and this...

and there's so much to blog about, but right now? Right now, there's an emergency going on, and I have to dash to go help my mother, who's just been hospitalized.

Everyone should be okay... but I'm on my way out, and this means everything is delayed, including finishing up shipping out signed books.

I'm so sorry, and thank you all for your patience and support.

Alden Amos custom Canadian Saxony with very exhausted SOAR mentor recovering from SOAR flu

I'm way too tired to give the whole story just yet, but now you know: I'm home. More shortly.

(seriously, you know you're jealous about the wheel. it's all that.)

It sounds nuts, on the one hand -- you're in the middle of a raging river, with all this fast rushing water and stuff, and there are obstacles everywhere, and what you have to do is... speed up? Seriously?

But it's true. And there was actually this amazing sense of calm in the middle of all that chaos, a deep empowerment that comes from taking on a rushing river and being the boss of your direction instead of just a piece of flotsam. And lately, I feel like this is how my life is going: everything's rushing and swirling in roaring torrents, but if I can just remember to keep paddling and stay just a smidgen faster than the water, I can steer and it'll all work out great. It's even a thrilling ride.

It's been a heck of a year! I mean, there's the book, for one thing. That was a huge labour of love, not just for me but for everyone who worked on it and everyone who pitched in to help make it happen. And it's REAL.

But apparently, I couldn't slow down enough to do more than take a hurried cameraphone snapshot. I'd love to do it now, but I'm also getting ready to dash off to SOAR, so... it'll have to wait. I may be just ahead of the rushing water but I've got to remember to deal with the things in my path in a sensible, "what's right here" kinda way. But indeed, the book is real. I have a real live advance copy of it, and in just a few scant weeks, it'll be in stores, and I'll be getting ready to ship all the signed copies you've all been preordering for the past few months. And I am staggered: right this minute, just as I'm getting ready to close preorders so I can get the whole lot of 'em in and figured out right after SOAR, 252 of you have preordered. Seriously. I'm floored. And grateful to you all. I've been having a great time for the past several months, setting aside little goodies and prizes to draw at random for folks who bought this direct from me, and those will all be going out with your books -- just wait and see, 1 in 10 of you will be getting a little something extra with your books when they ship mid-November.

And then there's the DVD! It's just arriving in people's hands right now. I can hardly believe it. I can't wait to hear what people think -- I'm pretty pleased with how it came out, and looking forward to the next one. You heard me, the next one!

And teaching! There've been some great classes in the past few months, and I'm about to go enjoy a really exciting week teaching lots of people to make batts. Oh lord, batts? You wanna talk about batts? I just did the math, and I've shipped 1165 batts in the past 3 months. That doesn't include the ones I kept or the ones for prizes and giveaways -- just the ones shipped to my loyal retailers.

And the web site redesign! I'm really thrilled, and enjoying hearing all your feedback. Thank you all so much, and keep it coming!

And this is the risk in slowing down, I think: it might give a girl time to think. And if I thought too hard about what's just behind me on this wild ride, I might miss what's in front, or fail to steer, or... who knows? Surely, somewhere up ahead here in a ways, there's a nice spot to haul off the river for a few and maybe have a picnic. But I'm not there yet. Hopefully I'll recognize it... and hopefully, I packed a lunch. With a beer in it.

Working with Jenn has been terrific, and lots of food for thought about small business stuff and doing things right -- so much so that this week, I'll be doing a quick interview with her for the blog, to tie in with presenting all the various new features. But for now, I just want to say TA-DAH! Look, we have new blog.

And thank you, Jenn.

UPDATE:

Tomorrow there'll be a lengthier post talking about specific changes, but I wanted to take a moment and address a question that came in from a first-time commenter:

Suddenly my RSS reader is cluttered with tweets from this site. I like the blog, but if I wanted to read tweets, I'd be on Twitter. Can anything be done to respect the preferences of those of us who still enjoy complex ideas and syntax, or should I unsub?

One of the things we're rolling out is separate RSS feeds for various types of content on this site. It looks like we rolled things out with the two main feeds swapped -- the first being all article-type content, and the second including various other types as well (like tweets, new videos, and that sort of thing). We've updated that, so now (as intended) the primary RSS feed is posts and articles only, and the supplemental one is everything. And, coming in the next few weeks, category-specific feeds as well!

