Friday, March 14, 2008

Fiber Craft Overload

I have quite a bit of space in one large bedroom to use as a craft room. When we first moved in, I sorted all of my craft things into boxes with the intent to put them away once I had a better idea of how I wanted my room to function and obtained the appropriate storage.

Well, the Vet Tech program at Central Carolina Community College happened, and I didn't do anything craft oriented for the year I was attending the program. Since then, I have been working out of the boxes. I started to get more involved in knitting and actually bought yarn from stores (rather than spinning it myself). I had a small dresser that worked pretty well to store it. I kept buying yarn as I learned more. Most of my early yarn purchases were novelty yarns. I have quite a lot of that kind of stuff, especially since I most of my yarn purchases were from AC Moore and in the beginning, I would buy enough yarn to do a particular project 2 or 3 times (usually in different colors).

I worked for Nancy of Nancy's Knit Knacks for about a year and learned a lot more about knitting and the fiber arts business and just how hard it is to make a living in the fiber arts business. I have been involved with dog training and my own pet sitting and dog walking business since then. So I have spend up until the last 3 months staying busy with that.

After getting a little overwhelmed with the pet side of my life, I am finally back to doing more crafty kinds of things. Farset, our 5 month old puppy, has made it almost impossible to spin up until now, but I have been able to knit. I have been doing enough knitting to have a better understanding of yarn and how to use it in projects.

I am in the process of sorting through my craft room/office finally. I have sorted the yarn into the different sizes. I used a WPI (wraps per inch) tool to determine the size and attached it as a small label on the yarn. Not all yarn marked Worsted or DK or fingering is actually the size the label claims it is.

Now I just have to find homes for it all. Plus I need to finish going through everything else in my sewing room/office so that I can actually get some things accomplished. I really need to have an additional table set up. My desk/table contains two monitors, a desktop, and a dysfunctional printer. There really isn't room for much else.

I have a knitting machine that I would like to set up. I have a drum carder that I would actually like to use on occasion. I really need to have a ball winder and swift set up all the time. I just remind myself that I have to take it one day at a time. I really need to find someone to help out with the dog walking. It is hard to grow my business (and find time for crafts) when I am working all the time.

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