This is the first time I picked up my knitting after giving birth to my first daughter.

I started this business in 2007. At first it was Yummy Yarn, and I sold my hand dyed, handspun yarn at the farmer’s market. I remember the lead-up to my first market day, when I was sure I didn’t have enough stock, I was afraid I hadn’t done a good enough job, and I was worried that my very modest plan to just make enough money to help us get by while my daughter was young was in fact still too ambitious.

This is my first spinning wheel, a Louet S15.

The modest plan worked out, for the most part, for awhile. I sold enough yarn and fibre to make what I needed to make, and I got to work out of my home so that I could parent my child the way I wanted to parent. I added some teaching to the mix, thanks to the local arts centres and local yarn stores who let me run some knitting classes. It worked.

Here is a package of yarn I sent in the early days.

This is my farmer's market booth in that first year.

I can’t say that it ever made us rich, but it was okay, so when I found out I was having a second child, I just continued on in the same way. The business switched from mostly yarn and teaching to mostly fibre, and that was fine.

Here is me spinning yarn with my second baby in a wrap on my chest.

Eventually, it got a little boring. Crafts are great, but when they’re your job, they’re like any other job – the creative, interesting part is when you’re developing something new, and once it’s developed, there’s a lot of repetition. But still, it was something I could do at home, and that was worth some boredom.

Working at home has its joys. How can this face not make you happy?

She pulled this onto herself and tried to eat it. Working with babies around is a challenge.

Time has marched on, and last term I went back to the “real” work I’d done before I had kids, which was teaching college English. It was wonderful to get into a workplace with colleagues I could talk to, new ideas to explore, and all kinds of skills to develop and expand. I had to put the fibre business aside for a time, but I didn’t mind much. I had been missing the intellectual stimulation of my previous work so much that not having time to craft was a small price to pay.

It was good that I worked that term, because it let me detach a bit, and see some things for what they were. The fibre work was getting tedious, and it didn’t pay enough for our current needs, which now included two children in independent schools. I missed having time to craft, but much of my crafting time had been taken up with “work” crafts, like making freeform pieces to sell. I wasn’t using any of my crafting time for leisure.

Having the endless supply of fibre meant that I was able to make a stash of yarn beyond my wildest dreams, and that was artistically valuable (10 skeins of turquoise all in different fibres, spun to different weights? Yes yes yes!). But that wasn’t enough compensation for what the business didn’t give me, and couldn’t give me.

Last month we found out that we are moving to Sweden, and that was just the news I needed to make the decision: Two Sisters Stringworks is shutting down. Putting aside the logistical issue that dyeing fibre in a tiny Swedish apartment is not going to work, I have reached the end of this particular chapter of my life.

This was a wonderful time. I have always been a devoted knitter, and lately crocheter. People who know me know that when I am not in the mood to knit, I am probably not doing well. The skills development that I have been pushed to do in order to support my teaching, the artistic development that I have undergone with the last couple years of freeform work, the techniques I have learned as a spinner and dyer, I am so grateful for all of these things. They would not have happened without this 6 year span of unfettered production and experimentation. Without the platform and structure of the business, I would never had let myself do half of what I’ve done.

In about 5 weeks, we are moving. In just a couple weeks, I need to have all the wool and dye paraphernalia that I’m not keeping out of my house. When we move, I am going to pack up my spinning wheel, and not see it again until I gets off a shipping container in a few months.

I am going to pack up the materials for three or four projects, two of them pure, personal knitting, and I will only make things for fun.

My Etsy store will stay up, but once the fibre is gone, it will be just for freeform crochet pieces, and I’m only going to make the ones I want to make, and I refuse to pressure myself to make “enough”. My Etsy store will therefore become one of those many, many Etsy stores run by hobbyists who make awesome stuff and don’t sell much, because they don’t list frequently enough to get the hits. And I’m cool with that, because I am now also just a hobbyist.

Thank you, to the people who have kept in touch, to the people who have enjoyed my work and have let me enjoy theirs. Thank you to the people who gave me opportunities to teach, to sell, to learn, and to share in the fibre community, both locally and Internetically.

