Monday, March 19, 2012

Alliance Women's Fiber Fest

Well this was our first show of the season and it proved to be so in every way. I realized that the truck is more necessary in  this venture than I realized. We did get everything there and back, but it two loads there and luckily we got it all to fit in one load back.

My husband has a very artistic eye. This should really come as no surprise to. I have used his eye many times in my crochet and to put rovings together. I had him working on labels and price tags the night before the show.( I will admit I am the perpetual procrastinator. ) He did such an awesome job and even added some extras.

I need more little baskets( and big ones too). This seems to be a never ending problem. I am constantly putting things in baskets and never seem to have enough of them. I find the baskets useful. I put the roving into them loose so that people have a chance to touch and feel them.

The rack is wonderful and very useful. I was in love with the rack the minute I saw it and have fallen in love with it even more over this past weekend. I finally figured out how to get the legs off of it. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. It was one of those things were you had to be smarter than the machine. I set it up and only found one fault with it which wasn't exactly a fault. A friend had some baskets attached to her racks and now I would like some to put on.

It was a rather slow show and we ended up selling more stuff  to other vendors than to visitors. Our big sellers came from leftovers of an auction buy. We had some books that had water damage and some cable needles that I just don't need right now. We were selling them at discount prices and if it wasn't for them I would've been really worried about the booth fee. I had 3 bigger sales of the day and luckily these made our day. When I did the final tally for the day I was extremely happy to see that we had actually made more than last year.

a picture of our booth.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Updates

Ok so I've been really bad at this lately. I'll admit it. I get busy and forget to post stuff.


At home: My grandpa passed away this week so that involved a quick trip out to Iowa. Which involved a rental car and 3 days in it with my sister and 2 little girls. It was good to see family that I haven't seen in forever again. I just wish that I wasn't seeing them at a funeral and we could all get together more often. My mother's family is thrown to the end of the earth almost literally. They live all over the country. I used the occasion to get pictures of all of them together and the separate family groups. My mom also used this time to get a group picture of her 6 kids. This is the first time we have all been together in a little over 5 years. I have to get the pictures off my camera yet and see if editing is needed and then create a file and send it out to everyone. May start on that this afternoon.


On the farm:  Lambing is coming along at a slower rate than I would like. We had a nice spurt there for a little while and now we are only having 2 or 3 ewes lamb a week. The older lambs are looking good and I'm happy with the fiber coming in on the fiber lambs. We started out with a string of ewe lambs and are now running into a string of ram lambs. Mostly 3/4 BFL.

In the shop: I had ordered some top from an etsy shop. Loved spinning it. It just seemed to glide onto the wheel. I wanted to navajo ply it, because it had a wonderful colorway that I didn't want to muddy up with a 2 ply. I needed to work on my navajo ply techniques. I finally felt comfortable the other night and pulled it out and went to work on it. The ply came out better than I had ever anticipated. Watching the youtube videos really did seem to help.

We have our first show of the season coming up this week. I can't wait for it. Of course right now I'm in a little of a panic mood. Trying to think if I've got everything. Hoping for a good show with a  good turnout.