Why natural fibers?

Before I even started this journey to sell my handmade items I was working with natural fibers.  When I taught myself to knit several years ago it was with forest green Red Heart yarn which I never quite made anything out of.  I think this was eventually donated to one of senior centers here in Denver.  I discovered the shop Showers of Flowers which had a huge showroom of all kinds of yarn.  Pillows, shawls and sweaters were made using non natural fiber yarns in a variety of weights and colors.  At that time I wasn't even aware of natural fibers but more concerned with cost/yardage for projects.

Then I went to the Estes Park Wool Market and I purchased a spinning and a CVM wool fleece.  My next step was attending the Western Stock Show were I met the alpaca ranchers and my dear friends at Ancient Treasures Alpaca Ranch in Arvada, CO.  I  have participated in shearing day for several years now and have skirted fleeces the past 2 seasons.  It has and continues to be a great learning experience for me and gazing at the alpacas in their pastures is just so peaceful.

So why is it that I focus on natural fibers you ask?  For me it is a means to support ranchers and small markets throughout the U.S. and world.  My journey into spinning natural fibers has introduced me to several sheep ranchers and alpaca/llama ranchers within the western U.S. face to face.  When I took up spinning cotton I gained such an appreciation of our ancestors and a better understanding of the cotton gins importance.  There are so many fibers (animals and plants) to explore and spin.  The groups on Ravelry who spin various fleeces per month have been a huge source of information for me and fan base for my work.

For me the niche of natural fibers places me amongst a caring group of people who love animals and enjoy working with their hands.  They are forthcoming with advice, understanding of trials and tribulations and confidence builders on new journeys with fiber.  In our societal "Green Environment" focus working with these fibers fits just right in while helping to maintain bloodlines/crops for future generations to explore. 

What are your favorite types of yarn to work with?  Do you lean towards a specific brand or manufacturer?

New listings in the shop

Not only did I deliver yarn to be sold in my LYS today but I also took product photos.  I listed about 5 new yarns in the shop today.  All of them are hand spun creations with decent yardage.

Taking it easy this weekend

I am taking it easy this weekend.  Going to the ballet with my niece today to see Swan Lake - yeah.  Tomorrow I will be delivering hand spun yarn to my LYS and signing contracts to be on consignment there.

Goals for the weekend are to take product pictures of the spun yarn, finesse pricing on my yarn and improve the yardage on a couple of skeins.  I should be able to accomplish these things and it will be nice here in Denver this weekend to help with photos.

My wholesale order of bags arrived and will work really well to store/ship roving.  I also purchased some dyed mohair roving which arrived this week and feels really soft.  BFL dyed roving was also purchased this week and should be arriving in a few days.  I do like how BFL spins up and it seems to take dye rather well.  We shall see how this new batch measures up to my first purchase as it is from a different vendor.

We were featured in a treasury this week and received some views from it.  Minimal views have occurred from the Ennea Collective ad but it is still early in the month.  Ennea Collective is an online magazine dedicated to showcasing objects created with hand spun yarn.  You never truly know how well an ad will do in a venue until you try it.  The last 30 days have brought in 12 views thus far but no sales.  Oh well exposure if always good and perhaps will bring in sales closer to the holidays.

The alpaca hat is being re-worked as I didn't have enough yarn to make a large hat.  It is being made in the smaller version and I have just finished the twisted cable pattern.  This time it is being made in white but will be similar to the brown version.

Creation of Yarn

I had fun at the ranch on Sunday.  It was good to reconnect with the alpaca owners for a few hours.  The baby alpacas are so adorable and I did pick out a fleece for next spring amongst them.  He is white with hints of fawn within his fleece.  Last year's crias are so big now - these animals grow so fast but still remain docile.  It is always good to meet the folks that come to the open house.  Some have never seen an alpaca before and many are not aware of all of the items one can create with their fibers.  The little kids adored the alpacas especially the toddlers.  We had really good weather for the event considering the day before was snowing and rainy.

