Spinny spin spin

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of this, which is great; not only do I have a backlog of fiber, but it’s all been social spinning so I’ve been seeing a lot of my friends as well. I may actually have some handspun to list and sell soon – how crazy is that?! I can’t even remember the last time I had something off the bobbins.

And of course I’ve been doing a lot of thinking…. BRAIN DUMP, YAY!

I was all set to wind down on my Etsy store, and then over the course of about ten days I had no sales on my regular shop, but five on my Etsy shop. So I decided to keep it plodding along, reworking what I have up there, and then started getting custom requests for two items that the first sentence of the items are something like “I am phasing these out and am no longer able to take custom requests for these items.” Sigh.

I think I mentioned but I did not get chosen for jury duty. It was for a crime that I have personally been on the receiving end of, so in spite of my bitter grace and my attempt to be impartial, I was excused. It did bring up a lot of ugly shit in my brain for a few days that I thought I’d shut the door on 20 years ago, after living in a place where I got broken into three times over the course of three months. So I sat with that for a few days and decided instead of working through it, I’d be just find shutting the door on it again. You know. Until the next time I’m called for jury duty and it’s a burglary.

The runner of the event hasn’t made the official vendor announcement yet, so I hope I’m not jumping the gun… but I want to start getting people excited that HaldeCraft will be vending at the Florida Fiber-In in September! What, what?! YES! So set your calenders, locals, for some fun in the Orlando area. It is September 20-22, 2013, at the Radison on International Drive. Sharon has agreed to help me (wo)man the booth, so we’ll be there all three days with yarn, yarn bowls, yarn mugs, yarn, fun, and yarn. And probably our spinning wheels (duh) even though I don’t sell fiber.

The dogs are getting along well, now. Lindy doesn’t really like to play chase, but Corwin doesn’t really like to be snuggled. HAHAHAHAH to both of them, they’re just having to learn to suck it up and reach a compromise. It is pretty damn funny to wake up in the morning and see Lindy pretty much sleeping on top of Corwin, who’s looking at me to say “really, mom? Really?”

I may have to raise the price on a couple of things I make, soon. Specifically, a couple of my base yarns. The last time I raised prices was 16 months ago, and when I did I probably didn’t raise them as high as I should have. I’ve seen it coming, though, and have priced a few new yarns I’ve brought in appropriately, so I won’t have to raise everything. So I’m not (too) worried that suddenly everyone who likes my yarn will jump ship. However, I am worried about yarn club, because coupled with the base yarn price there’s also me wanting to make nice swag to go with it, but winding up not making much profit when I do (surprisingly, with no profit, I do not make a paycheck… GO FIGURE). So I might wind up having to raise the price of yarn club by $10. Which is still pretty darn cheap compared to some other yarn clubs out there (a quick search on Etsy shows an average 3-month club with swag runs between $70-$90)… but it does give me pause. I’m thinking I have four options: (1) make no price changes and try to keep my cost of swag down. (2) raise the price from $65 to $75 and suck it up if people don’t join. (3) keep the price at $65 and don’t do swag any more. (4) raise the price to $75 but also make a $65 no-swag option. I’m leaning towards option #4. Yarn folks, even those not joining club, are welcome to chime in with thoughts but please don’t bring this to Ravelry yet — I’ll make an announcement when I work it all out.

I’ve started advertising on Facebook, ugh. Paying to promote certain posts – mainly my weekly updates – for a whopping $5. My reasoning was that if I was going to phase out my Etsy shop, I could use that $20/month I was paying in fees there, to advertise on Facebook, just to see what it was like. My views on those posts I pay to promote have gone up from about 150 people to 1200 people. It’s hard to say if that is directly translating into sales or not, but I have an idea to promote certain items rather than a general update, and try to track it that way. Sure, you could do things that say “mention this ad and get ____” but then you run the risk of people only wanting to buy from you when you have a sale. And if people are only buying when you have a sale running, then you either lose money, or you wind up having to jack up your prices to try to compensate. Neither one of those ideas thrills me.

It really irks me that our local paper, which is usually rife with misquotes and misspellings, has gone to a paywall online. You can view five articles for free, and after that, unless you’ve subscribed, you just get a box asking you to pay. The only things I ever really looked at with any regularity were the mug shots and the obituaries, both of which told me what was going on sometimes with people I know. Now those are behind the paywall. I wouldn’t mind subscribing… if they hadn’t misquoted almost every person I know who’s been interviewed for something in the paper. I totally support journalism. But not shitty journalism. And because I’m so pigheaded, now I don’t know if my former classmates have been arrested or my former teachers have shuffled off this mortal coil.

OK… I think I have brain dumped enough. Now if only I would update my recently read books on Goodreads, I’d have something else to blog about…. book reviews! Sigh. One day at a time. A brain dump is enough for today.