This was my time of life to be a woolworker, and I did it with all my might.

Here's where I'm going. Catch you on the flipside.

It’s not that I don’t have a lot of crafting stuff; I have quite a bit. But if there is too much stuff that I don’t love, that I’m not inspired by, that I can’t see in wonderful projects, then it become clutter – the kind that I’m not blind to, the kind that distracts and distresses me.

Last month I took on the project of cleaning out the fibre stash. There were a lot of odd things in there. There were braids of my own hand dyed fibre that I had relisted too many times, and were shopworn and a bit compacted. Braids like this, I don’t like to sell. They’re perfectly spin able, but they require some fluffing and pre-drafting first, and I don’t want a customer to have a less than great experience with my fibre. I had a few bags of undyed fibre left over from big bundles of fibre. Once I have an amount less than 224g left, I can’t dye and sell it, so I keep those bits, since I can always use up a small bit of any fibre. Here is a bunch of the undyed wool, some falkland, some black welsh mountain, some Shetland, some Jacob:

So I’ve been spinning those, and I got a bunch of lovely new hanks of handspun for my storage bins. After I spin things like that, then I have some freedom. I am drowning in Shetland wool at the moment, as I got way over excited last time I ordered supplies and ordered 15lbs of the stuff. I’ve sold a lot, but there is a great deal that’s just sitting there, and I love spinning it and using the yarn. So I spun up a ton of Shetland.

I also spun some things I haven’t tried before, like Icelandic, and some braids I have been eyeing and not letting myself spin but still hoping no one would buy them before I could spin them:

The last category is the one that feels the most special, the least like work and the most like a treat. I delisted a whole batch of something wonderful and beautiful that I could totally have sold, but I kept it back because I wanted it badly for me, for a whole project. This is part of my 800g of Colonial in ‘Wulf’, spun to a DK weight, that I intend to use for a cardigan for myself. I’ve been eyeing these since they came out of the dye pans, and when one of them sold I realized I would be too sad if someone else got them.

So that’s what I’ve been up to, spinning a couple dozen hanks of yarn for me, all for me. They are mostly just going into the freeform supplies, although I have vague plans to make an afghan, and a new Tomten sweater for my older girl, and and and. Do you see why I keep myself under strict control? Because without some rules about stash and the number of in progress projects, I find myself under an avalanche of potential, unable to finish anything. And finishing is so much fun.

Here are pictures of the rest of my pile of newly made yarn, and a picture of a finished freeform cowl, just to finish up.

I’ve made a small mountain of tea cozies, and also a handful of small wearables. I delivered them to Place Des Arts in Coquitlam for their Christmas Boutique. Then I filled a basket with yarn for another tea cozy, made half of one, and then realized I don’t want to make small things just right now. I wanted something with substance, drape, and a lot of interest.

I’m working on a blanket, in reds with some interesting visits from blue and chartreuse. It’s going to eat a ton of yarn and I would have to sell it for over a thousand dollars to even begin to recoup my time, but as readers of this blog probably know by now, I’m an inveterate go-big-or-go-home kind of crafter. So a big project it is.

Hopefully it will be done in time for my showcase spot at the Port Moody library in January. I have this idea that people will see it and then just contact me with custom orders for stuff, and I won’t have to do all that marketing and sales work that I avoid because I’m not good at it and it isn’t fun

So I got a job in September – a “real” job. Real in the sense of, it comes with a paycheque, and a schedule, and a series of non-negotiable deadlines. I went back to teaching, and with teaching, you really just can’t “space” and skip a day or two.

I do love it, and I do love the steady paycheque, but there hasn’t been much time for art in my life. I can fit in dye work, and I do a little crafting here and there, but I don’t have the ability that I used to have to take on big, interesting projects and spend chunks of time on them.

I miss it.

At the same time, though, my art and my fibre business weren’t enough for me, which is why I went back to work in the first place. As much as I loved doing all the wool stuff, it lacked the intellectual challenge that I craved. I was bored, drifting, and unsatisfied.

