Fairy Tales, There Once Was An Ugly Duckling…

For the last 4 years I have run a Woolen Rabbit Yarn Club.
  The first year was a trial process for me testing the waters and I had fun.  The second year I decided to have a focused theme and introduced the Roaring Twenties scheme that was completely designer driven. I gave the designers that I have been so fortunate to work with full reign to come up with a design that inspired them based on the theme.  They would give me a color idea for their design and then I would fire up the dyepots and come up with a colorway that would compliment their thought process.

  I have had GREAT fun with it and I think that the subscribers enjoyed it as well. 

After 2 years of the Roaring Twenties, I thought it was time to change it up a bit.
  I loved watching the "Once Upon A Time" series on tv, so I thought..hmmm, maybe Fairy Tales would be a nice new theme with such a huge resource to draw from.

When Alicia Plummer who I was very happy to have join along told us told me that her Fairy Tale was going to be "The Ugly Duckling", I really anticipated seeing not only what her design was going to be, but also what her inspiration was. 
One of the things that I do ask from all of the designers is to send me a little blurb about what inspired their design for the newsletter.

Alicia's inspriation story sounded much like a page from my childhood book of awkwardness and I am sure that many of you probably have felt this way at one point or another as you grew up and even maybe still as an adult as I frequently still experience. 

Most of my childhood friends went off on summer vacations, so many of my summer hours were spent reading books in my favorite tree or at the air conditioned library. One of my most favorite memorable books that was read over and over was the book "The Tales of Hans Christian Andersen". I never tired from the stories woven by Hans Christian Andersen.

Once I know what the designer's inspiration is, I start researching content for the newsletter that contains the pattern which is something thing that I truly enjoy doing because I always end up learning so many new things.

When researching Hans Christian Andersen, I came across the album that my brother, sister and I listened to many times over as children, by Danny Kaye.  I can still see this album cover in my mind.  Danny Kaye on one side and Tubby the Tuba on the flip side.  
Such an innocent time for us back then.  I feel a bit sad that children today will never experience a world that does not include the internet and cell phones…a world that is a bit more of a challenge to just use your imagination and only your imagination.

This sweet picture was the inspiration for the colorway that you see in the mitts.
When I finish a yarn club and the story, the colorway, the gift and the special card all come together in a way that this one did, it makes me very thankful that I am so fortunate to do something that I love for work.

Thank you Alicia for your beautiful design and your beautiful inspiration story!