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  • Life gave me lemons

    Hey folks! This is really just a personal update, because I have fallen so very far behind in my fulfillments and I wanted those who are interested to know what’s been happening (and that I don’t just suck at running a business).

    Starting in July, something was definitely wrong. I was lethargic, prone to dizzy spells, and just achy all over. I ignored it (as usual). Mom was also getting worse and worse.

    For those who don’t know, mom has severe spinal and cervical stenosis. In essence, bone spurs are growing into her spinal canal and crushing her spinal cord. It was particularly severe in the neck, and she was scheduled for surgery in September. She had lost manual dexterity, and balance, and we were told paralysis was a very real possibility if it wasn’t addressed. Her pain levels were off the charts. This would shortly become a very large and immediate problem. This is why I moved her my parents in with me a few years ago, and why I am their full time caregiver.

    In early August I woke around 4am with severe abdominal pain. I rode it out for three days before Tito dragged me to emerge. A barrage of tests, and less than 12 hours later I was being wheeled into the OR. They ended up removing my left ovary; it had a massive (7.5cm) endometrioma on it, which had ruptured and spilled into my abdominal cavity. The resulting pain was from the inflammation. I was also diagnosed with severe endometriosis, which answered many, many questions I’ve had over the years. Better late than never??

    I was discharged that morning, with a 6 week healing window and a 10lb lifting restriction. Four days later my dad collapsed in the hall and I broke that restriction. We spent the day at emerge again (he was ok, but it set back my healing).

    A few days after that, mom had a fall and could not get back up again. I broke the restriction again, and this time I definitely set the healing back badly. That same night she couldn’t get into bed, and I knew I couldn’t lift her again, so we called an ambulance. She wouldn’t be home again for 9 weeks.

    We were at the hospital daily, while trying to heal and trying to run the company, and trying not to stress out my dad. Tito was a real superstar during this. I can’t imagine how he did it.

    Mom ended up having emergency surgery for the cervical stenosis. She was fused from C2 to T1, and they installed plates and screws to stabilize her spine. The surgery was intense, and long, and risky because she has many, many other secondary health problems. She came through like a champ, but the healing took a long time, during which we were still at the hospital a lot. Images below because it’s horrible but also hella fascinating.

    Mom ended up going into a rehabilitation facility, and around that time I realized something was still wrong with me. My other ovary was supposed to kick in to even up my hormones, but it didn’t. My doctor thinks it’s also damaged from the Endometriosis. So I was bumped very abruptly into perimenopause. Maybe actual menopause, it’s been hard to tell. Heat flashes, cold sweats, WILD mood swings, exhaustion, depression, anxiety, BRAIN FOG, my restless legs amped up to 10, insomnia, holy smokes I can’t believe they don’t prepare you better for this. It’s one insane trip. Mom was still in rehab, I was still healing but also going to see her every day but also back at dyeing, but nowhere near as fast as I usually was.

    Mom ended up getting discharged on October 9th. We were not at all prepared for the degree of caregiving that would be required at home. I had to ramp up to easily three times as much as I was doing before. I’m also the only person who cleans and cooks here, so takeout became a major thing. I was also still reeling from the hormonal shifts. We had to make a lot of accessibility changes to the home.

    So here we are, finally past October. Life basically knocked me down around mid July and is only lightening up now that mom has made some meaningful progress toward healing, and I have come to terms with managing the symptoms of my new hormonal situation. But we struggled to make it happen from July to now. I kept thinking I was a few solid runs away from being back on track. I cancelled all our shows except Woolstock thinking the rough times couldn’t possibly last that long, but they persisted. Luckily so did we.

    I wanted to write this all down, for me, now that I’m on the other side, and for you, because I feel awful about the impact this had on the company. We are working around the clock to get caught up and fulfil our Christmas commitments, and we are so grateful for the patience and grace most of you have shown us. Small business life continues to be a roller coaster, but we are nothing if not adaptable and stubborn :) Thanks for reading.

  • Summer Slump Knitting

    Summer Slump Knitting

    The weather is hot, focusing is hard, and the constant onslaught of Bad News is wearing us all down, I feel ya babe. That’s why it’s time for something sweet and easy. You can buy new yarn, or you can use what you have. You can even scrap it up if that’s your vibe. Best of all? There is very little actual focus required. A precious commodity these days.

