Writing, carding, spinning....the business of fiber moves forward

I've been writing magazine submissions these past few months. Two have been accepted and I'm hard at work trying to meet the deadline for a third. As usual with we creative folks, the ideas and execution of those ideas come easy--putting it all on paper? Not so easy, because our brains want to move on to the next exciting project. A sort of "Oh, shiny!" moment every few days, and difficult to keep oneself on track. But I manage, with the help of lots of DVDs of the sci-fi shows I missed during the winter tv season. All the good ones come on at my bedtime and watching them at their original time would find me sound asleep in my chair with knitting in hand. And the cat snoozing in my lap, having taken advantage of my being asleep to catch a nap on my knitting.

Then there's the business of trying to keep carded fiber in my Etsy shop. I could card 8 hours a day, 3-4 days a week, just to keep all my colorways up to date. On the other hand, it gives my customers something to look forward to. The best part of carding is seeing something in my travels or in the yard that I want to capture in fiber. Upstate Meadows (currently out of stock) was one of those, it caught my eye when returning from Fingerlakes Fiber Festival several years ago. Field after field of Purple Loosestrife and Queen Annes Lace blooming among all those different grasses and I couldn't wait to get home and throw things into the carder to see if I could duplicate it.

One of these days I'll card enough Upstate Meadows to spin and knit a sweater for myself. But not this week, I have other colorways to work on and rolags to refill in the shop and create. Then there's the vegetable garden (and the danged groundhogs/woodchucks who like to break in for a snack) and the berry and fruit trees to take care of. Keeps me busy and makes for quick days and sound sleep at night.

Spindle Spinning classes at the festival, photo session

Phew! What a long weekend it was, but so much fun. The Waynesburg Sheep and Fiber Festival took place last weekend and I was tapped for judging the fiber competition in addition to teaching Spindle Spinning both days. Lots of great entries in the competition and we were stumped several times on which entry should take the blue ribbon in a category. If you make something (or many somethings) this coming year, you should consider entering them in the festival. Entry fee is just a few dollars and everyone loves to see and be inspired by the creations. It's one of the ways we can keep our fiber skills alive, by showing off and inspiring others to learn our craft(s).

For example, we had absolutely no advance signups for my spindle classes but past experience told us that I'd get a few students at the festival. I had two students on Saturday but once the Fleece to Shawl competition started, the class registration skyrocketed. I'm so happy to have hatched all those new spinners, whether they spin for pleasure or because they have sheep and want to know everything about the process.

Once I caught up with the dishes, laundry, orders and emails I was able to meet with my photographer for a photo session. Can't say specifically why we did this, but watch this space for upcoming news! At any rate, we lucked into a cloudy day on Thursday--just right for photography. Unless the sun keeps moving and the shadows move in the opposite direction and you have to keep dragging the picnic table into the shade to avoid 'burn out spots' on the pictures. We see those gorgeous photos of models wearing the latest fashion in romantic settings and think it's a wonderful sexy life to wear the clothes and travel to faraway places, but it's also a lot of work getting those shots! Much more work than I do since I'm just a small operation and don't usually use live models or romantic settings. I think we wasted an hour on capturing one particular shot that I wanted--nothing seemed to show what we wanted in exactly the way we wanted. But I always learn a little more about what makes a photo interesting in terms of content, lighting and balance. Here's a taste of what we did: