Business Archives - Page 2 of 3

Parental Leave, Repair and Finishing

February 17, 2016 by Jennifer Raymond

Sweater repair with guidelines.

If you’ve been following the blog in the last few weeks, you’ll have noticed Michael is writing a series on Maternity and Parental leave. You can read Parts 1 & 2, and there’ll be a third part coming out next week. I’ve been enjoying reading about his perspective as Mr. Turtle. While Michael and I came to deciding on Tinking Turtle’s policy together, our thought processes in some ways were very different. I struggled with the day-to-day operations: how is this going to affect myself and the customers? He thought more about the big picture: how are we going to match our leave policy to our values? How have others handled parental leave in the industry?

One of the things we were both on the same page about was being transparent to our customers – I want to be clear about why we’re making the choices and decisions we are, with plenty of lead-time to accommodate changes.

As of yesterday, I made the decision to stop accepting submissions for Repair and Finishing until after Little Turtle arrives. Over the weekend we took a hard look at my workload, due dates, obligations and commitments. We came to the conclusion that I’m nearly at max capacity for designing, teaching and finishing/repair.

If I’ve accepted your piece and you’ve made arrangements to pick it up with me, you will not be affected. If I have your piece already, you’ll be getting it back well before the baby comes. But chances are, anything new that comes my way will have to be tabled until the end of June or the beginning of July.

If you are still interested in finishing or repair, you have a few options. Right now, I have a signup list to be notified when I begin accepting repair work again (note: if you are on my mailing list, this list is completely separate). If it is a true knitting or crochet emergency, drop me a note, as I have a very tiny bit of wiggle room for small and contained projects. And for some types of finishing or repairs, I may have another resource to point you towards.

Got questions about what’s going on? As always, ask away in the comments or drop me an email. I always love hearing from customers!

Maternity and Parental Leave II: Crafting a Leave Policy

February 16, 2016 by Michael Raymond

Last week I took a first stab at exploring how the arrival of Little Turtle impacts our business, and some of the thoughts we have to ensure both the continued success of Tinking Turtle as well as our own personal well-being through a maternity leave policy.

As mentioned before, while a policy or leave of any kind isn’t a federal requirement for most LYS’s and other fiberarts business there are many benefits. These can be realized by taking leave herself as well as providing a leave policy for employees. Some suggested benefits as compiled by the Small Business Administration (which calls providing this type of leave a “smart option” for small businesses) include: positive morale for the for the perspective parent and increased loyalty of all employees. The International Labour Organization goes further in a broad horizontal review of leave policies, and finds that providing a comprehensive and flexible level of leave across all ranges of organizations can lead to positive outcomes including improved worker performance, productivity, and satisfaction.

Implementation of a leave policy can vary differently whether or not you are a retail shop owner, or a provider of fiber arts services with a work-from-home schedule. According to allBusiness.com, one of the ways small business benefit by being exempt from federal regulations is the ability to tailor broader policies to meet the individual needs of the company’s employees. With the rise in teleworking, there can be a “tiered” approach to a policy, both as the child’s birth date approaches as well as for employees returning to work after leave. The only caveat here is that whatever policy is established, it needs to be applied consistently and fairly across all levels of employees. This ensures there is no risk of an employee filing a discrimination lawsuit due to favoritism. Having such a policy documented and provided to all employees (in a handbook or welcome packet) for businesses with multiple employees is a good way to ensure everyone is aware of the policy and is treated fairly.

Here’s our maternity leave schedule and policy!

When you have a single employee or are self employed (as in our situation), how to develop a policy means being comfortable with the business closing, taking a break, or going on vacation for a period of time. With multiple employees, managing the business can be a bit easier, however it very well may mean reduced hours or services depending on the size of the business and the role of the employee, manager, or owner taking leave.

When we began contemplating a maternity leave policy, with Jennifer the sole revenue generating employee, we knew it would involve a period of time where Tinking Turtle would need to suspend most business operations. While there are some basic administrative tasks that I can perform, I doubt I could stand up to the quality for designing or finishing that our customers expect!

