Hunkering Down

 

This photo is from a few years ago, but shows some of the accumulation that we can expect as 'normal'.

The weather forecast for the next few days is...snow.  I'm not particularly bothered by it because I don't really need to leave the house for the next few days.  After a flurry of activity (and stress) the past while, the coming week is supposed to be quiet.

I have one last box of Olds homework to mark, and I'm nearing the end of the current warp.  I will be using up one more colour on this warp and have the draft for the next ready to go.  

The next warp will be the 'last' dark blue at 36 epi and should see me able to use up the last of the mercerized cotton.  There are half a dozen or so partial tubes of navy and then some black.  Whatever the 'last' warp uses up will be the 'end' of that particular yarn.  Anything left will be too little to weave with so it will go into my bobbin lace stash.

When I'm done with that warp, there will be enough of the dark blues to do one warp at 32 epi and I have yet to decide which of the 2/16 colours will get used first.  I have some 2/16 navy, but also other colours that I 'found' when I did the deep clean of the clean storage area.

And then I will have a new warp colour to play with.  Brassard has already shipped the yarns for that.  No danger of me running out of yarn.  (HA!)

In the meantime the BOGO sale is going well on ko-fi, plus I'm hoping people are interested enough in the cotton/linen spa towels to buy - they are priced way below what they should be.

Someone complained about a can of paint costing 3/4's of their daily wage.  Well, it takes me several hours to weave a tea towel, and linen isn't cheap, so each towel warp represents several weeks of my labour, plus the materials, plus, plus, plus...  So I understand that some people can't stretch their budget to purchase something like one of my towels.  OTOH, I have bills to pay, too, and I have never ever managed to achieve even minimum wage by weaving.

So, why do I do it?  Because I must.  I worked 8-4 jobs and grew to hate them, every single one.  So I chose to do an 'antique' craft and earn way less money than I could have done, just to be able to keep my sanity.  And I always priced my things so that more people could afford them, which put me way down at the bottom of the pay pyramid.

But again - my choice.  

OTOH, someone else's pinched budget is not my problem to solve.  So I will continue to sell my textiles at a price that I feel is as fair as I can make it.  And from time to time I will offer 'special' pricing on certain items.  (i.e. the BOGO sale, the current spa towels)

The same with my books.  When I wrote Magic, it was because resources on wet finishing were sparse, and I felt I could contribute to the general knowledge in the weaving community by presenting that information in a way that was helpful.  Hence the before and after samples.  It was horrendously expensive to produce, so my labour (and that of Doug) was largely unpaid.  When I announced the price there was a hue and cry about my price gouging, especially on my shipping charge.  For a book that weighed about 5 pounds, and no book rate in Canada, I had to pay parcel rates and international shipping - because the vast majority of people wanting the book were not in Canada.  Not to mention all the tipped in samples - which were not postage stamp size.  But I held firm, and now?  People are not only getting their purchase price back when they sell it, the book (with actual samples) frequently sells for *more* than what I charged initially.  If I could have got that price when I published it, I would not have had to finance the publishing for nearly 10 years...

With The Intentional Weaver, I had to weigh the cost of the printing with what I felt people would be willing to pay for a 'textbook'.  Because that is what it is.  By self-publishing I actually get more per copy than if I'd gone the traditional publishing route.  BUT, I have to do all the marketing myself. 

Ditto Stories from the Matrix.

The *value* in my books is the information being conveyed, not in the cost of the paper and ink that holds that information.

If you want a copy of my books, they will remain available at blurb.com where you can purchase all three books (well, Magic is a 'magazine' format) or signed copies should be available at Sweet Georgia again.

But winter is definitely here, and it is time to hunker down...