Blossom Merz Hand Weaving: The Collective Experience

Rugs

2010-07-30T06:17:00.000-07:00

The apprentice has surpassed the master, so to speak. Tower is learning the ropes of weaving from me. His first project has been to learn, set up, teach, and oversee a community weaving fundraiser. He is doing amazingly well at every part of it!

He has taken a few simple suggestions on potential techniques and turned them into beautiful rugs. If he chose to, I think he could make a decent living just weaving these from old clothes left around the land. He's now knows more about rag rug weaving than I do.

Enough blather, take a look!

[Clasped weft for a stunning effect]

[Understated inlay on velvet. Gorgeous!]

[The whole setup at night. Thanks for the lights, TJ!]

Rugs and Hornets

2010-07-28T07:15:00.000-07:00

[Pile of clothes turning into strips]

[8 rugs, waiting to be cut off]

The gathering is going well. People are having a great time. The last few days involved lots of little tasks: finishing and distributing our newsletter, managing the finances, collecting registration forms, working on proposals for our semi-annual meeting next week and most exciting, distributing fly parasites.

This was actually the funniest thing. We do two things here that encourage flies: use composting pit toilets, and compost our kitchen scraps. When we have large numbers of people on the land, our fly population explodes. We use many hanging bags of fly attractant to keep the numbers down, but it doesn't seem to do much good.
This year, we're trying a new technique: parasitic wasps. These tiny wasps lay their eggs in fly maggots and kill them before they mature. Here's the funny part... Word got out that I was waiting for them to arrive in the mail. In the rumor mill, tiny wasps turned into giant hornets. I introduced myself to a new visitor and he blanched. I asked what was wrong. He said, "are you the one who's going to release a swarm of hornets in the middle of the gathering?" When I stopped laughing, I told him that it was already done and they were harmless wasps the size of a fruitfly. Then at dinner circle I brought the bag with a couple tiny wasps still in it so people could see how small and harmless they are. It's funny how rumors work.

[Bag of parasitic wasps and larvae. See the tiny specks at the top? That's them.]

[Stunning Sunset]

Day Off, Sort Of

2010-07-25T23:02:00.000-07:00

[Rug weaving demonstration and silent auction]

Today has been slow and pretty lazy. After yesterday's ridiculous stress I really needed to take it slow.

I woke up late and took a long time to find people to help move the rug weaving operation down the hill. We loaded it onto a cart and hauled it all down, getting it set up by about noon.

Then I strung a new necklace. It's funny. This happens about once a year, usually mid-Summer. The strand of beads I've worn all year just doesn't feel right and a new one appears. This year was awesome! I gave a gorgeous strand of iolite to a friend about 10 years ago. She has loved the stones all these years and gave them back to me a few weeks ago. Tower let me choose some spacer stones from his collection so now I have a choker with two colors of iolite accented with tiny, sparkly light blue topaz. This necklace looks like a starry night. It's perfect for my life at this time.

[Iolite and blue topaz. Yum!]

The instant I slipped it around my neck there was a knock on my door. It was the president of our organization come to have a chat. I wish I could trust anything he has to say.

After that was done I balanced the books, counted the cash and wrote up paperwork for donations of food.

Then I took a quick nap and cooled off in the infinity pool. It was so nice to have that kind of time for once. I don't really, but it's nice to pretend sometimes.

Dinner was a delightful Indian-inspired affair after which I sat around chatting with friends until the temperature dropped. Now it's 11:30 and I don't want to sleep because the air is cool and lovely. The moon is up and people are wandering around having fun.

I think I'll make afternoon naps a habit until the weather cools down a bit.

Staggering Amount Of Work

2010-07-24T23:09:00.000-07:00

[Infinity pool, Wolf Creek style. Fed by the spring, it makes hot days bearable if you can find the time to use it.]

This day turned out nothing like I planned. I woke up ready to hold my Purse Queen office hours, set up the registration scene and move the rug weaving operation down to where people can see it for our fundraiser.

I got down the hill and didn't even have a chance to drink my tea before the world came crashing down. It turned out that we have nowhere near the amount of money we needed to buy all of the food, the treasurer was on an airplane and unable to transfer more, and the gathering starts tomorrow.

Sooooo, I updated the accounting records so I'd have perfect numbers to work from, performed some fancy (and well-documented) flim-flam, and wrote out detailed instructions so the kitchen crew would know how to perform the rest of the shopping. It took 5 hours of hair-splitting work. I'll reconcile again tomorrow, but I think I was able to pay for
enough food for half of the week.