    This is the Abraçada shawl – which is Catalan for “warm Hug” :) Here’s a little peek into what I was thinking when I put this baby together:

    1. I’m not the biggest fan of yarn overs to increase at the spine of a shawl, unless it’s an openwork shawl. I end up feeling like every minute fluctuation in my knitting tension will be magnetically drawn to express itself on that spine as an ugly dotted line of unevenly sized eyelets. And it’s cold.
      Ergo, this shawl has a closed spine with (gasp!) knit-front-and-back increases. Yeah, I could have made it a little cleaner with m1r and m1l, but I was feeling lazy. You can do it if you want, you overachiever you.
    2. I have pretty much zero time where I’m left alone to think and I’m *not* working on Blue Brick related stuff. I’m my parents caregiver, so I kind of exist in the gaps between when folks are awake. There are also 5 furbabes in the house, including two huskies which, we all know, are not for the faint of heart.
      The practical upshot of all this? When I knit, I don’t want to have to think. I want my hands to flow through the work while I watch Vikings and think about big muscle men and gorgeous shield maidens kicking ass.
    3. I am fashionably incompetent. Did I put on lipgloss? Girl, I’m not even sure I put on deodorant. Do my shoes match my purse? Only if Tito dressed me (which he does, when circumstances require me to look good).
      Whatever I make can’t require any flair or flounce to look good. It had to be cuddly and unfussy. I want to feel like I’m carrying around my own security blanket. I understand it’s not socially acceptable (or practical) to hide from axe murderers beneath the shawl, build forts out of the shawl or wet the shawl down and use it to flick someone else, but that’s ok. In the right mood I’ll do it anyway. I can certainly use a shawl to hide from, say, an unpleasant colleague. What’s that? I work from home? My household are my colleagues? See point above re: huskies.
    4. Finally, it’s gotta be flexible. I sell 500, 800, 1200 and 1600 yard shawl balls. If you don’t get to use at least 90% of your gradient, what’s the point? Therefore, I love shawls with repeatable motifs, charts that can be worked more than once, and sections where you can knit until you run out. Use up every last precious yard of that yarn.

    If you want your own super flexible, axe-murderer-proof shawl, you can check out the pattern here :) Want yarn to go with it? I’m your enabler :) Check out our store for gorgeous gradients in either ready-to-ship or pre order form.

    Stay tuned for a post wherein I invent a martial art that requires only a good sized shawl and the willingness to bite when threatened.

  • Agonizing Overhauls

    I’ve been putting a lot of thought into the company, and her challenges, and I’ve come to a few realizations. I promise, it’s not all bleak!

    1. Our fulfillment window has gotten longer and longer, each month, since I became my parents’ caregiver. Caregiving is a multi-faceted job that includes wearing a lot of hats through the day, and it can be unpredictable. I’ve got to work with each day as it comes.
    2. Between tariffs, and the change in the relationship between Canada and the US, things are unstable. It’s not just tariffs, it’s supply chains, import duties, shipping costs, brokerage fees, leftover pandemic problems, insurance blah blah blah. Ugh.
    3. CUSMA may not be around much longer. POTUS already indicated that he’s considering ditching it altogether, and there may not be a replacement. I couldn’t even estimate what those duties would entail because there are no straight answers out there.
    4. On a personal note; I’m trying to Do the Things. But gods… there is a kind of world-weariness that is setting in and some days it all feels uphill, especially while battling depression. I know lots of you feel me on this <3

    Tito and I have had this conversation before. That we’re behind. That we need to tweak things. Enough that we know it’s not just a matter of working harder, or later, or sleeping less or cutting costs. We have a few ideas that will go into play soon, and we are hoping our generous, sweet and patient customers will be along with us for this experiment.

    PAUSING PRE ORDERS TO THE USA FOR NOW

    We are going to increase our ready-to-ship inventory, and restrict our pre-orders to domestic orders and non-tariff countries. The reason is that I cannot guarantee that somewhere, in my fulfillment window, CUSMA won’t get cancelled. We can’t risk having a backlog of outstanding orders that will incur unpredictable fees to fulfill. 