After reviewing the economics in our annual budget for how much time we wanted to provide Jennifer, we developed a policy and schedule that afforded us the balance to allow for personal time with our new arrival as well as not lose business direction and momentum. For Tinking Turtle, this came to be a gradual reduction of duties preceding the due date, and then a stair-stepped approach with both taking leave immediately after Little Turtle’s birth and then gradually returning to a “new normal” after our determined leave time.

Once we set this policy for ourselves, our next tasks were to communicate this out to our customers and our business partners. I’ll write more on this aspect in my next post, as keeping everyone who interacts with your business in the loop is key to implementing a successful maternity or paternity leave policy for a small fiberarts business.

~ Mr. Turtle

Maternity and Parental Leave and Small Businesses

February 8, 2016 by Michael Raymond

Little Turtle!

Ah, Babies. What greater topic can evoke such an array of emotions from new parents and family & friends alike. In the business world however, babies and pregnancy are often met with a quiet sense of trepidation; just how will having a child affect an employee and their family? What does maternity or parental leave even mean?

As Jennifer mentioned a couple of weeks ago, we are blessed to be expecting a daughter of our own. This is an exciting time of change and discovery for us, as we start evaluating how having a child will affect both our personal lives as well as that of this business that we run, Tinking Turtle. A wide variety of opinions and ideas exist on how Silicon Valley tech-startups consider pregnancy and childbirth, however this culture significantly differs from the fiber-arts world. I figured I’d take a stab at documenting some of the items we are considering as we go throughout this process. This will be a journey of exciting new learning for all of us, so please join me as we work our way through the process of putting all of the pieces together to ensure we can have a warm and happy welcome for Little Turtle.

Under the defining legislation currently applied towards pregnancy and birth in the workplace, the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act, business with less than 50 employees are exempt from any requirements to provide maternity or parental leave, either paid or unpaid. Just because it’s not required, however, doesn’t mean that there are not benefits both to the business as well as the new mother. In a small one or two person shop, this is a difficult decision to make; it would involve essentially cutting back or shutting down operations for a period of time. With a large majority of LYS’s and other related businesses being owned and staffed by women, this is a doubly difficult consideration given the potential amount of time away to be considered.

Here at Tinking Turtle, we’ve begun exploring just how to balance these two competing factors: providing the time through maternity leave to nurture and welcome a Little Turtle into the family, while still being cognizant of the business landscape and relationships to maintain.

Check out our next installment, where I’ll drill down into some of the specifics on how we hope to accomplish this, and our thought process behind some of these decisions.

~ Mr. Turtle

Goals and Resolutions: Tinking Turtle 2015

December 27, 2015 by Jennifer Raymond

Now that Christmas has finished, my eye is starting to turn towards the New Year. While I don’t normally participate in New Year’s resolutions, I do use this time to put together some constructive goals – some for the business, and some personally.

What are some of the things I’m looking to change for the new year? Well, this last year had a bunch of designing, and a number of tight deadlines. On the plus side it brought designs such as Boston Ivy, Mercury, Electrostatic Lines, Riverbend and Lucky Hearts, and Stained Glass Rug to name a few. On the downside, I’m not sure that pace is sustainable. I’m going to be taking a good look at managing time and making sustainable decisions. On the plus side, I’ve now got over two years of data on how long a design takes me. On the minus side, I need to figure out how to leverage that data more.

What did I do well in 2015? Well, I made it to my second TNNA! I reached 50 patterns published – a major milestone both personally, and on Ravelry!

50 Patterns Published!

I got to teach several video classes with Interweave, which I’m still super proud and excited about.

As Mr. Turtle and I meet to have our yearly planning meeting, I’m sure we’ll come up with more concrete milestones we want to hit in the next year, and taylor the long-term goals we have already set. I think it’s important to keep evaluating your goals to make sure they’re attainable and still relevant. As life, jobs, and careers take us in different directions, the things we strived for at one point may not be the things we’re striving for at another point.

