little red bicycle

Easy Peasy Club Registration

didi b — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 19:30:00 +0000

Club Basics

The Easy Peasy club will focus on semisolid and tonal colorways, no wildly variegated colors will be shipped. Shipments will go out every other month, which means you have even more time to figure out what to do with your yarn before the next skein goes out.

The Bases

For this club, we plan on shipping out three of the following bases. If there is one specific base that’s not to your liking, you may opt out of that base (we will dye up an alternate base for you).

Tandem — 2ply 80% superwash merino, 20% nylon; 400 yards per skein, fantastic for socks!
Hipster – 3ply 80% superwash merino, 20% nylon; 430 yards per skein.
Penny Farthing – 3ply 80% superwash merino, 10% cashmere, 10% nylon; 385 yards per skein, with a brilliant glow.
Spark — 2ply, 75% superwash merino, 15% nylon, 5% stellina; 440 yards per skein. The “sparkle” is subtle in this base, not too flashy, but not invisible either.
Tricycle — 3ply, 100% superwash merino; 490 yards per skein. This is a workhorse yarn, lots of bang for your buck.

We may decide to dye up a limited edition base, but everything we send will be suitable for sock knitting.

Shipments will go out by the 15th of JANUARY, MARCH, and MAY.

Club colorways may be released to the public 6-12 months after club shipments go out. During this time, club members are free to order additional skeins at any time and receive a 10% discount on those purchases.
REFUNDS AND RETURNS

We are unfortunately unable to offer refunds/returns for club shipments. We believe that part of the joy of participating in yarn clubs is the element of surprise. You never know, you may love the colorway once you start knitting with it!

Etsy favorites

didi b — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 02:49:02 +0000

I love etsy for gift-planning. I get most of my holiday gifts & birthday presents for others from small businesses, and most of those have been discovered through etsy. Here are some of my recent favorites:

: Muslin Baby Shower Favor Bags

: The Seasonality of Californian Fruits & Produce

: Cute Linen Pillow Cover from Sukan

: Lego Stitch Markers

Today I managed to get everything I needed to done, BUT I didn’t get photos of WIPs. The upside of this is that tomorrow I get to participate in WIP Wednesday.

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Moody Mondays

didi b — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 05:11:05 +0000

My Mondays always manifest as being extremely productive, but as I leave the studio in the evening and lock everything up, I feel as if I’ve gotten nothing done. Tuesdays are the real hurdles, I seem to wait until the last possible minute to get out of bed; I procrastinate getting ready for work for hours… hell, I’ll even find things on hulu to “talk myself out of” actually working.

WORK FOREVER

Today wasn’t like that at all, hooray! Is this a day-off side effect? I hope so. Today I beat my usual daily production quota, shipped a million things, and skeined 900 minis for the club (which will ship on Thursday). I also spent a little time re-ordering some of our favorite bases, knitting the Evenstar shawl, painting my nails (you care), researching possible breeders for a pup, and tidying the house. I even managed to shut off my work email around 7pm, which gave me just enough time to become mindnumbinglybored before dinner.

Tomorrow I’ll have a better post for you, with some new etsy finds and WIPs.

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The workaholic’s day off

didi b — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 06:34:14 +0000

I’ve only recently admitted to being a legitimate workaholic, but it’s been true for years. Every job I’ve had, I’ve become obsessed with. While at various retail jobs I skipped meals, thinking that if I took 10 minutes to eat, I’d have to make up for it later. When I worked in a fancy office building, the only thing that got me out of the office for lunch were group meals. Everyone (all 5 of us, huge, I know) would go out to eat for an hour and a half, and while we ate we’d talk about books we were all reading, pets, and games we had been playing. With LRB, it’s no different: I will work from the time I get out of bed, to the minute I’m back in bed. This generally means that I’m productive, but the cold hard reality of it is that I’m always stressed and always overwhelmed with the next 6 things I have to do.

So, it’s no surprise that my “day off” usually means I wake up, work for a few hours, then goof off for a while until bored, and work more until dinner time. My last several “days off” have been like this. Last week? I spent four hours re-skeining yarn on Sunday, then making minis, and steaming yarn. The week before that? I took a half day to go into the city and see my favorite Mommy-to-be, but before I went to her place I was packing orders, shipping things, steaming yarn, re-skeining, updating etsy, etc etc. Rinse, repeat, going back to May or so.