    This doesn’t mean that US citizens will be totally excluded from fun new things, but it does mean that I can’t open a product to them until I know that I can ship it within a week or so. So if you see something you want, write to me and we’ll figure it out :)

    WHAT IF I WANT SOMETHING YOU DON’T HAVE FOR SALE?

    Want a sweater kit, or a colour that isn’t up? Need a kit, or an extension to finish a project? Write to me, and I’ll dye your order, and add a few items of that colour to the inventory to make it worth the dye and time. Feel free to comment on posts or send me emails telling me what you want to see in the store! Customer-driven inventory is the best way for us all to get what we want :)

    WHAT ABOUT CURRENT PRE ORDERS?

    We are still plugging away at our pre orders. We are looking to complete the James Webb/Star Trek collection by Friday next, and get into the Perihelion Shawl kits. Everything will be fulfilled as soon as possible and nothing is getting cancelled or left behind :)

    WE ARE STOCKING A US RETAILER – THE NIFTY KNITTER!

    We are not sure how that looks in a post-CUSMA future, but at this time we are working on a partnership with our dear friends at The Nifty Knitter in Issaquah, WA (more on them soon!). We are hoping that they can take over as a US provider in the event of a CUSMA cancellation and we can create a mutually beneficial way of handling the tariffs with them if necessary.

    WE ARE PLANNING TO HIRE SOMEONE

    The Blue Brick was happiest when she had at least four full time people. Part of the challenge has been moving the company to our basement, and with my unpredictable care schedule it’s been hard to rope off a 9-5 block. Another set of hands will help the train keep moving (please don’t send us resumés though, we already have someone in mind :))

    OK, so what now? Tomorrow I’ll start creating a plan for the inventory. One that gets you variety, kits, and projects that are ready to go. We will promote all shop updates on our instagram feed, and our newsletter (go to our website to sign up!).

    We will do our best to make sure the word is out and the inventory is delicious every time we do a release. We hope that we can generate enough cash flow with this method, while shortening customer wait times and pre-preparing ourselves for the future of the free trade agreement, but it’s a bit of a jungle out there these days and, who knows?

    What I do know, is that we’re creative, committed, and here for the long haul :)

  • Coffee Cake Banana Bread

    I was noodling over what to write and realized that everything I had to say was a bummer. So you know what? To hell with that. Got the January Blues? I’ve got the cure :) And you don’t need to read my life story, or close a wack-a-mole’s worth of pop up ads to get it.

    For the muffins:

    • 3 overripe bananas (mashed)
    • 1/3 Cup melted butter
    • 1 tsp baking soda
    • Pinch Salt
    • 1 cup white sugar
    • 1 egg
    • 1 tsp vanilla extract
    • 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
    • 1 tsp ground cinnamon

    For the topping:

    • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
    • 1/2 cup brown sugar
    • 1/3 cup flour
    • 2 tablespoons melted butter

    Preheat oven to 350, line your muffin tin.
    Mix the mashed bananas, butter, egg, vanilla, sugar and salt in one bowl, with some sort of speed mixer if you’ve got one.
    In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cinnamon and baking soda. Sift together.
    Add the wet ingredients to the dry, mixing until by hand just combined. DON’T OVER MIX.
    (At this stage, if you like, throw a half cup of crushed walnuts in there).

    In another bowl, combine the brown sugar, flour, butter and cinnamon. I like to combine the dry ingredients first, nuke the butter for 30 seconds, and then add it while stirring with a fork to get a nice crumbly mix.

    Add the batter evenly between the muffin tins. I like to use an ice cream scoop for this myself. You want to go to about 2/3 of a cup full. Take your crumb topping and sprinkle it generously over the top of each muffin.

    Bake for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. I find this time can fluctuate quite a bit depending on how much banana I was working with, so check yours regularly and don’t be afraid to add a little extra time on there.

    Let them sit and cool for about 5 minutes in the tin, then take them out to finish cooling.

    Enjoy a small, bit of pure warmth and happiness with a sweet crumbly topping and forget about everything else for just a little bit :)

    You deserve this time. Do not let the news interfere with your muffin.