Do you make crafting, crocheting, knitting or other goals for the new year? How do you make them? I’d love to hear!

Changes: Pricing and Holiday Deadlines

October 22, 2015 by Jennifer Raymond

Repair of a Shetland Lace Shawl

It’s getting to be the end of October (where did all the time go?) and that means we’re starting to move into the Holiday season. This is the time of year where the amount of finishing and repair I do nearly triples!

I love doing finishing and repair work – I love being able to help you finish your projects and make them perfect! I love helping you restore older pieces that have gotten loved on a little too much.

But the reality is that Finishing & Repair are the types of work I can only do so much of in a day before my well runs dry. It’s also time (and very often space) consuming. There’s a reason I get so many different large shawls, blankets and other large items to block! I’m fortunate that Mr. Turtle and I have been able to dedicate a space in the house just for this type of work, and that he’s totally chill with finding a bunch of sweaters and other things drying on the guest bedroom bed.

Repairing a Crochet Blanket

What Changed?
Quite a few things have changed since I last changed my pricing- nearly two years ago now! And many of these changes have led to me concluding that prices need to increase.

I moved, and it became more costly for me to drive to my drop-off/pickup locations.
More individuals have opted to mail, and have me mail back, their items. Postal prices have increased.
The type of projects I tend to get have become more complicated: most of my customers like to handle the “smaller items” themselves, and send me the more difficult projects.
My volume of projects has increased! Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m happy about this. BUT! The reality is that knitting, crocheting, seaming, blocking, pinning, etc are all hand and arm heavy activities. I’m relatively young, but I’d hate to find that 5 or 10 years down the road, I’ve given myself a repetitive stress injury. Because of that, I limit the amount of hand-heavy activities I do during a day, and I make sure I have time to stretch in between. This means I have a finite amount of time during the day I can devote to finishing and repair.
I’ve gotten better. As I practice more and learn more, the quality of my finishing and repair has increased, and I believe that my expertise is worth it!

Frankly, I’ve known I’ve had to raise my prices for nearly 6 months, but the reality of the holidays coming really drove the point home – my prices are not sustainable.

So what does this mean for you, my customer?

Coming Sunday November 1st, my prices will be increasing on Finishing & Repair work. My hourly rate will increase from $30 to $40. Many of the categories in my Finishing line of services will also change – some won’t change as much as my hourly rate, and some won’t change at all. But most things will be increasing by a little.
On Monday November 30th, I will no longer be accepting Rush Service. This will continue thru January 1st, and then Rush Service will return. You may still request (and receive!) Express Service. That means if you want to get something finished or repaired before the Christmas Holidays – get it in sooner rather than later.
There will be a new surcharge for oversized items. Details are still being determined. But the long and short of it is: I have cats. I make sure all my finishing stays in places where it won’t get affected by cats. This is fine for smaller items, but when I need to work on really large things, I have to rearrange my house to create a space where I can work that won’t also have cats laying all over it. This extra effort needs to be taken into account – otherwise I’m going to get frustrated and grumpy every time I go to work on large items. I don’t want that to happen.
Note: for any of you that have gotten items to be before the November 1st deadline, don’t worry! Your projects will be charged under the old system.

Got questions about the changes? As always, you can leave me a comment, or drop me an email, and I’ll be happy to answer them!

Thank you so much for being loyal customers!

From the Business Desk: Small Business Privacy

October 15, 2015 by Michael Raymond

From the Business Desk is a semi-regular series that looks at some of the important factors in running a Small Fiber Arts Business. This feature looks at some of the common privacy implications that Small Business owners should have an awareness of. Join Mr. Turtle as he looks into the practicalities of privacy and small business.

