Thanks to each and every one of you for the really delightful comments yesterday! I owe several of you email replies, too, and hopefully I’m even going to *get* to them soon. I’ve been having no luck keeping up on email the past couple of months. Again, I blame the summer.

Oh, and as far as what kind of beer we have on tap… well, Boddington’s is a staple. Mmmmm that stuff is good. I also like stouts, such as the well-known Guinness, and Murphy’s Stout. And in the summertime, I like to drink all those beers that everyone says taste like nothing at all. Ice cold, outside.

Marcy asks why there aren’t sheep in the huge pasture you can see in the photos I take on the deck, like this one.

The short answer is there aren’t any sheep there because instead, there are horses there. Related to that, it’s not our pasture! But we do get to socialize with the yearlings that usually live in that paddock. We live back behind a horse farm — there are lots of horse farms around here. However, our property isn’t zoned for livestock. Which is really just as well — I’ve got a family and a small business, and the last thing I really need is livestock! Bear in mind I grew up largely rural, so I’m familiar with the workload… and the never getting to go out of town… and so on. I have my hands full as it is.

I did manage to get a few blends done this week, blends I’ve been wanting to get done for a while. Not that I got to the whole list, mind you! But, like this:

Merino/Tussah/Camel batts, baby! Aww yeah. There’s still a green and a blue left to do, after which I’ve got to salvage some cashmere (that sounds worse than it is, I swear), but I got the purple and the peach done, and geeze, they’re nice. Really nice. I stole a peach one to sample.

I also made a minimal amount of progress on setting up something new: First Dibs Sales! From now on, I’m going to give all of you loyal blog readers a crack at stuff before it hits eBay. So far, I’ve thrown together Batts and Silks, and the latter includes a handful of production colours of hand-dyed tussah, and will let you order as much as you want — but there’s a week turnaround on those. If you order more than 8 ounces custom dyed in a production colour, however, you will be eligible for a discount — drop me a line and I’ll let you know more about it, if you’re interested in that. Eventually, the production run colours will move someplace where you can just order ’em, but I haven’t gotten there yet. Oh, and one other convenience with the First Dibs pages is that you can pay with a credit card directly with the paypal shopping cart, even if you don’t have a paypal account.

So, well, I guess all of that is something. I’ve still got to get the page with handpainted wool tops and the like put together. It’s time-consuming, though, compared to the eBay listings, which is a major appeal to just using that store — more time for production, less fiddly overhead in time spent on putting pictures to cart items and so forth. Plus, I can easily do things like say “All yarn is now 20% off for the next week, and all fiber is 10% off,” with the eBay store. Why yes — in fact, I did just do that. If there’s something you’ve been considering buying, now’s a good time! There isn’t going to be a lot of new production of diverse things for a bit, because I’m about to start in on production for round 2 of Batt Club. Which reminds me: I’ve gone over all the numbers and for the remaining 2 months of this first (and maybe only) Batt Club run, I can squeeze in 4 more people with a prorated deal — $60 for the final 2 months. First 4 to email me about it (abby at abbysyarns dot com, naturally) will be the lucky ones.

Batt Club has been really interesting for me so far, and I hope for those of you who’ve signed up. Every one of you should have your fibers by now, and I’ve heard from some of you and seen pictures of what you’ve been doing with your sock blend, and it’s really a thrill! August’s blends start coming off Cardzilla on Monday and are slated to ship Friday, 3 August.

As it stands right now, I am leaning towards doing it again, with signups in September, for October, November, and December. If you’re signed up now, you’ll have first dibs on a renewal spot, and renewal will come up the second week in September, and be open for a week or so. Then, once I know how many renewals there are and how many slots are open as a result, I’ll announce when new signups will be open, and we can take it from there.

I’d love to get a show of hands (or something) from folks who might be interested in either a Batt Club Yahoo group or Flickr group (and which you’d prefer) to share your experiences with other Batt Club members. If there’s sufficient interest, I’ll create one (or both).

Whew, is it the weekend yet? No? Scandalous. It should be; then I might have beer on tap again, sheesh! Not that it’s beer o’clock yet, alas. But soon… soon. It’s too muggy today to think about doing much more fiber work. I’d think about dinner, but it might be too hot for that too.

Man, is anybody else having problems with bloglines today, or is it just me? Most of my feeds are just no updating. Grrr!