A special treat on Christmas Morning (or Holiday Day as I call it).

 Does anyone else get this obsessiveness?  An idea in the head and the whole of life and cleaning house and everything cannot happen until that idea actualizes?  

Just me then.

Well, I don't know where it came from but one morning I woke up needing to build a thing.  I had no idea how to do it.  But it infested my every waking moment.  

So I made the thing and I made a video about making the thing.

It's not perfect.  It's not even close.  But I made it.  I ate it.  It was DELICIOUS! 

It's amazing how much you can learn about a thing by making it out of gingerbread.  It also inspired me to learn some special effects for the video.  

Happy Holidays everyone!  

The best way to learn how to build anything!

There are things you know you know,
things you know you don't know,
and even things you don't know you know.  
But it's the things you don't know that you don't know that will get you in the end.
-paraphrased from some politician I can't remember.

I've been working with spinning wheels for nearly 20 years.  Repairing, assembling, using, spinning, buying and selling, teaching, technical support, writing, researching, and other adventures.  I know a lot about spinning wheels.  

Or at least I thought I did. 

What I didn't know is how much you can learn by building a spinning wheel out of gingerbread.

That's right, gingerbread.

Gingerbread must be the most unforgiving substance to build from ever!  Rigid when you don't want it, crumbling at the wrong moments.  Even making the parts thicker doesn't guarantee strength.  But rather, understanding the forces at work and the stress points is key to successfully building something out of this crazy material.  

I learnt more in two days of failure and one wheel-shaped object than I ever knew I didn't know.

My first attempt was not as awesome as the image in my head.  Actually, it has no resemblance to the image in my head at all.  

But I kind of think I might try again next year and see if I can do better.  

If you want to build or repair spinning wheels, and you want to do it well, build one out of gingerbread.  You will learn more than you ever knew you didn't know.

Can I sell my handspun yarn? Here are some tips from an expierenced seller.

 Another one of those "this is something I wrote elsewhere and wanted to keep a record of so I'm reposting it here" kind of posts.  There is a lot more I could say on the topic, but I need to leave something for me to write about in the future.  For now, good enough is good enough.  

Selling yarn in person!  I'm so glad you are thinking about this.  It's so much fun!

Some things that help:

• Make stuff with your yarn! Seriously. This is the best way to improve your spinning by working with your yarn and learning how to improve it.
• Have samples of what you made so people can see how the yarn behaves.
• Make yarn in large batches. My batch size is one kilo. People want to feel confident they have enough yarn for their project.
• Make the skeins all the same size and price (400yds is enough for a pair of socks and is a good length for most yarn)
• Have ball winder and swift on hand and offer free use of them (get the ball started, and get the person winding their own if things are too busy)
• Price according to the time it actually takes. Don't take less than minimum wage.
• Hint, if you don't know how much your time is worth, use the 'broken arm' standard.  If you had a big order and you broke your arm, how much would it cost to hire someone to make the same quality yarn?
• Do some time and motion studies on yourself. Get a stopwatch if you don't have a phone that can do this. Find out how long it really takes.
• Pricing too low often (subconsciously) indicates the quality will be low and people don't want to buy it
• Specialize - make only sock yarn or only sweater yarn until you are perfect at it. Make knitting yarn or crochet yarn.

Most important of all:

Learn to FINISH the yarn.

Finishing includes many steps, but basically, we are handling the yarn several times over distance. So when I take my yarn off my bobbin, my skeiner (a click reel because I'm measuring at this stage because the other stages expand the length of the yarn by about 3% and I want the customer to get the best value) is about 8 yards away from my bobbin. Then I wash the wool and block it. To block, I put it on the swift and put the blocker at least 8 yards away from the swift and rewind it.

The distance helps distribute the twist and handling it each time helps you see if there are any flaws.

If you are selling to weavers, wind under tension so that if the yarn will break, it will do so now, not on the loom. fix the break by tieing a knot big enough for the fingers to find when the weaver is working with the yarn.

If you are selling to knitters, a splice is better as they don't like dealing with knots.

From my experiments, garments made from finished yarn pill less and last about 6 years longer than ones made from 'right off the bobbin' yarn.

Also, you are going to get people complaining about the price - no matter what the price is.

When this happens I offer to teach them how to make their own.

They reply: oh, I couldn't possibly have the time or the skill to make that.

I stay silent and try to keep my face friendly and confident. maybe nod slightly.

They usually buy the yarn.

A little bird told me... sewing with a sewing bird (and how to make your own mocking sewing bird)

It is entirely possible I made this entire video so I could reference 3 seconds of a Dr Who episode.

I've been wanting a sewing bird since long before I knew how to sew.  I'm frugal with my spending and antiques are far too expensive.  The brass reproductions are pricy enough.  But I put a price watch (camelcamelcamel.com is great for this) on my dream bird with the expectation it would never drop that low.  But it did.

The sewing bird is designed to solve a major problem with hand stitching - back and hand pain.  It is supposed to give more control of the needle and fabric.  And having tools that inspire makes it easier to avoid procrastination.

Before I spent money on it, I decided to try an experiment.  Could I make a tool that would do the job with random things found around the house?

SPOILER: Yes.  Yes, I can.

So here you go.  My adventures hand stitching, making a mocking bird, and finding out if a reproduction Sewing bird really works.

I hope you enjoy it.  

There are a lot of things I could do better, I know.  But this video marks yet another big step towards making the videos I want to make for you.  There is a lot more focus on storytelling as well as - what I hope is - informative and useful information.  

If you like this sort of thing and want to see more of it, here are some things you can do to support me on my creative journey.

- go to youtube and give me a thumbs up!  Or even a subscribe!  That would be awesome
- or pop over to my Etsy shop and support me that way.