  • Costco is the 7th Ring of Hell

    The best thing to come out of the pandemic was curbside pickup. S’true. This is the only civilized way to visit places like, say, an Ikea. Ikea is perhaps the 6th ring of hell, with its confuzzling labyrinth, angry, seemingly unattended children and dictatorial shopping experience. But I digress.

    When it comes to Costco, generally, we stick to online ordering. But sometimes a cruel and unusual urge takes me, to visit the dreaded dungeons with the lighthearted statement “I’m just gonna go see what they have in person.”.

    Such an urge reared its nonsensical head yesterday. Like “seeing what they have in person” will revolutionize my shopping habits by adding new and heretofore unknown delights. As though, somehow, it will result in Something that is not only staggeringly, unthinkably desirable, but that, this elusive Thing, is worth being there in person to buy it.

    I gathered my intestinal fortitude and ventured to Costco, on a Monday morning, in a blizzard, at a location that’s out on the highway instead of in town. Now, you might think that Costco, on a Monday morning, in a blizzard, in the sticks, is a slightly moderated version of hell. And you would be wrong.

    It began with the fact that we had to scramble for parking. Cars convert people into single-minded maniacs. Christmas, doubly so. Add on the fact that it’s a Costco parking lot? May the odds be ever in your favour.

    When we got in, there were no carts. The folks bringing carts in through the blizzard emerged less like people bringing carts and more like dog sledding teams bringing precious serum to our dying population. They were immediately mobbed. I almost checked out at this point, but I reminded myself that I was an adult, and a 4th degree black belt, and that my family needed a kind of cheese which is apparently impossible to get elsewhere. I whispered affirmations under my breath and went IN.

    A little known fact about a Costco is that, once you scan your membership card, your cart converts into a battering ram. I emerged into a post-apocalyptic world filled with fuming people, like a machine where you insert a nice person at one end and a psychopath comes out the other, willing to fight to the death for a bulk bag of bagels.

    Stopping in a Costco, however empty you *think* the aisle around you is, is a crime. If you do try to catch a breath somewhere, someone else will actually materialize out of the ether to yell at you.

    It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve been, the thing you need is never in the same place twice. It’s a wack-a-mole for cheese. A guessing game, a blind thrust down a hall in hopes that, at the least, that brand of chicken fried rice that mom likes will be here. You rush around with your crumpled little list clutched like a lifeline, whispering “Let me not have ventured forth in vain.”.

    The concept of gladiatorial combat never went away. Costco is the Colosseum of our day, where we are both the fighters and the spectators, locked in a battle unto the death for eggs. The difference is, we enter the pit (mostly) willingly.

    What I’m saying is, it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

  • The Art of the Image

    I’m not just a photographer as a hobbyist, I’m a legit, professional, award-winning, certified BIG DEAL. S’true. I had a job job before I left it all to chase string.

    I love my camera. I’ve photographed people, landscapes, aerials, potraits, weddings, and lots of yarn. I built The Blue Brick, in a way, to give a vehicle to my photography; I had such an archive of colour that I wanted to share. If you’re new here, every yarn I sell is based off a photo that I have taken. No stock photography, no AI, no excessive editing, just nature’s colours.

    My favourite type of shot, out all of all of them, is when I have a chance to catch something fleeting, to freeze a moment that will never be there again, to hold it in a perfect memory made solid. These are some of my faves over the years :)

    I took this photo in Rome, on one of the many side streets that you can get lost in. There was a lady with her budgies, and those little pieces of paper in front of her are fortunes. For change, she’ll give you a fortune. Mine was some generic stuff about when I’d marry, and how many children I’d have (both wrong) but I’ll treasure the photo forever! When Nat Geo wanted to publish it, I got the email on April 1st. Took me 2 days (and more emails) to believe it wasn’t a prank. A dream come true.

    When you go to Hawaii to see Kilauea, you need to be flexible. Sometimes the lava is only visible from land. Sometimes only from a helicopter. On this trip, it was only visible from the sea. The waves were rough, and shooting was hard, because you’d ride a big wave, see the lava for a second, and then crash down into the trough. That wave would go on to crash against the cliffs, and the lava would send up a big head of steam that would make seeing impossible again. I had to time it perfectly, after one big wave had receded, and while I was still on the crest of the following one. Here is the result.

