Vacationing: Yarnival + the beach!

I'm in between two exciting trips right now, home from the Yarnival in Placerville, CA and now on my way to the beach in Ocean City, MD for a week. Traveling is rare for me, so this summer is a real treat!

The Yarnival was a smorgasbord of inspiration and my usual post-MDS&W burnout evaporated quickly once I slipped off the plane into a wickedly good zone of zero responsibilities. I spent the next 5 days soaking up good conversation, too much sun, and a variety of goods from fellow fiber artists that I've been anxious to meet for years. Lucky me, I came home with a Girl with a Hook hat (one of my goal purchases for the trip), a skein of handspun and a pair of earrings from Neauveau Fiber Arts, a gorgeous handspun lariat from Rose Nectar Fibre Couture, fiber from Oscar and Sophia, and batts and locks from Jazzturtle (Esther and I shared a booth). The highlight of my trip was definitely chatting with everyone. Oh, and the river. I could never forget how good that river felt on my swollen pregnant-lady cankles!

 

 I came home to a feverish tot and spent the next week doling out snuggles and antibiotics and catching up on terrible children's movies.

Once poor Ingrid was able to attend school again, I got back to work and cranked out two small updates. My favorite colorway came out of this set of ClassicBatts named Bottled Sunshine.

I believe these two updates were among my fastest-selling, there's barely anything left in the ol' shop, and I'm about to run out to the Post Office for my second-to-last trip before my Beach vacation. If you've got your eyes set on anything, nab it quick before I shut down the shop tonight! I've got time for one more PO run tomorrow morning before I pack up my tot and head for the beach with my family.

This second baby, it's a BOY! I know I've posted just about everywhere else so I'm sure it's old news. I'm just excited that I'll have a chance to try something different, and that our little family will be complete with one of each. We're naming him Ira.

update-o-rama

Time has FLOWN as usual, but this time I know exactly what has happened - Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival!!! All of those late nights paid off and I had a wonderful time vending with my Mom (MarigoldJen) and with help from my good friends Christiane Knight of Three Ravens as well as Adele Michelsen from Looliemom. I left with over 12 giant bins and 4 bags of fiber, and returned home with 2.5 bins, and my tent was mostly empty by Saturday evening. Here's Mom and me during set-up.

I returned home to a very distressed toddler - poor Iggy was not happy at all about the few days I was gone, so I spent the next week providing as much boring routine as possible to help prepare her for what came next - a move across town! (I feel like the Price is Right announcer here..) We lived in a gorgeous remodeled barn on the outskirts of Shippensburg for nearly 5 years, but with a second baby on the way, the open layout of the barn was no longer going to be a convenient or safe layout for our little family. Now we've got much more space, though this new spacious and more cost-effective home is a temporary blip in our efforts to save up for a home to purchase within the next two years.

The move took much much longer than we anticipated - I had to do the bulk of packing and organizing since my husband was busy with odd hours at his job and an exciting radio gig on the side. I pushed for a heavy de-stashing of everything we owned to help speed up the process, and even slimmed my book collection by over 80% - which feels deliciously refreshing!

Just after settling and unpacking and restoring comfort and routine to my sensitive toddler again, another big event - my parents flew out West to be with family during a rough time and had a last minute emergency crisis with their dog requiring a sitter/kennel. He was missing just one of the vaccines required for a stay at a kennel, so I've been dog-sitting/house-sitting for the past week and a half, living between homes with a re-frazzled toddler, spending 2-3 hours each day with the commute. You can probably now imagine why the studio has remained mostly untouched for a full month! Also, it's probably not hard to imagine how anxious I am to shut myself into my new basement cave of floor-to-ceiling fibers and freshly washed fleeces.

I have so many wickedly good ideas on what to do with my newly bolstered stash - the fleeces I brought home from Maryland Sheep and Wool along with some delicious BFL fleeces I ordered from one of my absolute favorite farms - they're all divine! I bought a couple of natural colored fleeces that will absolutely not be dyed, and you'll know why once you see the sweet milk chocolate brown rambouillet and the multi-tonal silvers and charcoals in my ribbon-winning leicester longwool fleece. As usual though, I can't stay away from high contrast bolds and brights, so the natural colors will be a fun spin on the typical Hobbledehoy crankings.

