 | Welcome to the SilkWorm | |
Hi everyone, this is my new blog. Yahoo is dead. Starting a yarn store inside the BookWorm...and guess what! It is going to be called the SilkWorm.
I have thought about what to do with this blog. what to use it for after I found a new home for my store blog. I have decided to use this blog for a "how it really is to run a small business" sort fo blog. Cover the ups and the downs. The gripes and the joys ad maybe a few things in between.
I am now OFFICIALLY the owner of the Book Worm. The sale was final on Saturday, Dec 1, 2007. The money got a little hinkey, so I can get as much yarn and craft supplies in as I wanted. I will still be ordering, but not in as large a quantity as I would like. I want the basics of tatting supplies in as well as the basic notions. The BrownSheep wool came in. That is come nice quality yarn. I will have to eBay some of it ASAP to get more money in to but the notions. Isn't that awful? Oh well. The books should do OK even though December and January are the slowest months for used books. Don't know why. As long as I get enough yarn and notions in to do classes, I will be happy.
My first yarn order of Brown Sheep should start coming in next week. It has been slow and hard going. Getting the approvals from the companies. Making the money ends meet. A lot more work than I thought. Each company wants different information.
Next week my first order of notions should go thru. Boy, it is like a kid in a candy store. So many catalogs, so little money. :) What I am thinking of doing is a mail order business....sort of. I know from my crafter experience that you can never find what you want. Oh, you can find supplies at the local stores. Only a few and never what you exactly want. Michaels, for example. Someone is Texas, I think, does all of the ordering for all of the stores. Most stores get exactly the same thing. Bigger stores just get more of it. But things like Dye lots get thrown be the wayside. I challenge anyone to go into a Michaels store and find 5 - 7 balls of yarn in the same dye lot. Kinda hard to make a yarn order, right? So I have the catalogs and the ability to order, but I have no floor space to display items. I cant really afford to order a whole bunch ahead of time anyway. But I can let the crafters of the area view the catalogs and tell me what they want me to order. That way, They could get what they want, and we will all be happy. True, most like to see the items first. But the catalogs look good and most crafters have an idea of what they want. They pay something like 60% down and I order the item. They pay the rest when they pick it up. Sound resonable? Or just crazy?
This is a much better video of the bookworm. It is a large store. Larger than it looks like from the outside. It has empty space in the front that I will rearrange and put yarn in the shelves and add a display of needles.
It will not be very large, but hopefully, it will be a nice place to buy yarn. Add in a table, and I will be able to give lessons. BookWorm.MPG (7.4 MB)
| Start: | Dec 1, '07 8:00p | | End: | Dec 22, '07 | | Location: | Radcliff Plaza inside the BookWorm |
The silkworm officially opens.
So, 360 is massively changing is 2008. At least that is what I just heard. Well, I have been thinking of moving my blog anyway...sooo. Here I am, trying out a new one. I just didn't want to take the time to actually MOVE! I'm here now. Will try to post more. But I am just SOOOO busy. Just...... I never have time.
This is a very poor video of the interior of the BookWorm. It has an open spot in the front with free books in bags for people to search thru. That part is being moved and yarn is goin in on the open shelves on the wall and a large table will be moved in for classes IM000481.MPG (4.4 MB)
|  | These are patterns I have permission to share |
 | new blog | Oct 22, '07 12:57 AM
for everyone |
Trying this out. So much does not work on yahoo, sometimes I wonder why I try.
 No, this isn't from the class. This is just me trying to read directions.
Not normally a good thing.
See, I learned to knit from my mother. She learned to knit while on lunch breaks at Lockeade. She barely could read directions and I am not much better.
But I happened to talk to an erstwhile student who is scared to try and knit a hat.
I told her the only way to do it was to just try. If she remained scared and didn't try, she certainly would never knit a hat.
Then I went home and thought about my entralac class approaching. I had heard that entralac was hard. Pretty and interesting but hard to comprehend. I realized that I was scared. Scared to try it just like my student was too scared to try a hat.
So as I lay in bed, I grabbed my scrap yarn and spare needles by the bed. In a little over 30 minutes without unraveling, I made this piece. I still don't understand it. Just a blind knitter right now trudging along on the instructions, but I like it.
The hat should be a lot of fun to make
Closeup of my first piece.
yes, there is a way to make the little show-thru blips disappear, but I was just learning - OK?
 Woo Hooo. I signed up for an entrelac class.
Yea, it is expensive. Yea, I may not like it. But it is one of those things that fascinate me.
Yes, I have instructions I can follow. Yes, I have the knitting glossary from Elizabeth Zimmerman that clearly shows entra-lac. But I want to learn this from a person.
So, the class begins next week. I will try to take lots of pictures and stuff. And post them all here...
| New job | Sep 14, '07 12:34 AM
for everyone |
OK, so I haven't been on here lately.
OK, not really at all.
So what has been going on, you ask?
I have a new job......
After about 6 years of doing the same thing over and over....I have moved to a new job. The old job was just that....OLD. Yes, I could do it with my eyes closed. It gave me time to knit. Heck, If I fell asleep at my old job, most of the time - no one noticed.
But in return for that, I was treated like shit most of the time. I worked with a lot of 18 year old whiny brats who thought they had the worst job and always wanted someone else to do it. I called my job "diaper patrol". My old job was to basically go behind everyone else and clean up their mess. I didn't start out like that. It started out with me learning every job around. That is the way you get more hours....to be able to do a little bit of everything.....BUT, after they found out that I can do all the jobs, I became the person everyone goes to to "fix" what is wrong....