Although I didn't sell any yarn I did receive some good feedback from customers.  Yardage matters to them and knowing what projects they can make with a skein is very helpful.  I'm going to rework/add to the skeins I have fiber for this week prior to trying to sell them locally or in the shop.  Product descriptions will be tweaked to give good project information to shoppers for our yarns and let them know how to combine skeins for that special project.

Given yardage requirements I am going to revisit my pricing of the yarn too.  If it will take more than a skein to complete a project I need to make sure the material cost doesn't exceed a customers budget for the finished project.

ATAR will be opening up the shop more often especially doing the holiday season.  I have agreed to man the shop on Saturdays which will give me a dedicate time to create items along with some potential sales.  It is good to have a variety of outlets for merchandising and will be fun to help in promoting the venue.

Spinning yarn in public

I do love spinning yarn in public and I got in 2 days this past weekend to do just that.  The young boys are the most interested in the craft and how to's of it all.  They ask great questions and really watch how it's done.  I try to have double and single ply yarns along with finished products to help visitors tie it all together.  For the little girls we relate spinning on a wheel to "Sleeping Beauty" as most of them have seen that movie.

Although I didn't have any sales it was a very productive weekend.  I made about 6 to 8 skeins of yarn plus I finished the second alpaca hat.  Some local alpaca ranchers have invited me to spin at a pumpking patch event they are attending.  They are even allowing me to sell some of my handmade items too.

I have the weekend off from demostrating but will be visiting a new yarn shop on Saturday.  I am looking forward to a relaxing week!

Small update

I am going to try something new on the blog front - small updates versus lengthy paragraphs.  Perhaps this will allow me to write more often.  The past month has had numerous health issues which have also impacted how much I am able to do.  I am participating in the Alpaca on the Rocks this weekend.  The evenings this week have been in preparation for the event.  I used my mill spun yarn to create a hat for the show my only concern is that it appears to be huge as the yarn is not as thick as the original yarn used for the project.  I am making a second one with less stitches to make it smaller.

On the spinning front I have 3 oz of alpaca/tussah silk spun and will be plying it tonight or this weekend.  The special order yarn is drying and I have started spinning the alpaca/milk roving.  The milk fiber is not as sticky as the silk so the VM does come out better.  Both rovings have rich medium brown color from the alpaca and will make nice yarn and projects.  As I have set aside rovings in 1 oz, 2 oz and 4 oz packages my overall stash of alpaca blended bamboo and silk has decreased.  Still need to follow up with my LYS on purchasing rovings.

Off to the docs soon then the day job.  I am not as prepared for this weekends event as the Farmers Market but a lot of my items are from last weekend and ready to go.  I do have 2 days for potential sales and a nice selection of items to present.  We shall see how it goes!

Marketing strategy

I read a great post on the Etsy forums on developing a marketing strategy for our businesses.  It was refreshing to realize that many of the concepts covered I had implemented or at least thought about.  My niche will be knitwear accessories (scarves, gloves/mittens, hats, etc.) along with yarn and fiber.  No crocheting in my future or making sweater or socks.  Although I love the concept of knitting shawls, I do realize that for me such an item would not be a good business product.  My love of complicated lace patterns means that generally a shawl would take at least a year to finish and would be priced at over $100 US.  The smaller items are much more reasonable and require less yardage of yarn.  Still searching for projects for my small quantities of yarn blends.  This weekend I will be creating a 3 color roving listing to spice up our fiber options.  I plan on have a trio in 1 oz and 2 oz color batches for people to blend/spin at their leisure.

Woven scarf

The white woven texture scarf is completed, cleaned and blocked.  It is just waiting for me to be able to take daylight photos for listing on Etsy - see image to the right.  I finally listed the handspun alpaca yarn from Sopie Mae.  My internet research has revealed several pure alpaca lace scarf patterns and products.  This was inspirational as I had become aware from spinning tutorials/mills that alpaca lacks elasticity and should therefore be blended with wool to improve projects. Lulu's fleece which is still being spun into lace weight yarn is back on the radar.

