I Took The Leap

I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing, but I am officially an eBay seller as of today!  I’ve been thinking about it for over a year as an avenue for my handcrafted soap and lotion, but have been dragging my feet.  I began to resent my time sitting at the computer and didn’t think I needed to spend more time there.  But this spinning thing has caused a situation.  I love to spin, I love to knit.  But I can’t begin to knit all the yarn I’m spinning and I’m acquiring a stash (on top of the original stash).  I am taking it to the farmer’s market but people in my part of the globe think Red Heart is great yarn, and expensive at that.  I have sold one skein at the farmer’s market three weeks ago, but honestly, I think that was a fluke.  So we’ll see.  If it sells on eBay, great, I’ll buy more roving to spin. If not, I’ll keep it and use it myself and go broke buying more roving to spin.  I’ve developing quite a habit here.  The last batch of roving I bought seemed like an enormous amount, about two pounds, it seemed enough to last for a year.  I’m more than halfway through it now and already thinking about ordering more. 

Sorry Ruby, I should have asked if you wanted it first since you seemed a bit interested.  I’ll let you choose what color you want and spin some special for you if the purple sells on Ebay.   

So I guess if this works out I’ll put my soap on Ebay also.  I’m being cautious since I don’t want a lot of things to manage, maybe only putting a couple things up there at a time.  The kids will be out of school THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW and I’ll be a tad occupied for the next couple months so I am only taking baby steps. 

I cannot believe the school year is over.  Where did it go?  In many ways I’m relieved, Middle Child had a horrid year with a horrid teacher and Missy Moodle really needs a break too, all day kindergarten is a total nightmare and we should all revolt against it. (Just say no to adding Pre K to public schools!) But on the other hand, I love my days off to do whatever I please, you know, dishes, laundry, vacuuming.  But hey, at least I can do it in peace when the kidlets are in school.  Have you ever noticed you can’t hear kids ripping each other limb from limb when a vacuum is running?  (Vacuuming is actually harmful to children and should only be performed when they are not on the premises.  There should be a warning label on all vacuums.)

I’m just not sure I’m ready for full time motherhood again.  It’s a total emotional drain.  Thankfully I’ve scheduled many camps and classes, and tutoring so they won’t be bored.  Too bad gas prices spiked and I’ll have to get a part time job to be able to afford it.

So, okay, I’m ready for Summer break I suppose.  Do I have a choice?

(And I think my first blogaversary is this week!  I survived a year.  What the hell am I doing?) 

You Know When You’re A Grown-up When . . .

As I’ve mentioned here before, I succumbed to the pressure and am now spending my every Thursday evening as a vendor at the local farmer’s market.  It IS good, cheap advertising for the soap business, and I almost don’t mind being there since I take Charlotte along and spin as the parade of people go by.  Oh sure, there’s people who stop and ask about the wheel, the soaps, or just say, “What are you doing?”, but for the most part I’m just sitting there spinning for about three hours.  It’s actually kind of fun.  But last night at the market, the first thirty minutes were definately not fun. 

I had arrived about three p.m. to set up my table since I wouldn’t have much time to do it after the kids were out of school.  Two weeks prior I arranged my spot at the market with Linda, who guaranteed me a fabulous spot near one of the entrances.  I was very excited to get such a high visibility spot since I signed up late.  I covered the table of soaps, knitted things and spun yarns with a tablecloth and weighted it down and left.  When I arrived near the starting time of the market I was surprised to discover that someone else was in my spot.  It was an enormous table with a black table cloth loaded with fancy-schmancy overpriced jewelry.   (This annoys me to no end that they allow people to resell merchandise at the market, which began as a ‘handmade or homegrown only’ market only a few years ago.)  The woman at the jewelry booth was clearly unnerved by the entire situation and before I arrived had even shoved my table several feet from where I had left it.  Next to my table on the other side were two women selling baked goods.  I chatted with them a bit and they seemed very nice.  Someone with the jewelry woman was sitting in the chair I had left with my table.  But being the bigger person I said, “Oh, that’s okay, I don’t need it yet.”   I WAS really peeved at the situation and wanted to wrap my hands around Linda’s neck (the woman in charge of booking the market).   The jewelry woman was clearly having kittens over the situation, she and her hubby were having a mini conference off to the side and they kept pointing at me.  “Looks like Linda promised this spot to both of us.”  I said to her at one point.  She replied several times, “This is the spot she promised me six weeks ago!”  I said, “Whatever. Linda will sort it all out when she gets here and there’s nothing we can do about it now.”  I ignored her from that point and set up my wheel and uncovered the table, positioned everything and sat down to spin.  I was not going to get ruffled by this dumb woman and this horrid situation.  But inside I was screaming.  Soon Linda appeared and said, “Looks like we have a problem.”  She claimed that my spot was actually on the opposite corner and acted like it was my error, which I knew for a fact she had double booked the spot.  (Later in the evening she apologized for it being her mistake.)  I was nice as I could possibly be to her and recounted our phone conversation about which spot would be mine, which she then claimed was a misunderstanding on my part.   I totally wanted to scream and yell and drop kick both women across the market, but I fought the urge and remained in control.  She showed me two other spots and let me choose which one I wanted.  I said, “I assume you’ll be helping me move my table.”  To which she replied, “Of couse!”  I was shocked.  Since there was no point in arguing, we moved my stuff and I quickly settled in, fuming all the while.  One woman from the baked goods table even pitched in to help me move my stuff.  Some people are just nice, I tell ya.