Because of all of these events, it's been very difficult to find the right times to have or schedule updates - usually after a long day with a clingy toddler, I fall asleep while tucking her in! I do have more product to list from MDSW to continue to add, but I also have a full bin of fresh batts and rovings for this weekend's update. Stay tuned, and stay flexible! I'll make sure that a newsletter goes out with my update info ONLY AFTER I'm totally sure that an update is happening that day :)

Spring reflection

This Spring has been such an exciting and dizzying blend of personal and business activity that I can't help but feel reflective now that I'm in the midst of my last week of Festival preparations *and* am preparing to leave this rocky first trimester behind. I turned 29 this month, and there's nothing like birthdays to make you think about what you have and haven't accomplished, and overall, I'm surprised that I'll be leaving this decade with several life goals under my belt including a completed family and a rare opportunity to make a living off of doing something I love.

After several unsuccessful months of infertility treatments, I had convinced myself that it was time to give up on the thought of a 2nd child and pursue graduate school instead - I think I've been hoping for an opportunity to go back to school ever since I graduated - but when we found out the exciting news this Spring that I was expecting, I quickly recalculated those plans so that I could be at home as much as possible for my two kids while still having a chance to work - something that's very very important to me. I love working, and I don't feel like a bad mother for saying that I need to work, full-time even. With a mixture of late night shifts with my carders and part-time daycare, I've got a good flexible schedule for batt-blasting and dyeing and mothering. I hope to continue this routine and schedule until both children enter school - and at that time I guess I'll have a brand new stack of options to explore - maybe I'll have a chance to try out the more artistic side of the fiber arts, or maybe I'll expand and take on a partner.

For now, I'm just feeling very fortunate to be able to play with color and texture all day long - and to have such a encouraging and enthusiastic group of customers and fiber co-workers. I'm also lucky that I've got no one to call off to when the morning sickness hits hard. (I've totally spent the equivalent of 2 work weeks hugging the toilet or trying desperate natural remedies for nausea). I had two nauseous evenings while pregnant with Ingrid and that was it - this is so unexpected!

As for the festival - I'm just a few days away from being 100% ready! I'm throwing a small shop update tonight, mainly to raise money for gas and travel, and then I'm certain I'll return with dozens of beautiful batts to share in my shop. Here's one that I'll be listing tonight, "Geode."

A final note - updates should resume as normal, about every 1-2 weeks, following the festival. We'll be moving across town out of the HobbledeBarn that I love in May or June, but a 3rd floor apartment isn't necessarily ideal for juggling a newborn, a clumsy toddler, and groceries. Also, winter is just too expensive in this place - you don't want to know what it costs to heat a three floor loosely-insulated / mostly-empty barn. Exact moving plans haven't been cemented yet, but I'll have a new basement studio, and while I'll miss the great views from my current studio overlooking corn fields, I'll still have a place for all of this fluff!

oh baby!

Ok, I can finally comfortably announce that I've been out of sorts and not updating my shop as frequently because I'm pregnant with our second child! I'm very excited, but this pregnancy has knocked me out with morning sickness, and I've been a bit of an emotional wreck over the combination of MDSW plans and trying to get organized for a potential move within the next two months.

I've been sitting on a  small update for a week now, and I'm hoping to have a chance to list some of it mid-day tomorrow. I've been anxious to have a European-time-friendly shop update, but I cannot organize it mid-day no matter how hard I try! It looks like I'll just have to pre-draft listings the night before in the future for those updates, which I hope to do once a month or every other month.

Our second baby is due in November, the busiest month of my woolyworkin' year, so I'm hoping to get plenty carded ahead of time so that I can stock up my shop for the months I'll be on maternity leave. That means full-time fiber-blasting this summer, if I can refrain from turning green over the scent of wool. :)  We're really feeling excited over this - the age gap between Ingrid and Baby Next will be about 3 years on the dot, and I hope that they can grow up with a comfortable companionship with one another.. eventually.

