Thursday, March 29, 2012

closing the shop for the weekend

I'm vending at the Whidbey Weavers' annual spin-in this weekend (Oak Harbor High School, open to the public from 11 - 1 on Saturday, $15 otherwise for both days, including spinning lectures and clinics). All the fiber at my Etsy is coming with me, and I was going to deactivate only those listings to avoid duplicate sales, but now I'm thinking my head might explode between now and the spin-in, so it might be simplest to just put the entire shop in vacation mode.

Anyway, if you've had your eye on something, now would be a good time to get it, because it may not be there after this weekend.

Look for some fiber listings the second week of April. I'll try to be consistent about listing fiber over the next couple of months, but Black Sheep Gathering is getting ever closer, so listings will probably tail off as we get towards June. Someday I'll have enough stock to both list AND hoard for shows, but today is not that day.

Instead, today is my last day of dyeing before the show, and you can tell. The dyeing plan never survives contact with show week, and there are all sorts of random things in various stages of dyeing scattered about the studio. The clinical observer part of my brain has noticed that the last few days before a show can produce some really interesting colorways. Cleaning up my dye table becomes a low priority, so splatters of color end up juxtaposed that would never have occurred to me otherwise. Leftover dye solutions get mixed together, the wrong dye bottles get grabbed, and oftentimes beautiful, non-reproducible things happen. They get released into the wild at shows, and sometimes that's the last I see of them.

5 comments:

Susan said...

Enjoy the weekend. Wish I was able to attend. Hope to see you in June at BSG.

Susan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Thanks, Susan, and I'll see you in Eugene!

Annaliis said...

I'm curious--do you prefer to dye unspun wool or start with spun wool? I'm still such a novice :) I can see the advantage to the unspun--you don't have to worry as much about the color not taking where the thread/yarn is twisted on itself--but do you spin your own yarn?

Unknown said...

Unspun fiber and yarn dye pretty differently, at least how I do it. There are definitely some colorways that I prefer to do on fiber, and some that look better on yarn.

I did start spinning last year! It's a lot of fun, and there's so much to learn. :)