As much as I love the teaching, though, I’m feeling really over-burdened. I’m only working part time, but I still have the much the same level of responsibility for the kids and the house as I had before. Prepping and marking happen on non-negotiable time frames, making meals happens on non-negotiable time frames, and if something is going to give, it’s going to be my craftwork, on which there are no deadlines.

So I’m trying to figure out how to make it all work, and whether it’s worth keeping up the teaching job. I don’t have a contract for the winter term right now, so that choice may be made for me in any case.

Basically I’ve had an interesting experience of feeling that the grass is greener on the other side, on both sides of the same fence, within a few months of each other. What this tells me is that there are significant advantages and disadvantages to both situations. Insufficient challenge wars with insufficient pay. I’ll let you know how that shakes out in a month or so.

While I’ve got your attention, I am having a sale in my Etsy shop this week. 15% off until November 10th if you use the coupon code IAMCHILLY

I start with a basket of yarn that I like.

I make a bunch of motifs, to figure out more precisely how each yarn will look and behave, and what balance of colours works best. I leave the tails long so I can use them to slip-stitch the motifs in.

Now my piece starts. This time I’m starting with a spiral.

I start adding pieces.

I deal with the ends as I go. Next, I’ll crochet on some small bits.

Now I’ll add a curve of something interesting. A line of cluster stitches, this time. Sometimes I do popcorns or puff stitches.

Now more motifs. I always think more of these guys is a good idea. Such cheerful little spots.

I notice a spot for something square there…I have just the thing.

Now to fill in and smooth out the lines:

And it’s done! I’ll make a half-dozen of these before I start joining them together for the finished garment.

I’m not convinced the colour balance is quite right, but I’m persisting anyway. I have found that if something contains enough variations on the major colours, and is big enough, a problematic colour scheme can develop its own logic.

I’m especially pleased that I found a home for this square that I made a few weeks ago that was cruelly excluded from the intended project. I loved the square, a ‘Sunburst Granny’ that looked so nice in light weight handspun.

So I try to only share my excitement about stuff that I am offering for sale at the time I talk about it, not weeks ahead of time.

Today I’m breaking my own rule though, because some things are too exciting.

This is humbug Icelandic wool, and it’s on my dining room table.

These are Gotland locks.

This is more undyed wool than you can shake a stick at, including moorit Shetland, scoured white Shetland fleece, Jacob, BFL, and Gotland top.

I can’t claim I’m going to move fast on this, the kids are having their last day of school today, but it’s coming, it’s coming.

Still, there are a few things I do and like and talk about that I don’t see too much about out there. One of them is the freeform work, even other free formers don’t do it exactly like I do it, so if you follow my Twitter or Facebook streams, that’s mostly what you’ll see. I figure my missives are brief and pretty, so that’s okay.

Twitter doesn’t leave much of a catalogue though, not a searchable archive. Blogs do that. Which brings me to the reason I’m talking now:

I have just discovered that I can blog from my phone. As I am often too busy to sit down and blog when I’m home, I communicate more from my phone, when I’m out than anything. Expect frequent pictures. Like these:

I crocheted something gorgeously retro.

I started work on a much more sedate-yet-lovely baby blanket.

I dyed some wool.

I’ve been running a sale in my store – 15% off for people who type the code TOURDEFLEECE into the coupon code field – and predictably my sales have been great. Which means that suddenly I’m getting low on stock, which has me scrambling. I have a decent amount of undyed fibre hanging around, but it’s mostly in smaller quantities now, a pound or less or each type. Today I’m soaking four different fibres, and that’s usually dangerous because one type of wet wool can seem very much like another type of wet wool, and mixups can happen. But in this case there really isn’t a danger. I will never mistake grey Gotland for oatmeal BFL, honey mohair for white BFL. And it’s good to clear out the little bags of stuff, so I can spring into action when my new supplies arrive in a few weeks.

My sale ends on June 10th, so stop by while the getting is good!