Ok, I've hit that point! I feel a little behind on everything. We've had quite the juggle this month with one car in the shop and one specific-very-positive-but-exhausting life-changing news. I'm ashamed to admit, I've had trouble over the past two weeks contacting every customer after each order, and after Paypal multi-order shipping has been non-operational on the only computer in the house hooked up properly with a printer - oy! Expect hand-written addresses until our rocky Paypal situation improves, or until I give in and switch back to Endicia.

Resolution: No update this weekend.
Further resolution: Early bedtime!

Being overwhelmed with good business is a blessing, but I need to make sure that I can keep up with it properly before slipping into bad business.

As for MDSW prep - you have no idea how excited I am to meet up with new and returning customers, play with fiber in public, and hang "Please pet the Batts!" signs all through my booth. I'll be in the Lower Corral, space 21 again. That's way out past the Main Exhibition hall, so if it's raining, wear galoshes and bring a raincoat! I'll still be there! And now, I'm signing off for tea, feedback catch-up, and more carding! Tomorrow, instead of the usual Sunday night update I'll be finally creating my new portal/portfolio website and whipping out dozens of ClassicBatts and Garden Compost batts for Maryland Sheep and Wool.

yarn parade

My original goal of 100 skeins of handspun was probably lofty. I've got a third of that goal, but progress ground to a halt after I ran dry on inspiration. I'm taking a week or two off from spinning to card, dye, and label what I've got.

This week's update was a huge success! I can't believe that I don't have a single oz. of wool left in the shop. Fortunately, I've got a bump and a half of Merino, just waiting to be dyed - so there's more to come in a couple of weeks. I'll add a few things this weekend, but after that, the next larger update will be on 3/11.

MDSW progress

I spent most of last week tinkering with dyes and planning colorways for Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival in May. Here's one of the products I've been working on : Ply Packs!

 

 A Ply Pack is a selection of 4-6 pieces of dyed top on semi-luxury bases like Merino/tencel, BFL/silk, Merino/silk, and Merino/bamboo. These cute packages nearly sold out last year at the festival, so I made sure to create quadruple the supply. I like to chain-ply these in random stripe lengths, but I found that most customers made self-striping or two-ply yarns.

My to-do list is daunting and I find myself getting distracted with fresh fleeces - baby BFL, baby Finn, Cormo X Merino, Moorit Merino, Huacaya alpaca.. I'm drowning in a delicious buffet of fine raw woolies! The wash process for me is finally streamlined - divide the fleece into 1.5 - 2 lb. chunks, soak, hot wash w/Dawn, rinse, rinse, hot wash w/Dawn, rinse, rinse - DYE! Most of my fleeces need the two hot washes since they're extra greasy fine wools, though some like the baby BFL can be polished off in just a couple of hours. Here's that baby BFL all dyed up in one of my favorite colors:

At least I'll have some happy farm-fresh fibers in my Maryland batts! It's been a goal of mine to make a slow switch to using about 30% (or more) fibers from small and/or local farmers, and this year I'm finally making progress on that goal. Of course, it's crazy-expensive to use wool from scratch - with a Merino fleece, up to half of the fleece can be lanolin, so if I'm paying $15/lb, that quickly turns into $30, not to mention all of the time it takes to skirt, wash, and pick out VM. Still, there's something really satisfying about starting with raw earthy wool and transforming it into something that's just as soft as the commercial top, but has a crimpy kinky texture and is filled with life.

I'm just going to put this out there - I'm always willing to trade finished product for high quality fleeces with low VM. My faves include anything with a lower 20's micron count, kid or yearling mohair, huacaya alpaca, and staple lengths that aren't shorter than 3".

Aaand, I better log off and finish sorting through pictures for the 2nd half of this week's update. I've got a tiny discount available (Code: HOBTEN) celebrating 6 years of selling on Etsy.