License: Some rights reserved by g4ll4is

Just the other week, the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced that in addition to the estimated 22.1 million identity records that had been compromised in an illicit hack of their databases, approximately 5.6 million sets of fingerprint records has been stolen as well. Unlike a credit card or social security number, which can be changed or re-released, this personal biometric data is crucial to keep private, something that the OPM had failed to do.

While most small businesses do not operate at the scale of the Federal Government, they are still responsible for certain privacy requirements around how customer and employee data is collected and used. In addition to the commonly thought of privacy items like securing data from theft, there are other more subtle aspects of privacy law that govern what a business can, and more importantly cannot, do with someone’s data. While privacy has been growing in importance with the rise of the Digital Age, it has only been recently that the general public has become attuned to it’s importance in the world of commerce. As a small business owner, having a baseline understanding of some of the key elements of privacy law can pay dividends in protecting your business and yourself from liability.

In the United States, unlike our European cousins, privacy regulations follow a sectoral approach: each sector of the economy has its’ own set of laws and regulations. The general enforcement for privacy constraints in the business sphere, as opposed to more regulated sectors of industry like healthcare and finance, is the Federal Trade Comission (FTC). In its’ creation with the Federal Trade Commission Act, the body is chartered with enforcing against “unfair and deceptive trade practices and acts,” of which case law has held includes taking appropriate privacy and security measures. For the small business owner, this is important in how you portray your business’s privacy practices to your customers and the general public.

One of the first items a business owner should consider is that if you have a web presence, you should have a written Privacy Policy. This serves to inform any visitors of their rights to their personal data, and more importantly, your intentions surrounding that data. This in turn allows users to make informed decisions or know that for instance using a “contact me” form on your website may lead to their email address being added to your mailing list. Additionally, the State of California in their 2003 Online Privacy Protection Act requires such a notice to be posted on the website if you may potentially be collecting identifiable information from California Citizens. Given the interconnected web of e-commerce in today’s world, the chances are that this may be happening; ensuring that you have developed a current and accurate document unique for your business situation can cover a lot of your privacy bases in this respect.

Attribution: Some rights reserved by hyku

Another key area a small business owner should be aware of is how they conduct any email communication and marketing. As e-mail messaging has exploded in recent years, replacing more traditional postage service mailings, many small business owners have found themselves afoul of the regulations in this space. Email messaging in the United States is primarily governed by the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM Act) of 2003. In brief, the Act requires all email messages to possess a legitimate return email address and physical address of the sender, not have any false, misleading, or deceptive headers or subjects, and provide a clear and conspicuous way for the recipient to opt out of receiving future email messages at no cost to them.

Because of requirements such as these, I would recommend that any organization that intends to use email as a platform for outreach to consider selecting an Email Marketing service to assist in managing one’s distribution list. Many of the commonly used services, such as Mad Mimi, MailChimp, or Constant Contact provide free or extremely cost effective basic plans for small business users. These services allow the use of email formatting templates to assist in meeting all necessary privacy requirements, and additionally provide a platform by which recipients can individually manage their subscription status and opt in or out of receiving certain types of communications. Additionally, such services assist in keeping email distribution lists secure, and ensure that when messages are sent out, recipients email addresses are not exposed to other individuals. It is because of these benefits that any small fiber arts business should consider setting up an Email Marketing service as part of their initial business plan.

While the future of privacy law and requirements for U.S. based businesses may seem murky, a small fiber arts business can take heed of the above principals to best position themselves to be able to respond both to industry requirements as well as the overarching desires of their customer base. By acting and thinking in the best interest of the customer, and treating customer information as you would have another company treat yours, the savvy business owner can create and maintain indispensable customer goodwill. And that is an asset always worth having for your business.