Looking for a lofty, fluffy yarn? Learn to spin carded fibers with long draw. Looking for smooth and drapy? The worsted-style short forward draw is your answer. Do you have a challenging fiber, or are you after results in between, such as a drapy yarn that's fuzzy? The answers are here. But it's not all deadly serious: we make sure to have fun. Check out this video clip!

Today, we're going to do a real productive day. Really for real this time.

0720: The morning bookkeeping's done, first email pass done, and I've written a few things we need from the market on a post-it. Boy's gotta go down for the bus in 10 minutes, so it's about time for us to start the dance where I ask him why he isn't ready, he says he can't find his shoes, and I say that if he were to put them by the door, then he'd know where they are all the time, instead of having them randomly be anywhere in the house where he happened to kick them off. It sounds like it's drizzling. Had I realized that, had I been thinking, I might have not bothered to make coffee, driven him down to wait for the bus in the rain inside my car, and then headed to pick up those few things from the market and just coincidentally, you understand, found myself buying an enormous latte. But, no: I blew off a lot of work yesterday and it's all gotta happen today, so there will be no using the guise of altruism and responsibility to go get myself a coffee treat.

0725: But it's raining kinda hard. So maybe there is. He is gonna get a ride to wait for the bus. I don't do it often but... every now and then... if the weather's foul... and it is... We'll just see if, while sitting at the end of the rather long driveway, I change my mind and just do happen to go where there's espresso.

0820: Oh fine. I caved. Perhaps excess caffeine will make up for the productivity I gave up yesterday when I sat down... and stopped moving for most of the day. So in about 2 minutes when the liquid strength is gone, the workday begins in earnest. No playing. It may be a day that calls for extra-loud, extra-toe-tapping music, because the truth is that doing production carding is a slog and sometimes it can be brutally hard to keep on going.

0915: Brief email wrangling of the most urgent variety. Oh god, why didn't I clear out more email yesterday? WHY??? My first spinnng workshop DVD is getting close to market and there's work to be done towards Louet building a workshop-in-a-box kit with it. I'm excited about it for sure. There's also tech edit work to be done today. There aren't going to be enough hours. The batt shipment I hoped to get out this evening is either going to go Saturday morning, or Monday. See, this is why I hate sitting still. Actually, I like sitting still and taking a break sometimes, but the truth is that afterwards, I always seem to wish I had that time back.

1015: My wonderhusband brought me new tunes for working to. This time, it wasn't even a trick -- like the mix CD he made and left in my car, which turned out to be beyond a rickroll: it was entirely made up of New Order extended dance versions. I finished up a batch of 26 batts bound for Amy King in Maine, part of the order I keep hoping to finish and ship tonight. I named it "OMG It's October." Because seriously, OMG, it's OCTOBER, people.

1130: Could be lunchtime. If it's fast. I break to meet my husband in the kitchen and see what's there to eat.

1152: Had a lovely quick lunch of leftover brown rice, chicken, peas, and cheddar cheese. Back to the grind.

1335: Almost done with the second-to-last batch of batts for Amy's order. Worked on it through a tech editing call and a call about lining up one last thing for SOAR materials. There's an outside chance I might actually get this order done today... and then too, I just remembered today is the day school sends home midterm report cards. Seriously, already? Yeah. Seriously. Wow.

1400: One more smaller batch to go. I can do that in 3 hours, surely. Batt count for the day so far is 52.

1440: On track, but taking a 5 minute break for my feets and a pint of water.

1600: I'll be working late, but I'm finishing this today, fer cryin' out loud.

1630: Reviewed the midterm, and because he failed to turn in 2 language arts assignments, letting him pick a fast food dinner is off the table. My better half is heading over to spend the evening helping his dad with his new computer, so at least nobody will hate me for working late tonight. Dinner'll be a quickie: tortellini, which the kid loves. Another half hour or so of work to go before I break for dinner. But since it's Friday night, I'm treating myself to a hard cider while I work late. Had to spray the cat with water for jumping on my hard-working LaserJet again. Grrrrr. Will she ever learn?