    This ocean formation is a sinkhole called Thor’s Well, in Cape Perpetua, Oregon. Like so many photos, this one takes patience and timing. The tide must be in, and you must be safely situated close to the sinkhole, but braced by the (sharp!) volcanic rocks so you don’t get pulled forward. There is a hole that we cannot see, below the cliff face. A big wave rolls in, geysers out of the sinkhole, and then flows back down. I’m using a long exposure to smooth out those waves. It takes a million shots sometimes, but this was the winner.

    Multnomah Falls is also in Oregon, and though the classic image of these gorgeous falls includes the bridge across the middle, I decided to climb down to the bottom. Here, the waterfall is little more than a narrow, misty column, lit from without by the sunlight falling into the valley. I managed to catch it before the sun passed behind the cliff face, when that last, golden beam came in. When you catch perfect, fleeting light, it feels like nothing else.

    When the last solar eclipse happened, I was totally bummed out at first; we were under heavy cloud cover. But there were these pockets of clear sky, and thinner clouds, so I set up anyways, and hoped for a “pocket” to pass over me. As it happened, during the peak of the eclipse, the sun was in a layered area of thick and thin cover. I obtained this shot by stopping the camera way down, and using a very fast shutter. I believe I also stopped down farther using a neutral density filter. The idea was to under-expose the clouds, so I could see the detail (and the thin clouds in front helped me do that). As a result, the brillance of the sun, and the “diamond ring” moment were clearly visible to the camera.

    Before drones, if you wanted aerial photography, you either needed to up on a roof or into a helicopter. Aerial was one of my specialties, I have no fear of heights, and these karate arms were able to stablize the camera in the high winds of a helicopter with the doors taken off (necessary for shooting, and yes, you got very cold). I also had to be able to shoot, in low light, from a moving object, without either creating a blurry image, or an underexposed one. I had the knack.

    Those buildings in the centre don’t exist by the way; I took these shots for a presentation on a possible project, and the 3D modelling team placed the buildings in. A fun detail is that, for the buildings to look correct, I also had to shoot the reflections that would be in their glass. A lot goes in to making a realistic image. It was always tricky, but always rewarding.

    I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my underwater work. Scuba diving is very relaxing, and somehow amniotic (is that a vibe? You get my drift (drift! See what I did there?!)). I’ve taken a lot of photos, but one that’s special to me is this little black saddle toby, taken in the Maldives. It’s special because this fish was about 2 inches long, and hiding in a dark little alcove and woo boy did he give me a challenge.

    Underwater, all colours except blue gradually disappear (and so does light), so you need artificial lights to work with. However, you need to be delicate about it; you can’t blast light into the sensitive eyes of marine life, and you can’t touch the coral to stabilize yourself while you shoot. So, you have to have solid buoyancy control, and the lights have to be offset, and of course your critter needs to cooperate :) This was my favourite shot of the trip.

    Hope you enjoyed my little photo trip! I do have so much to write about, I’ve taken up calligraphy, I’m testing for my fourth degree black belt in a few weeks… but life has been really nutty and sometimes it’s like riding the wooden rollercoaster at Wonderland. You know, that “this could fall apart under me at any moment” feeling. But that’s life, you hang on ;)

  • A little advice. A big reason to celebrate :)

    Tito and I have been married for 10 years!

    Years ago, long before we were married, we were watching the movie Paranormal Activity. In the horror movie trope, there’s always that one person that doesn’t believe the place is haunted. Tito turned to me and jokingly said “babe, if you ever tell me the place is haunted, that’s fine. We’ll move”.

    Over the years, that grew into what we call the “Paranormal Activity Protocol”, and it’s saved us from many potential fights. The point is, if it’s important to him, then I don’t need to get it. But I DO need to respect it. You think it’s haunted? Good enough for me. And vice versa. 

    Today, if I could give one piece of advice to the world, that would be it. If something is super important to someone you care for, and you don’t get it, it’s cool. You don’t need to. The other person’s feelings are more important than proving yourself right. 

