I'm so spoilt...

In terms of the awesome quality time I get to spend with Matilda. She is at the absolute sweetest stage right now, learning new words all the time and constantly chatting away. I even get asked for "kiss" and "cuddle" once in a while. There's a lot of demands to "show me", "open", "close", etc. She's a pretty happy kid; sometimes quick to temper but always quick to get over it (unlike her wayward mum..)

Rather than moping around wishing the rain away today (when I know we need it and the rainwater tank loves it), we went to the pool. She loves to swim and splash around. A little while with her "superman muscles" (arm floaties) and a little time walking around in the shallows.

We feed the chooks, hang around and cook together, and just generally have a lazy old good time. I'm cherishing the time as I know it's not going to last forever.

News on the knitting front:








(ie. NOTHING! I seem to have temporarily lost my knitting mojo. One round into the current sock project (last worked on about three weeks ago) and I just couldn't keep up with the easy pattern!)

I spent the last night and some of today untangling the Olympic mega skein of self-striping yarn. The skein was about 8 metres around. Never, ever again am I going to dye self-striping yarn this way again! There was about 300g worth of Casbah and I was asked more than once, "why are you bothering?" by Roy. And to think I was going to breeze through 15 skeins of this for the July Yarn Collective sock club!

I am going to temporarily re-open the Ozebaby store to list the 3 skeins of Olympic yarn -- it's either that individually disable each and every product (there are about 9 full pages of active products) on jollyjumbuck.net.

Getting on with it.

Right. It has been a rocky couple of months but I'm getting on with it now. We ran into a few problems and there was a point in there where Matilda and I moved out for a bit, but we are back now and working on it. A little more conversation helps greatly. Sometimes I think we are back at square one again but nevertheless I can't stay in this limbo forever.

I'm really sorry for pulling the plug on Jolly Jumbuck so suddenly (and at times gracelessly as I stuffed up the cart so orders were still coming through), but I really did need to focus on getting things back on track domestically. Something had to give and the only thing I could sacrifice wasn't my family, or my health, but my work.

Jolly Jumbuck is going to stay closed for a little while longer while I take this opportunity to do what I have been needing to do for a while now, and that is to transfer over to either osCommerce or Zencart cart. Congo has been fabulous but was always a temporary thing. So that's the Renovations part of it.

In the meantime whenever the muse strikes me I am dyeing up stock. Just a few skeins here and there whenever there is some free time. Matilda is down to one day a week at daycare now so you can imagine I'm not getting that much done.

And the best part, I can now reveal. I have been quietly putting my feelers out for an employee. I just can't keep on doing both the retail and dyeing part -- at least not the way I want to do it. So. the plan is this person will be handling the retail side of things when everything is all set up.

It's not a done deal yet, but my friend Abby (mum to James, three) seems really interested. What it will involve is I label and bring her the skeins, she photographs and lists them and then when orders come it they are filled from her home. So she can work from home and earn some money/computer experience at the same time.

On an unrelated matter, I have three skeins of yarn that needs to be skeined up and listed pronto. It is self-striping "Green and Gold" on Casbah, especially created for the Olympics.

Putting the Mum back in WAHM

A few people have contacted me lately, asking why things were so quiet on the Jolly Jumbuck front. Well, I've been busy behind the scenes doing large dye orders for a couple of places (hopefully I will find some time to catch-up blog about them later on).

But most of all, I've been busy being Mum. Matilda now has two additional days a week with me. My mum has moved away and daycare fees have gone up so that's why the change. We really enjoy spending days together, she's a very "sticky rice baby" and we have a lot of fun. It's a lot more exhausting than anything else though, so by the time she's in bed all I want to do is to knit and relax.

The past week has been quite distressing at night, she is usually a great night sleeper but has been having growing pains or something. Would go to sleep as normal but then wake up an hour or so later and not be able to go back to sleep for hours!

The plan is to do dyeing at night but as I said most days I'm just too exhausted. The new lights in the dye studio makes it a possibility when things settle down though. Right now I'm cancelling the dye-to-orders, and just focusing on dyeing up a stockpile for the occasional stocking. And other behind-the-scenes non retail stuff as well.

So that's a quickie explanation and another post in this dismally-maintained blog!