1730: Just about done. All that remains is bagging and tagging and getting it all in the box and to the post office, but that's for tomorrow. Not a bad day's work: 88 batts all told, which is a record for me, and therefore, I'm not going to kick myself any harder for the slacking off this week. I made hundreds of batts. No wonder my feet are tired.

1800: Dinner handled and back to work.

2010: My better half is home and I'm knocking off batts. Made some headway on the ones that have to happen next week... perhaps enough to buy myself time to take off and go get a massage, which I've been trying to reward myself with for a while. Heading to the family room to watch a movie with my family, while working on that DVD copy on my laptop. Usually I'd spin or knit or something, but I want to get this done and my hands are really, really sore from carding so they need a bit of a break.

2255: Bedtime. That writing isn't done, it'll have to be first thing tomorrow morning, around 0600, at this point. I'll be sound asleep by 2330 and awake by 6 whether I like it or not, even though it's Saturday. It's been that way for at least 2 years now. So tomorrow's getting that box shipped, finishing that writing, and a range of household chores like sweeping and mopping the kitchen and doubtless doing some laundry. There's always more of something to do.

I do my first email pass -- several accounts, just a nuking of spam and cursory check for anything life and death. Really, just for stuff that's life and death. I only want to deal with big things before coffee, nothing small, you know? I read my horoscope, look at the weather forecast, and make the second email pass, in which I flag things for actual reading and followup once I've got the coffee. I check for blog comments, sometimes look at Ravelry.

Around 0630: If the manchild isn't up, it's time to wake him up. But he's been good lately about getting himself up, good about taking a shower without nagging, good about making his own breakfast... and so while there's still morning stuff to be figured out, it's much less than it used to be. I start downloading transactions to balance accounts, household and business, and go to make coffee. During the seeming aeons that it takes to brew -- really it's 3 minutes -- I start emptying the dishwasher, reloading it if need be. And here's where a major personality flaw of mine comes into play. I can't make coffee for myself first thing in the morning, because if I walk into the kitchen and the first thing I see is dishes in the sink, it ruins my day. It flips my crabby switch and I can't turn it off all day. But I've learned that if it's a little later in the day, after I've done something else, if it just isn't the very first thing, then I'm okay. I may gripe for a few minutes, but then it's over. I used to always do dishes before bed, one last pass just to be sure... but for various complicated reasons involving living with other humans, that hasn't worked out for me in over a decade. And now, to be honest, I'm usually going to bed dead tired, asleep on my feet.

Around 0700: I talk to the kid through all of this, about his upcoming day and mine. Sometimes I rant about how someone spilled orange juice and didn't wipe it up and now it's sticky and gooey and more work to clean up. I think of that as an homage to my own parents pointing out the same stuff, or as inevitability. Sometimes I have toast for breakfast. But I always have my massive cup of strong coffee, adulterated only with heavy cream. It's a vice I'm unwilling to even consider forsaking.

0730: The kid's off to school. Me and my coffee finish the bookkeeping, invoicing and the like, and tackle some of the needs-handled-today email. In a perfect world, somewhere in the past 90 minutes is when I'd be getting blog posts done. It was, for a long time, and I need to refocus. And in my other perfect world, this is also when I head out and go to the gym to spend 30-40 minutes on the elliptical trainer. I do well with that up until a really busy time hits, and then I can't make myself do it, because I need every minute to get work done.

About 0800: This is when the workday officially starts. It gets pushed to 0830 if I've hit the gym, or if I'm blogging or something. The first 2 hours, even email and blogging, don't count. At 0800, that's when I either start production, get cracking on a major project like an article or book, or tackle whatever big thing it is that needs handling. Today, it's a production day, and I'm 15-20 minutes behind (but this is forgivable, because after all, I'm blogging). I have batts in progress in the studio and this is Wednesday. Wednesday is early release day for the city schools, and so the manchild'll be home at 1530, which means stopping then at least to welcome him home, find out about his day, and commence with any necessary homework nagging. Plus, lunch is usually half an hour, shared with my husband in our kitchen... but today it's a working lunch out with one of my retailers, so it'll be longer. So my production time is short today -- not more than 5 hours considering that after lunch, I'm making a midweek supermarket trip.