    In a world divided by political lines, colour lines, and economic lines, where we consume polarized media in echo chambers seeded with incendiary bot accounts… it’s so so important to just listen to other humans and try to respect their side. Try to accept that it matters to them, and let that be enough for you. Because that human connection is what will ultimately save us and if we lose it, we’ve lost everything. 

    Tito, you are the love of my life. The engineer to my artist, the adventurer by my side, in the mountains, in the sea, or just watching Star Trek. I can’t wait to see what the next ten years bring. And in the words of our beloved officiant John Joseph Mastandrea, here’s to life, here’s to love, here’s to you.

  • How to cope with stress like a BOSS.

    If you’ve been following, well, anyone Canadian, you know that the tariffs have been a royal pain. A hamfisted implementation. A logistics nightmare. And thus, we have been under stress.

    Follow along, dear reader, as I explain my extremely responsible, adult, and valid coping mechanism with all the elegance and grace of which I’m capable.

    I went to the local grocery store. I got a birthday cake. I don’t mean a fancy cake. I mean a shitty sheet cake with icing roses in a colour nature never intended. I bought that cake… and I had it made out “To me”. Buying my own birthday cake, on not-my-birthday is a habit of mine when things go south. I’m not ashamed to say that it’s been a two-birthday-cake month around here.

    I used to have them made out to “Ralph”. Eventually I gave up hiding my true intentions. But up to that point, Ralph’s of the world, I had your back. (That, incidentally, was the origin of naming the entity in my studio who controls kiln firings and humidity levels “Ralph”).

    It’s ok to cry while you eat the cake. It’s encouraged, actually, nothing adds flavour to cheap icing like the tears of the despairing. I spent the pandemic haunting my studio alone, slowly losing at McDonalds box jenga. But I digress.

    Here’s the other reason to buy yourself cake; I read an article recently titled “the benefits of getting old” or some such. There were several bullet points, but they all added up to one thing:

    Older folks just don’t have as many fucks to give.

    The article tried to vary it up. They really did.
    “You have greater emotional intelligence”.
    “You have more life experience to draw from”.
    “You are less likely to be reactive”.

    They really could have just summed it up though, thusly:
    You no longer give a fuck when you don’t have to.

    Back to the cake. When I went to the cashier, she looked askance at my cake (this is not my first time having an odd interaction with a grocery store cashier, scroll to the bottom).

    Her: “Birthday?”.
    Me: No.
    Her: Special occasion?
    Me: No. 
    Her: Ok then… *goes on to pointedly do Other Things*
    Me: The cake is for me. I’m going to eat it myself.
    Her: …
    Me: You may not know this yet, but when you’re in your 40’s, you can purchase, and consume, your own birthday cake any time you like. No one can stop you. Depending on how you feel about your glucose levels, you could even start now.

    She gave me an admirably level look. Then she said
    “When I get there, I will think of you. You fucking legend”.

    Goddamn right I am.

    = = = = 

    Many moons ago, in the footsteps of the Great Dyers, I decided to try dyeing yarn with Kool Aide. I had never dyed yarn before and had no idea what to do. So I started by going to the grocery store and buying up every single serve package of Kool Aide I could find, in as many flavours as possible. 

    I dumped my findings (40 or so packages) unceremoniously onto the conveyor belt.

    A cute guy was standing just ahead of me, and he kept looking back at my unseemly pile.

    “I’m Dyeing!” I volunteered.

    “You’re WHAT?!” He exclaimed in horror.

    “Yes! Tonight!” And, as an afterthought,
    “Did you know you could use Kool Aide?”.

    ====

    And yes, for my pedantic readers: While use of the phrase dates back to 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and the saying “drinking the Kool aide” has entered our common vernacular, in the case of Jonestown it was Flavor Aid,  laced with cyanide and other horrid things. :) 

  • Today’s Post Sucks.

    I’ve been labouring under the impression, the apparently misguided impression, that CUSMA was a real and useful thing. However, it turns out, in the absence of a De Minimus shipping amount (and in the presence of de-maximus insanity), I’m not sure anymore. The information around this has been very, very confusing.

