One More Week

One more week, and then I'm FREE!!!  I am ready to be an ex-LYS Owner.  I did love this at the beginning, but I am seeing more and more that it was a good time for me to exit out of this job.

I'm looking forward to a summer of being able to spend more time with family, more time in the yard (I really need to get my gardens under control), and more time at the looms!

I've been working on a babywrap on the Megado and am at the halfway point with this one.  Allowing for shrinkage and take-up, the weaving length of this one will be about 5 yards long.

Warp chains ready to go on the loom.

Warp in the raddle.

Weaving!

I have a nice sized stack of handwovens (mostly towels) that need to be hemmed, so I'm looking forward to some time to sit at the sewing machine too.  There just hasn't been enough time to get things done, so things have been piling up.  

What's on the Loom?

I'll admit, I haven't had too much time to be working on any weaving projects, but I do have both looms warped with projects on them.  

One of the yarns that I was introduced to at the Weavers School was the cotton from Lunatic Fringe.  While I was at the school, I came home with one of their towel kits.  I did manage to eek out a little bit of time to get one of these kits on the Megado.  As I'm still getting used to the loom and the weaving software program for the dobby, I thought I would start with something a little more mindless to start.  

On the warping board.  Fun, bright colors!

The Louet Megado has a built in raddle.  Very convenient and I like the fact that I can stand with good posture while I'm spreading the warp ends in the raddle.  

Here are all my warp ends spread out in the raddle with the lease sticks still holding the cross.  Now it's time to thread the heddles.  

The Megado has texsolve heddles.  For a loom that has 16 shafts, these lighter heddles will be great!

The next step is sleying the reed.  

Here's a back shot of the loom after everything has been done and my warping is finished!  

And we're off and weaving!  I will get 4 towels from this warping.  I've been playing around with different shuttles - finally ended up using an end-feed shuttle (not shown in this photo) for these towels.  

Officially Closing Shop!

It happened!  The closing sale for the business started on April 4th.  I can truthfully say that I am so relieved.....now the only worry is that I'll be able to sell off the majority of my inventory.  Let's face it, I have enough knitting yarn to last a lifetime, and as I'm gravitating more and more towards weaving, I probably won't be knitting as much as I used to.  So many customers have asked whether I saved yarn for myself before the sale started.  Believe it or not, I didn't set anything aside.

I've had so many well wishes and great comments from customers, both old and new, and that has been rewarding.

Rough.....

The last few weeks have been rough, to say the least.

The shop was flooded over 2 weeks ago.  This wasn't due to a broken water pipe, overflowing toilet, etc., but due to the weather and the thaw.  Unfortunately, while originally the landlord told me that they were taking care of the repairs, they are now backing down on that statement.  Of course, this statement was made to me after the flooring was totally ripped out - not just the damaged area, but the whole damn floor.  So, we are down to concrete and I WILL NOT BE PUTTING NEW FLOORING IN ON MY DIME.   If this had been discussed prior to the removal of the whole floor, we would have just replaced the damaged area which was probably 1/10th of the entire shop.

On top of that whole mess, my youngest daughter really needed me during a very bad time.  She came into the shop to see and talk with me about something serious that was going on with her health-wise.  Due to the fact that I had knitters in the shop, yet again, I really wasn't there for one of my daughters in their time of need and that sucks.  My family life and family relationships have suffered due to the shop and it's time to end that.

The shop days are numbered......The events of the last few months have put any love of owning a business to bed.  I am at the point where I hate going in to work everyday and it is getting harder and harder to get out the door in the morning.

After the shop closes, I'm going to attempt to earn some extra spending money through my weaving.  My first venture will be trying to market and sell baby wraps.  Let's face it, I have the equipment and soon I will have the time.

My husband is being very supportive of this decision and I can't wait to have more time to spend with my family.  The clock has started on the end of the shop and it can't come fast enough at this point.   I am totally at peace with this decision and won't have any regrets for closing the shop.  Life is too short, my family is too important, and the demands placed on the LYS Owner is ridiculous.  I could tell you story after story, but it's best if I just keep that to myself.

New Year

So….once again, the blog has gotten away from me again.

It's time to recap 2013.

Looking at my Ravelry project page, I think I completed over 30+ projects.  I know that there are some that aren't listed, like my plain jane socks that I knit and some weaving projects that are done but just aren't hemmed yet.

The highlight of my year was the trip that I took out to the Pacific Northwest with my husband.  I attended a week long weaving course in Coupeville, WA, and my husband did sightseeing off by himself while I was in class.  We stayed at a refurbished firehouse which was like an apartment - it was our "home away from home".  The weaving class with Madelyn was great, I fell in love with the area and we are starting to make plans to move out there someday.

One of the things that I never mentioned on the blog is that I got another loom.  I added a Louet Megado to my herd of looms.

This is a 16 shaft, electronic dobby loom with a 44" weaving width.  So Much Fun - but I really need to find time to be able to work on it (that may be happening this summer!).   I have a second warp beam on order, but that hasn't arrived yet.