And what will the participants in the gathering notice? Nothing at all with any luck. They'll be eating lovely food and having a great time without a care in the world, just as it should be. (According to recent customs. I'm old enough to remember when the gathering did much of the work of preparing for itself.)

Then I got the registration scene set and retired to the shade to process timesheets from the rug weaving project. When the rugs sell, part of the money is going toward our utilities, but the rest will be distributed among the people who worked on them. I like things to be fair and clearly communicated.

Then I worked for a few hours on our organization's newsletter before dinner. Tonight was leftovers, but they were delicious and exactly what we needed: salty, meaty pot pie. I had signed up for dishes so I did them, thankfully with a few volunteers to help. Then it was off with my Princess to collect donations and get back to the newsletter for a few hours before bed.

Notice that I never did get the weaving booth or rug auction set up say nothing of my own work. First thing tomorrow, before the heat arrives.

Hosting Gatherings

2010-07-24T08:19:00.000-07:00

The main purpose for acquiring the Sanctuary was to host gatherings. In the beginning, people came together for a week or two to prepare the land for each gathering. Over the years that has shifted so that nowadays people expect to arrive and find everything prepared for them.

This is an immense amount of work. I mean, it's a big enough chore to keep things maintained "well enough", but to add the gathering polish takes all available hands working all day every day for at least a week.

We had a private gathering last week. The land wasn't quite ready, but done well enough for them to enjoy themselves and have a successful week. Then we had one week to get ready for the most important gathering of the year: the Spiritual Gathering of Radical Faeries. This gathering is the reason we bought the land.

On the first of July, I took on a new responsibility: Purse Queen. This job entails managing all of the money that gets earned or spent on the land. Once I've got all the systems in place, this will be a one-hour-a-day job. Right now, though, it takes about two.

I believe that bookkeeping needs to be done to the penny. If there's any margin for error, it's very difficult to figure out how big that error is. I've developed new systems and procedures to ensure that we know who is spending how much money on what. Every night at dinner the receipts are collected and change checked against petty cash taken out. In the morning over tea, the previous day is ledgered, the cash counted, and new cash logged out as necessary.

I've also set up a new system for receiving donations. The old system was not secure. Many people were collecting money, putting themselves in the way of temptation. "If I borrow a couple dollars, I'll totally pay it back next week." I don't think that anyone would steal from us, but I do think that mistakes are bound to happen in a loose system. The new system is simple and accountable: all money is collected in locked boxes. They are only opened by two people who fill out a form recording how much came in. Each person gets a copy and the books get a copy. Ta-dah! A transparent and dependable system for receiving income!

To truly manifest this new accounting workflow, I built us a new lock box named Tricia. (It sounds like "treasure" when spoken with the right accent.)

[Tricia, the treasure chest with new registration forms and a box of homemade bracelets]

Changing the Focus of my Blog

2010-07-22T16:25:00.000-07:00

I haven't really written in a while. This is for several reasons.

First, production weaving isn't all that exciting to write about. It involves weaving the same thing over and over again. Sometimes the colors change, but not much else.

Second, my vision for a crafts monastery is ramping into high gear. I've stepped into a more active role in the Wolf Creek Sanctuary community with my eyes always on the horizon that will lead to the development of the monastery of my dreams.

I write this blog on my phone, but when I get myself to a real computer I'll change the name of the blog to reflect my interest in business development, consensual community-building, and queer spirituality. I think this change of focus will get me back in the saddle of posting regularly.

In the meantime, look at my new haircut for Summer:

[I'm not a Buddhist, but I play one on TV.]

Rag Rugs!

2010-07-19T22:05:00.000-07:00

The last month has been interesting. I'm teaching folks here to weave, starting with my apprentice, Tower.

The project is simple and fun: we're taking old cloth that accumulates around the land and turning it into rugs. Torn bedsheets, old clothes, nothing is safe from our high-speed cutting machine!

The resulting rugs will be sold at the big summer gathering to raise money for our wintertime utilities. At this point, most of the people in the community have put in at least a few hours working on this project. It'll really pay off when we don't have to worry about utility bills during our off season.

Tower has done most of the real work on this project, warping the loom himself and supervising the new people as they learn the basics of weaving with rag strips.

[Tower setting up the loom]

[Vibrant and Dylan cutting rag strips]

[Tower with some rugs]

Images from the Land

2010-07-13T13:45:00.000-07:00

[Dracunculus smells like rotten meat.]

