I'll have to motor through today, but I'm frantic to get a post up. We've got company in from Atlanta/Baltimore in our old friend Crystal B (Sister Paul, to those who know her well), and it's been a busy week to boot.

There's tons going on at the shop as we continue to bring in summer fibers and work on bringing in fall stock. We've pushed out our next Yarn Tasting since several of the yarns that we wanted in either weren't in the States yet or needed models knit and weren't yet in the store. Every yarn has to have at least one model for the event to make sense, and if the yarn's still on a boat, then nothing's on the needles yet. EEK! So that's pushed back.

Yarn's still pouring in, though, and we're very excited to be working with Alchemy again. We'd tried a bit out when we were still in Indiana, but A) we didn't have models, and B) we never reordered, so that went the way of the dodo. We had a long, wonderful conversation (if an hour or so of giggling and being generally evil with Austin and Gina constitutes a conversation), picked out tons of patterns, got offers from them to supply us with some fantastic models, and we're back in the game. They've got beautiful product, and I'm really happy with what's come in so far.

So much so, in fact, that you're soaking in it. Yup. The swatch from my last post is Alchemy-based. What is it? Oh, silly reader. You know better than that. I'll get there eventually. But not today.

Today, I want to talk about inspiration. As corny as it sounds, my family has been much of my inspiration lately.

Well, yeah, they're my inspiration, too, but I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about Rob. When we're together and talking and generally relaxed, I see things that just make me want to design something. Sometimes it's an architectural thing.

Every time we eat at Houlihan's not far from the shop, my eye is drawn to this dome. How it's going to show up in a knitted piece, I have no idea, but it's in my head, and it won't go away.

Sometimes it's a combination of colors or shapes that catches my eye. This decorator pillow didn't leave Pier 1 with me, but it's with me constantly. I can't get the multiple tones of each color our of my head, and the sections of colors over multiple blocks is making my teeth itch. I want to translate this into fabric... badly. My own fabric, I mean. Knitted fabric!

How will it happen? Hell if I know. When will it happen? Ha! That's funnier than the first question. The point is that it's in the cooker. It's rolling around, banging into the sides of the pot with steam roiling around it. Eventually, it's going to hit something and stick. Hopefully, it won't be cauliflower. I'm not a big fan of bland design, and cauliflower doesn't particularly excite me.

What does excite me, though, is happening. Change. I don't know how, but my life appears to be changing. I'd like to say I'm at the helm of this boat, but I think I might not be. But I can feel the engines. And they're rumbling pretty hard.

And on a final note, this is me. First of all, the rest of the picture was horribly overexposed as many of my images lately have been. Why? I'm using my phone to take pictures. They suck, in my less than humble opinion, but that's what I've got at the moment. We keep the good camera at the shop, but I'm looking strongly at having a nice, new camera soon. Why? Well, because I'm a raccoon, and I like new and sparkly things. But more realistically, I see wonderful things all over the place very, very frequently, and I sincerely want to share them with you. And if my camera sucks, you might not see the beauty that I do. And we simply can't have that.

P. S. What I'm working on: updates to the website. Here's yet another teaser: