We're off to OFFF

Well, very soon we're off to OFFF - Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival! We're packing up and trying to think what to bring, and wondering how our space will work out and all that stuff. This will be my first time at OFFF as a vendor. Charlie & Melda hadn't gone for some years before I bought the business either. I decided Black Sheep was so much fun that I'd give this one a whirl too. Fall is a tough time around here cause we're busy with the knitting catalog and Wool Rag and spin catalog, but I thought I'd see if I could squeeze it in without killing myself and everybody around me.... here's hoping! :)

Look for us on the porch of the main pavillion! We'll have lots of wheels, and gadgets and sock yarn and books.

AND, if you show up in your t-shirt from this years Komen Race for the Cure, you'll get a small token of our appreciation (while supplies last). It's a really important fund raiser for a really important issue, and I'd just like to say thanks for supporting it.

And that mystery photo from the last entry is indeed silk worm cocoons. Cathy and Wanda are both raising them. Don't know how much silk they're going to get since they aren't snuffing the moths, but letting them emerge from the cocoons and complete their lifecycles. It's a very cool process, watching these guys do their thing.

Okay! Let's all go have a great time at OFFF, it's gonna be a great show!

Diane

Playing Catch-Up

(did somebody say ketchup?)

First - thanks so much for all the kind words on and off the blog about our run-in with the thief. They were all very much appreciated!

Time to share some projects from around here!

A sock in progress from Cathy, using Maizy...



Part of a finished sock from Cathy out of Trekking color 100





and part of another finished sock from Cathy out of Mielenweit cotton Festa. Cathy is our sock superstar around here. I've managed a couple of pair in my life (thanks to Cathy!), but she cranks them out regularly. In fact, she wears only handknit socks. I have aspirations to be able to do that, but it's gonna take a while. Anybody else wear only handknits? You have my utmost admiration!



And guess what else Cathy and Wanda are up to!!


Any guesses?? :)

Recovering

A while back I wrote a post about stress, and how we were all a little wacked out around here and to please be patient with us. A very sweet person called to make sure we were all okay. Physically we're all fine. Emotionally, maybe not so much.

You see, we were robbed. Not the dramatic horrific kind of robbery, but the stealthy, sneaking.... words fail me. Someone we all knew and even liked robbed us. This person worked here (and is NOT pictured in the catalog! don't think it was any of those good people!!), and was stealing spinning wheels and other big ticket items and selling them for dirt on eBay. If you know somebody who got the deal of the century on eBay for a "new in the box" wheel or drum carder - it was stolen here.

The financial fallout of this has been really bad, but that only affects me. The emotional fallout affects everybody who knew this person, all of us who worked day in and day out, sharing bits of our lives, and jokes and the shared happenings of our day. We were betrayed. Not just once, but continually. At first we thought somebody had broken in - a one time thing. Turns out it was going on for much longer than we thought, and who knows how long it would have continued. So all those conversations about how could it have happened when we thought we were robbed - that this person participated in, and gave no inkling.... were you laughing all the while?

The good people that work here have pitched in with extra effort - showing up to see if we needed more help when they weren't scheduled, working extra hours, coming in last Sunday to get inventory done as fast as we could without being closed any longer than we had to. I guess it's part of the balance in the universe - the good trying to balance out the bad.

The bad still eats away at me, as it does everyone else here. But it's getting better, and it will continue to get better. The law will do what it needs to do with this person, and we will get on with our lives. Sadder but wiser?

Choices, it's all about choices.