[Sunbow on a hazy day]

[A pretty sunset last week]

Custom Sewing Table

2010-06-26T12:05:00.000-07:00

I finished paying off the commercial sewing machine and brought it home. Then, I realized that I'm used to sewing on a huge table. For dealing with stitching the ends on yardage and stuff, a 20" deep table just isn't enough.

Thanks to TJ and our tool shed, I was able to design and build exactly the table I want. In a larger space, it will butt up against the machine table. In this space, it sits at 90 degrees and lets me move the cloth around me as I work.

Here's how we made it:

[Start with a weather-beaten banquet table]

[...and a piece of plywood]

[...lots of tools]

[...and a ton of filling and sanding]

[...and poof! There's a folding sewing table built for the space]

Oh, Deer! (Not for the squeamish...)

2010-06-09T00:08:00.000-07:00

Some days just don't turn out how you expected at all. Today was slated to be a routine day of food arrival and storage for a big gathering that starts tomorrow.

On one trip, the driver saw a deer hanging out near the road, alive. On the way back, she was on the side of the road, dead. They brought the groceries home and went back to get her. She was still limp when they got there, and just had traces of rigor mortis when they got home again.

Our friend, Badger, is able to dress a deer in just a few minutes without getting any blood on himself. I stepped in to help and spilled a cup of blood down my leg and into my shoe.

In all fairness, this was my first time helping to dress a deer. I'm not good at it, but it was way easier than I thought it would be. It wasn't gross or weird, just completely natural. Two hours after she arrived here, this animal that would have rotted by the road had been transformed into delicious food.

We ate the liver and heart tonight. The rest of the meat has to brine for a couple of days before we can eat it, but then we'll be having a feast. And it's a good thing, too, with 175 of our friends visiting for the week!

Of course I didn't take any pictures with blood and tallow all over my hands. These were taken immediately after we were done...

[Deer head and skin (in headlights)]

[Ribcage, guts, water for cleaning]

[two of the meat trays]

The Creek

2010-06-07T06:24:00.000-07:00

I'm finally home. Between the stuff with my bio family, food poisoning and other stresses, it took me way longer than normal to find my bearings this time. It finally clicked today when I took time off from work to listen to the creek.

And then I realized that, thanks to modern technology, I can give y'all a glimpse into this world. Here it is!

New Sewing Machine and Lessons

2010-06-04T15:27:00.000-07:00

[My new, powerful machine]

It's funny how things work. I stopped by to talk to Karen, the co-owner of Select Designs, a production sewing shop in Wolf Creek (and, incidentally, one of the few businesses in this tiny town.) I just wanted to ask if she had a source for used commercial sewing machines.

Well, as it turns out, they are changing directions with their business and have some machines on hand that they're ready to part with. I've been shopping online for a few weeks, so I know a bit about what's out there. She quoted me a fantastic price on a beautiful machine and then, as if that weren't enough, offered to train me on it and let me come use it under her tutelage until it's paid off.

Sweet! Today we sealed the deal and she got me started on it.

This machine is made to do only one thing very efficiently: stitch in a straight line. No fancy stitches or fiddly mechanisms to go out of temper - just lots of power:
- The 1/2 horsepower clutch motor can run the machine at 5500 stitches per minute. That's 10" of sewing per second. Scary! Productive!
- It uses a brake that lets it stop as fast as it runs.
- It has a knee lift so I can keep both hands on the work and turn corners quickly.
- It holds two cones of thread so bobbins wind automatically while sewing, not as a separate operation.
- It sits in a sealed oil pan and is lubricated continuously by an integrated oil pump.

Even if the machine didn't run faster, these last two features would save me an hour every day.

This was a short day in their shop so I just ran through lessons for a couple of hours. She had me do exercises to focus on speed control, straight lines, turning corners, braking, and continuous turning of the work to follow a line. This machine works just like the home machines I've used for decades, but WAY faster, more powerful and more responsive. I'm pretty good with it after just a couple of hours. I think it'll surpass the speed of my home machine the first time I use it for real work and still leave plenty of room to grow.

[Tonight's sunset at Wolf Creek Sanctuary. Breathtaking!]

This stuff with my dad has me turned inside out emotionally. I'll get through it and definitely be better off.

It's funny that I have no problem setting boundaries around energetic availability among the rest of the people in my life, but family is different. They treat me like crap for decades and I keep on working to gain their approval. There is no amount of work I could do that would cause them to treat me like a member of the family so I need to stop trying and remember that I have another family that appreciates me.

Slapped With Reality

2010-06-04T04:34:00.000-07:00

...or another version of the story at the very least...