This week, I was forced to take a real day off. Last night, I logged out of my email at 9pm, and stared at the ceiling. My big plan for today was to do brunch, thinking that maybe if I enforce some kind of tradition on my ~Day Off~ I’ll be better at not working. This was the plan:

Wake up at a luxurious 10am, take a shower, read, then go out for brunch.

After brunch, wander, find a book store, wander more, sit and knit. Coffee.

Following that, head home, knit, prepare dinner, tidy my bedroom, and watch a movie. Drink a lot of sangria, because I’m too classy for PBR or Highlife on my day off.

What actually happened?

7am: Woke up. Sun was up, thought it was 10am, beelined for the studio.

7:02am: remembered that today was my DAY OFF, scowled at studio door for a few minutes, talking myself out of turning the knob.

7:05am-7:30am: stared at ceiling, contemplated work so that I’d be less bored.

7:31-8:05am: Napped with Pono (he’s skilled at napping) (see below)

8:10am-10am: Worked on the evenstar shawl until bored (watched shitty tv on hulu and itunes during).

10:05-10:45am: threw hands into the air and scooped the catbox, did dishes, grumbled about life.

10:50-12pm: more grumbling, knitting on shawl.

12:05pm: lock self out of house. Lay on deck, stair at sky (because there is no ceiling).

1:00pm: get let back into house. Swear forever. Kick proverbial puppies in angst, leave for brunch.

1:20-2:25pm: Brunch failure. Place I wanted to hang out was packed, back up cafe also packed. Wandered.

3:oo: found Palo Alto Creamery. Ate too much. Silently swore about it not being brunch anymore, cursed self for failing ~the plan~

4:oo-5:30pm: wandering, came home, thought about packing orders REALLY HARD, read, worked on shawl, caught up on news.

And so on, and so forth. Having a day off was really stressful, in a completely strange yet relaxing way. What the hell am I supposed to do with myself when I’m not working? Do I clean everything? Do I find excuses to spend money? Paint my nails? I really need to work on this whole thing.

At least I got through chart 1 of the Evenstar shawl, and spent a lot of time with this dude.

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No, not crazy at all…

didi b — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 22:17:25 +0000

Casting on for Evenstar tonight. I’ve officially lost it.

Little Red Bicycle Spark Lace in "Ahab", 47" 3.5mm signature circulars, and 6/0 toho peridot silver lined beads.

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Bee’s Knees and Sayuri puff.

didi b — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 17:10:08 +0000

I love these colors together.

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The LRB studio soundtrack:

didi b — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:14:43 +0000

With lots of Neutral Milk Hotel, Bon Iver, Horse Feathers, The Rural Alberta Advantage, and many others on the stereo all day. Sometimes I mix things up with a little Gavin Castleton, or Cee Lo, or even *gasp* Lady Gaga. What is your work soundtrack like?

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WIP Wednesday: Ophidian

didi b — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 03:02:50 +0000

Everyone needs an orange shawl. With beads. BEADS!

I cast on for Ophidian on the 23rd, but it’s been slow going. I’m knitting it out of Little Red Bicycle Tandem Sock in the “Bee’s Knees” colorway, with some copper lined orange beads from 7beads.com (thanks Lydia!). It’s a simple knit, easy to memorize, great to pick up and put down without pausing to mark where I am in the pattern.

I have three or four more rows to get through before I can start the edging. I’m not sure what my problem is, but I’m pretty sure it directly relates to how much time I’ve had to knit while at work the past few days. Grr…

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FO: Celaeno Shawl

didi b — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 02:33:19 +0000

Last month I was stricken by a strange, new, uncomfortable sickness: the desire to put beads and together. The illness took me quickly, and before I knew it I’d fallen down online and had purchased more than a dozen possible bead matches for this yarn:

Little Red Bicycle Unicyle in “She Wasn’t a Wallflower”

I hadn’t settled on a pattern, but I knew that whatever it was I ended up knitting it needed to be 1) beaded and 2) knit in She Wasn’t a Wallflower.