This new spot is actually is better than the old one.  The traffic is almost as good if not better, it will not be in the sun as the other spot will be, and I have about double the amount of space I had before which will be great for other spinners who will be joining me in the coming weeks.  Linda stopped by later in the evening to thank me for being so gracious and to apologize to me for the entire mess, which was her fault.  She said the jewelry woman was quite nasty to her.   She stayed and chatted a few minutes and even said she loved my soaps and offered to use one of her contacts to get my soap into a local gift shop.

Peeps, the moral of the story is that your mother was right, niceness counts.  Though it takes restraint, and it might feel better in the short term to say exactly what’s on your mind, it doesn’t pay off in the long run.  Though I did lose my ‘prime spot’ which I was promised, I ended up with so much more.  When did I turn into such a grown-up?

Warshrags & Handspun

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In honor of Teacher Appreciation Day I whipped up a few warshrags/dishcloths/facecloths and plan to give them along with some of my soaps.  What lucky duckies those teachers are!  I still wouldn’t trade them for a million years. It’s the only job that’s harder than parenting.  And yes, they DO deserve three months off.  I should be making some cookies to go along with it, but they’ll get what they get.  I am already making cupcakes for Miss Moodle’s fake birthday at school tomorrow.  WTF?  Why must they torture us so?  It’s bad enough to add extra pressure to parents to come up with a extra way cool treat to take, but there’s the added confusion of “Mom, I thought my birthday was in the summer? Am I having it early this year?”  Five year olds do not get that you can celebrate your birthday on a day which is NOT your birthday. It causes major confusion in my house every year.  It’s all just too much.

 The yarn photo above is of my most awesome yarn to date.  I bought it dyed from Abi and absolutely love her fibers.  I think it took me weeks to spin it since I spin a little here and a little there.  The coolest thing about it is that I used the Navajo plying technique and it really worked great.  I love this yarn.  I am heading off to the farmer’s market on Thursday and hoping to sell it and some soap as well.  How do you price hand spun yarn?  I poked around Etsy.com and ebay, and researched different postings about it, but basically I  have to charge what this market will bear.  I really want to sell it.  I think I’m putting $40 on it.  Is that too much?  The fiber was about $10 and I have about four hours in it.  I really would love to charge $50 but I’d never get it.  My friend Philip charges .18/ft. for his handspun, but that puts these 190 yds at $102.  I am positive I’d never sell it for that unless I broke it into three skeins and sold it on ebay.  I love to buy from ebay, but I don’t want the hassle of selling there.  I don’t like being a slave to the ‘puter.  I’ve debated ditching this blog a zillion times because it takes so much time and my ‘puter and I are barely on a first name basis.  ( And he’s sneaky.  Once he asked me if I wanted to make something my main email server thingie and I said yes and I spent all day trying to undo it.  It’s best to just quickly do my bit with him and then move on.)

Baseball season kicked off on Saturday and I spent about five hours with my butt on a bleacher.  Ugh.  This is going to be one long season.  And I will have a misshapen behind by game 5.  We have about 45 games to go to.  The sucky thing is that about 10 will be in freezing weather, 10 will be in rain just enough to play in & not enough to cancel, 20 will be in blistering heat and in the direct sun and/or night games with May Flies flying about my head or gnats biting my legs, and five will be perfect weather, or cancelled, hopefully for bad weather.  I did enjoy Saturday’s games, I nearly finished my second sock from my handspun white corriedale/romney blend.   They’re awesome.  Photos soon.  I do miss some of the game due to knitting, okay, much of the game actually, but if I have to sit there I’m going to knit, end of story.

A disturbing note…okay, two disturbing notes. 

1. The wack job who (allegedly) burned a local church down appears to have done it because he was a satanist and hated organized religion/Christianity.  Yeeks, right here in river city.  What is our little burg coming to?  It’s really scary.  And no, I don’t believe his story that he broke in to the church to cook a burger and accidently burnt the place down.  Did we all fall off turnip trucks yesterday?  Good story tho.

2. Oldest Logical Child informed me that his 5th grade class is learning about global warming and two films they watched last week were: 1) An Inconvenient Truth, and  2)  The Day After Tomorrow.  Holy cripes, that movie scared the crap out of me when I saw it.  I was looking at every gray cloud like it could cause the end of our world.  I am so tempted to call the teacher and find out what other information she presented.  It seems pretty one sided.  I think she needs to read this.  Scientists do not agree on what is causing our weather changes no do they agree on what should be done about it.  And furthermore, Al Gore has no place in my kid’s classroom.

Tomorrow I’m planning to enjoy my last day of work. I don’t have to go back until the beginning of next semester in August.  Whoopee!   Now if only the paychecks would keep arriving…

Garden Eyesore

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 In a previous post I mentioned that DH and I had indeed gone off the deep end.  Today I offer up the proof.  It really was a group effort, I should give all involved parties credit.  Middle son made the bird house in scouts and painted it.  The downside: whenever some smart alex sees me knitting they say, “Whatcha knitting?  Oh, is that for the tree?”  Sheesh.  What have I done?

 In local news, some disturbed person tried to burn down half our downtown churches last saturday night.  The second photo above is what’s left of one of them.  It demolished the entire church, which was 118 years old.  It’s around the corner from our church, which was not touched.  Jean bean, I am worried for your mom, how’s she holding up?  I’m sure they’re already planning to rebuild.  The church is billed as the first methodist church west of the Mississippi.   The place was crawling with ATF agents yesterday as this is a federal offense.  I bet the arsonist not count on that.  They will be put away for an eternity, or we hope.

I’ll try to be a better blogger, but peeps, it’s going to be hard with kidlets out of school soon.  And the next 8 weeks of my life will be spent at the ball diamonds as all three are in ball this year.  In the coming weeks are: talent show, piano recital, three thousand ball games, science camp, basketball camp, nature camps, swim lessons, scout camps, church camps.  How much is gas?