    If you’ve somehow managed to get this far without hearing about this, good on you. Also, don’t feel too badly; the day before William and Kate’s wedding Tito turned to me and sleepily said, “Hey, is some bigshot in England getting married tomorrow?”.

    So here is the thing. Starting August 29th, the US will suspend the $800 de minimus entry that has been in place for years. That means that all packages entering the states, no matter how small, will be subject to duty.

    There seem to be two main concerns. How to get the yarn past the border at all (that is, correct HS codes, certificates of origin etc.) and whether the customer will have to pay more to get it. And thirdly, whether there is enough Nutella in this world to get me through this mess.

    I was under the impression that all but 4% or so of Canadian goods fell under CUSMA, but this is what I am getting for our tariff codes (and yes, our yarn is milled in Canada and qualifies as Canadian in origin).

    This is sourced from https://tariffguide.ai

    And this is sourced from https://www.tariffinder.ca/

    It seems fair to assume at this point that someone is paying something that was not part of the original contract. That, as vague as it is, is the most that I can say with certainty right now. I’d love to know the amounts, but it seems to vary from 6% to 41% to up-to-$200USD-regardless-of-value-because-we-can-so-suck-it%.

    Here’s what other countries think

    “Postal services in Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Italy said they will stop shipping most merchandise to the U.S. effective immediately. France and Austria will follow Monday, and the United Kingdom Tuesday. India’s government also said the country will temporarily suspend postal deliveries to the United States starting Monday” the AFP

    What’s a Canadian entrepreneur to do? Here’s where I’m at:

    August 25th – September 2nd: I am going to pause shipping for one week. This is because I won’t be able to get things across the border in time for the 29th, and because after the 29th I’d like to see where things net out.

    My goal is to figure out how to pay the tariff on my customers behalf for all orders that were placed before the 29th. Further, I am hoping that it can be done in a way that allows the customer to have proof, so they will have recourse if someone tries to double-dip at the other end and charge them again.

    During that same week I will not accept orders from the USA. Once the dust has settled and I can see which way the wind is blowing (metaphor city y’all) then I can get a plan together. Perhaps it involves building tariffs into my pricing and covering it at our end. Perhaps the customer will just have to eat the cost at theirs and I will end up losing tons of business. Perhaps I will have to stop shipping to the USA altogether which would likely crush us (this is not an option right now, because I do not like the idea of being crushed).

    (Side note, during the Salem Witch Trials there was, in fact, a person who was crushed to death. Toward the end, folklore has it he screamed “More weight!”. Absolute Legend.).

    This is going to hurt the company badly. Paying all those tariffs will hurt, and refunding all the inevitable requests will hurt. I have no clue, honestly and transparently and humanly here, how to get by that bit. And I can say that here, while mixing metaphors (the other day mom declared, in a fit of drama, that she could no longer “see the rainbow at the end of the tunnel”), and run-on sentences, and more than a bit of self-pity because this is my blog and I don’t shave my legs for this space. I gave myself a good cry today and ate several ice cream sandwiches.

    I bet I can make you laugh before you leave though….

    Tito just does not have the flair for the dramatic that I do 

    Him: “yeah, I was cleaning the backyard and I hit a wasp nest. Had to get the spray foam.”

    Me: “So Tito managed to open the gates of hell in the backyard. The puzzle box from hellraiser. The rift from Pacific Rim. And the denizens of Hell, with beelzebub, kaiju and cenobites in tow came pouring out. It required armour. And so I put on a 7mm wetsuit, armed myself with wasp spray and went into battle to close the rift and emerged victorious.”

    Moral: If it looks stupid, but it works, it ain’t stupid. Tito came out with 8 stings. Me? Zero. Yeah, I wore my goggles, too. And if wearing a wetsuit to ship yarn helps, then start the bath y’all.

  • Pivot! Pivot! Pivot!

    I am looking to tweak some things about how the Blue Brick operates, to adjust for some really big, relatively recent challenges. Tito and I are mom’s main caregivers. This wasn’t a surprise, we planned for this time when we all moved in together last year, but her health has taken a downturn since the last stroke, and the challenges around mobility and pain management are pretty intense.