Michael Raymond, CIPP/US

“Mr. Turtle”

Talking with Marian Schembari

September 30, 2015 by Jennifer Raymond

This morning I spent some time talking to Marian Schembari, a Davidson College classmate of mine. Marian’s been a person I’ve enjoyed following since we graduated: from her facebook ad that got her a job in publishing, to her dynamic transition from a Couchsurfer user to employee, and finally to the freelance career she has today – she’s always doing something smart and interesting. Oftentimes I’ve drawn parallels between the tracks of our careers – as we’ve both struggled to figure out what to do when the career we thought we wanted to do didn’t quite work. While I realized that I wasn’t suited to academia and an office job, Marian realized that publishing wasn’t quite a good fit for her. In the years since 2005 (when we were across the other in our freshman dorms), I’ve went from being a little in awe of Marian (she had a great roommate and a great sense of style and an amazing writing voice) to being respectful of her as a businesswoman – one who has managed to make several right-turns in her career and still remain passionate and articulate and true-to-herself.

So I was curious as I sat down to chat with Marian over Skype this morning. She had put out a call on Facebook, wanting to talk to women who ran small businesses, and I figured it would be a fun way to say hello and reconnect. It’s funny – despite never being good friends in college (probably due to me often just feeling/being awkward), we managed to chat for just under an hour about so many different things we had in common.

One of my goals each month this year was to call up and talk to someone I thought was neat or cool and just chat. I’ve mentioned this before (especially on twitter). The goal was a simple one: the job I have now, on an everyday basis, is a largely solitary one, and I wanted to reach out to people who I thought were neat and just connect. Also, because I tend to have a fear of calling up people I don’t know, this was a way to work on that problem! Think of it as establishing my own water-cooler. I kept the rules loose – the chat could be in person or on the phone, and it didn’t have to really be for any reason other than I thought the person was nifty. This mission has led to me establishing connections I didn’t think was possible, and even some young friendships.

Talking with Marian brought home why I started this project. We were able to chat about how our Alma Mater has both been a boon (in friendships) and a frustration (our work-ethic is perhaps permanently warped). Marian gave me some great ideas about how to talk and present myself online, and I told her a bit about my business and the fiber arts industry. At one moment Marian shared her love of adult coloring books, and I reached just out of the frame to hold up my mug of colored pencils. Laughing, Marian reached out of the video frame on her end, to show me a bunch of colored pencils – also in a coffee mug.

It also brought home several things I shouldn’t forget: that I need to remember to keep doing the things I love, in between the things that keeps a business running.

When was the last time you reached out to an old acquaintance? How did it go?

From The Business Desk: Agile for Small Businesses

September 25, 2015 by Michael Raymond

From the Business Desk is a semi-regular series that looks at some of the important factors in running a Small Fiber Arts Business. This feature looks at how to leverage some new time and project management techniques from the Agile framework for small businesses.

As a small business owner, time is one of the most important assets that you have. It is also one of the most limiting. While other business areas like staffing or inventory can be expanded or invested in, there are only so many hours in a day (if you know how to change this, please let me know!). Making effective use of your time for projects and operations is crucial for a well managed business to both succeed and grow.

Is this what agile means to you?

Scrum. Kanban. Sprint. Agile. You may have heard these phrases before in industry trade shows or in the media as the newest focus for tech companies to manage their time, projects, and resources. While originally created for Software Development, the Agile Framework at it’s core can be applied to any business process or project; especially in the Fiber Arts industry where there are natural market segments and discreet work items like classes, designs, and projects.

While we here have written previously about project management, thinking about the Agile methodology more surrounds the what rather than the how. The core elements of agile that a Small Business owner should most be aware of are Team Ownership of Work, Minimum Viable Product/Shippable Units, and Timeboxing.

Before diving into these a bit further, I wanted to provide a 30 second overview about Agile from a non-technical perspective. Unlike traditional mindsets where work is done in an orderly, sequence of events, Agile revolves around breaking up the necessary work to be done into discreet work units, and then over a set period of time (commonly called a “Sprint”) delivering a piece of the work to the customer. For example, if you are running an LYS the work could be a 4 week class on garment construction; each week/session could be a unique and discreet unit of work. Now, with this background, let’s look a bit further at some of the tenants that could be applied to your business:

Team Ownership of Work: Agile frameworks work best when a team of individuals with a variety of skills are empowered to come together to tackle a project or issue as a whole. The team, rather than one individual, collectively has a say in how the work is preformed and ultimately delivered to the customer. This is especially applicable to a Fiber Arts business, due to the muti-facted nature of the industry.

