Well, Anna and I definitely took a loooong vacation from our blog. Although I wouldn't exactly call it a vacation - we were busy getting ready for the Franklin County Fiber Twist, which was last Saturday, September 25. Prepping wool and yarn was all-consuming, and even used up a few of my vacation days from work. Anna was right there, helping every step of the way. Michael referred to the prep work as "Mimi's Sweat Shop." And it was.
We washed a couple hundred skeins of yarn (they come back from the spinnery with some oils from the machines on them and need some freshening up). We left some skeins natural, but tied others up and dyed them. Then we hung them to dry for a couple days before we twisted them up.
We washed fleeces and Anna rainbow dyed some of them. We packaged fleece into little bags and tied them with ribbons. We went through the carded waste wool from the spinnery and separated it into roving and wound roving balls.
We made mason jar sewing kits with vintage notions, buttons and wooden spools of thread. We went through our collection of hundreds of vintage knitting needles and cleaned and sorted them.
We designed labels for all our wool products and Anna made a poster with photos of all our sheep. This was very popular at the Fiber Twist - everyone wanted to talk about the sheep.
The show was great fun and we sold a lot more than I expected, including half of Bunny's raw fleece! She does have beautiful wool.
After a long day, Anna spent the last hour of the show at a class on needle felting (her new obsession), before helping to pack up all our wool and yarn.
Since the show, we have spent a good percentage of our profits on needle felting supplies for Anna. She definitely earned it! At least we don't have to buy wool!
We're looking forward to a more regular blog-posting schedule at this point. And Anna is planning to get back to writing her "Meet the Animals" series. Stay tuned.