My best friend is great! He sent me a "kick in the pants" email yesterday on the topic of going to help my dad. It's exactly what I needed.

You see, I am a very generous and forgiving person by nature. I want to help everybody and just be respected for who I am. When it comes to my family, though, I need to just let go of that. There are times when I *should* hold a grudge and let people reap the harvest from the ill will they've sown. This time, "people" means my dad and his wife. They don't seem to hold any respect for me, and they don't deserve my help, regardless of recent events. This is a very difficult thing for me to realize.

What Carl pointed out is that I'm not really in a strong position to help my dad, and it's partly his own doing. Here's the story... Two years ago I decided to pursue weaving as a profession. While working a day job that barely covered my bills, I did six months of research, took a couple of courses on planning and starting a small business, and worked with a few business advisors to write a detailed business plan and pursue funding. Then the banking industry all-but-collapsed. Lending dried up "temporarily".

So I called on my dad for the first time in my adult life. I wasn't asking for a handout. I was asking for a loan in very specific terms with a clear, conservative plan to pay it back. His response? He didn't even call me back. And when I finally called him, he gave me the cold shoulder, saying merely "I don't buy it." He made no offer of assistance less than the amount I was asking. No terms like "start it yourself, show me that you're serious and I'll help you get to the next level". Just a simple "no" that translated to "you don't deserve my help in any way." I told him that I would have liked his support but that I'd just go ahead and do it on my own.

That was the last time we spoke, about a year and a half ago. In that time I've done just as I said. I borrowed some money from friends and bought my loom. I've spent the last year as an apprentice, earning relatively little for my work while I learned the ropes of production weaving. This year I set ambitious milestones for myself and have met them all. I have now acquired the materials for my own batch of cloth, designed and wove it, made products from it, and test marketed them to thousands of customers. This week I'm putting together a small booth and refreshing my product inventory to prepare for summer craft fairs.

If I had startup capital a year and a half ago, I'd be that much further ahead of where I am. I'd be in a place where I could really help my dad without much personal sacrifice. (Actually, my experience has shown me that my production and earning estimates were grossly conservative. I'd be doing GREAT if I had had even moderate funding.) Instead, I'm in a place where I am still pinching pennies to get my business off the ground.

Yes, I *could* pack my studio into the van, go east and help them out, but why *should* I? Yeah, he's my dad, but where was he when I needed support? He didn't even have the decency to call me back.

"Are you really in trouble here?" was his last question when I called him. No, for the first time in my life I was not making a decision based on desperation, just making the best of whatever situation happened to be in front of me. I was finally taking charge and pursuing my life goals. And with no support, the going would be way rougher.

It has been rough. But I am making it and realizing that I have another family - my friends. I've lived with them longer than I lived with my biological family. They understand and respect me WAY more, and they care more about my actual well-being.

It's doubtful that the family would have taken me up on my offer to help anyhow. They seem to perceive me as worthless and undesirable. I think they need to believe that in order to treat me like a pariah. It's just not healthy for me to engage with people who behave that way, even if they're "family". They've made their choice clear over the years: they would be better off without me. Well, so be it.

I'm sorry that this realization is coming in the midst of the most difficult situation Dad has ever faced, but I'm sure that his family will get him through it. That family doesn't include me now any more than it did in the past. I'll save my kindness and generosity for people who deserve it.

Thanks for the clear thinking, Carl. I owe you one.

Life Throws Curves

2010-06-01T22:18:00.000-07:00

The other day my grandmother sent a message: "Call about your Dad. URGENT!" Then I saw an email from my youngest brother.

Uh-oh. I'm not close to my family, so two messages at once means it's serious...

My dad was riding his motorcycle through Utah with a friend when a blinding sandstorm kicked up. As they were pulling off the road, a vehicle crossed the center line and hit them.

I don't know about his friend, but Dad is finally in stable condition. He's got lots of broken bones and it looks certain that he'll be paralyzed from mid-chest down. He should be heading back to Rochester, NY soon to continue treatment closer to home.

My dad's a big-hearted guy with a fantastic (and relentless) sense of humor. He has always kept ridiculously physically active with several jobs and a million projects at once. It's going to be tough for him to transition to his new life. He'll have to go through intense physical recovery, a major overhaul of his house, and the psychological shift to a life that looks nothing like he's used to. I have no doubt that his stubbornness and sense of humor will see him through.

