expect change

I'm getting ducks in rows in preparation for a big reveal. Blogging, for me, has increasingly been about the visual. Words sometimes fail me but articulating what I'm up to with pictures feels more intuitive and direct. With that in mind I've been hunting for a way to blog that focused more on images than text. While I was searching it occurred to me that I could incorporate a name change and why not just do the rebranding thing while I'm at it?

Consider this my two months notice, then. Because in searching for the visual solution to my blogging druthers I realized it meant a move to a more flexible platform. Namely, wordpress. I'm currently tweaking and playing with themes and layout but by November I plan on officially moving over there. Eat Agar Handspun will transform into...The Woad Spindle. Those new spinning kits inspired the new name.

So much for nightshades keeping the fauna at bay. 

Did you know that voles will eat potato plants. All of them. Or maybe it's just my voles that do. This pitiful handful is all I managed to rescue from my garden/their buffet. They made a delicious addition to some breakfast burritos last night, though. 

market preview

I have a ginormous Etsy update this week. Lots of hats and cowls and some yarn, too. I fell off the schedule wagon the past few weeks and had some catching up to do. All of these things will be at the Longmont farmer's market this Saturday from 8am to 1pm.

I've created about four colorways of natural dyed reclaimed, unsweatered yarn to take to market as well. These will be exclusive to that venue for a while until I figure out if it's worth it to add them to the line permanently. I'll also have a few short / seconds skeins in indigo if anybody wants to try them. If they turn out to be a winner I might go in for buying actual base yarn to dye up.

the yay..uh oh

I felt pretty smug at the beginning of the week when I took this shot. My out box is nearly full, ready to deliver to shops and be listed on Etsy. Then I found out I had made it into the Longmont Farmer's Market this season. They do an art market add-on every fourth Saturday. I'm so excited to be a part of it. Doing a regular market has been one of my goals. But...suddenly my box felt kind of small. Really small, actually. I've been busy making ever since. Carding, spinning and weaving. I do love a deadline and the first market is at the end of April. 

Weaving may be my new favorite thing to do. It's soothingly meditative and goes by relatively quickly compared to knitting. The best part though, is that I feel like I've found an ideal way to show off the colors and textures in my handspun. It's kind of like creating a canvas and a painting at the same time. One of my goals is to have a pile of these for the first market.

 I don't want to get out of the habit of stocking my online shop, so I'm still going to list things on Etsy as I make them. One question that gets asked a lot is whether a given item on my table can be found elsewhere and generally I always mean to list things when I get home but rarely get around to it in a timely fashion. No more of that. This week I have batts, yarn and a woven scarf.

hawks & socks

A red tailed hawk was hanging out on top of the pole in our backyard for almost an hour last weekend. Things like this (and the moose that ambled through a few weeks ago) make me wish I had a telephoto lens. This week has been a getting things wrapped up kind of week. I finished off not one but two pairs of socks/slippers. I thrummed the slippers with about two batts worth of these. The socks just barely fit Toby. I tucked in the multitudinous ends of my first official woven scarf and rewarpped the loom for the next round. There was coffee with montessori moms that resulted in a tiny revolution. And, while I may not have anything to add to the shop I do have a lot of spinning to do after a marathon carding session.

almost not winter

Since last weekend I've mostly been starting seeds, tending the kombucha (its lavender blueberry this time), spinning and knitting. Around the house kinds of stuff. We recently got a foot or so of snow and I've been reluctant to wade out to the studio to do more weaving. My test project is off the loom so I need to rewarp it and start a new project, probably something wide with the chunky reclaimed cashmere yarn I dyed with woad this fall. I can see it as a soft cowl, maybe with leather closures.


 My first big order of seeds came in the mail. I'm trying to focus on perennials this year. Or at least things that will either reseed or overwinter. And more flowers. There were patches of toadflax around the backyard this summer so I'm going to try some heirloom linaria. It's basically the same plant, but in lots of colors. I've also got pansies and hollyhock and cosmos. The kids picked seeds out, too. They started a plot of their own down in the northwest corner of the yard. Anais wants to try white strawberries, litchi tomatoes and dragonfruit. That last one will probably be more of a houseplant, but it should like hanging out in the kitchen well enough.

