This week’s month of love contributions is a smidge abbreviated because I’ve had a rough week.

Our house was broken into. Again.
They stole nothing this time, just rifled through cabinets, breaking cups and squashing any sense of safety.

I thought about skipping this all together, but I love yarn, I love the Month of Love and more than anything, I love sharing it with you.

So, let’s get to the good stuff.

Legolas + Gimli

Luke + Lorelai (already sold!)

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This week’s winner  is commenter Wordlily, who suggested both the color and the concept for Luke+Lorelai.

Suggest a couple (or group) AND specific colors in the comments of this contest post and if I spin it, you’ll win 50% off!

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PS. I appreciate your good thoughts, sweet comments and concern. I would greatly appreciate it if you could refrain from sharing advice or ’shoulds’. Thanks!

Last week I listened to the BEST podcast I’ve ever heard about sharing-your-crafty-thing. It was Sister Diane’s CraftyPod show about Engagement Marketing.

If you sell your crafty thing (patterns, yarns, purses, whatever!) you really need to listen to this.

What’s Engagement Marketing?

Diane gives a great definition and explains why you’d want to use it, but I can’t resist putting it in my own words.
It’s sharing your thing by connecting. By making relationships, by talking to your customers one-by-one. It’s what we (you and I) do here on the blog in the comments. It’s chatting on Twitter. It’s leaving comments on Flickr.

Ignore the word Marketing.

Because it’s so much more than that.
(and I don’t like the word marketing)

It’s not just sharing my passion with you, even though that’s always fun.

In all of this connecting, sharing, chatting; I’ve gotten to know you.
You share your yarn-ideas with me, you help me crochet, you review my class.
You challenge me, encourage me and inspire me.

For that, I thank you.

Enough with the gushing.

If this all sounds like utopian love-fest, it sort of is.
It makes my working life so much better, that I get to share it with such fabulously brilliant people.

But it’s also REAL. And useful.
Useful in sharing my thing and useful in making my business sustainable.

And it’s accessible to anyone. Really!

Want some of this gushy-ness?

To feel this good and gushy about the people involved in your business, start by listening to Diane’s podcast.

And if after you’ve listened, you’re looking for some concrete ways of applying it, check out my Share Your Thing class (which is now available for homestudy).

PS. Not into all this business talk? I promise I’ll get back to yarning tomorrow! In the meantime, suggest a couple and you may win 50% off a skein of yarn.

Happy Month of Love!
Have you suggested a yarn yet? Read the contest details here!

It started simply enough, with Sesame Street:

But Month of Love morphed into Geek Week with lot of sci-fi type inspiration.

This week is all Lord of the Rings-inspiration with Celeborn + Galadriel:

Arwen + Aragorn

and Legolas + Gimli (coming tomorrow!)

Just to solidfy my geek-cred, we have Spock + Kirk:

Next week, the geekery continues with Battlestar-inspired yarns (along with a few other, less geeky TV shows, like Gilmore Girls and Mad Men). Catch them all here, a new one every day!

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This week’s winner  is Karma, who suggested both the color and the name for Galadriel+Celeborn. Aragorn + Arwen were mentioned in the comments but with different colors and I had already spun this yarn with them in mind.

Suggest a couple (or group) AND specific colors in the comments of this contest post and if I spin it, you’ll win 50% off!

Remember how last week I got a bit crochet-obsessed?

Yeah, that didn’t fade away.

I’m crocheting a bunch of these hexagons to make a blanket for my bedroom (lots and lots and lots of green scrap yarn).

I start with cute little circles, crochet as many of those as I feel like and then I move onto,

adding the second round. I usually do one round of that and jump right to the last round:

And at this point, I stop and move onto the next hex. Because though it’s not a full hexagon left, I want to join them together as I add the last brown, hex-making round.

Every circle is going to be hex-ed with the same brown yarn (I think it’s an alpaca/wool blend, but a big bag was given to me un-labeled, so I’m just guessing.

Since I want to join them as I make the last round, I’m waiting until I’ve made a LOT of circles, because I’m afraid that if I join them as I go, the colors will be clumped together and we can’t have any color-clumping!

They make me happy!

PS. Also making me happy? The Month of Love Contest entries. Have you entered yet?

Did you know Valentine’s day is a month away?

I’m not a big fan of V-day, but I do LOVE thinking about love and how we change with it and how we change it.
And of course, when I think about something, it seeps into my yarn.

All this love-thinking birthed the Month Of Love series of yarns, 2 years ago.

Month of Love is a month-long yarn-party from 1/15 to 2/14 (Valentine’s Day!); I make a yarn representing a famous pairing or couple (and this year: group) every weekday for the entire month and share it the very next day.

Last year I asked for your suggestions and that post became the MOST popular post on my entire website. I got so many great ideas and awarded so many prizes and the whole thing was SO much fun, that I’ve been dying to do it again this year!

And here it is, the day before the Month of Love!