PS -- my laptop is well and truly dead and I'm too tired to fight for the computer at night so the next stocking won't be till June. I will update the newsletter soon.

PS #2, 5 minutes later: Eeep! Roy has just surprised me by nearly doubling my studio space and finally attaching the sink etc. I was wondering what all that banging was :) Now I really will have to dye more to make use of it! Anyone know where I can stretch time out to 36 hours a day?

Technology HELL

I don't know where to start!!! It has been one thing after another this month -- NOT happy. I am waiting for the next disaster to strike at this point.

• Roy (and his sidekick R, I call them Beavis and Butthead) decides to do a complete computer overhaul (his PC is great now, BTW, but we'll get to that in a minute)
• Mucks around with this modem and that modem -- everything is now networked and I've lost my wireless. Fine, I can drag a LAN line along everywhere.
• Uhhh, where did the internet go? Call iprimus tech support, listen to crappy elevator muzak.
• ISP is doing work on the line? A day or two? OK... thanks for the warning, but I suppose I can deal with not having net access on the weekend.
• It's been four days, what the hell is going on? At this point I don't know or care where the fault is, I just need it fixed. Or at least back the way it was before you two f***ed around with it!!!
• Right, internet is finally back. Manage to get the old ADSL modem to work on the home PC. I drag out my laptop -- untouched for the past week.
• It's DEAD. Can't detect a hard drive.
• Thankfully still under warranty, the last issue I had the replacement part came within one day. But, have I lost everything in the hard drive?? I think so. Did I back up? Of course not.
• Wrestle B and B off the home PC (stop playing Spring already!) to check email.
• Frantically trying to catch up. Only, I think I have lost a bunch of those too. I had 27 messages when I checked webmail from the library, but now they are gone. Off the server, into the great unknown. So if you have emailed me in the past week or so please re-send it.

I pull the plug on all technology (I wish)

cough sniffle moan groan

I've just spent the last two and a half days curled up in bed, drinking endless cups of honey and lemon, and basically feeling like death warmed up! Thankfully Roy has been really good, and so has my mum in taking M, and better still I haven't (yet) spread the derms on -- I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy!!!

Things at JJ have basically come to a screeching halt! Some of the sock yarns are up, but there are still more, and all the soaker yarns still have to be listed.

I hope to feel better tomorrow, to catch up on the listings and orders, but right now I'm going back to being miserable. Should have got a flu shot!

xoxo

Amazon splurge

To reward myself for saving so much money, I went on an Amazon shopping splurge. I spent up big, but not quite $580.62!

Some of the books on the way:

• Favorite Socks
• Last-Minute Knitted Gifts
• Harmony Guide: Lace & Eyelets
• Vogue Knitting The Ultimate Sock Book
• Ocean Breezes: Knitted Scarves Inspired by the Sea
• New Pathways for Sock Knitters
• One-Skein Wonders
• The Knitter's Book of Yarn

I get it now!

I'm a bit of a clueless blogger! Have just received a gentle reminder that I've been tagged by Donna (Cinderella's Stash) months ago for an award. I was very touched by the award but didn't get that you actually had to do the same to three more bloggers :P

So here it is..



In turn, I would like to pass on the award on to three lovely Perth ladies:
Helen (Knitting in Perth)
Ann (1morerow)
Sasha (Knit Nutt)

In other news, I have been AWOL online for a while now (you only have to look at the sparseness of blog posts to deduce that!), but am slowly coming out of my "hibernation". I just wish that I had more time to keep up with blogs and podcasts and forums, but it just doesn't work out that way. Miss M is keeping me busy (and sometimes tearing my hair out as I'm chasing her from aisle to aisle in the shopping centre -- suddenly holding hands just ain't cool anymore). Anyway, that's why there hasn't been a yarn stocking in ages. I've got quite the stockpile building up, and am planning on holding what I'd like to call a "yarn banquet" after the Easter holidays. More details in the newsletter!

I'm also happy to announce that Jolly Jumbuck yarn is available in the US, from a fabulous new store called Yarny Goodness. Pam searches out the coolest indie dyers and crafters, go take a look. I've just sent off a shipment of yarn so they will be appearing in the store soon.

Also, I have a new helper! Her name is Alice, and she is so very very helpful to the business. She's an electric skein winder from Ball and Skein :-D I love Alice! Might share a pic in a future post.