About 0830: On the way into the studio (it's such a hike -- it's the bedroom next door to the one that serves as my office) I gather up dirty laundry and start a load. I put my hair up tight and wear close-fitting clothes, because I'm going to be working with a motorized carder all day. This means tooth-covered rotating drums. Nothing dangly. No way. I take the phone with me, and I play loud music. I have until 11:30 to grind out batts.

0900: The in-progress batts from last night are done. I weigh them, bag them, and move to the office to print labels and put them on the invoice. I doublecheck that the order I finished yesterday is all there, invoice is right, stickers are right, and so forth. That's 6 big bags, and I haul 'em downstairs and see what I have laying around for a box, since I'm delivering them today at lunch instead of shipping. So far this morning, my music library has spit out some Al Green and some Steely Dan. It tried to spit out Ice Cube, but I clearly haven't had enough coffee for that yet.

1030: Halfway done with what should be about a 24-batt batch. The third load of laundry is in. Musical high points have been June Carter Cash, Bill Monroe, The Spinners, Three Dog Night, Judas Priest, Bonnie Raitt, Muddy Waters, and ZZ Top. I take a quick email break.

1130: Time to break, clean up a little from the carding work, find a respectable t-shirt at the least, and get ready to head out for lunch with Susan from Ball and Skein in Germantown, Ohio. She's my local dealer -- Germantown's about 45 minutes away -- and we're doing a batt handoff, plus we really need to see if we can't firm up a date for me to do a workshop at her fabulous new shop space. It's a little chilly today, proving fall is really here, whether anybody is ready or not. Lord knows I'm not. It's 53 Fahrenheit (about 12C) and breezy and I'm coming to grips with the idea that sandal season may genuinely be over.

I'm about halfway through the last blending pass on this batch of batts, so after lunch, I'll finish that up and then do the final finishing and sizing pass which makes the batts come out more or less even in size across the entire batch.

1430: Home again, home again. Checking email with intent to get that batch of batts done before the workday is totally over. This evening is also a wash for productivity since I have to go to a meeting at the kid's school. Also, it's time to move the laundry again.

1530: Kid's home. The homework checking has been completed. I'm proceeding to try to squeeze out the remaining batt productivity I can before dinner. I feel like I've gotten nothing done today to speak of. I always feel like that on Wednesdays no matter what.

1700: End of the production day. My better half cooks dinner and I hang out in the kitchen with my spindle. Kid's done with his homework.

1800: Everyone's fed, the kitchen is tidied, and there's 45 minutes till I have to be at a school meeting. Sounds like time to fold all that laundry. Mmmmmm.

1845: Off to that school meeting, visions of coming home to a beer dancing in my head. Well, the visions are dancing in my head; I'm not envisioning a beer dancing in my head, because that would just be weird.

2030: Home. That's done. A beer and a little bit of spinning should round out the evening nicely. I think I'm going to refuse to look at the computer for the rest of the night. What a strange and unproductive day to have chosen to try to do this day in the life post. I'm going to have to try to do a more normal one sometime... supposing I ever figure out what that would be.

Edit: Of COURSE the pretty is coming back! Just a little patience, it'll all be worth it.

I SURVIVED SOCK SUMMIT 2009

or maybe

SOCK SUMMIT ATE MY BRAIN

or something along those lines.

Pulling photos off the camera, it looks like I.... hardly took any. Which, when I think back, isn't that surprising. I managed to get a few Wednesday afternoon before things kicked off, and then a few on Thursday morning... and then pretty much never again.

How did this happen? Well... I've gotta say, it was intense. I've been to a few fiber events, worked a few conferences, and this was different from all of them. It was big, and filled with people, and totally inspiring, and exhausting, and delightful, and exhausting, and invigorating, and exhausting, and it was all of those things completely nonstop. There's so much I've been swearing I was going to say...and so much I haven't found the words for.

Here's our classroom (and there's a story about that):

Here's Denny setting up:

Look how we didn't block the fire exit rearranging the chairs they couldn't put in a circle for us. We're such good kids and unlikely to get in trouble with anybody's dad.

We were conveniently located near the coffee.