The first (and only) time I’d ever tried beaded knitting was wayyyyy back when Nautical Knitter still did mystery shawls. The result was sad: I made it through the second clue of a beaded stole (which takes HOURS when you’re me), and my sweet housemates two-year-old daughter cut a long, vertical, hole down the middle. Project was immediately binned, and forgotten with a bottle of wine & a bad 80s movie. I held a grudge, clearly — blamed the beads, not the culprit.

I approached the beaded knitting illness in an overwhelmingly fickle fashion, as I do with any decision making process. It took me three evenings to decide I wanted to knit Celaeno. Each night went thusly:

Didi: Bubby, should I make this shawl, or this one?

Mr Me: The prettier one.

Didi: *scowls at computer for 10 minutes* Okay, what about this one, or the prettier one from last time?

Mr Me: This isn’t the optometrists office, just pick one. You’ll like whichever you knit.

Didi: Well, what if I make *this one*? I haven’t knit anything from Romi’s 7 Shawls book yet.

Mr Me: Yes, you should knit that one. You cannot choose another shawl.

(rinse, repeat, for three days, same conclusion each day)

And next, there were the beads. Ohhh, the beads. If you’re one of my lucky twitter followers, you’ll remember the bead dilemma: 12 different bead options, 10 of which were variations of violet, 2 of which were blue. There were four hours of “OMG WHAT IF I CHOOSE THE WRONG BEEEEADS?” tweets the night I decided to make 7beads.com and firemountaingems.com my slaves. I ordered so many beads that Lydia (owner of 7beads.com) combined THREE ORDERS for me. My indecision is inconvenient.

In the end, it was all moot, I went with some bright-ass turquoise beads. You know how it goes, right? You choose something, then second guess it, spend a night trying to talk yourself out of that something, then eventually admit that your first choice was right and you’ve just wasted hours of your life. Except, in my case it was more like four nights of wasted time just because “turquoise might not work with violet” or something. Stupid.

Somewhere between the beads arriving and casting on, there was a night on the couch that was nothing but swatching with all of the bead options. (Foreshadowing should have clued you in on this part.) Before the beads had arrived, I’d already decided that yes, the bright turquoise beads would be THE BEADS for the shawl. When the beads arrived it was as if I’d never made it to that milestone, and had landed at the starting line once more. That night, I knit 12 swatches. The decision came down to handing a pile of swatches to my charitably patient Mr Me so he could choose for me. (He chose the bright-ass beads.) (I cursed a lot when this happened.)

Cue cast on! The shawl itself was really easy. Lots of garter stitch, with bead placement decided for me via random.org. In fact, the knitting went so quickly that I don’t really remember much between casting on and getting to the edging. I know that there was an evening on my couch with a Real Housewives binge, so it’s possible that killed enough brain cells to wipe the process from my brain. So be it.

Suddenly, there was a shawl:

This really pretty, very simple, bright purple shawl…

I am so happy with it. I’m neither a violet person, nor a turquoise person, but I love this shawl to bits. The bright beads perfectly match the violent violet of She Wasn’t a Wallflower’s intensity. The garter stitch section gives the entire piece an extra ounce of warmth and texture that wouldn’t otherwise exist with a smooth stockinette body, and the estonian features in the border are just involved enough to be stimulating without being overwhelming. This project was perfect.

Of course, now I’m a monster… I may or may not have ordered a few bead options and dyed yarn for the Evenstar shawl.

*Don’t think I didn’t spend a few hours deciding whether or not I wanted beads randomly placed every 17 stitches vs every 22 stitches. (I didn’t decide, instead I switched whenever I felt like it.)

Help, I’m trapped in a bad movie! Yarn Club Open, yay!

didi b — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 18:00:36 +0000

Club Basics –

Each monthly shipment will include one skein of yarn dyed with our theme in mind, available exclusively to club members for at least six months. Registration will begin on October 1st, at 10am Pacific.

We delved into the dark, deeply saturated, broody colors of the H.P. Lovecraft universe, explored the realm of the Greek Gods, and traveled around the world with our first three clubs. From November-January, Little Red Bicycle’s yarn club will prance through fantastically under-rated films. Think “The Blob”, and “Man from Planet X”!

Ready to Register?

Scoot yourself on over to our sign-up page!

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