Goal Setting

My mission for SmokyMountainFibers has always been very simple:

Use high quality materials.
Make beautiful things.
Ship tomorrow.
If you make a mistake, admit it, apologize and fix it for free.
That should keep me from making too many.

But I have been lately thinking about my fiber business and how I can make the business end better while keeping the creative part fun. I want to be sure that I am happy and connected with the fiber community, while building my business in an increasingly uncertain time. I also want to do other things - garden, hike, dance - oh, and there is the day job! Here are my thoughts...

Selling my work - I set sales goals on Etsy by month and by year. For example, in 2009 I hope to sell 1000 items. That means I have to sell about 85 (actually 83.33) things per month. In my private world, I’ve rounded that up to 100 items per month to stay ahead of schedule. That is highly doable, as the warmer months are slower and things really kick up in the fall. And since I ended 2008 with just about 1000 items sold, it’s easy to keep track.

Selling at the B&M accounts is a bit trickier because they sell different things - mostly hats and handspun yarns. But because the 2 shops can sell all the hats I can make, I just have to decide what & how much I want to make. The yarns are easy - Make what I want, deliver as much as I want, knit up the rest!

Colorways – I’d like to round out the color selection in the Etsy shop to be sure that I always have a full complement around the spectrum. I tend to have reds , blues and greens, but can frequently run low on minor colors and there are colors that I can’t seem to photograph well, so they don’t get posted. I either spin them up or sell them locally.

Sock yarns – Although these are NOT my strength on Etsy, they have a steady turnover at both B&M shops. Work on semi-solids. Think up a catchy name for same. This is Rosewood as knitted by Mickie.

Etsy FAST –Get involved in the team again. Join in the challenges, stay active on FiberFriday

Ravelry - SMF group – Start it - Easy! Maintain it - a bit harder! What if nobody joins? Yikes!

Patterns – Shall I give one away? Free patterns posted to blog? Posted on Ravelry as a free download? Hmm…

Website: SmokyMountainFibers.com – This is the year!

Over a Hurdle

Sometimes I wish that I could play with fiber all the time; that I could be a full-time artist craftsperson. Other times I am very happy to have a day job that is creative and satisfying MOST of the time, a but frustrating at other times.

Without going into gory details, the non-profit agency who had funded my work (facilitating professional development for k-12 teachers) has ceased to exist. So as the old program died a slow death over the course of two years (during which time the college gave me PLENTY to do), we were picked up by a similar program an d we are now funded through a federal grant. So as of October I have new responsibilities ramping up the new program, while still expected to continue my part time teaching load.

The first quarter with its qualitative and quantitative program reports and somewhat complicated (oe at least different) financial reports is finally behind me. I have to revise the series of linked spreadsheets, change line items and budget codes, create quarterly rather than monthly reports, etc. Ever see Office Space? Where our protagonist has some difficulty with his TPS reports? That has been me!

But it is behind me - The spreadsheets are clean and happy and the formulas match from one set of budget codes to the next. The papers are filed. The reports have been mailed both physically anad electronically.My desk is tidier than it has been for a month, as there are no more unfinished reports in file folders. Still more than enough to do, but I can happily say the TPS reports are completed.

Now back to our usual fiber content. I love this picture. Later this term I will be assisting my colleague as she teaches her fiber unit in Art Education. I demo spinning, talk about color and we will teach the students to knit. Only one knitter in the class and it's a young man I had last semester in my Ed Tech class. Sounds like fun!

FiberWeekend

Without a huge number of commitments this weekend,I got to play with fiber all weekend long. Here's what happened at my house...

1. Dyeing - Roving and Mohair locks. Both the Etsy shop and my brick & mortar accounts seem to need fiber regularly. I also have a side job dyeing locks for a friend who likes to spin them up into yarn.

2. Knitting - my toe up socks have given me a wee bit of consternation. It seems that I do not like the short row heel. Luckily, I found a pattern for a backward dutch heel that is something of a puzzle to knit, but I finally figured it out. and I like it quite a bit. Then while attending a 2 hour meeting today, I knocked out most of the cuff.

3. Packing - Orders for shipping and grab bags. While I was at it, I weighed up 4 ounce and 8 ounce bags for easy shipping.

4. Taking Pictures - I spent a good bit of time taking pictures of rovings for my Etsy shop. Most of them came out nicely, though a few of the greens are bit 'dull.'

4. Paperwork! - I finally got my spreadsheets done for 2008 and worked out my 4th quarter sales taxes. No big thrill, but it is done.

The rest of the weekend was low key - laundry, house-tidying, reading, baking cookies, grading papers, visiting with friends. Life is good!

Going Toe-Up

Socks are comfort knitting to me. I learned to make them early in my knitting days and have never counted the number of pairs that I have made - surely 25 pair or more. After my mother died, I knit many, many socks - no creative energy, but I needed to knit. The following Christmas, everybody got socks! I use a couple of recipes to make the socks I like to knit, relying on Ravely, Ann Budd's Book of Knitting Patterns and the Blueberry Waffle Sock [note that these are written for size 5 needles!) that I return to whenever I need to knit socks and don't really have a plan.

Having purchased a couple of skeins of a sportweight sock yarn on sale, I realized that the skein is a bit smaller than usual. I decided to make my socks toe-up even though I am a very serious devotee of the cuff-down method. But I don't like socks that are too short and I wasn't sure when I would run out of sock yarn, so toe-up, here we go.

OK - the toes are a bit pointy. They will flatten out. But like many of the faux Fair Isle patterns, the sock is endlessly enjoyable as I watch the patterns happen before my very eyes. I have been reading patterns as I get ready to take the next big step - the heels. I think I am going to use the ShortRow heel as in Leyburn. Lime and Violet even pointed me to a video that demos the 'newer, better' technique.