All that puttering resulted in something to show for myself. I finished up three pairs of fingerless gloves and reserved four batts from a personal batch I made over the holidays. It has tons of yak and silk and when I soaked the first round of yarn it smelled like aspen leaves. All that means really, is that I finally have a proper shop update this week with knits and fiber batts.

weaving

I've had a floor/table loom for years. It belonged to Gerry's grandma and weaving has always seemed like such a good idea. The next logical step in my fiber craft education. But, between the hinky jargon and the misunderstood notion that it takes two people to warp one of these things, its mostly just sat around. Until last weekend. After watching a bunch of video tutorials and one adorable grandpa making rag rugs I finally set up the loom. I'm just doing plain weave and I put the floor treadle...things away because setting up the table loom side seemed easier to rig up. But I love it! I'm definitely going to be adding bigger woven items to the shop soon. Right now I'm doing what will probably become a mobius scarf out of some reserve Eat Agar that I've been holding on to for years now.
When I was still spinning OOAK skeins I would save ten or so yards from each for my own self. I could never find a project that seemed right for the 500 yards I ended up with. Weaving it all into one long, saori-esk scarf is what I was waiting for. It looks pretty amazing.

In order to feel like I was geeting more than just personal projects
done I simultaneously washed some wool and mixed up a few more Sukoshi batches. The jacob and merino wool turned out super soft. The suffolk got a wee bit felted as I was impatient toward the end and tossed in the dryer. It was set to cool, but the agitation did it in. It's salvageable but I'm probably going to save it for a dye day to redeem it a little. Spot's jacob went in with a bunch of woad dyed silk and alpaca along with teal and undyed hemp, auburn huayaca alpaca, a handful of yak and blue sparkle. Emma's merino became the base for alkanet dyed alpaca, seafoam bamboo and aspen dyed silk. There's some purple sparkle and yellow and plum flax in there, too. I'll be spinning up one or both batches this week.

 In unfibery news, I scored a broken birdfeeder at Home Depot for a penny (hooray for cashiers who take pity). Someone had dropped it, but all it needed was some glue and tape. I hung it out on the front porch, where the wind doesn't get too crazy and the chickadees found it a few days later.
I got this year's seed order done, too. It includes trees! Lots of trees! Trees for fruit and trees for chickens and trees for wind breaks and wildlife. It also includes a soil blocker, a toy I've been wanting to play with for a while now. And there are garlic sprouts in the cold frame, some of them are four inches tall and reaching up through their leafy blanket.

intentions

     The month of January was for me time. Selfish knitting, a beer class with my mister, kombucha making, and generally hanging out around the house without the guilt of a to do list hanging over my head. It went by fast but toward the end I was missing the routine of work.
     Even though my stay-cation had a few days left last week, I started binge listening to indie biz podcasts like AIM and Tara Swiger's Explore Your Enthusiasm. It was so inspiring I ended up breaking out paper and pens to plan out my goals for the upcoming year. There's something about writing it all down that makes it real, attainable. Starting with the big stuff and breaking those down into 'actionable steps' transforms the conceptual into to doable. For me, anyway.

Here are my big goals for 2015:

~ take better care of my vendors. 

~ focus on what sells

~ experiment with a few others.

~ find a regular market to sell at

~ teach 

~ create a look book

~ publish something

personal goals:

~ 50 pairs of socks

~ yoga & archery

      I also wrote out my production timeline, the steps I take to get from raw fiber to finished object. Even though it lives in my head, it's a chattering beast. I have a habit of trying to do all the tihngs all at once which usually results in getting very little actually finished. I'm hoping that having it in hardcopy form will help me avoid vapor lock and stay on track. Structure = good.

    

Look what I scored for $3 at Goodwill today! 

Gonna make me a scarf...just as soon as I figure out how to set it up. Hmmm. My Moo stickers finally got here, too.