The end is also the middle (since I’ve already begun)

Soooooooooooooooooo. I just realized I need to go pour me a fresh cup of coffee before beginning to type this all up. BRB!

OK. Still with me?

I hate June. It’s hot as fuck outside and shit always seems to happen that’s just flat nuts. One day in June, when I was 15, my Stepmonster came home after work and said, “start packing everything, we bought a farm and we’re moving this weekend.” LIKE WTF, CRAZY LADY. A little heads-up next time? My grandmother had a stroke in June. My grandfather died in June. Years later, the same grandmother also died in June. For years, my lease was up and I had to move in June. In June of 2007, I told my hateful job at the Enginerding Firm that I was giving them a more than generous six-weeks notice and that two friends of mine and I were all going to open a yarn store together. Then in June of last year, we announced that the yarn store was going to have to close the doors and we were going to an online-only model. Yesterday we announced that we are also closing the online shop. Hey, everything is 25% off starting today! Go buy yarn!

And you know what? I’m OK. I was going to write this long blog post about change, and morphing, and whatnot, but what it really boils down to is me being OK with this. Like I’ve been saying for a year, it was harder when we had no yarn on the shelves and no money to buy yarn, and I couldn’t talk to any of my friends about it. Also, this does not affect the long and deep friendship that I have with Sharon and Ginger. I love both of those women to pieces; nothing will ever change or get in the way of that.

And hey, I have some good news for the fiber addicts! I’m going to keep dying yarn, changing the name of the yarn line and bringing it into my shop on HaldeCraft. I haven’t decided on the exact name yet (submissions are welcome!). I’d love to call it “HaldeSomething” but I’m having trouble narrowing the Something down. I already have HaldeSpun, so I don’t think I want to call it HaldeYarn, as that might imply the other stuff isn’t yarn (?). HaldeDyed makes me sound like I have a stutter. HaldeColor sounds like 1950’s segregation. “Dyed in the HaldePots” is sort of my favorite so far, even though it makes it sound like I’m swishing them around in a toilet (HI NEW READERS!). Last night, Ginger suggested both HaldeStrings and HaldeStrands. Well, I have about three weeks to dwell on this, so… just putting it out there. Suggest something I fall in love with and maybe there’ll be some yarn in it for ya!

SO ANYWAY. Yes, I’ll still be dyeing yarn, both in some of my favorite and the most popular Hanks colorways (ooo, HaldeHanks?) but not all of the colorways. Some just never sold very well, even if I did like them, and I can’t afford to have a bunch of things that aren’t moving. But if you’re an old Hanks customer and are looking to get one skein of something to finish a project, don’t be afraid to give me a shout. And I’ll be bringing in new colorways, lots of one-shot deals, and I’m totally re-vamping the sock club (I’ll do a complete post on that once I get the last few details narrowed down… like a yarn name…).

And I feel… whole. I don’t feel any more as if I’m letting Hanks down by focusing on HaldeCraft, or cheating HaldeCraft by working on Hanks. Now it’s all the same. You could argue that it was the same before, since it was all for *me,* but… it just felt different. I’m really sort of excited. I mean, nervous about money (when am I not?!), but really excited about ideas that I have for HaldeCraft and bringing in hand-dyed yarns. I think you yarnies reading this are going to love what I’m going to do with sock club.

So. Stuff is starting to go on sale at Hanks, and next week I go on vacation for two weeks. Three weeks from now, I will take any leftover Hanks yarn (hopefully this will not be much!) and start listing it on Etsy (either under the Hanks Etsy shop or mine, depending on how much is left), and I’ll start dyeing the new as-yet-unnamed line for HaldeCraft. I’ll start dyeing the August sock club, and posting information on the new sock club coming up. HaldeCraft, by the way, will go into vacation mode while I am gone — I get from a Google/SEO point of view that this will screw up my Google Rankings, but that is less of an issue for me than someone ordering something and me not being able to mail it to them for two weeks. I’d rather fight my way back up Google than let a customer down. ALWAYS WITH THE PEOPLE-PLEASING! A good portion of my free patterns (and I’d already started to work on this) will be re-worked and re-listed on Ravelry under HaldeKnits (see? Foreshadowing! You can see it in retrospect, right?!). Plus, I’ve been working on some ideas for patterns that I will charge for (and they’ll be worth it, trust me). Those will also be for sale on Ravelry under the HaldeKnits line.

Ideas! I has lots of them! England prevails!