In the meantime, it'll be rough going for everyone. Dad's got a wife and four sons. His wife works for the Post Office. The youngest son lives in Texas where he's a physical therapist, just out of school for a couple years. The next son lives fairly close, but has a job, a wife and a baby to care for. The next son has a wife and five kids, constantly struggling to keep afloat in an area of economic depression. The oldest one (that's me) has no wife, no kids, and just transitioned to a somewhat portable life as a professional weaver, struggling but stable.

It seems clear which one would come home for a while to help Dad to get through this, but for one hitch... The family hates me. Yeah, I'm strange, artistic, free-spirited and, like my dad, don't mince words when I have something to say. I really don't understand the hatred, though. We're all a little strange.

So now I'm looking hard at my life. I've got some big decisions to make regarding the next steps for my weaving business, but I really see nothing preventing me from packing up my loom and materials for a few months' work and heading east. If the family could stand to have me around, it seems like I could take on enough responsibility that we could all keep our lives somewhat in order while we help Dad to get through this.

Ghost Town of Golden

2010-05-30T22:11:00.000-07:00

[Golden Community Church, a multi-exposure vertical panorama]

["Visitors Welcome"]

[The General Store]

[This outhouse is really part of the national monument]

I'm back home and settled in. It really takes a few days to get reacclimated to the pace of life out here. It's so much nicer than the Greater Los Angeles area.

The other day we went on a field trip to the ghost town of Golden. It's about 7 miles from the sanctuary, but I've never been before.

This whole part of the state was shaped by the gold rush, with many 19th century prospectors turning north to the Rogue River Valley from California. There are still quite a few active claims in the area, but nothing like what was in Golden.

The area was mined with hydraulic techniques that washed tons of dirt through sluices, leaving the soil level about 40' lower in some areas. When the gold dried up, they left the town just as it stood.

Nowadays, there are just a handful of buildings left. They are simple, but beautiful in an eerie kind of way.

It's good to be home.

Rapid Change

2010-05-26T12:55:00.000-07:00

[Tent, half down]

[Tent, completely down]

[Annie's van, half packed]

It's over! The faire was a success. I learned a ton of stuff about the customers, what they want, how to design for them, and how to sell to them. I also have a real idea of the actual amount of money that passes through the booth and how much inventory and variety it takes to make that happen.

We had the entire booth struck, packed, and rolling down the road in about 5 hours. My friend, TJ, had come down from Wolf Creek to bring some of his possessions north. He came by for an hour to lend his van packing skills, and thank goodness he did! Annie's van was packed to the ceiling by the time we were done.

Annie took her loom back, freeing up some space in my van. TJ and I went to Anaheim to get some of his things from storage and fill up that empty space. We were on the road by 6:00, arriving in San Leandro at 2:30 AM. The van is staying out there while I visit the city...

So now, I'm taking BART into San Francisco to help Carl move some of his stuff into storage.

It's a strange culture shock to go from the faire to the city, and then back to the forest. I can't wait!

Sewing Outside

2010-05-20T20:50:00.000-07:00

[From the loom to the sewing table]

Since Wednesday, the weather here has been spectacular. Highs near 85 and a light breeze have meant that it's nice to work outside.

To that end, I set up a sewing table under the canopy with the loom. There's just something poetic about making the garments right next to the machine that made the cloth. And the view? Beautiful!

[View of the mountains as I work]

Mechanical Delicacy

2010-05-19T17:09:00.000-07:00

This week has been very strange. This show has taken more energy than I understood. On Monday I did my bookkeeping, bank deposit, and such. Then I took a nap and awoke to rain that continued all the way through Tuesday.

I tried to sew more bags and had a short-circuit in the foot pedal. I took this (and my exhaustion) as a sign that it was going to be another day off. It means I'll be working part of Friday, but I'm OK with that. Thank goodness for the TED Lectures podcast through iTunes. I learned a lot while my body was resting.

Today the sun was shining in my window before I woke up. Yay! It's a weaving day. I'd have a set of ruanas woven, cut off, edged and shrunk before bed. Or so I thought...

The loom has been acting funny for a couple of weeks. Sometimes it doesn't advance. Sometimes it lifts the wrong harnesses. Sometimes it behaves like it's in reverse even though it isn't, but only for one pick and only when I'm not watching it. I've gone over the dobby box with a fine-toothed comb, scrubbing between levers with WD-40 and Q-Tips, checking the tension and alignment of every cable, cleaning, tightening and oiling every single moving part.

Everything I tried made it work a little better for a little while, but the problems kept coming back inconsistently.

Finally today I found a tiny nut on the ground under the loom. When I found where it belonged, it was the moment of realization... A tiny 3" cable had "stretched", causing everything else to go out of alignment.