So that job is over. I am now no longer part of just UPS. I am now UPS Airlines. I work with long term employees - not teenagers. It is full time, more hours and more money. A LOT more typing than I have ever done before.
But no time to knit. No time to do much except work. But the sups are nice. The building in nice. The people are nice.....
Will let you know morel as I go along.
This last week I had to take a week off work to clean out a storage unit I had rented. This had needed to be completed for a long, long time.
My mother died in 1994. She was a crafter. People think I am a crafter. Other people think they are crafters. Most everyone I know is an amateur next to my mother. My mother knitted almost obsessively. She could crochet...but her real love was knitting. She also sewed and made bamboo baskets. At times, she had tried quilting, tole painting, macrame jewlery, wool tapestry, embroidery, rug hooking, wool rug braiding and several others I have simply forgotten.
My mother had worked all her life. Then I came along in the same year my father became permanently disabled. She was forced to quit working. Soooooo, to keep from going crazy, she took her knitting for hobby to obsessive porportions.
Why is my cleaning problems important to any crafter? Well, I was told to just throw everything away. Just get rid of everything. Just let it go. But people do not understand that I do not exactly have photos of my family. My father was disabled after my birth and didn't like pictures taken. My mom had been severely beaten and had her cheekbones and nose broken. She also did not like her photo taken.
So while I have very many pictures of myself as a child and the surroundings, I have few of my parents as I knew them. I have memories. I have a knitted blanket my mother struggled to finish and ended up hating the colors. I have sweaters and socks I remember her ripping out because she had found a small mistake. I have patterns that we collected together, planned to complete together, that I will now have to finish alone.
So here I was going thru what was basically the contents of under my mother's bed. After she died, due to EXTREME problems with my relatives, whatever I could get my hands on, I put into storage and never had a chance to look at anything.
So to my surprise, I found a stack of magazines. My mother never read magazines. She would keep parts of magazines (patterns) but rarely entire magazines. So I found a stack of Vogue Knitting magazines from the early '80s. What and Why? I thought.
Good heavens. I looked at one of the fronts before I threw it away! An old interview with Elizabeth Zimmerman. The next Vogue had an original pattern by Elizabeth Zimmerman. Every magazine I found in that stack had an article about EZ or about Schoolhouse Press or a pattern written by EZ. I never even knew they existed. While I loved watching The Knitting Workshop in the '80s, I wasn't the type to sit and read an interview.
So now I have my memories. I have a few of her projects to complete.
Within the last two weeks, I have researched several topics. Either I was asked a question I was not able to answer or I was trying to explain how to do something and needed either pictures or more instructional data. Several times, I turned to a podcast for information. A few times, I found wonderful entries with detailed photos in blogs. Tonight, I found all of my information in online libraries. These are just a few examples of digital media and the wonderful resource that they can be. Of course, there are drawbacks. You must have a computer or have a friends computer. Why digital? ahhhh Cost maybe? all of the resources I found have been free. "But I like paper" I have been told on more than one occasion. Well, printers are cheap. Most digital media works on the print on demand theory. If you want that page printed, print that page. All of the books I found you could print the entire book or one page at a time. But why waste the paper I say. So I thought I would share some of the wonderful resources I came across as part of my research. First and formost of all research sites is Archive.org. This is an online library to beat all libraries. Some of the great books I found dated all the way to back to the mid 1800's. Isn't that fantastic? Take a look! School Needlework Take a look at pages 89-91. Nice pictures, good information. Totally free. Not finished. Come back later for the rest
 Sometimes I give friends links to podcasts, digital books or blog.
One problem....
They just ask me "what am I supposed to do with this?" or "What is THIS?
My fault really. I get into technology a lot more than my knitting friends. I have access to a fast network and a nice computer. And I have someone to rebuild my laptop when I manage to kill the silly thing.
So I will step back here and explain a little.
A blog is what you are reading. It is usually something like a diary in digital format. It can be the ramblings of a normal day, a journal of knitting experiments, a pictorial history of completed knitting projects. It can be anything honestly.
It may have pictures, sound, links to information that other people have available. But normally, a blog is mostly text. A way for friends or family to trade information without clogging the net with forwards and numerous emails duplicated for all family members.
A podcast is a verbal blog. What? Yea. It is that simple.
Think of all the blogs you have read. All the pages of text you have passed over to read later. Now, people are replacing these pages with words. So while you are reading your email, you can listen to a family member ramble on about their weekend at the lake. Or listen to someone give you precise instructions on knitting that sock you wanted to try.
Again, a podcast can be about anything. I have even found blogs where people read books. Simple sit in front of the computer and read their favorite book.
I will have a tutorial later on how to listen to a podcast.
What is digital media. That is simple. It is just about anything on a computer. Pictures, video, music. audio books, digital books.
The PDF below will show you how to use the RSS section of Yahoo Mail Beta for reading digital media feeds
How to use an RSS feed 
This is just to see if this works...
Use this to contact me
We are trying to get a guild formed.
Maybe a guild is too structured a word. We are trying to get a set meeting where knitters, crocheters and tatters and other crafters can get together and laugh, craft and bitch together.
Still trying to get a name established.
Still only meeting at Barnes and Noble.
Still only have 4 people who attend.
Looking for ideas is anyone belongs to a guild or has experience in a guild.
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