AND I just figured out how to make the photos go into the middle of the post instead of just on top! How about these 'shrooms? And nice stump, and lovely beaver pond?
Update:
Yesterday turned out to be a great day. I sold 3 bunnies to Andrea at Black Berry Hill Farm. Yay – 3 buns off to a good home. AND I did errands, oh how the errands do pile up. I will totally not bore the universe with a list of my errands, though it is tempting since after all, they take up so much time and if I don’t list them, well, it seems like what the hell did I do with myself all day (btw – I LURVE using Word to write my entry instead of writing directly on the blog b/c it corrects my bad spelling and capitalizes my “I”s). I also finished photographing the skeins though now I need to download them. And put them on a cd to bring to the work computer. It never ends.
I plan to go into work today after I get myself to the Food Bank Farm (our local CSA – Community Supported Agriculture farm), and call the store about the back pack part that I need and and and……. (again with the errands – see what I meant about griping?).
So I guess I better go. Oh and we saw Harry Potter last night. It was great – like seeing old friends!
Ttfn
I survived the fair, and I survived thanksgiving… and while with hordes of family at TG, I managed to convince some of them (Yay Jen! Yay Mike! Yay Ali!) to try my little spinning kit instructions. So now I have some ideas of what must be changed to make them more understandable. Maybe once our knitting groups starts back up in the new year, I will bring them along and see if the knitters want to try them out. Well, as promised, here are some of the drawings that I worked so hard on. Aren’t they great?? W
ell, considering my lack of drawing skills I think they are pretty darn good!
Apologies for being a Blog Drag and not updating as so many bloggers do so well. I have just missed my bus home from work – so I have a few minutes to spare! Very few meaning I had better get hopping if I really actually mean to update.
Big update: I will have a booth at another local fair. This one is at a local Waldorf school (no, not the salad – the school). The folks at these schools are very “into” all things natural, fibery (the kids are taught to knit quite young) and “from scratch.” So perhaps I will fit right in. Did I mention the miserable time I had at the last fair? Yes, I guess I did. Well, let’s hope this one is better.
As for Rhinebeck, I had a nice time there, though I am still not entirely sure why the darling hubbie came along. He is not a fiber kind of guy. Still, we had a nice dinner in Great Barrington on the way home so that part was good. I did not do so great on my Bingo card, still, it was fun to meet a few people. Now, of course, anyone that HAD checked out my blog because of that will by now have stopped checking it because it never changes. AUGGGG. My bad.
And now I must go or I will miss the next bus. At least tonight is my local spinning night.
New post, which threatens to be long since it’s been so long since I updated, except that who has time to write at all, let alone a long post. Still I will try.
thing!!!! This should be fun and should make Rhinebeck more enjoyable since sometimes (true confession time) I go and just feel jealous seeing everyone’s booths and seemingly so successful fiber businesses.
1) I must research events. Obviously they are not created equal (there was hardly anyone at the fair yesterday, there were very few booths, and I don’t think much of anyone was selling much)
2) I must come up with better Wind Remediation Equipment. The wind yesterday was gusty and everything kept blowing around. The booth next to me was selling scented candles – they managed fine in the wind, but
wind + soft fluffy fiber stuff = not good.
3) I must come up with more saleable items, without destroying my integrity. Does that make sense? I want saleable things, but there’s no point making things that will sell, but that I don’t enjoy making or that don’t satisfy my creative urge. I am in the (presumably) lucky position that I don’t have to actually make a living on my creative efforts. So I need to find a way to sell yarn that I spin. That’s really the crux of it because that is what I wan to make. There’s no sense making some cute little doo-dad that the buying public might want, but that I personally think is stupid. On this topic, my thinking is to come up with knitting kits (something I had thought about long ago) because a lot of people are interested in knitting, perhaps knit a bit, but for them it is too big of a leap to just buy a skein of handspun yarn and figure out how to make something from it. So kits, or at a minimum instructions for how to make use of my skeins is a good idea.
This was my weekly “day off” from work and I had hopes for accomplishing some useful things, but instead I had a very bad bunny experience. I actually only know of one person (that’s you, Togbean) who might potentially read this, and I should warn you, that if you get easily queasy or don’t enjoy hearing about revolting things, you might want to just move on to the next blog.
I, however, will plow bravely forward with describing this because it is truly disturbing and I want to get the whole thing out of my system. Ok, here goes. I have many bunnies, and this spring one of the 3 litters of babies included this one that was fawn and white in a pretty pattern (a lot like our corgi dog) and, best of all, with blue eyes. I usually only keep rabbits from especially good breeding combinations, and/or that are especially big, healthy, strong and with really excellent wool. Well, he was big, seemed quite healthy etc and in combo with the unusual color/eyes I decided to keep him. And he’s really a very nice bunny. I named him “Frank,” as in Sinatra.