[The bad cable is pulled out of service and replaced with a chain]

[The lever attached to that cable pulls an aluminum finger which advances the pattern pegs...]

[...which push on levers...]

[...which cause harnesses to lift.]

When the cable went bad it was like losing the timing belt in a car. The finger wasn't pulling the pegs all the way against the levers. Therefore, the harnesses weren't always lifting properly. One tiny bead caused weeks of slow and difficult weaving.

The funny thing is that I found and fixed the problem with only two yards left before I take the loom apart and return it to Annie.

And finally, when the weaving was done, it was time to stitch the ends and shrink it. Then the power went out. I thought at first it was the foot pedal again, but noticed that the light was off, too. I checked and, sure enough! The resort was without power late into the night.

I grabbed a pen and paper and worked out some block twill designs for a new cloth I'll be weaving when I get home.

Stacks of Garments

2010-05-15T06:46:00.000-07:00

[Enough for now]

I did it! I learned how to make ruanas fast enough and consistent enough to sell them on weekend 6 of 7. This was the reason Annie taught me to make them, and I'm glad I didn't let her down.

After this show I'll be shopping around for a commercial sewing machine. I love my Singer 301, but it's too slow for production. The features I want most are:
- Extra long arm so I can push yardage through on the right side of the needle.
- Locking reverse. My bags require running the machine in both directions.
- Mounted flush to a table. The Singer sits on top right now and limits the length of stitch runs.
- FAST. I want to line up a seam and go!
-Automatic oiling. Right now I spend about 10 minutes a day oiling it. If I don't, it gets loud and clunky.

Well, I'm off to the show. Let's hope we can sell it all!

New Skills Are Exciting!

2010-05-12T21:50:00.000-07:00

[Looks like a ruana!]

Today was an exciting day as I learned a new skill: sewing ruanas. Ordinarily I weave the cloth, cut it off the loom, fold it up and drive great batches of it to Lowell. If I see the final result before it's sold, it'll be months after I wove it.

This has led to a strange disconnection for me. Learning to sew ruanas bridges the gap in a big way. I can cut the cloth off the loom, stitch the edges, shrink it, cut it and sew it all in one day. It lets me remember how tight I was beating it, how thick the weft yarn was, etc. and see just how these factors affect the final garment. Overall, I think this skill will accelerate my learning to a great degree if I can make a habit of using it.

And then there's the plain exhiliration of it. I can hardly believe that I'm living my dream. I really, truly have the skill to take ordinary cones of thread and transform them into garments that people drape over themselves and feel glamorous. That is so cool!

Of course, it was slow going today. The first one felt like surgery as I interpreted written instructions and photos for the first time, having never seen the process in real life. I have this voice running in my head that can be overwhelming, "make sure the outsides face each other", "always end with the flat side of the seam to the outside", "mind the pattern placement when you're pleating", "don't stretch the cloth", "clip both threads immediately - snip, flip, snip", and so on. The more I do this, the more I'll be able to run on autopilot and really focus on the craftsmanship instead of the process.

By tomorrow night I will have sewn 8 ruanas and have another 4 woven. Maybe I'll take half of Friday to sew those 4 as well. If I'm that fast by Friday, that is. I do need at least half the day completely off.

Sewing Ruanas

2010-05-11T21:30:00.000-07:00

The faire is going well. So well, in fact, that we can't keep stocked up on our most popular item: ruanas. Annie sews and ships off a box of inventory every week or so to replenish the stuff we're selling. One thing we can't keep up with, however, is the peacock colorway.

Tomorrow we're doing something new. There wasn't enough time to ship peacock cloth to Oregon, have it sewn into ruanas and ship them back before Weekend 6, so I'm going to sew them down here. This is a big deal only because I've never sewn garments from Annie's cloth before.

She's done an amazing thing, though. She wrote a detailed document explaining exactly how she sews these garments and photographed every step of the process. The first one will be a challenge, of course, but I think it'll all come together pretty quickly. I should have 12 of them woven and sewn by Friday.

[Two batches of ruanas: one fresh from the loom and one stitched and shrunk]

[On the loom: the appearance and feel of a screen door]

[After washing: fluffed up and sumptuous. See how little light gets through?]

Visiting the Desert Flowers

2010-05-06T20:26:00.000-07:00

Today I got up early to weave more cloth that needed to be shipped this afternoon. While I was out, I stopped at Joann's to buy bright blue thread and needles for next week's sewing adventure.