    It’s taken a lot of time away from The Blue Brick, for which I apologize and feel awful. I know that many of you (bless your hearts) will say “Family first, yarn can wait” but that simply cannot work long term, because The Blue Brick is the only source of income for our home and it needs to be a robust, healthy company for us to get by.

    The second challenge has been the tariffs. Again, I know many folks will point out that we are, technically, currently, covered under the CUSMA agreement, and customers should not pay extra money to receive our yarns. And they would be right. However, market uncertainty has still resulted in greatly reduced sales, a natural consequence of all this instability. There has been some confusing and conflicting messaging out there, which means lots of people aren’t sure what’s going to happen.

    Our supply chain has also become much more expensive, and much more unpredictable in terms of availability. Sometimes we’ve been told that stellina, say, or red dye, cannot be had for love nor money. Nor kidneys (believe me, I’ve tried).

    Finally, social media isn’t what it used to be. Visibility is down. engagement is down. Bot accounts, false information and accounts that have been hacked for onlyfans proliferate (I, too, was surprised when my favourite “Baby zoo animals” feed became a sea of scantily clad bums). It can no longer be our main source of outreach.

    What am I doing to fix this?

    Never fear, I am not wailing in the corner and tearing at mine garments. Nor taking up a drinking habit. Both have been tempting, don’t get me wrong, but it’s times like this that I’m grateful to be a lifelong Karate student. Some days (rarely) it means enlightenment. Many days it’s the therapeutic benefit of getting out of my own head to be of service to others. And sometimes it’s just the cathartic value of punching, kicking and screaming for an hour, aka a controlled temper tantrum.

    1. Stabilize my supply chain by pre-purchasing in bulk if possible, and warehousing it all here at the house so I’m never short on the yarn, dye and chemicals I need to do the job. This will mean discontinuing some bases (TBD). I’ll do my best to retain everyone’s favourites and keep a range of pricing so our yarn is always accessible. This should, in turn, speed up fulfillment which will be critical.
    2. Building out a separate office Here at the house, but separated from everyone else. During these times Tito knows he’s mom’s primary person, and I get a few hours, uninterrupted, to focus on the non-dyeing side of the business. Including customer service, shipping and website maintenance.
    3. Diversifying sales. Many folks do not want to wait for weeks to receive a pre order item. I’m going to generate and maintain a beautiful inventory section of ready-to-ship items. I’ll bring in the occasional specialty base, or spinning braid. I’m going to try to find somewhere to fire my ceramics and bring them back to market. Maybe I’ll make resin jewelry, or turn nostepinne again. We are so much more than yarn.
    4. Diversifying communications For so long, it’s been social media driven. But all things Meta are now suspect, and I think that’s driving a lot of people to get their daily feeds elsewhere. I’ll get active on Bluesky and TikTok, and I’ve re-started this blog. I’d love everyone to go to our website and sign up for the newsletter if they’re so inclined. Sign up for updates from this blog if you want. I promise, sometimes I’m funny. The biggest commodity out there now is our attention. Let’s control where it gets spent instead of being force-fed things that make us sad. This one is a challenge. I don’t know where to find the time to be constantly working on outreach. I don’t have the kind of life where I can focus exclusively on high quality content creation or teach my dogs how to juggle for likes. But my audience is out there, and I need to meet them where they are.
    5. Focusing more on fiber arts myself. There was a time when I wove, and knit, and designed, and crocheted and spun. When I was actively producing FOs and talking about the great things that I was doing. These things, the enjoyable part of the business, are the first casualties when time becomes scarce, but they’re critical. They’re literally the bridge between what I make and what my customers want to do. To visualize, to get inspired, I need to rediscover the artisan within myself.

    I’m no business expert ;) this is a journey. But I’m an artist. I’m a teacher and a maker. I’m passionate and earnest (and I have super healthy kidneys if you’re interested). I will adapt this business to the new zeitgeist and I hope you’re all joining me on the journey. I remain so grateful for all the people who love what I make, who support us, and who allow me to make my living bringing beauty into the world.

    I’ll end with pretty pictures of what’s currently on for pre order :) Check it out if the colours call to you!

    Dried Lavender

    Kim’s Barn

    Flint

    Aster

    Autumnal

    And a hell of a selection of Blues

    Stay cool. Be ungovernable.
    S.