new blog

Here's what I plan to do: I'm going to start writing a new blog. The reason I started this one is that every helpful selling strategies email from Etsy says that shoppers love blogs, and good sellers write blogs. That may be true, but I think the problem with mine is that of all the things I am thinking about minute to minute, rarely is making jewelry or accessories among them. I still create things, because I enjoy it. I am no great photographer, so when there's 2 feet of snow outside it's hard for me to photograph anything since I have not yet found a feasible way to put myself inside a lightbox. My main Etsy shop will carry on, and I plan to add some of the more eco-conscious things I've been working on to the other Etsy shop, Duck & Cover,like recycled yarns, but this blog is dead. nobody needs to listen to me bitch about the things and people that annoy me, or to read the myriad ways I can grasp at straws as I try to relate what I'm actually thinking about to my shop.

So here it is: I give you. . .

The last Octavia's Beads blog post!

Making yarn is my new favorite thing. I spun some nice super bulky undyed yarn from some wool roving that i picked up at the Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival last weekend. I knitted a few rows with it and it is soft, cuddly, and amazing. I was so proud of myself. I also bought some pinkish-peach and cream roving with bronze glitzy-stuff in it at the PASA conference and I think the two combined will make a stunning wrap.
At the K&C festival, I took a class on recycled yarn. Some of it was probably common sense, but as I have none, I needed this class. The instructor even pointed out that all of the things she taught were available to learn from youtube, but I am not likely to pay rapt attention to youtube for more than a few minutes. To be fair, though, that is how I taught myself to use a drop spindle. That and a library book from the U.K. which was published in the 1960s and never checked out before. I'm certainly on the crest of a trendy wave, aren't I? Anyway, T-shirt yarn, plastic bag yarn, leather yarn. . . it's all possible, it's all doable, and it can look really fantastic. I knitted a headband out of T-shirt yarn that I made while I was there that day.

So. . . if you'd like to see what I make with the yarn, to find out what I plant in my new, bigger garden and how I plan to add wheat, nuts, hops, and kiwis, read the new blog. If you want to follow the drama and the learning curve as I manage my first multi-farm CSA group this summer, read the new blog. If you're curious about how much of one family's food supply one person without training or experience can produce from an acre of challenging clay soil, read the new blog at http://www.finianvalley.blogspot.com. Thanks!