Welcome to E’ville! – Dana the Intern – Week 1 June 24, 2008

My first week at the Knitwhits studio has been an exciting experience.  When I first arrived at the apartment complex that I would be living in I discovered that I was close to the “hood”.  What a great way to start out a two month adventure 2500 miles away from home.  I was concerned as to how I was going to know what was a good area to be in and what was not. Tina was a tremendous help by showing me around the city of Emeryville and explaining the in’s and out’s of the Bay area.  She took me to a fantastic fabric store called Stone Mountain and we went to the Lacis Museum of Lace and Textiles.  Both of those places are a must see if anyone visits the Bay area.  After the tour my nerves were much calmer and I knew I would be okay for the duration of my stay.
The most fascinating thing I learned so far is all the hard work that goes into making these kits.  Tina does this all by herself, making sure each skein of yarn is spun to perfection and the right amounts are given in order to complete her kits.  She is cautious and wants to make sure every customer is 100% satisfied with their finished product!  She spends hours of her time perfecting her patterns.  Several people will test them before she considers having them purchased by her customers.  I am fascinated by how she comes up with her designs and how she converts them into patterns.  She told me I could come up with a design of my own and then we can translate it into a pattern!  Do not worry though it will not be one that we will try to market!

Tina came up with some projects for me to complete while I am here.  One project that I have completed was the email list update.  We also put together a Summer newsletter where I was able to introduce myself and tell where I came from.  I had a great time learning how to put that newsletter together.  In fact I was so excited I emailed it to my family for them to see.  Soon to come is a “Pattern of the Week” newsletter sent out weekly, and I get to choose some of my favorite patterns to include in the email.  This will highlight the pattern and tell a little story behind it. 

The biggest project I am looking forward to is reorganizing the studio.  With my label maker and organization skills in hand I am going to transform her studio.  Take a look at some of the before pictures and stay tuned for the after.

ETA – Tina here: In my defence, I’ve put up some yarn pictures of nicely wound balls of yarn! My studio has it’s own familiar chaos, which is I think a family trait.. My father has the same “organized chaos” method in his own office and he too gets a bunch of grief from all of us as well.. think of it as an endearing quality..

An Intern for the Summer June 17, 2008

Well, I’m back from my semi-annual trade show put on by TNNA and it was a doozy. I was there by myself mostly this time except for a couple of hours with my new summer intern. I think I got a total of 11 hours sleep in the first four of the five nights I was there.

The show felt busy to me, though I’ve heard people say it felt slow, but this time I definately had more foot traffic than at the last show. I also got more orders and bigger orders. All my good-old standby accounts came by and placed nice healthy orders, plus I picked up a few new accounts. This show also saw a few dormant accounts come back to life which was nice, very nice!

So now I’m back, and sort of recovered, (I actually fell asleep at my desk the first three days I was home!), and as of this week I have the company and help of my intern, Dana. I’m putting her to work on a lot of marketing stuff that I’ve just never had the time to do. She’s here for 8 weeks and though it’s only day two, I’m thinking 8 weeks ain’t enough…

Dog Report: Yep, it’s her ACL. Not a full tear, but a partial tear. So far this means weekly antiinflammatory shots, and a limit of 3 10-minute walks a day, no roughhousing, avoid stairs, no running, no off leash, basically a whole lot of nothing.. for as much as the next 6 months. She’s had a couple of weeks now to adjust to her new level of inactivity and I fear in the end it’s the owner (i.e. me) that struggles more with this than the dog. Since she can’t have doggie time, I’ve invited people to come over to visit as much as possible (with the caveat of no playing with the dog) to keep her from going totally batty with boredom. She’s actually doing fine, and now having Dana around in the studio makes life much more interesting for her. We shall see how this goes.. let’s hope for some good healing in her knee so she can tear it up again (not the knee though) in the great outdoors come winter..

In the meantime here’s a nutty picture of a new design – in the testing phase on Ravelry if you’re interested in the blow-by-blow

Stupid, stupid, stupid June 1, 2008

I think Freia has a torn ACL. Why did I take her out today???????

She’s been limping a bit for about a month now, I think she initially hurt herself jumping out of the car one day. I’ve been giving her Rimadyl, resting her for a few days, and progressively increased her rest as she’s continued to not improve.

Basically really limited her for the last 3 days and she seemed better, so I took her out to Pt. Pinole.. She was running and having a great time with Rufus, no limping, happy as a clam. But as has happened before, once she stops moving, the pain begins. And today is probably the worst I’ve seen it.

And I’m going away to TNNA on Thursday so I can’t really do anything about it till I get back the following Tuesday. I’m just kicking myself right now, and I feel so very bad for her. And she was really fine this morning.

Damn it.

Of course to top it off, if it is a torn ACL and requires surgery, it’s 8 weeks of severe restrictions in movement – guess I”ll be sleeping with her in the studio since she won’t be allowed up the stairs, and won’t do well without me around, and the surgery runs from $2-4K. Great.