Stitches out....Hold his Britches!

MrB got his stitches out the other day, from his recent hand-surgery. He is no longer sporting a cumbersome bandage. Now he is just itching to get back cranking, but wait a minute, all of Brigadier 88 is not here at the moment.  Parts were sent to the Cape for some modifications and updates, and we are awaiting their return.  He has to hold his britches, and see when they will arrive. And then, also see what he is capable of doing within his healing process.  Having the weekend to watch curling and Olympics will give his hand just a few more days to be on the mend.  MrB speculates a postal delivery Monday or Tuesday, and holding his britches and enthusiasm to see how much he can do to get back into the swing of things, or not!  No doubt, this will be a pivotal week introducing himself back to the world of cranking gradually.  But I know that if he manages to get the machine back together and even make a few rotations with that crank, his face will light up! MrB and #88 are sure to be cranking out sock pairs before you know it again soon, and when that happens, I will be happy to announce we are back on a roll, and update our market schedule with a return date.

Oh Darn ~ After

The first sock that I darned, I did not have any of the same yarn left.  So I used some miscellaneous yarn I had kicking around.  It turned out really well, I think!  One thing is though, I forgot to turn the sock inside out. Oh Darn! The second sock for repair by darning, I did have the same yarn and as you can see it is not very noticeable.  I do like that fact on the first sock you can see the stitches.  It was easy for me to do the basket type weaving.  Remember making paper doing the basket weave in and out in school, well this is the same principle. What I like about the 100% wool is that the stitches will felt together a bit after a couple of washings. I will have to see how the darning stands up!

Two of my socks darned and ready to give the wearing test!

Oh Darn ~ Before

This sock needs to be darned on the bottom of the upper foot pad.

Before darning my two socks!

This sock needs to be darned on the heel.  This sock is made of 100% wool and was handpainted by me!

It's a Darning, learning day

I have never learned to darn properly.  I have never had to do it before.  MrB and I enjoy the feel of 100% wool socks on our feet.  If you live in Canada in the months of January and February, nothing better on your feet and they serve as slipper socks too when you wear crocs like me.  I want to mention that we do not sell many 100% wool socks but on occasion we do.  I thought it was time to learn more about darning today.  My first thing to do was to search and find a good simple friendly You-tube video.  So off to you-tube I went!  The first one I found was way out of league crocheting. so I found another one and it was much easier.  I did not know that were darning mushroom.  This is new to me.  I was familiar with the darning eggs though.  Well now I have learned  how to darn, I must put that into practice, and go do that shortly.  I do not have a darning mushroom or darning egg to do the job.  So guess what I am using a jar today, and I now have two lathe projects for MrB when his hand is back to functioning.  I am thinking too that sometimes we have more delicate yarns for our own use for socks made of alpaca, cashmere etc, so it will definitely be useful to know how to darn correctly.  MrB has been darning some of his socks, he is much harder on socks than I am!  He will darn his socks and I will darn mine!  I have two socks to darn today.  One is a heel to darn, and one is bottom of sock where your foot pad is below toes.  These are the two areas in which my feet wear the delicate socks.  Please note to anyone reading this post, that I am not referring to the superwash socks that we crank as they have some nylon content for strength.  I am not saying that will not wear in certain areas, but truly not as fast as 100% wool socks or more delicate yarns used for sock pairs.  If you wear one pair of socks, over and over and over again, they are going to wear out, that is a fact, and it does not matter what kind of yarn was used to create them. It's a darning, learning day for me today!

Almost forgot to share... MrB's excitement before surgery!

At our last market stint, we had a lovely young girl approach us of doing a custom order of socks.  This was a unique proposition for MrB, as she is a colour technician for a local handpainting yarn company. MrB was thrilled to have the opportunity to work with this yarn that includes cashmere! It knit very well on the CSM. Miss BP was very happy with the outcome of her somewhat created left-over principle of sock pairs.  I did get her permission to share the photo of the sock pairs here.  She dyed two of the three colours to use for these sock pairs.  The third colour is called, "puffin", and both myself and MrB very much enjoyed seeing that colour unfold as cranked! It was great to see the yarn, touch the yarn, and for MrB to crank the yarn!  When Miss BP picked up her socks, she LOVED 

them!  We are glad we can share them with you. And Thank you to Miss BP for giving Socks Made On 88 the opportunity to use the yummy yarn!

We have "Progress"

We have progress with the healing of MrB's hand.   I am sharing this picture to show one way MrB can occupy his time.  The picture of this puzzle is just amazing!  It reminds my family very much of my father as he used to collect antique tractors, and most of them were John Deere ones.  So this picture could easily be my dad and my two sons, or him and his two great-grandsons ( my nephew's sons) One of my sons loves this puzzle, and now that it has been completed we will save it for others in the family to do in the future.

This post reminds me of how things can become traditional, or how family members like to pass on things.  It makes me wonder, who in our blended family will want to carry on the tradition of cranking socks from #88?  We may never know, but too early to tell!  

An "I told you so moment!" Re: Shipping costs.

Sometimes being an Aries, and a bit stubborn, as is my partner in life and in SMO88, also, I have to admit, he is sometimes right!
I got an "I told you so" moment this morning after I got back from taking a parcel ( pair of socks) to the postal outlet to mail.  

Let me back track a bit.  When we first started this little business venture, I went to our local postal outlet and told them the circumstances of what we would be doing, and what we would be mailing occasionally.  It was recommended to me to buy envelopes, first the bubble kind which I tried a few times, and I did not like them.  Then it was recommended to me to buy the cardboard photo envelopes and mail them that way.  So up until this December of 2013 that was my method of shipping sock pairs in Canada and the USA.  In December I got a request to mail out a pair of Men's size 12 socks, and I knew they would not fit comfortably in the either mailer.  I decided to go with just trying the concept of wrapping them in brown paper and mailing that way.  They went quite a bit cheaper and I was happy because of that.  Today I mailed another pair, much smaller size to the USA also, and wrapped and mailed them in brown paper as well.  I was tickled pink to know they went out too, as a small package with no problems and less costly.  I shared this info with MrB upon getting home, and of course his reaction was, "I told you so!"  Yup, he told me so, in the very beginning that I should have mailed the sock pairs that way.  Well I didn't listen to him, I listened to the postal expert!  I am now thinking that the postal people wanted me to buy the envelopes so that they would gain more money from selling their products.  They got 2 years of extra money from me and our customers.  From now on I will be mailing the sock pairs wrapped nicely and neatly in the traditional brown paper.  And I don't have buy brown paper as I save large paper bags that I receive, free of charge when buying products from our local NSLC.  That kind of makes me laugh, but I am doing my good deed by recycling too! Now everyone will be happy, me, MrB (as he has a smile on his face, thinking I told you so) and our customers!  The only party who may not be as happy is Canada Post!  So the moral of this story is, perhaps you should not just take their word for it, and try different options and see which one best suits mailing your product.  See which one best works for YOU!  Now here I am  again, blogging and telling you that there are always little changes along the way to be made to improve your service or improve operations to make things easier for everyone involved. Even for the habitual type people like me, that sometimes buck change, and get the, "I told you so!"  Just smile and carry on...... Oh, and by the way, this change also prompted me to make yet another change on our website.  I am getting so good at tweaking the website and facebook page lately. But you already know that as we have discussed that previously.  It's a good CHILLY WILLY Day here in Nova Scotia, Canada at -10C (14F) so I am going to have something hot to drink, and keep warm indoors, now that my postal errand is complete.