Which was good because we needed oh so very much of it. We'd take turns standing in the line, which was not inconsequential... look, here's a relatively empty lobby:

(You may not be able to tell, but as usual, Tina is right there in the center of it all making stuff happen, and if you were to turn your back, there'd be Steph, and if you were to turn your head or go around a corner, there would be Rachel, Debbi, JoAnn, or Lisa in all their orange-shirted glory.)

Anyway, so this one time I'm standing in the coffee line and Denny's hollering "Oooh, I want the perfect oatmeal cookie! Buy me one of those!"

"Oatmeal, or the cookie?" I asked her. "There's The Perfect Oatmeal, or an Oatmeal Raisin Cookie."

"The perfect oatmeal cookie! It says right there!"

"No, that's oatmeal. It's not a cookie."

"I want the perfect oatmeal cookie! That's what I need!"

"It's not a cookie, Denny!"

"Shut up and get it!"

So I got it for her... but..

Would you believe it wasn't a cookie?

I told you Sock Summit ate brains.

We saw some great folks. Denny got to give Spirit Trail Jennifer a present, and here they are:

And I'm convinced this is the sassy magic of Mary Scott Huff that made this photo come out all fun like it did, plus you can see the shawl Denny gave Jen.

I can't wait for Mary's book, which should be on shelves just before mine. I haven't seen the book -- but I saw some of the projects and they were stunning, and Mary and I were cooking up an idea for a collaboration of some sort too.

We met WonderMike, see?

And we totally made a Rubbernecker mod cry, and we have PROOF.

But as for the rest of it, apparently it didn't happen. Why? Because there are no pictures.

So obviously, I didn't really meet Sivia Harding first thing at the airport, on the shuttle to the hotel. I wasn't at the teacher dinner when someone put a hand on my shoulder to steady herself as she raised her foot to show a sock to someone else... and I realized it was Barbara Walker. I didn't really set down my bag at the dinner table the next night next to Priscilla Gibson-Roberts and come back to find it had been moved to another table, so I was stuck eating with Meg Swansen and Amy Detjen (among others). Denny and I didn't really teach 150 students over 4 days.

Oh but! I did get batts there, and here they are in the wild at Carolina Homespun:

But I obviously didn't go to the Sock Hop, or all kinds of other things. And obviously, I bought nothing at all in the marketplace, and this is clearly absolutely true, because I didn't bring anything home. It is absolutely not possible that there's a box on its way to me now that had to be shipped. Nope. No way.

If I ever get my brain back, there's so much more to say. So very, very much. I'm completely thrilled and honoured to have been a part of it.

I love a good debate. I love it when someone challenges my assumptions and makes me think. I love the interchange of ideas, even when there's a disagreement. My best friends are all people who can hold their own in an argument, without just being jerks. But I'm completely aware this is a relatively fringe position these days, and folks with that outlook can be few and far between. And one of the reasons I started this blog was to have my own soapbox. So here's a soapbox moment, and when I'm done, please, take the soapbox and have your own in the comments.

Here's the thing. I hate some of the stuff people say to brand new spinners. Actually, to folks who are brand new to many things, but particularly spinners. Some of this advice is peevesome or downright offensive; some of it is insulting to people who've made huge commitments to skill and excellence, and much of it is actually condescending and belittling to the beginning spinner it's intended to support. Let's go through a few of these, shall we?

If I wanted perfect yarn, I'd buy it at Wal-Mart!

Really? Because a skein of acrylic selling for 50 cents an ounce is the pinnacle of yarn perfection? Because there's no point in producing a skein of merino-silk-cashmere blend yarn spun exactly to your specifications when you could just buy a cone of cheap mill cotton? Because this...

or this...

or this

is all stuff it's not worth bothering to do, because you can totally just buy yarn at Wal-Mart. Yarn just like that.

Another problem with this whole line is that millspun yarn isn't perfect. It has tons of flaws. But until people are fairly experienced in judging yarn (which comes quickly from spinning, and more slowly from other pursuits) most folks can't detect these flaws. The textile mill wasn't developed because people wanted a more perfect yarn than could be produced by hand; it was developed because people wanted more yarn, faster, for less investment in training. What mills produce is an approximation of the work of an experienced handspinner -- an approximation that is good enough to do the job considering it's cheaper and easier to get more of, and can be made with a lower-end workforce.

