It’s funny how the time flies isn’t it? I feel like I have been crazy busy for months but when I stop and think what do I have to show for it, I’m stumped! I have been working on a piece for the IFA magazine, Felt Matters. Fingers crossed that will appear in the September issue but I can’t say too much about that before it is published….
There have been quite a few markets and spin-ins this month, which have been fun but not all that profitable, fingers crossed I do better at the next two, a pottery market in South Auckland and then Fibretron, one of the biggest fibre events in New Zealand….
I sold a few felted soaps at the Nathan Homestead market:
So I have been replacing some of that stock, first I needed to work out which soaps needed replacing:
Then to work…
A few of the finished soaps ready for the next market….
Not fibre related but we have two new chooks, a friend adopted a new dog and was struggling to manage so I agreed to add her two ladies (Thelma and Louise) to our flock of nine naughty chooks. I had hoped to keep them in a separate run and coop (alcatraz henitentiary) where they could all see each other for at least a couple of weeks. However, 3 of my girls decided the mountain of food in their troughs wasn’t enough, they wanted what the new girls were eating and broke into alcatraz. So I had to play prison guard and break up the fights, turns out one of my Red Shavers is a horrible bully, she’s been threatened with the pot a few times.
Thelma and Louise are still sleeping and laying in the henitentiary but are allowed to free range during the day. For the most part they are hanging out away from my original flock but every now and then I have to break up the squabbles and chase the naughty bully away.
In between chook chasing I have started work on a crochet shawl using some hand-spun art yarn, can you see the shells and glass beads? It was spun form some of the pina colada blend I have for sale, it contains pineapple fibre and reminds me of summers on the beach. A distant memory in the depths of a New Zealand winter!
What fun you’re having with those chooks!
It seems that people have got a firmer grip on their purse strings these days – sales are harder to get.
The shawl is going to be beautiful – yes the shells and beads are visible and what a lovely addition to the yarn.
The chooks are keeping me on my toes, they are fun to have around and a lot easier to keep here than in the UK where foxes are a threat.
A lot of my fellow traders are also reporting a drop in sales across the board this year, I had hoped things would get easier with interest rates falling but I guess global uncertainty has everyone watching their pennies more closely.