Today I decided to clip Frank’s hair. I had brushed him recently, but he had gone off his feed – a pretty good indication of incipient wool block (something angora rabbits get) so I had treated him with several doses of Vaseline. It seemed to take care of the problem, but he had gotten quite a bit on his coat, thus the decision to clip it all off. In the process of clipping (I think I am making this way longer than I need to in order to avoid describing the actual awful thing….) I noticed a really nasty sore under his chin. It was truly truly truly nasty. It was open and seemed to be filled with dark convoluted stuff, I swear like a brain. And then I noticed that something inside seemed to be moving and I knew I was dealing with some sort of parasite. I’ve seen fly maggots inside open wounds before, and this was different. I have also heard of insects that lay eggs under the skin and then develop there. I suspected that this kind of insect larva was what I was dealing with. I did a quick google search, and yes, indeed, rabbits have a bott-fly parasite whose larvae develop in just this way. The solution is to smear it with Vaseline, and when the larva starts to emerge to get air, you pull it out. OK, I did it. And what emerged was immense!!! Horrible!! Disgusting!! It is practically the size of my thumb and dark and has all these folds down its big fat maggot body. I will say, that as a biologist, which I am in my other life, I find it quite fascinating. But as a caretaker of rabbits, for whom I try to keep life as happy and stable and safe and healthy as possible, it was awful awful awful.
And that is not even the worse of it. If I had removed the larva and that was the end of it, I could deal. But unfortunately, the rabbit now seems to have a big and infected abscess from the whole ordeal. I have cleaned it, and packed it with gauze, but I am afraid it is too much. Having lots of rabbits as I do, I cannot justify the expense of taking them to the vet when things go wrong. I have gone that route enough times to know that I would be cranking up a lot of $50 vet bills that I cannot afford. So I muster through as best I can. Unfortunately I cannot get antibiotics without a vet visit, and I don’t think Frank is going to make it without them. I do feel bad. On the other hand – I try to keep things in perspective – he is actually the result of a father/daughter breeding which is not the best thing to do. So if he does not make it, well, believe me there are many other rabbits. So far he does not seem in pain, is eating and seems comfortable. btw - the photo at the top is of Frank in his younger days.
That ends my story and is an example of WHY I CAN NEVER SEEM TO GET ANYTHING DONE!!!!!
Reality has struck in the form of work which has started back up. But I cannot complain (yet). Classes will not actually start until Friday, and lab (which is what I teach) starts next week. So for these few days, I have been plugged into my work computer which has Photoshop. I am trying to learn how to use it, so that I could actually post GOOD photos onto my web site. Maybe I will even try putting one on this blog.
But back to FIBER NEWS. What have I accomplished towards my goal? [and I will make a little aside here to show how my angst-filled psyche works: while walking the dog this morning, I got to thinking about my goal of selling skeins of yarns at craft festivals etc. I got real discouraged thinking about the reality of it all. Let’s say I pay $50 – or sometimes it is $100 – for a booth. Let’s say I actually make some sales and get that $50, or $100, back. All fine and good, but that does not really account for the time put into making the yarn. I will probably price my yarn to give myself a tight $10 an hour for the time spent making it. But that would not really add in the cost of the wool, or the “dead” time. After all, if I spend an hour actually spinning a skein, there’s also all the time spent tidying up my spinning area, measuring and weighing things…. I do add in the time spent on carding and blending, but not really the washing time, since I usually do that in between other things. But the really discouraging thought was that there I will be at this fair all day long. Will I make enough to cover the entire day? After all, I could be doing many things on an entire Saturday: hiking, housework, reading. On the other hand, given a free Saturday, what would I usually do? Spend it spinning or knitting or carding. And I’m hoping that part of what I could do at a fair would be spin while people look at my stuff. So ok. Too bad if reaching my goal does not also make me filthy rich….]
Really back to really fiber. What have I accomplished? On the physical side of things, I managed to finish making a rack to hold skeins of yarn. I made a table, though it still needs a little work. And I set everything up under my EX-UP tent and took photos of it all. This was needed for that application form I mentioned. And….I finished and sent in the application!!!! Big step for me. Now I wait for the powers that be to judge my application and make a decision on whether or not I am “in.” Meanwhile, I have also been rewinding all my skeins so they have a consistent form, and I have been cataloguing them. A bit obsessive of me, but it makes me happy. Once they are all wound and catalogued I will start photographing them. And maybe THEN I can put the photos on a web site that does not yet exist. So there’s where I’m at. Whew.