In the less-than-300 years we've had millspun yarn, and textile mills making cloth, and a move to mass production for clothing, people's exposure to really good textiles has gone down; people's ability to judge a good-quality fabric or garment has diminished; people can't even tell, and they just assume that whatever machines are doing must be better than what people can do -- at least, for textiles. I find this perspective incredibly tragic. I don't even know where to start talking about how tragic it is.

Your first yarn is art yarn!

No it isn't. It's beginner yarn. Beginner yarn is great, and very powerful, and a wonderful thing, and something to be tremendously proud of. But it's not art yarn. You can't do it on purpose, you can't reproduce it, you don't understand the technical structures involved, and there are no guarantees it will stand up to being used. Real art yarn is produced by people with skill and training -- people who have invested time and effort into acquiring those things. They have techniques that produce specific results, which they can execute reliably and describe and define and teach. Their yarn is not an accident. Their yarn is structurally sound.

These same things can't universally be said of that first beginner yarn -- but that doesn't mean the beginner yarn is bad. It just means it's beginner yarn. Think about it this way: if you were to pick up a guitar, would you expect the first thing you played on it to sound like Andres Segovia playing Bach fugues? I hope not -- because if you really think that, you're going to be disappointed. Nobody should be giving you the expectation of instant excellence with the guitar, because it's a lie. Playing the guitar takes skill, and that skill takes practice to acquire. Spinning is no different.

I think it sells a beginner short to tell them their novice efforts are master-quality (and let's not even get into what it sounds like it says about master work). It sells beginners short, because it's a lie. People do it in an attempt to be supportive, I know, but I think it's better to praise beginner work for what it is, rather than to liken it to the work of people who've spent time and energy studying and practicing. Why? Because as a beginner, I think you have a right to know there IS more; that you can do better, and you will, and that all it takes is wanting to and practicing. I mean, how much of a bummer is it to think that you just learned everything there is to know in 15 minutes? Does it even ring true, or do you know deep down it's a lie and a platitude?

I think a big part of the problem is that people sometimes don't want to be beginners -- and I think that expectation comes in part from this notion that it's supportive and good to tell beginners their work is somehow "advanced" or "expert" or "art." But as I see it, being a beginner is a sacred, special time. In fact, in Zen, there is a saying:

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few."

This concept of the Beginner's Mind is an important one to study in a Zen context... or, really, any context. Being a beginner is the most liberated time you'll ever encounter. You are totally free to not know what you don't know; you shouldn't have to be working to overcome baggage; you should be under no pressure to demonstrate or defend a subject or position. Nobody can judge you for saying "I don't know."

But in American culture, we have devalued being a beginner. We urge people to hurry into mastery, even if only by proclaiming themselves to have achieved it. We suggest that not having mastered something is bad, when all it really means is that you haven't mastered it yet, and what could possibly be wrong with that? I'm gonna say this again: There is nothing wrong with being a beginner.

In Zen pursuits, mastery surpasses being an expert, in large part because a master can reclaim the Beginner's Mind, and is again free in ways that weren't possible when being an expert. In other words, the greatest mastery there is comes when you can incorporate everything that you know, without being so bound by that knowledge that other things seem impossible.

Where this often falls apart in American culture (and likely others) is when people are looking to move (often as quickly as possible) from being beginners to being experts. It's not uncommon for people at that stage of the game to want answers that are absolutes: do this, and then that, and you will get a predictable result. This is an understandable desire, but it's my opinion that focusing too hard that way actually slows down the learning process in the long run. Being able to instead wonder, and question, and say "What if?" -- being able to imagine a possibility and strive for it, knowing it will take work and time, knowing there is a vast world of potential that is not yet revealed, that's what makes learning happen and happen fast. And there are as many avenues to mastery as there are people who'd pursue it.

For myself personally, I strive to be a beginner wherever I can. I want to always have those pathways open; I don't want to miss out on taking an interesting detour because it wasn't marked on a roadmap. I would urge everyone, no matter how long they've been spinning, to try being a beginner. Come to things assuming you know nothing, and don't quickly be forced out of that mode of thinking. You might be amazed what this opens up for you.