Let’s get this love-y party started!

I think I said it pretty well last year:

I’m interested in how this interplay of colors and how the addition of a color (or person) to a yarn (or your life) can change a color or at least, the perception of that color. And some couples, they just have a single color to symbolize the pairing (ex. Cheech +  Chong = green). Of course, this applies to more than just romantic couples; it happens with any sort of pairing: PB & J or Bert & Ernie.

(PB&J, from last year’s Month Of Love)

I need help thinking up these couples AND the colors associated with them!

If you suggest a couple + color that I choose to use, you will win 50% off any skein in my shop.

To enter the contest: leave a comment below this post with both a COUPLE and their COLOR(S). You must include your email (no one will see it) so I can let you know if you’ve won. You may suggest as many couples as you like and if any couples are duplicated, the winner will be the first who mentioned both that couple and the colors I use.

For example: Sesame Street: red for Elmo, yellow for Big Bird, blue for Cookie Monster, green for Oscar
(note: I already made that yarn, so don’t suggest it!)

PS. To keep up with Month of Love yarns, you can see them on the blog every Friday and you can getthem in this section of the shop. Last year, the yarns sold out pretty much as soon as I listed them, so I’m thinking they won’t hang around for long!

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about yarn (the New Year brought new projects), but it is still my first love.

Sometimes I forget and wander into the land of launching a yarn store in 12 days or teaching other yarnies…but all it takes is one great pattern to pull me right back to my first love!

This granny square is what drew my fervent adoration this week.
Or maybe it was this entire rainbow-colored blog.

Or maybe it was Mercedes of Kitchen Sink Dyeworks (she’s kitchensinkdye on Twitter), who is crocheting the most amazing granny squares from her handpainted yarn.

(yarn dyed, squares crocheted and photograph taken by Mercedes)

But once I fell into this granny square vortex, I started scarfing up granny square information.

• How to Granny from Meet Me at Mike’s
• How to Granny from Purl Bee

And then I started branching out into hexagons.

And then I fell down and maybe started crocheting a hex a day.

In case you need even MORE reason to start crocheting, check out this and this.

I’m working on a hexagon blanket for my living room AND a giant granny square (out of various handspun) for A Novel Yarn.

I’ll be sharing my pictures as the projects progress, but in the meantime, I’d love to see yours!

What are you crocheting?

What have you crocheted with handspun or handpainted yarn?

I can’t believe it’s taken me 4 days to share this (blame on being snowed in!) but last Sunday, my yarn shop (A Novel Yarn) was featured in the biggest local paper – The Johnson City Press!

That’s me on the left (with the pink hair) and my business partner (and mom) on the left. We’re hugging a shelf full of Jen Hintz’s yarn (the photographer made us do it).

As you can see, the article took up the whole front page of the Temp (ie. Lifestyle) section, with a picture of my picture of Shera, along with more of Jen’s yarn and my mom’s hands knitting.

The article was all about our “philosophy” of handmade yarn and living curiously (about where stuff comes from, if we can make it, how it’s made, etc).

The article also briefly mentioned my first business (and true love), Blonde Chicken Boutique, so if you’re here from the paper – hi!

So many of you have asked, but it doesn’t appear to be online!

My work A Novel Yarn (you know, my real-life yarn store!) has put me into contact with hundreds of independant yarnies.
I’ve read their blogs, poured over their online shops, signed up for newsletters.
I have observed.

And all this observing (combined with my own yarnie-experiences) taught me a few things:

1. Everyone really has their own style of yarny-ness
2. That own-style-thing means that everyone has something different to offer
3. A lot of yarnies aren’t highlighting their own, unique, awesomeness on their website, blog, twitter…in other words, on their public face
4. Many of these yarnies have scattershot marketing, if any at all.

These problems are so overwhelmingly universal (with a few exceptions like ColorBOMB) in the handmade world – this is so NOT limited to yarnies.

And this is a shame,  because there are so many awesome makers of awesome things that are toiling in virtual obscurity because they don’t know how to share their thing.

All this observing has ignited a passion inside me.
What was once just a vague thought (I’d really like to somehow, someday  help other handmade businesses) has turned into a solid plan.

I want to help handmade businesses reach their right people in a non-icky, super simple way.

I don’t have all the answers, but I’ve studied a lot and I’ve done a LOT of trial & error (& error & error).

I’ve put together systems that have worked really well for me (newspaper & magazine articles, showing up in books, etc) and that can be applied to ANY crafty business.

And as part of my Sharing-It Pledge, I’m ready to share this aspect of my business in a 3-week online class.

You can read all about the class here and the subjects we’ll cover, but the short version is this:

• You want to share your thing with the world
• You have something unique to offer
• Together we’ll discover the best places for you to share your thing, a system for doing it consistently AND ways to highlight your you-ness.

If this seems like something you might like, you can learn more and register for it here.

Have any questions or comments? Leave them below!