Spring Green show and other stuff

The show in Spring Green over the weekend was pretty good. Not quite as good as last year, but still considering the detour and the intense heat on Saturday it was a great show. I sold two rugs that I have been hauling around for 10 years now... they were not quite the oldest rugs I have, but darn close. I sold my last rug just after we had packed almost everything away.

Maddie sold almost all her felt balls and I sold a great many of my needle felted balls. One woman bought $134.00 in felt balls. I only had to take three credit cards so that was good. I am terrible at remembering all the stuff I need to call in the card transactions later so they always make me nervous. Not to mention the fact that the credit card companies nip off a little more profit each time. One guy actually bought a felt ball with one. I could not talk him out of it. Oh well. The cost of doing business. Maddie needled another 10 balls over the two days and was a nice attraction for people. I hope I can hang onto her for a while for shows. It is good to have a decorative fixture in the booth LOL (some guy called her a fixture and she asked me if I thought that was a compliment)

Puck had to work on Sunday night so it was just Maddie and me for Sunday. The weather was much cooler, but the wind was horrendous. I hung up all my heavy rugs on the tent so it would not blow away. I was nervous the whole time... On one side was a glass artist and on the other was an expensive potter... talk about being between a rock and a hard place :)

we all survived and it seemed like people were buying. My good friend Michael stayed with us for most of the day so we got to visit when the booth wasn't too crowded. He also helped us pack up, which was wonderful. He is nice and tall and can reach all the things that we short people struggle with. I forgot to bring my nice step stool. I will have to add that to the show list.

we got packed up in a little less than an hour which is great timing. We drove home and I smelled burning rubber faintly. We had the windows open so I wasn't sure it was us. I didn't see any smoke or anything so we pressed on. We stopped at McDonald's for our end of show vanilla shakes and the van was sort of burbling like it was overheating. A little steam was escaping, but the overflow tank was pretty full. I added a little water to that. We headed for home again and got on the final road to home which is a curvy back road when the heat light came on. "Oh Shit" I exclaimed and pulled off to the side of the no shoulder road. We were right on a curve. I popped the hood and checked the over flow... it was still full. bummer. I did not want to open the radiator when it was hot, fearing an explosion. I had poured most of our spare water into the overflow tank.

We waited a few minutes. Finally I decided I better try to let some steam out of the radiator. I grabbed one of my cloth utilitarian bags (grocery and whatever) and set out to open up the steaming monster. I gingerly unscrewed it and waited for the gushing water that usually boils out. Nothing... Yikes! The radiator was completely dry. Now we had a completely different problem. Maddie and I scrambled to find extra water to pour into the radiator. We had half empty water bottles that we had drunk at the show so we emptied those in. Dumped the last bit of our designated radiator water in, still not full but could at least see water in the radiator. I decided to chance it and turned the van back on. No light so I drove slowly home. We made it and it appears I did not completely wreck the engine.

I tell you if it is not one thing it's another. I spent most of the evening deleting the things I had sold off of ETSY and cursing myself for not having a better system for locating the dang rugs. It took hours to figure it all out and I had sold a rug off of Artfire too. That all is way too complicated for my poor brain.

I finally decided to create a spread sheet with all my goofy names, the descriptions of the rugs and my id numbers. I spent Monday completing the spreadsheet. Now I am ready for anything. Oh and I had sold a book from my vintage shop too so I had to get that packaged up and sent out.

Yesterday morning I steeled myself to call in the three credit card sales. I called the number followed the instructions and punched numbers in as fast as I could. The nice little automated voice told me I was not a valid merchant number and transferred me to a human. She asked for my merchant number three times and finally told me I was not valid either and to call my merchant account person to straighten it out. I called him and left a message... he called back two hours later and told me my number had worked fine when he tried it (gee I hate that) I took a deep breath and tried it again.

I apparently am too slow for the automated telephone deely and they transferred me to a person again. This time my account number went through, but it had been my first sale and I had forgotten to get her street number and zip code so that her number could be verified. In my notes it mentions that I can just use my own number and zip for stupidity like this. The girl said I couldn't, I said it was in my notes and she said what the heck. When it came to the sale amount I gave her an amount, but did not include the tax since on my crib sheet it looked like the tax was supposed to come later. She started to give me a verification and reference number and I asked if she needed the tax amount. She sounded a little confused, I explained that I had not added the tax on the amount I had given her. She claimed it would be fine, but I have a feeling I lost the tax amount on that one.

I went to do the next two on my own. Dialed the number for the fourth time... got all the way through one and got a message that it was declined... Panic!

Called the number for the fifth time and did the other transaction... yippee that one went in just fine, grabbed the other one and tried it again... barely beat the automation timing, but this time it went through just fine so it only took me 4 hours to enter three credit card transactions. I sure hope I get better at that


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Dyed some wool for felt balls and got Maddie's balls and some of my own into the washer. All that wool and balls are now drying. Took picture of the rugs that are not yet on ETSY this morning and got them edited and resized for the site.

