Great Mail Week

Have you ever had a great mail week? Where you open the mailbox and find something awesome? Walk up to your door and find a package? Answer the knock and it is your friendly parcel delivery person? I hope you have because it is fantastic! I had a great mail week this week. I received two knitting related packages and opened them both as “Unboxings” for my YouTube channel.

The first was something that I ordered for my booth at the Summer TNNA show. Its use is the only thing that really makes it knitting related.

The second was my Secret Shopper for this month. Have I mentioned how much I love doing this? There are so many amazing products out there for knitters and I know that I will never find them all. Having one of you kind souls share with me some thing that you have discovered is absolutely amazing.

A huge shout out of thanks to CathyG (it’s a Ravelry handle) to being my intrepid shopper this month! If you have an idea for Secret Shopper, something you think I need to have, please drop me a note and we can see if we can schedule you.

Secret Shopper 3 – Unboxing

I had to look back through the blog to see what I have previously said about the Secret Shopper concept. I don’t like being terribly redundant, but I also don’t really remember what I write after a couple of weeks. My brain, she is full of stuff. In case you need a reminder, Secret Shopper is where I ask another knitter (or crocheter, I’m equal opportunity as you will see) to do a little shopping for me. I give them a budget and a couple of rules. Whatever they send me needs to be readily available to others (no yarn that you have to stay up until 2 am and press refresh constantly) and something cool for knitting. Tools, notions, yarn … whatever.

They have it shipped to me (or ship it themselves) and I open the package on video. I have no idea what is in the package and the viewers of the video get to be surprised with me! It’s a win/win and I have been having a lot of fun with the idea. If you think that you might want to be (or have a suggestion of who else might be) a Secret Shopper please let me know! Obviously this is all in preface for the next installment in this series. Over the weekend I received my April package and I opened it yesterday!

This month’s shopper was the fantastic Lindsey Stephens. Lindsey is the crochet and knitwear designer behind Poetry in Yarn and she did an awesome job sending me a surprise. I cannot thank her enough and can’t wait to play with my new knitting stuff!

In looking through the blog I noticed that I totally failed to post Secret Shopper 2 – which was also a grand ole time. If you enjoyed episode 3 make sure to check out episode 2 Secret Shopper 2. I hope you guys enjoy watching these videos as much as I like making them. If you have any input, comments, or requests I would love to hear them. Feel free to comment on a video or here on the blog!

 

 

Secret Shopper Unboxing

Hmm, I hadn’t realized that I had missed blogging last week – things have been absolutely a whirlwind. If you have subscribed to my YouTube channel you will know that I have posed several videos since last we chatted. I am not going to put them all here but I will link them.

I added a tutorial on how to do the Cross Stitch Mock Cable featured in my Cross stitch Mock Cable Hat. And then we had a wee chat about how much I love Knitting Bags. Finally, for my release of a new pattern Corundum Ridge I uploaded a pattern tour (this pattern will get its own blog post later this week).

All of this is leading up to the video I posted today, which is another Unboxing video. I had a load of fun doing the first unboxing of my gradient yarn & beads and I want to keep doing this style of video. But I needed a twist.

So what I came up with (with help from my friend Heather Zoppetti) is the idea of doing a Secret Shopper. What happens is that I have a friend shop for a knitting related product that they think is awesome and have it secretly shipped directly to me. And then you get to see the surprise at the same time that I do!

I don’t want to spoil the surprise before you watch the video – but I am beyond pleased with my first shipment. What do you think?

I will have to recruit additional shoppers for future months, I am going to try and do one of these every month (I would do it more frequently but that would get pretty expensive). If you have any ideas of who you would like to see shop for me (within reason) I would love to hear them.

Unboxing video blog – Gradient yarn and Beads

I have always wanted to be a better blogger, but somehow I have a difficult time thinking of things that I feel are worthy to be committed to writing. Imagine my surprise to learn that I have no such mental block about talking (this will come as a surprise to precisely no one who knows me). With the new video format I have been playing with I am having a much easier time keeping up consistent communication. And there are so many advantages of being able to show you things as opposed to trying to describe them.

Take this new video. I am working on another collaboration with The Unique Sheep and Earthfaire (the same team that helped me cooked up BitterBlue) and I just received the box brimming with lovely yarn and beads. With my webcam I was able to do what is called an “Unboxing” video, so you can watch me pull the goodies out of the box and get the same awesome surprises that I do.

I mention in the video that the inspiration for these color ways came from my Pinterest board (I think I mentioned it) if you are interested in seeing said board you can check out Color Combos for Color Work. Two of the three combos came from my inspiration stash one is here and the other (which is actually from a different board) is here. I am linking them instead of embedding the photos because I do not want in infringe on the artists copyrights. So click away!

This talking-to-the-camera format is kind of unsettling for me, I have always been camera shy. But I am gonna try and keep it up. Please let me know if you like this approach and if you have any requests for something you would like to see/hear from me I am all ears!