, and lots of changes based on your feedback. And, of course, lambing starts May 1st! We’ll have little lambs springing around the farm before you know it!

More soon. Again, I thank you for your kindness and loyalty. It is worth more than diamonds and gold to me.

For the first several months of this blanket block-a-long finding inspiration for the block designs was simple.  I was full of ideas.  Bursting to try new things.  I had only to look around me to see all kinds techniques, colors, and motifs I wanted to incorporate into a block.  Taking those ideas, putting them to paper, and then stitching the blocks has been an enjoyable challenge and an invigorating puzzle.

This month was different.  I laid out all of the various colorways of Yearling available to me in a row on my bed and stared at them.  And I saw nothing.  No owls, no Zias, no interesting slip stitch pattern.  Just nothing.

I cast something on, and then ripped it out.  I cast on something else, and then ripped that out too.  I cast on a lot of things, and ripped them all out.  Nothing seemed to fit.  All of the brilliant ideas that I had in January and February had vanished  from my head, and nothing seemed quite right for an April block.   I began to despair that I would not have a design in time for the first of the month (and indeed I did not).

In the end, it was a friend who saved me.   I posted online a poor quality cell phone picture of my yarns (which I had arranged in spectrum order) and a plea for help.  Her response, “Stripes?,” gave me a simple and elegant solution to my quandary.  And so, this month, I give you stripes.  I didn’t even change the color order.

A rainbow is kind of April-y, right?

Next month, I am going to do a solid block using the blue Mermaid colorway.  I am pondering what kind of design or stitch pattern to use.  Tell me in the comments what you would like to see.

Cris lives in bucolic western Kentucky with her husband, two children, and a menagerie of assorted four-legged creatures.  She spends her days as a librarian and her nights dreaming of a small plot of land where she could raise a few chickens.  She be found on Ravelry as Flarkin.