the peaceful peacock

Before Annabelle was born, I laid out a plan of what I thought I could actu­ally achieve with an infant and a tod­dler underfoot.

I knew that phys­i­cally cre­at­ing would be a chal­lenge (to say the least…) so while she was very, very tiny and liked to sleep all the time, I learned to make my own hand­spun yarn.  Once the wheel became too excit­ing for tiny hands to resist, I moved into the next phase of the plan, switched gears and focused on lay­ing out the web­site of my dreams.  I have been deeply immersed in learn­ing the skills to make this happen–not an easy feat.  It’s just about there though and I’m pretty sat­is­fied with the over­all appear­ance and set-up (like the bare bones of my gallery!  take a look!)

And so comes another shift.

The time has come for me to drag my moth­er­ing hor­mones away from the chil­dren (some­times kick­ing and screaming–me, not them) and into the stu­dio for a few hours a week to hit the machines.  We have a sum­mer mar­ket com­ing up you know…but don’t say that out loud because I start get­ting a lit­tle frayed around the edges.  The plan was to begin cre­at­ing inven­tory in Jan­u­ary and I hon­estly can’t stop myself.  I just walk into my stu­dio, sit down, and auto­mat­i­cally start stitch­ing things together.

Slow and steady.  That’s me.

And that’s a tall order for a woman whose mind fol­lows the pace of the speedy lit­tle rabbit.

This year I plan to offer a wide selec­tion of hand­spun yarns, a vari­ety of knit­ting and cro­chet acces­sories (like the hook and nee­dle cases), and a lim­ited col­lec­tion of hand­made cloth­ing of my own design.

Which just might uti­lize my skills in hand dye­ing and/or applique, like this cus­tom skirt in the works:

And due to the unex­pected arrival of the girls last fall, you just might see an appear­ance of some hand­wo­ven goods.  Like belts.  Maybe.

So click your heels three times, whis­per a spell and it might come true.….….

A blan­ket of snow qui­etly greeted us this morning…

…and set the per­fect tone for some time snatched away to devour a bun­dle of hand­spun yarn.

Another ben­e­fit to hav­ing a mama who is an artist?  She spins up some crazy yarn.  I’ll be mak­ing a hat for the Etsy FAST Decem­ber Chal­lenge (a team­work theme) with this lit­tle bundle.

Or maybe I’ll keep it for myself.  It sure is purty, isn’t it?

I’ve been work­ing on a sig­na­ture pea­cock feather design and I think I’ve come pretty close. 

So sorry kids, this headband’s stay­ing right here with me.

Not only does it fea­ture a new motif, I’m pick­ing up a new skill for the bor­der­ing yarn:

Wish me luck!