As such, I’m moving to a brand new blog! I hope you will follow me over there and add that new blog to your RSS and e-mail feeds. Be sure to check out my most recent post, as it includes a coupon code you won’t find anywhere else!

I have already used the new blog to advertise my shop updates and share all my free knitting and crocheting patterns. As I continue to build it, the new blog will become the site for other crafty tutorials and update posts as well!

Thank you for sharing in my blogging journey with me; I’ll see you at the new place soon I hope!

- Jess

I added the following yarns:

and these batts:

The shop is nice and full of sock yarn, handspun yarn, and batts! There are even a few combed tops snuck in there.

Remember, if you don’t find exactly what you’re looking for, just send me a message and I’ll create a custom order for you! I can re-create my repeatable colorways on any yarn, roving or batt base and I can also dye up a new colorway inspired by your favorite stories and characters! If you’re not a spinner I can spin the yarn for you and if you’re not a knitter I can even knit something up!

Use the code September to get FREE SHIPPING this week in my Etsy and Artfire shops!

Anyway, without further delay, congratulations to Zilliah who was the randomly selected winner of the give-away! I have contacted you on Etsy about your prize.

For everyone else, I hope you’ll check out my Storied Yarns shops on Etsy and Artfire! I just finished updating them with a few new items, see?

Next week I’ll have an update of sock yarn, so if you didn’t win the give-away you might still be able to get your hands on your favorite colorway!

Also, I’m hosting a Knit-Along in my Ravelry group, inspired by the Wicked Lovely novel series by Melissa Marr. You can knit one of these two fabulous projects:

Visit my Ravelry group for further details, and purchase your spot in one of my shops!

Thanks again for visiting, everyone! Head on over to Andrea’s Blog and catch up with the rest of the Fiber Arts Friday fun!

For instance, one of my favorite colorways is The Other Mother:

On the other hand, Phileas Fogg is a colorway that just isn’t my favorite, but it sold relatively quickly when I listed it:

So the problem is, which colorways to dye/card before the fiber festival?

That’s where you come in! Please head over to my Flickr Available Colorways set and pick a favorite – or two! Tell me WHY that item is your favorite if you don’t mind, and I’ll read over them and try to get a better idea of which colorways people like the best. As a bonus entry, leave another comment with some helpful fiber fest vending advice for me! If you’re a veteran vendor, what advice do you have for a newbie? If you’re a shopper, what do you like to see when you go to a fiber fest in terms of booth setup, customer service, or whatever?

Here’s the best part: I’m going to dye up a skein of 2ply Superwash Sock yarn for one random commenter to this post! As long as your comment involves one of my colorways and why you like it (or fiber fest advice – limit to two total comments per person), you can be randomly selected to win. When I choose your comment I will dye up a skein of yarn in YOUR favorite colorway, so choose wisely! Also, please leave me a way to contact you in your comments (e-mail, Ravelry ID, Etsy ID, etc.).

No purchase necessary to win. Simply look at photos of my colorways and pick a favorite, then tell me why (or give me fiber festival advice). I will mail you the yarn free of charge, it doesn’t get any better than that!

The contest will end NEXT Thursday, September 1, at Midnight CST. The contest is open to US/Canada and International participants.

As a thank you to everyone who participates in this little experiment of mine, use code FAVORITES to save 15% off your order in my Artfire Studio or Etsy shop. The code is good through 9/2/2011. While you’re there, if you happen to be sale 100 in Etsy or sale 110 in Artfire you’ll find an extra surprise tucked in with your order!

Here are the newest items I added to my shops yesterday:

Thanks for browsing, and thank you in advance for your helpful comments!

When you’re finished with all of that, head on over to Wonder Why Gal’s blog and check out the rest of the Fiber Arts Friday fun!

First off, I took a T-shirt I have from grad school that wasn’t quite everything I want in a shirt. I loved the awesome logo (Liberty University’s butt-kicking eagle, LOL) but hated the boxy, oversized-but-not-baggy fit. So I chopped it up a little bit and now I like it a lot better!

Please excuse the bathroom mirror self-portraits! I discovered today that having my 6yo take photos for me results in blurry photos that make me look pregnant b/c of her shortened height angle, so in my oh so humble opinion this is at least better than that!

It’s hard to tell, but what I did to this shirt was cut the neckline wider/deeper, cut off the sleeves at an angle going from the armpit area to the outer sleeve (removing the existing hem and making them a little more fluttery) and cut off the bottom hem (it had an obnoxiously big sizing tag on it, ugh). Then I stitched three or four lines of shirring around the neckline and voila! A girlier version of this tee.

Here you can kind of see the shirring at least a little:

Next up, another T-shirt project! This time I made a skirt. I’ve been loving this tutorial, but after closer inspection I realized that the 99-cent green tee I bought at Goodwill yesterday was going to make a mini-skirt if I cut it off below the armpits. So instead I cut off the sleeves and then cut across the chest, making it a little taller. I had to stitch a seam down the sides b/c the skirt stuck out a little where the armpits were, and then I did the shirring as suggested in the original tutorial. Now I have a new skirt!