We had to do some room shuffling again, so now I have two studios upstairs.  Right now, I have an 8-shaft Mighty Wolf, a Wolf Pup, and a 4N4L Baby Wolf (at the shop) in addition to the Megado.  

I haven't done much spinning since the Tour de Fleece this summer and my spinning fiber cabinet is pretty full with some beautiful batts, so I will be getting back to that soon also.

My youngest daughter got engaged over the Christmas holidays!  So, I am knitting her an Evenstar shawl for her wedding veil.

We had a health scare with Josie in December.  She was diagnosed with a Mast Cell Tumor, but luckily the pathologist's report came back ok.  It's not benign, but they were able to get nice, clean margins so we should be ok.

Otherwise, I'm working (too much), Wilson is working, and there's not a lot of time for other things YET.  As I alluded to earlier, that might change in the near future.  We'll see.

Getting Something Off My Chest

I try to stay upbeat and positive, I really do.  But man, retail is HARD.

Yesterday, I had a father and daughter stop into the shop.  I greeted them and told them to let me know if there was anything that I could help them with.  They all but ignored me (that's fine - I'm used to that), and the daughter grabbed two skeins of yarn (both Angora blends).  The father questioned her on whether that is really what she wanted and she told him that yes - that's what she needed.  Now, all of our yarns have a price tag ON EVERY SKEIN.  I rang up the transaction and told him what the dollar amount was (again - there should not have been a question on how much the yarn was).  He handed over the credit card, I chatted with him and his daughter as I was bagging up the yarn and they went on their way.

Fast forward about 10 minutes and in walks the husband, daughter and wife and they are wanting to return the yarn.  I inform them that I would be happy to do that for a store credit or an exchange, but that it is our policy that we do not issue credits back onto their credit card.  We have this policy posted on our counter, on the wall right behind the register, and on the receipt.  We are a small business.  It costs us money every time we swipe your card.  There was a fee that we incurred when you made your purchase, and now you want us to LOSE money on the transaction because you want to bring it back?  Swiping your card again for a credit incurs us yet another fee.  Get it? - WE LOSE MONEY WHEN YOU ASK US TO DO THIS.  We don't break even, it is a loss.  That is the reason that we have this policy.  The big box stores can afford to credit back the money onto your card - they have thousands of transactions and deal in volume.  Your little small business down the street?  Not so much.

And really, being nasty and telling me that you are going to go out on the "blogosphere" and let everyone know what kind of business they would be dealing with if they purchased anything from me isn't going to sway me.  Go ahead and blog away.  I don't care.  Rant and rave all you want - that only makes me stick to my policy even more.  Nastiness won't win you any brownie points from me.  And, by the way, way to teach your child how to handle conflict.  What did she learn?  That you make threats when you don't get your way.  She was all ears and eyes as you and your wife were throwing threats at me.  I politely pointed out to you where our policy was posted.  Really, I should have this policy posted on my door?  How many businesses do you go into and the store policies are listed on the front door?

And people wonder why retail is such a hard job.  The majority of the customers that walk into the door are angels, but there are a few that make you question just why you are doing this.

Kind of counting down the days........

Long Time No Post

Looks like it's about a year and a half since I last posted on the blog.

A lot has happened and a lot has stayed the same - but for the most part, it's all good.

My pug, Koby, is still around.  We ended up trying acupuncture as a last resort for him last year and I'm very happy to say that it worked for his back.  We were just days away from putting him out of his pain, because it was SO bad.  As of today, he has some good days and bad days.  His back seems to be much better (fingers crossed), but he has had some nerve damage so his back legs don't work quite as well as they used to.  He can be quite wobbly.  We're trying to help this as best we can - we have rugs down on our hardwood floors since he gets better traction on carpeting.

I'm still knitting and spinning, but I've also gotten into weaving in a big way.  So big, that I even took a weaving vacation to the Weavers School in Puget Sound.  W went with me and he did some exploring while I was in school and in the evenings we went out to dinner and did some exploring also.  I love the area, the weather was fantastic while we were there, and I want to go back so badly!

Top photo is our amazing instructor, Madelyn van der Hoogt and her dog, Huck.  

The other two photos are some of my samples that I wove there.  In all, I came home with 11 beautiful samples, tons of information, knowledge and inspiration and memories of a wonderful trip.  

Our stay in Coupeville on Whidbey Island was amazing.   I will be back!  

Here's a link to my flickr photo set for the Weavers School trip.

I will also try to post to the blog a little more frequently.   I have a new loom that I'm attempting to learn how to weave on.  This has led to more rearranging upstairs in the studios - yes, plural.  I'm very lucky that my husband is so nice and supportive.  I now have taken over 2 of the bedrooms for all my crafting.  Once things get a little more organized, I'll try to add photos of the two rooms.  And I hope to be weaving some amazing items, so I hope to also be able to add some great photos of my weaving as well.