Another sale this month

November is definitely turning into a profitable month for me.  I received my 3rd online sales order today plus my local yarn shop Wild Yarns sold a skein of my hand spun yarn this month.  Sales definitely keep the creative juices flowing and boost ones confidence.

It was a fairly crappy week for me but I stayed focus on finishing the headbands and actually spin up 3 different fibers this week.  Yesterday didn't see any sales for me at the ranch but word is getting out in the neighborhood so hopefully December will see sales for many of us.  I do love seeing the baby alpacas and llamas on the ranch every week.  We have been lucky to have nice weather (no snow) but sometimes windy thus far.  I definitely use my time wisely while there.   Be it taking product photos, completing projects or cataloging merchandise.



CVM Headband



BFL Shades of Brown



Working on more yarn to sell locally at Wild Yarns - thinking the BFL in shades of Brown, Alpaca/Milk protein and Shetland Gray yarn.  I left the alpaca and CVM headbands at the shop on the ranch and will be listing the purple wool one on Etsy today. 

I just discovered there is a yarn for ruffle scarfs made out of Mohair and Wool for sale which is similar to the Flounce yarn.  Need to find a local source for purchasing and listing in the shop.  The purple Flounce scarf I made for my sister she loves and actually wore for her birthday outings.  We both love purple!

I have ordered some unique gift tags that I want to include with sales so I am hoping they arrive by Tuesday so I can include a couple in today's sale.  The skeins have been sorted as to which ones need yarn labels and which ones I need to wash/finish/measure.  Still need to research patterns for fingerless mittens with a flap cover.  I am thinking of making them with the Llama/Soy Silk yarn or Merino wool red.  Need to find patterns and send them to my friend for final approval though.  Well I am off to clean yarn and post items on Etsy/EBay!

Spinning cotton bolls

So I broke down and opened up the package of cotton bolls tonight.  I was supposed to defer this to the weekend but the thrill of working with new fiber got the better of me.  I am using my lightest weight drop spindle and teased fiber from one of the bolls (removed the seeds).  So far so good, it is spinning up pretty easily for me and I am adding lots of twist to the fiber before winding it onto the spindle.  I relaxed a bit of the yarn to allow it to fold back on itself and it stayed strong along with looking like a decent 2 ply yarn.  Not sure if I will ply it with the white wool roving, white huacaya fleece or white suri locks as of yet.  Still have 9 1/2 bolls of cotton to spin so that decision is on the distant horizon.

Fleece market day was a lot of fun and yes I kept my purchases within reason.  I bought some mohair (goat) fiber that is naturally black and white.  The fiber is clean but the ladies from Sister Sheep had washing instructions for future mohair purchases.  Also purchased a very small amount of their CVM wool fiber which so reminds me of my very first fleece purchase.  This fiber is in the raw stage so it will need to be scoured prior to spinning.  There was a very cute lamb by the name of Jane who escaped from its keepers and ran across the street to the other shopping center.  I was frozen with horror when she ran across the street and we were very fortunate that cars in both directions had stopped.  Jane stayed with us for a few more hours and then went back home to her ranch.  The angora rabbit was beautiful and I got some good advice on spinning up angora for the future.  The owner of the rabbit also has alpacas and we met up again on Sunday for Shearing.  Of course we had 2 alpacas at the shop both boys who were quite well behaved.  Black Romeo had a thing for sniffing my spinning wheel and me when I wasn't paying him any attention.  Overall it was a great fiber sales day for all and an educational day all the way around.

Sunday was shearing day and 65 animals were shorn including several Llamas.  I aided in skirting a lot of fleeces that day.  Mr. Midnight is a rescued llama that hadn't been shorn in a very long time.  He got trimmed on Sunday and the joke was that I wanted his fleece - not!  Although he has beautiful coloring his fleece was a felted/matted mess and I am sure he is feeling so much better to get that coat of off him.  We had quite a few volunteers including my son and lots of camaraderie that day which is what makes shearing day so much fun.  There were actually a few ladies that volunteered throughout the day to assist with skirting even if it was just passing fiber to them for the trash.  Good learning experience and most importantly I did not add to my growing fleece pile! 

This month I am exploring markets for the fiber/yarn products and looking into broadening my marketing campaigns on the web.  Have to remember that I haven't been in business for a year and that things will fall into place when the time is right.  I work my business everyday in some manner and that is the important thing.  I have the llama/silk roving on the wheel; an Estonian lace scarf on one set of needles; a cotton cowl/hood on another set of needles and of course now the cotton on a drop spindle.  I LOVE FIBER!!!!

Llama fiber is here!

I apologize for the delay in posting - time has just gotten away from me.  The llama/silk roving arrived and it is absolutely wonderful.  Fiber fanatics will understand my drooling over the new arrival.  The mill took a nice fleece and added soy silk to it to make this roving.  It contains very little vegetable matter - far less than I was thinking it would.  I have sorted it into 1 and 2 ounce bags for merchandising.  I will be keeping 5 oz for spinning and making into a scarf.  It is so impressive that I was motivated to sort 2 fleeces and sent them to the mill for processing last week.  One will be roving (my cria alpaca fleece) and have bamboo added to it the other will have wool added and be converted to worsted weight yarn.  It takes about 4 to 6 weeks for processing so I hope to have the product back by June for summer festival sales.

I spun up my first batt of fiber into a sports weight yarn.  It is definitely a different technique to spin batts versus rovings but for me the preparation allowed me to spin a thicker yarn style.  On the wheel is some older wool roving which is being spun lace weight - perhaps to sale as no project comes to mind at the moment.  The neck warmer (scarflette) is complete and I just need to add buttons.  Will be getting the girls at the office opinion on button options this coming week.  I am nearly finished with another preemie hat for Children's Hospital.  This one has a heart motif on it.  I thinking of repeating the motif on a larger hat and the big idea this week is sachet bags!  The bags should be pretty simple to knit up and create with a variety of intricate patterns which will satisfy my creative needs.  From my online research it seems that most are created in a simple strip panel and then seamed together along with adding the potpourri.  Cotton yarn is the most common type of yarn used for the sachet which I do have in the stash.  I think one of the projects for the Durango trip will be a bag similar to the wedding bag I made last August.  It calls for crochet cotton yarn in a small gauge and was quite intricate.  The blue and green crochet thread will make great color statements to the pattern.

Shearing day is 2 weeks away - yeah!  I am down to 5 fleeces in the house and know at least one will be made into yarn due to its coarseness.  When I was sorting through the fleeces for the last batch to the mill I realized that I had 2 different colors in fleeces destined for yarn.  In the future all fleeces will be viewed in daylight not a semi lit barn to aid in judging their color schemes.  This fall I think I will add some tan/light brown fleeces to the mix versus my brown/burgundy fleeces.  Still want to try my hand at cotton and a good CVM fleece as I hear great things about them and believe my first one was not a good representative of the breed.  There is a group on Ravelry that spins up a different bred of fiber a month and records comments, accomplishments and errors with the fiber.  So far I have just been reading about their adventures but would like to eventually participate and contribute to the group.  They do domestic and rare breeds from various animals which is educational and pretty cool too.  Well that's all that is happening thus far in fiber world.  No sales thus far on Etsy but I am prepping items to sale at a festival or too this summer so things are moving along.  Until next time - try to keep the fiber purchases in tow if possible!