Shop is now closed… read on for more info…

Hi there! I’m glad you found me, and I’m sad to say that the Unwind Yarn Company shop is now permanently closed. As I posted in my last entry, it just seemed like the right time to cut my losses and move on, as the business had been struggling for a while.

So what comes next? I plan to continue dyeing wholesale for my wholesale partners Arkansas Yarn Company, Needlepoint Junction, and The Yarn Patch, so you’ll have the ability to get fresh yarns from me from those shops! (Always good to support local yarn shops too, right?) When my wholesale partners order from me, I will likely post and offer to dye sweater quantities (ONLY- no single skein orders) for anyone who is interested; keep an eye on this blog and my Instagram account (@unwindyarncompany) for those announcements! A limited number of spots will be available for sweater quantity orders when I offer them. If you’re an Into The Wool Fiber Retreat attendee, you’ll also have the opportunity to get an exclusive yarn from me every year as part of your goodie bag, and I will have a small selection of yarn available at the market as well.

Thank you for your support over the last 14+ years- I do appreciate you and hope you continue to tag me and send me messages when you work with the yarn I’ve dyed in the past! I love seeing my work come to life in your creations.

All my best,

Dana

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August 16 Shop Update

Hi folks! I’m excited about today’s shop update! As usual it’s happening at 1pmET, and these 4 beauties are already up in preview mode:

Top and bottom left are With A Paddle and Without A Paddle (respectively), the Into The Wool Fiber Retreat 2017 colorways, and top right is Kokomo, and bottom right is A Bushel And A Peck. There are 2 skeins available of each!

But while you’re visiting my shop today, consider checking out the Single Skein Selldown section! All of the skeins in that section are 20% off with code SSS20, until they’re gone! Help me to make room for next week’s update and save some 💵 at the same time!

Have a great week and I’ll see you back here next Thursday!

XO-

Dana

2016: Dye To Order!

Hello all! I hope 2016 has been kind to you so far. I haven’t written on the blog in a while because I haven’t had much to say, but I wanted to give you some updates on what’s going on with me personally, as well as what’s going on with the shop.

 

As most of you know, I had my daughter in May 2015, and motherhood has been a huge adjustment. I can’t imagine my life without Madelyn now, but it has meant that I have had to change pretty much every aspect of my life to put being her mom first, and my chronic ailments have given me quite a bit of trouble postpartum as well. As a result, I have not been able to work as much as I have in past years, although I have done my best to keep the shop well-stocked.

 

I have embarked on a series of collaborations with some very talented bagmakers, namely Kim of Kicks And Giggles Designs and Rick of WhimzeeStitches Designs, making some very adorable limited edition kits of yarn from me and a bag from them.

Left: “Peppermint Party” kit with Kicks and Giggles Designs; Right: “Mariposa” kit with WhimzeeStitches Designs

 

 

These kits have been very popular so far, and I have collaborations with other amazing bagmakers planned for the future too!

 

Running the kits on a preorder basis has given me a chance to try out a new model for running the shop that I have been contemplating, and it has given me the confidence to go forward. Starting today when I reopen the shop, Unwind Yarn Company will mostly be run on a dye-to-order basis. This means that you can select a yarn base and purchase the number of skeins you want, let me know what color you want it dyed in, and I will dye it to order for you and ship it within 3-4 weeks of purchase. Why such a long lead time? Well, I am my child’s sole caregiver during most of the day, and I get limited dye time each week, so I don’t want to promise that something will be shipped sooner and disappoint anyone. If you should need something faster than that, then please send me an email and we will try to work something out (there might be a small “rush” fee if I currently have a lot of orders ahead of yours). There will still be some ready-to-ship items in the shop at any given point, new colorways will have both ready-to-ship options (in limited quantities) and dye-to-order options, and miniskein sets and sock blanks will always be listed as ready-to-ship (not available for custom order). I really feel that this business model will allow me a lot more freedom, as it requires that I store less dyed inventory, and that the skeins I dye will actually go to new homes within a reasonable period of time. The number of skeins available for dye-to-order will be limited to the amount of undyed stock I have on hand, just to keep things from piling up too much in my to-do list, but I will do my best to keep a decent amount of stock of all of my bases available at any given point. If you wish to order a particular base and do not see a listing for it in the shop, please feel free to email me (unwindyarncompany@gmail.com) and I will be happy to order the yarn base in so that I can dye it for you. All of my repeatable colorways will be available for order (except for the ones specifically noted), and there are no minimum lot sizes. You can see the list of available yarns in the header, as well as links to the repeatable colorway pages. I hope this works out, as I think it will suit everyone’s needs!

 

I hope you are all doing well, and I look forward to hearing from you soon! 🙂

 

XO-

Dana

August 4 Update: Halloween and Ovarian Cancer Awareness Colorways

Hi all!

Sorry for the long silence… I was busy having a baby. 😉 Madelyn is now almost 11 weeks old, and the absolute light of my life. I’m now easing back into work after taking a much-needed leave from dyeing, and my creative juices are definitely flowing!

Today’s update will be focused on two particular themes: Halloween 2015 Colorways and my brand-new Ovarian Cancer Awareness colorway for this year!

This year’s Halloween colorways are based on one of my favorite movies, Practical Magic. For those that have not seen this movie, it is about sisterhood, love, loss, and hope, with a good dose of magic thrown in! It has a bad guy of course, and a good guy too! (and the fact that it stars Nicole Kidman & Sandra Bullock, along with two of my favorites, Diane Wiest and Stockard Channing, makes it a must-see for me every year!)