On the way home I spied the yucca blooming in the desert across the street from camp so I took a little break, suited up for tick and rattlesnake safety, and hoofed it down for a closer look...

[Twelve foot tall flower spike]

[New shoot, only six feet tall]

The desert is absolutely exploding from the spring rains. It has turned into miles of ground covered with gold and orange flowers dotted here and there with blue, purple, and every other color. And every so often there appear stands of these majestic white yuccas.

Gold is the theme lately. Here are photos of my two favorite birds sharing the campsite right now. I realize that the photos make them look similar. Their size, behavior and sounds are so different that they couldn't easily be mistaken for each other in real life.

[My favorite bird to watch]

[Calmer, quieter, and beautiful to see]

If you're a north american bird fancier with an iPhone, you really owe it to yourself to get the iBird Explorer app. It contains lots of birds, searchable by location, habitat, shape, size, color, flight pattern, and more. You can the see range maps and photos, listen to calls, and read good information on how to identify the bird in question. There's lots of information on each bird and a built-in browser that displays the wikipedia entry. Once you're sure of the identity and have read up on the bird, you can enter your own field notes.

All-in-all, it's a bird watcher's dream come true. I'd go so far as to recommend getting an iPod Touch on eBay just for this one app. The interactive search makes it better than any bird book you'll ever find, and far easier to carry.

Weaving in the Desert

2010-05-05T20:27:00.000-07:00

Doing the books this week has been a sobering experience. I've been going along for a year telling myself that what I'm doing is the best thing I could be doing so it's not worth looking too hard at the details. "It's better to just keep on truckin'!"

Well, now I have choices to make. Do I continue with the plan to buy the booth? How long will it take to raise the money? Could I create other opportunities for myself that would pay off faster? Good numbers will help me make these decisions.

I am more resolved than ever to acquire the services of a good accountant. In setting up my accounts just for the purposes of data entry, I made a big mistake, marking the money people loaned me to buy the loom as an asset instead of a liability. I've fixed it, and it made a huge difference to the net worth graph...

[Net worth, bad accounting]

[Net worth, better accounting]

The first thing to notice is that the loan is a huge liability, worth a large percentage of the rest of my assets, including the loom. No wonder it's been so tough to put a dent in it!

The next thing to notice is the impact of my time at the sanctuary on my bottom line. I moved in August, the first time my net worth raised appeciably above zero. The Artist in Residence program is almost solely responsible for my ability to make it as an artist starting from scratch. I hope that we can keep this program going by finding other artists who could make use of just such an opportunity to launch a fledgling art career.

Even a big planning error that left me without weaving in December didn't drop me down as low as I was when I lived in San Francisco.

Accounting aside, this trip to Los Angeles is doing amazing things for me. Apart from testing my bags with thousands of customers, I'm developing crucial general insight into this customer base and their desires. Every day of the show I get feedback from hundreds of customers who try on garments. They tell me what they like, how much they are willing to spend, and what they'd change with the current line. In the end, they vote with their money.

I'm also learning how critical supply-chain planning is for a business like this. It takes a couple of months to go from a yarn order to a stack of saleable garments. And that's for each colorway. Right now I'm weaving as fast as I can and shipping stuff to Oregon so it can get sewn into garments for another show in a week and a half. Next week, I'll be weaving peacock ruanas and doing the sewing on them myself so that we have them to sell the following weekend. The good news is that this extra work is only necessary because sales are fantastic!

While I was at the loom today, I looked over my shoulder to see a roadrunner watching me from about 10 feet away.

[Image from iBird Explorer app]

I'm really enjoying all the birds down here. This is where many of the pretty migratory birds spend the winter. Right now we've got bluebirds, tanagers, and the noisy and beautiful hooded oriole. Some of them will probably head north at about the same time as I do, about two and a half weeks.

Accounting For Real

2010-04-30T10:00:00.000-07:00

I've been laid up for a few days with a flu. Yuck! I should have seen it coming, though. There are a number of factors to reduce my immunity: stress, not enough rest, environment change, low quality food, and finally wet, cold weather.

The first day of flu was horrible - fever, aches, nausea, dizziness. The next two days were progressively better, but didn't find me feeling well enough to go sit in the cold wind to weave. I didn't really trust myself to make good decisions at the sewing machine, either. It seemed a better idea to tackle the elephant in the weaving studio: accounting. It's a monotonous task I can do while laying in bed high on DayQuil, and fix progressively if I get it wrong the first time.