One thing I learned with this project is that I should look for longer shirts. The other thing I learned is that it’s really hard to find 99-cent tees at Goodwill (on 99 cent day, even!) that don’t have a gigantic logo all over them. This shirt had one, but it’s far enough toward the top that it will never show under the shirts I normally wear.

My third and final wardrobe addition for today is a new dress, wahoo! I followed this awesome tutorial; the only thing I changed was to sew the skirt portion to a polo style shirt instead of a tank top. Also my fabric is actually a thrift-store sheet; I have a bunch of it left over so I plan to make one of these for Jilly to match!

If I make one of these dresses again (which I plan to do, with a cool grammar tee and another GW sheet), next time I’ll make the skirt portion a little lower down on the top. I wasn’t quite accurate in my measurements here, so the skirt starts just below my boobs, which isn’t my all-time favorite style but it’s still cute. It also means the skirt’s a little short, especially (ahem) in the back where my butt makes it stick out more, so I’d do better next time to make it a little lower, longer or both. Otherwise though I am at least glad to have one of these dresses b/c I’ve been ogling tutorials for them online for weeks now!

Hopefully I’ll have more thrift store refashioning posts in the future, this is tons of fun!

One of the project bags (top left) is quilted and interfaced so it’s ideal for carrying a spindle and some fiber. The others are smaller, great for one-skein projects. The handspun is a whopping 298 yards of worsted weight squishy goodness and the combed tops include BFL, BFl/Firestar and Superwash merino in my nursery rhyme colorways and a NEW Harry Potter inspiration!

A few times a year I jump in and participate in the swap as well. This round, August to October, we’re swapping something for the hands – mittens, gloves, arm warmers, fingerless mitts, you get the picture. At the risk of giving too much away I’ll just say that I decided it would be the best option for my recipient if I dyed up some Faux Cashmere spinning fiber to make her mitts.

I chose my “Irial” colorway which is a blend of some of my recipient’s favorite colors (deep red, burgundy, purple and black). I dyed it in a graduated pattern instead of variegated this time, so I’ll split this braid in half lengthwise and then spin a single from each half and n-ply those singles on themselves to maintain the color progression from start to finish.

Here’s the fiber:

I’ve never spun straight Faux Cashmere before, but I’ve been wanting to for a while, so this will be exciting for me! I’m going to knit my Rainbow Brite Mitts pattern b/c I’ve been wanting to see how that will look in a graduated pattern instead of a striping one. I hope my recipient likes the mitts!

In other news, I sewed up a little bag of some sort. I’m not really sure what to call it! I wanted to make a sturdy project bag so I could use it to hold a spindle and not risk damaging that spindle too much. This design is okay, but it’s not 100% what I had envisioned, so I’m going back to the drawing board. In the meantime, I’ll be putting this one in my shop some time on Monday in case someone else finds a good home for it:

The bag is made from a sturdy canvas fabric on the outside. It has interfacing and batting on the inside and it’s quilted, with a regular hot pink cotton lining. It has a nylon webbing strap on it and some binding on the top edge. In the pictures you can see I have put some stuff in there to show off the size – that’s 4 oz of superwash merino top and two of my spindles to show that the bag is plenty large enough to hold those items and more.

Watch for a Shop Update in Etsy and Artfire on Monday – it will have some roving/top and a few project bags in addition to this one!

My husband has a friend who needed a traditional Russian first-year wedding anniversary  gift for his wife, which apparently is a muslin tablecloth with a decorative edging. Most of them are pretty darn decorative, but I agreed to make a very simple one and that was fine with the recipient, so here’s what he got:

I used some decorative stitches on my sewing machine and some light blue thread to do the border. It feels good to finish something!

From top to bottom: Little Boy Blue, Little Miss Muffet and Love in the Wild!

These are all chunkified art batts. However, they’re also SUPER soft. I’ve used cloud-like merino and BFL locks in these batts in addition to silky smooth tussah silk and faux cashmere, plus firestar for plenty of sparkle. These batts are truly a spinning adventure and soooo soft and squishy! Each one weighs approximately 2.8 ounces.

Here are the handspun skeins: Blood Orange Creamsicle, Forget-Me-Not and Barnaby Victorious

The top one is a 2ply, light fingering weight and over 300 yards! The bottom two are n-plied; the middle is sport weight and 128 yards and the bottom is aran weight and 110 yards.

Thanks for browsing everyone!!!

Here’s the top displayed on my son’s toddler bed:

Not the easiest thing to see, but it has monkey fabric framed in random green/brown/gold/tan scraps, then strips of green and banana fabrics in between.

Hopefully I’ll get the time to quilt, back and bind it before the week is out!