Dance news: the OFB gig went well. I called lots of fun dances including the medley I did not get to call on NewYear's Eve. I predict great things for Great Big Taters: fiddler Jane Rothfield, Hilarie Burhans of Hot Point fame on the banjo and Bernie Nau on the keyboards. Not a huge crowd by OFB standards, but most contradance groups would be impressed by the ehthusiasm if not the size of the crowd. Here is the link to the YouTube video of the New Year's Eve Masquerade Ball. Odd to hear one's disembodied voice.

The weekend: Spending quality time in the fiber room - dyeing, photographing packing fiber for both the Etsy shop and my Brick and Mortar accounts. I hope to get a bit of spinning done too. Oh, and grading quizzes and papers!

Winter hikes; Finishing Socks

I spent the past weekend in North Georgia with a number of friends. We had a number of reasons to gather and celebrate - our friend Charles retired from a job that had ceased being fun and our president W had long ago ceased being fun for the rest of us. So as Charles begins the next part of his life and all of America begins the next part of ours, it was a time to celebrate transitions.

Delicious food was cooked and eaten, friendly massages were given and received. We talked music and dance, peace and politics, beading and knitting - a fine way to spend the weekend with old and new friends. Charles and Bill and I set off on Sunday afternoon to hike Mount Yonah. Since the US Army wasn't using it to train the Rangers how to climb on its flat rock faces we had the place to ourselves. The earlier cold weather and snowfall left snow and ice behind, but the afternoon was warm and sunny - perfect for the spectacular views complete with Black Vultures riding the thermals.

I also finished the Bronze Berry socks that I had been knitting and gave them to Donna. She is a warm, generous and outgoing person and loved the socks. I immediately began a pair of toe-up socks in Socka Colori. They have a delightful pattern in the yarn. Since I seldom make toe-up socks, I have to think about what I am doing and follow a pattern. I'll post the progress on Ravelry.

Although I hated leaving the business for the weekend, both SmokyMountain fibers and the students seemed to have gotten along without me. But the 'to do' list is mounting and next weekend will be spent working at home dyeing, photographing, packing grab bags, grading papers and doing all those things that are calling my name. Gotta Go!

Coming Up: Calling the Old Farmers Ball on Thursday.

Not my Next Career

Cake Decorating, that is. Although my colleague and I had great fun decorating a cake for our administrative person's 50th birthday, perhaps frosting is not my most creative medium. It was lots of fun and the other 2 talked about taking a cake decorating class, but I think I'll pass. For all its tack glory, the cake was delicious. The cake itself was a dense pound cake and the icing was genuine butter cream - heavy on the butter! My official contribution was the ice cream (Moose Tracks and Pralines & Cream) and both cake and ice cream will live in the office refrigerator for all and sundry to snack on.

Note the background of these pics: Paper cutters, hole punches, program brochures and all matter of office supplies are within easy reach of squirty bags and tips.

Although my evening class started in the Adult ACCESS program started last week, the semester began this week. I have 2 day sections as well as the evening session - both very full. I have revamped my class slightly to make it more education, less technology. So far so good. In the self-assessments I found that virtually all my traditional age students have Facebook or MySpace pages, but only one admits to having a blog. I don't tell them about mine.

Official fiber content: At tonight's SAFF board meeting, I'll be knitting on the BronzeBerry socks. The first sock is ready for the toe, the 2nd is ready for the heel flap! These are fast little sockies - Lunch hour knitting rocks!

In Which She Tidied the Basement...

I started this post with 'Cleaned', but even 'tidied' is too strong a word. However, blogging that you made a bit of progress on the basement may put your life in a pretty dreary category. But not in a basement as fine as my own.

I live in a house that is about 840 square feet - rather small by US standards of the 21st Century, but perfectly adequate if...
1. You live alone or with someone that you like a lot
2. You are not a major packrat
3. You have a basement that nearly doubles the square footage of the house.

I qualify for all of the above. Plus the fact that it has both an indoor stairway and I can walk out into the backyard and it has windows along one side make it a particularly nice basement. People live in worse places that this - even in my neighborhood! One side is utility: Clothes washing area, furnace, overflow pantry, root cellar -that sort of thing. When I remodel the kitchen, I'll move the stove down there to dye on, along with the old kitchen cabinets.

The other side is SmokyMountainFibers warehouse and processing area. That's where I keep fleece, roving and dyed fiber, dye in the crockpot, pick and card fiber and store tools and supplies of all kinds. It is furnished with shelving units, random tables and cast-off desks, a boombox and all matter of boxes that is my semi-organized workspace. But it gets a bit cluttered and I can't find the things that I need. Every now and then I bite the bullet and break down boxes, pack up the things that go to the charity shop, throw away useless things that I do not seem to need and have to reason to keep another day. I always find a few feet of space by doing these things and it makes me feel better as I de-clutter and destash.

The last few years I have de-stashed via Etsy and SpinSales and sent fiber to new homes, getting rid of tail ends of fleeces, roving I have not used, yarns I do not seem to want to knit. This year the tradition continues as I post a lovely Icelandic fleece that I just will not get to; some llama I do not love, cone yarns that have been around too darn long, superwash roving that I do not like to spin. Someone will appreciate these things much more than I.

I worked with Sally at the Locally Grown Gallery this weekend to 'winterize' the shop - creating more work surface and storage to keep her (and all of us) productive during the slow times. That little gallery has continued to surprise me - I hope the economic downturn isn't too tough on that business. Sally is an excellent sales person as well as a gifted artist and fine friend and deserves success in this endeavor.

Other weekend good stuff: Bristol dance was fun - great band, lots of enthusiasm.
I baked a ham! yum! Served it with sweet potatoes, collards and white beans.
BronzeBerry socks are about 1/2 done - yeah!