Ordered 35 more little connectors for my grid display system. We discovered after we were at the show on Saturday that we were about 25 connectors short. Maddie and Puck zip tied the heck out of the grids and it held together pretty well. I will be prepared for the next show. The problem is that because I now am selling online I need to be able to find the dang rugs if I sell them so we set up a rack in the basement. That used up my connectors and now I am short.

Blasted through that red warp

I finished the red warp a couple days ago. I think I got 12 rugs off that warp. It was not a very big one. I am pretty low on red rags right now. Next I think will be a yellow and orange warp. I only have a couple yellow rugs in stock so I really need some more with shows coming up soon. I ordered a mess of color from Edgemont yarns which should be here in a couple days. They are very quick at shipping.

I have been cutting yellow and orange rags as quickly as I can.

We were up north over the weekend to see our daughter in a play. We stayed with my baby sister who gave me two garbage bags full of blue jeans. Tonight I am cutting the seams out of as many of those as I can so Puck can cut them into strips. My business is really a family affair :)

Out with the Blue in with the Red

Finished my blue warp a couple weeks ago, got them finished, priced, measured and photographed. Spent the next few weeks listing and now finally have all but about 7 rugs listed. Now it is on to the next warp. I am pretty low on Red rugs right now so that will be my next batch of rugs. I have my first art fair at the end of June and need to build stock.



This is the truest picture of the warp wound on the the sectional beam of the loom. It is a red and black Log Cabin pattern





This shows the warp all laid out. After I wind on the required amount of warp I pull the threads up over the beam and double check to see that they are all accounted for. I arrange them in the correct pattern and tape the threads to the beam to keep them in place





My husband or daughter help me pull the threads through the heddles and we can get it done fairly quickly once we get into a rhythm. Once that is done I sley the reed. That means pulling each of the threads through the reed. It has gotten to be rather challenging now that I am relying more and more on my glasses to see the dang slots. I did mess up and skipped one slot, but it was close to and end thank heavens and after I took everything apart it was not terribly difficult to fix. They always say that if you want to teach someone to weave have them do the weaving first to get them hooked and then teach them to warp up the loom. If you had to warp up a loom before you had ever woven anything I rather think no one would take it up. :)





I just added this little picture to show the lovely gears on my loom. It is dusty and industrial looking, but I really love my loom.

In between warping I have been sewing rags together and cutting rags on my Fraser cutter. It is a hand cranked cutter which uses human energy to work :)

Lots of stuff to do

Started off early and got another rug named and described. It is such a dang process.. I will be ever so happy to have it up to date. I have been cleaning up some of the earlier rugs I uploaded and adding their invoice numbers so that it wont be total chaos if I sell any at my art fairs which are fast approaching.

Got a wild hair up my you know what and decided to take some ETSY advice on business cards. The claim is that people just stash cards and never take another look at them. I guess I do the same thing and I have been handing them out for years. A suggestion was made to be creative and one idea was making magnets to hand out. I decided to investigate the idea today. I had to drive to Janesville anyhow to get kitty food and some other things so I planned on Hobby Lobby.

found some magnets at the local Outreach along with some sheets that will be great in my next batch of rugs, bought some paper to print off some designs and ended up finding some printable magnetic paper at Hobby Lobby after all.

Got home and put all my stuff away then set about making my magnets. They turned out pretty good so I hope they end up being useful. One batch was a little off color until I cleaned the nozzles on my printer, but after that they looked pretty good.

Finished my Blue Warp

Got my blue warp finally off the loom this past week during Easter Break. Managed to weave a couple nice long rugs. A Hit or Miss 9 foot runner and I think my biggest blue jean rug ever at 16 feet.

I finished the warp off on Wednesday then spent the afternoon knotting and pricing. My husband Puck helped me get all the rugs photographed along with some of the runners I have not been able to get pictures of on the dining room table... I only have so much length on the table although it is pretty under the rugs. I like the outdoor light, but the weather has not been cooperating too much lately :)

Now I have a nice big pile of rugs to get loaded on to ETSY. I figure I can do two or three a day and keep my creativity going although I am running out of names for green rugs LOL

Finally Back in the Studio

Now that I am finally finished with the play I was co-directing and have put away most of the costumes I loaned out I have spent the past weekend working on rugs again.

Yesterday I spent 9 hours sewing rags and weaving. I was working for the most part on a batch of shirts that I had cut up a few months ago. I love hit or miss rugs, but they are way labor intensive. It took most of the day to get that batch of rags sewed up. I keep pieces as short as 5 inches because I hate to waste anything, but it does take time.

today I did a little more sewing and more weaving. I have a total of 5 rugs finished now and am tying fringe tonight. Feels good to be back in the saddle again. Need to get some product finished for my summer art and craft fairs.

I joined a new Team

I was invited to join Design Style It is a website that is promoted to designers. I made an application and was accepted. It seems like a very good fit for my work and I look forward to a long and fruitful collaboration.

In other news I have not been weaving at all, but am getting closer to listing all my rugs which has been quite a task. I still need to photograph some runners, but my dining room table is not long enough to do them justice. The weather outside is rather prohibitive when it comes to photographing right now so I may not get to them until spring.

I have gotten some doll house rugs made in some new and fun colors and hope to get pictures up soon. I have some rainbow, mint green and a darker blue.