On the wheel right now is a bobbin of the Wensleydale roving which I hope to completely fill and ply within the next 2 weeks and sale.  Another bobbin contains Lulu's fiber spun for lace weight.  Goal is to fill bobbin to ply with my other single ply yarn from this fleece.  I have decided to spin up some of my black wool roving to ply with the colorful mohair single.  I am thinking that black will balance the reds, greens, white, and blues of the mohair fiber nicely.  We shall see and I will post pictures of the yarn when I get to that step.

On the needles is the self designed hat project from 2 ply fingering weight alpaca handspun yard.  I have a book of knitted stitch patterns which I at first I thought was a great way to help me design my own items.  Well the pattern are created for flat and not circular knitting and my design skills are not that developed as of yet to do the conversion.  So this hat has been ripped about 3 times thus far in attempting to create it.  At this point I have a 2x2 rib band and I am creating a lace design for the body.  No idea on the decreasing which will probably require additional ripping to get it right.  Luckily this is not a custom order and doesn't have a deadline to be finished.  My praise and kudos go out to all of those knitwear designers out there.  You are truly talented/gifted individuals.  Knitting from patterns can be challenging but no where near as challenging as creating the pattern.  I have no idea the size of the hat - it will probably turn out to be for a child as the circumference seems pretty small.  This weekend I will be completing the custom gloves as they are due by the 8th. 

Still have high hopes for the stitch book to aid in developing scarves and headbands though. I did use the moss stitch pattern to create my beret.  It is the cables and textured patterns that are posing difficulties for me.  Just learned that my roving is ready at the mill and will be picking up next weekend.  The plan is to take about 3 lbs of fiber to the mill to be converted to rovings in April with the larger bags to be converted to rovings/yarn by August.  Need to start listing/selling items to cover the mill costs.  Well that's all for tonight from Colorado - take care!

Lack of focus - burnout??

I feel like I am drifting from my purpose or I just have too many irons in the fire.  I need to revisit my business plan and get back to a more focused view of running the Etsy shop.  Still thinking about the shop critique and that I need lots more items listed.  I do have several skeins of handspun yarn which I could list.  Missing the energy to write up profiles on each so that they can be posted.  Pictures exist for most of my handspun.  There are days that I completely understand why most businesses delegate tasks to professionals as it is somewhat overwhelming to be a one man show.  My passion is spinning yarn and I have been faithful to that path over the past few weeks.  On the business side I start to work the business i.e. post pictures, list items, etc. and then my energy is sapped so I push it off to another day.  Today was my first day checking into the Raverly forums - last checked in on Saturday.  This is probably just a slump which will pass - hopefully.  At the end of the day I know that I do have items for sale, some decent photos of the product and a custom order to finish.

I did a google search for alpaca fiber in Colorado and my etsy listings came up on the first page not sure if it is because they are in the cookies on my computer or we really are liked by google.  I think I will have a friend do a search and see what they come up with.  One day I really need to do some research in SEOs and find out how to improve the visibility for all of our items.  Don't think that will happen this week though.

The fingerless gloves are progressing - one is complete.  I need to spin up another bobbin of fiber to make more yarn for the project.  Sent a photo of the completed glove to its owner for approval - which I did receive.  I purchased a sampler box of luxury fiber about 2 years ago and amazingly the dreaded moths haven't gotten to them.  Have you ever heard of Karaoke Fiber?  Well I learned that this is a mixture of wool and Soysilk fibers that produce a silk like yarn.  It has been plied with tan alpaca fiber into a skein.  Made another skein of tan alpaca, whhite cashmere and white silk and yet another of tan alpaca and grey cashmere.  They have all made some nice tweedy looking yarn.  Still have several 1 oz batches of other luxury fibers (bamboo, silk, llama, alpaca, angora and cashmere) to spin up.  It has been fun testing out different spinning techniques with the fibers and learning the traits of each one.