When I borrowed money from friends to buy the loom I kept careful records in a paper envelope. Then I bought the loom and started weaving for Annie. Again, I kept other, careful records of our work with a piece of software called Billings. (This is an excellent program, by the way, with a nearly perfect iPhone app that syncs with it.) My expenses usually come at a low volume, so I've been using Mint.com to categorize them as they occur, assuming that this would be useful.

A few weeks ago I sat down to do my taxes and realized that these separate sets of records made it impossible to reconcile them. I had to file for an extension. I knew all along that I should have been using QuickBooks, but never took the time to get it set up, pull all my records into it, and reconcile them.

Well, this illness gave me the chance I needed. I went online and pulled statements for all of my accounts from January 2009 to the present. It's kind of complicated because I have Paypal and Wells Fargo linked. Money is always flowing back and forth between them.

In the end, I got everything but petty cash reconciled with all accounts matching their statement balances TO THE PENNY at the end of every day from January 2009 to today. Yeah! Since I almost never spend cash, it will be easy to reconcile that when I get home to the receipts folder.

[Income and Expenses for a fragile baby business]

Here's one picture of the final result. It's easy to see that 2009 was a tough year. My income was higher than my expenses only 6 out of 12 months. December, the highest volume month for most sales-based businesses, was completely wasted because of a major planning error. 2010 looks better. If I can keep producing and selling like this, I may have finally made it. (Oh, yeah, and I need to get my software addiction under control. 8% is way too much to spend on computer stuff for this particular business.)

["Net Worth", not the same as Self Worth]

Here is another picture: a net worth graph. The red represents money I have yet to pay back from the "Friends' Loom Loan". The green represents mostly assets: equipment, materials, vehicle, etc.

You can see three big dips in my assets last year: quitting my day job to weave fulltime (and the lag before I got paid), visiting Wolf Creek in August, and moving there for real in December. You can also see that I got serious about high volume production in January, after realizing that "lazy" production and poor planning weren't building the business fast enough to be sustainable.

One thing this graph shows is that I'm on the right track! Even though there's still no cash in my pocket, the resources I have at my disposal are increasing. This increases opportunities and will one day (soon) turn into real money.

So, this week was almost a wash in terms of physical productivity, but has seriously enhanced my infrastructure and mental well-being. It's stressful to know that such a big part of your business is inadequately handled!

After finishing the Ren Faire I'll have to hire an accountant to set up a tax-appropriate chart of accounts for my business. Then, I'll recategorize expenses to it and file last year's taxes.

Does anybody know of a good accountant who's familiar with crafts business accounting?

Accounting

2010-04-26T21:25:00.000-07:00

What a weekend! With kids' day on Friday, my usual day off, this weekend was kind of brutal. Thank goodness I got my new boots last weekend or my feet might not have survived this one.

Today I did a good deal of resting and catching up on accounting. I made some mistakes in setting up the cash scenario for this weekend and made it tough to figure out how much cheap merchandise I actually sold. It took a few hours and lots of counting, but I finally got it all untangled.

Last week I realized that I might be able to find an app to help me tally up sales, split cash from credit cards, and calculate commissions. This needs to be done on Sunday night in order to write paychecks. That is also the time when I'm tired and feel the least able to do it.

So, I found an app called simply "Spreadsheet". It is fantastic for a number of reasons:
1. It's in my pocket.
2. It's compatible with Excel.
3. I can email excel files directly from it.
4. If I needed to, I could design the spreadsheet in Excel and put it on the phone.

[Sales Sheet. Notice the magical column C that sorts things into the correct tally column...]

I set up a spreadsheet quite quickly with this app. This sheet has one magical column that determines how to handle the amount on that line: subtotal multiple items or complete the transaction and take a regular credit card, American Express, cash, or (if we know you personally) a check. Then the spreadsheet totals each payment type, figures sales commissions and per diem payments. At the end of the day it tells me how much cash should be in that day's bank deposit, and what the final credit card settlement should be. Having it laid out like this makes it faster and easier to find mistakes.

[Daily totals, some stuff redacted. I don't mind telling my secrets, but these numbers have to do with paying others.]

The Spreadsheet interface is extremely intuitive. I said earlier that one benefit is that the files can be set up in Excel and ported over, but I doubt that would ever be necessary. This particular sheet has many cells with complex formulae, but the full-featured cut/paste system made populating them simple. If you've used cut and paste in Excel, this works just the same.

Spreadsheet has implemented a huge subset of Excel's functions so there isn't much that it can't do.

My old dream of a full office in my pocket just keeps getting closer and closer!