I designed these colorways as loose interpretations of how the characters and situations in the movie made me feel. For example, The Aunts rarely wear color in the movie, but I wanted their colorway to be vibrant and exciting like they are! The Death Watch Beetle isn’t colorful, but I feel like the magical portents it represents would be, and some beetles do have that iridescent shimmer. Jimmy Angelov is just a bad guy all around, so his colorway had to be dark and mysterious with some shocking acid green thrown in to denote his evil side, and Midnight Margaritas had to have night colors (navy and black) along with strawberry and traditional lime green!

Top row: Death Watch Beetle, Jimmy Angelov
Bottom Row: Midnight Margaritas, The Aunts

Each of these colorways is available on Journey Sock, Honeymoon Sock, Twinkle Sock, and Expedition Sport, and there are multiple skeins available of each. Two colorways (Death Watch Beetle and Jimmy Angelov) are also available in shawl-sized skeins (500yds/125g) of Journey Sock- perfect for you shawl knitters! They are available on a limited basis, so if you want one of those, you might want to be on time for the update!

I also knitted up some swatches of these colorways so you could see what they look like knitted up into a sock leg. I did my regular sock leg of 60 stitches on US2 needles, and knit them out of Weekend Sock (a discontinued base that knits up exactly like Journey Sock) so you could see how they pattern; but as always, your unique gauge and number of stitches cast on will affect the finished patterning. Be sure to knit a swatch so you can see the effect you will get before beginning your project!

Top row: Death Watch Beetle, Jimmy Angelov; Bottom row: Midnight Margaritas, The Aunts.

I will have Halloween colorways available in this update, the August 25 update, and the September 15 update only, so if you like them, be sure to get what you want! (especially shawl skeins- they will only be available in this update!) In the next two updates I will also have select colorways from prior years’ Halloween collections, and in the August 25 update I will have miniskein sets as well.

UnTEAL We Meet Again, pictured on (top row) Honeymoon Sock, Journey Sock; (bottom row) Twinkle Sock, Voyage Aran

Three years ago I was asked by the podcaster CoggieTM of the High Fiber Diet Podcast to create an ovarian cancer awareness colorway, and it was a runaway hit. A lot of people enjoyed knitting with “TEALtember” so much that I decided to create a new colorway this year, and I am pleased to introduce “UnTEAL We Meet Again”!

I discount this colorway by $2 per skein, and hope that you will donate that amount (and whatever else you can afford) to one of the following ovarian cancer foundations:
http://www.ovariancancer.org/
http://www.tealtoes.org/

This colorway will only be available in the two August updates this year, and only in limited quantities, so please don’t hesitate to pick some up if you want some! It will be available on a variety of bases including Journey Sock, Honeymoon Sock, Twinkle Sock, and Voyage Aran.

Some facts about ovarian cancer (taken from http://www.cdc.gov):
* causes more deaths than any other female reproductive cancer, but it accounts for only about 3% of all cancers in women
* each year, about 20,000 women in the United States get ovarian cancer
* among women, ovarian cancer is the eighth most common cancer and the fifth leading cause of cancer death, after lung and bronchus, breast, colorectal, and pancreatic cancers

Thanks so much for sticking with me while I took some time off to be with my daughter, and for your continued support of my business! You can preview all of the items going up in today’s update until 4pmET at the shop, when everything will go live for purchase.

XO-

Dana

5.6.14 Shop Update

Hi all! Today’s listings are all up in preview mode and will be available for purchase at 4pmET.

There is one of everything unless noted.

Top row: Dirty Martini Journey Sock, Alpine Portuguese Merino, Fidelity Touring DK.

Second row: Wisp Corriedale, Sarasota Journey Sock, Spanish Moss Corriedale.

Third row: Gloam Touring DK, Stop & Smell The Poppies Superwash BFL (2 braids available), Save The TaTas Journey Sock.

Fourth row: Spanish Moss Corriedale, Ethereal Expedition Sport (4 skeins available- a sweater quantity!), Wisp Corriedale.

 

Thanks so much for looking! I hope you see something you love!

 

XO-

Dana

Some news

I wanted to update you all with what’s going on in my life, since it is affecting the shop.

 

On March 21, my husband and I found out that we are expecting our first baby. My first trimester symptoms have been pretty normal, and we went to the doctor last Friday for an ultrasound and labs. During the ultrasound we found out that the baby was only measuring a little over 6 weeks in gestational size (we were expecting to see an almost 9 week fetus) but the heart rate was 147 which is very good for that gestational age. My doctor decided to add on a few extra labs to be sure everything was ok, especially since the baby was obviously younger than we expected to see. Yesterday I got a call from my doctor telling me that all of my labs (including HCG, the human growth hormone) looked great except that my progesterone level is a lot lower than he would like, so he called in a prescription for progesterone supplements to help support my pregnancy. I am also on total bed rest until we go back on Friday for a repeat ultrasound to check on the baby and make sure it is ok.

 

As you can imagine, I am very scared right now and am totally focused on resting and taking care of myself, and unfortunately this means that I am not able to do much with the shop until the doctor clears me to begin working again. There will be no shop update this week, but I will not make a decision about next week until I see what the doctor says. If you are the praying kind, I would appreciate your prayers as I go through this scary time. Thanks, as always, for your support.

 

XO,

Dana

12.10.13 Shop Update

Hi everyone!

Here is today’s 4pmET shop update preview…

12.10.13 Yarns

12.10.13 Fibers

I am debuting a new-to-the-shop colorway this week. It was originally created for a custom order for a customer, and I liked it so much I decided to make it a regular colorway! This week there are two skeins available in Journey Sock.

“First Frost” on Journey Sock

It will be available on other weights and bases very soon!

Please be sure to read the post before this one to find out some details about my end-of-year sale, shipping dates to receive orders before Christmas, and some other info.

See y’all next week for my last update of 2013!

XO-

Dana