Well I'm off to bed - tomorrow is another day of knitting and it is Ash Wednesday!

Banner completion

I finally took the plunge and created a real banner for my Etsy shop.  I added pictures of the yarn, fiber we sell along with the photo of Zoelenna on a nice brown background.  The GIMP software tonight just flowed for me far better than my first attempt.  I am so proud of my computer progress in this area - a little bit at a time.  I also did fiber/tool shopping this week and the items have arrived.  I ordered custom gift tags with my shop name, a leather leg protector for prepping fiber and some fiber from a Ravelry friend destashing for a move.  I came across another lady on Ravelry looking for yarn for kids to learn how to knit with and will be shipping some of my acrylic based yarns to them for projects. It is nice to find a home for the acrylic based stuff.  My last purchase for the week was a spinning DVD which has been very helpful in actually seeing worsted from woolen prep styles along with their hybrids.  It also discussed what fibers to use for each style for different types of projects.

alpaca scarf

I spun up the mohair purchased last year and think I will ply it with some wool white top I have as it has so many colors in it.  Washed some hand spun skeins so that I can start knitting and selling them.  Decided to make a knit scarf with a woven pattern out of the alpaca worsted weight yarn I have.  I must admit that I do really like the woven texture and am enjoying the patten even though it only consists of 2 rows repeated throughout the project (pictured on the right).

I am 3 rows shy of completing my petroglyph scarf as I ran out of yarn.  I suppose I should start spinning up the remaining fiber just so that it can be completed, cleaned and blocked.  I have too many choices of things to spin on the wheel - yikes!

I am going to start on the mitten order this week along with working on the scarf. That is only 3 projects needles at this point.  Still tossing around ideas for headbands for the small amounts of yarn I have in my stash.  Of course I could just take photos of them and try to trade/sell them on Ravelry for fiber.  It could be more of a viable option than selling them on Etsy as they have such limited yardage. 

Although there haven't been sales in the shop for February we certainly improved in our marketing presence.  The yarns and some fiber have been featured in a few treasuries and actually received some nice comments on the FB page too.  Posting new pics of the fingerless mitts on Etsty today and will try to get the beret listed on there too.  I can't wait to see the roving from the llama in March.  It has been a busy and good week and March will be filled with more spinning, mill processing and knit designed projects for me.  Back to knitting the scarf.

Fiber Mill adventure

Well I did make it to the mill on Saturday eventhough my bronchitis did not appreciate the journey.  I took a tour of the entire operations from washing the fleeces, to drying, picking, carding and finally creating yarn from them.  Learned not to care so much about keeping the lock formation of the fleeces being sent to the mill but concentrate on shaking out the dirt and checking that the length is uniform. 



I brought the black Llama fleece I purchased as an example and Andrew (Spring Too Fiber Mill) helped me choose the fiber to add to it (soy silk) and what percentage to add (10%).  I choose this fleece for its softness which one doesn't generally associate with Llama fibers.  We talked about the strength of the fibers as it relates to textile processes and some of the benefits of combining different fibers together to complement/enhance one another.  So in about a month I will get a roving made from the black llama fleece with white soy silk spread throughout it.  Having spun up a similar type of roving I am anxious to see how mine will turn out.  Within the next year I will need to take some fiber sorting classes to aid in choosing fleeces and help me improve the material I will be offering for resale on Etsy. 

My March goal is to research fiber combinations (alpaca/wool; alpaca/bamboo) and learn the pros and cons of blending fibers and for what use.  It was an educational day and well worth the drive.  I am excited to see the end results of the raw fiber I will send to the mill this spring.  I'll be sure to post pictures so that others can share in the journey.

Sunday was my day of spinning yarn.  I spun up the red roving into yarn for the fingerless mittens order and plied my pretty bluish/red roving which turned out to be more purple/red (see pics below).  You can see a picture of the actual roving in my Flickr album.  It was a productive weekend, one filled with rest and minimal human interaction which are always a treat for me.



Colors came through
better here