If you are looking to put on a specific fiber event like a Fiber Festival, your team could consist of folks with a deep knowledge of yarns and marketing, separate instructors with significant technique knowledge, and then a handful of us less crafty types with some of the more technical business knowledge. By bringing the team into the decision-making process early on to determine what is and is not feasible (“scoping the work”), you and your business can be sure to have a better understanding up front of what you can (and more importantly what you cannot) accomplish in a given period of time.

Minimum Viable Product/Shippable Units: In the software development space, research has shown that the average user base only heavily utilizes 20% of all of the features of a software application, following the classic Pareto 80/20 rule. Think about your business. Are there certain key elements that always seem to attract the most customer base? Do you have certain patterns that always seem to hit on what the customer wants? Agile is built around focusing on identifying what those elements are, bundling them together to create the leanest possible unit for work to ship, and then working towards that.

Applying that principal to your business can dramatically help you drive your Return on Investment, as once you are able to focus on these areas, you are able to cut to the core of drawing in your customer base. Then, once you have a solid project or process up and running supporting that desire to be taught a specific skill in one of your classes, you can enhance that with additional features that may apply to a smaller set of customers. Doing this is following the tenant of breaking down your projects or work into smaller features called Shippable Units that can be developed in a shorter period of time.

Timeboxing: As mentioned at the beginning, managing your time effectively is crucial for any business owner. As an example, I have allocated myself 60 minutes to write this article. Following the Agile principal of timeboxing, a discreet amount of time is set aside for any one task, meeting, or work item. When that time is up for the day, no matter at what state the project is in, you should stop and move to your next item. Many different studies from business to medical have demonstrated that mulitasking is actually a misnomer, and the human brain loses efficiency when rapidly switching between tasks.

As such, being able to focus on one item at a time, like updating your website with your latest shipment of yarn or re-arranging your models for an upcoming trunk show, work it for a specific period of time, and then close out that piece of work before moving on can dramatically increase the efficiency in how an individual or team gets work done. So when you have those daily team meetings, or find yourself bogged down answering your inbox, break up your task into specific chunks, and timebox them. It may take you longer to accomplish that one task, but by knowingly addressing items one at a time you are able to accomplish a lot more work as a whole.

Overall, the Agile methodology is gaining traction in many large and medium sized corporations and is still being developed and tweaked as additional lessons are learned. While this overview has just scratched the surface, it’s an interesting mindset to begin thinking about when approaching your business planning for the coming year. For another approach on how to use some of these tenants, check out this great post from Agile Advice. And with that, I’m timeboxing this post for today!

~ Mr. Turtle

Making and Fixing Mistakes

June 2, 2015 by Jennifer Raymond

darning and fixing a hole in knitting, repairing a mistake

Fixing a Mistake: a hole, in knitting

I’ve been thinking a lot about mistakes lately.

One of my most popular classes is titled “Oops!” The class hits home with knitters and crocheters: sometime, somewhere, we all are going to make a mistake. Probably even more than one mistake. And if it’s a big enough mistake, it’s going to need to be fixed. It’s a simple premise for the class. Let’s take the pressure off making mistakes, and deliberately make them – and then learn how to fix the mistakes we’ve created. Oops is a class, that, at it’s heart, is about being human. Instead of pretending that mistakes don’t happen, it faces them head-on.

I’ve heard it quoted a couple of times that in Navajo rug work the weaver puts a deliberate “mistake” into their work: the idea being that only the Creator is perfect. You hear this idea echoed in Indian or Persian rugs, or in Islamic geometric designs. While some people believe the myth is not true, there’s a point to be made in the story: by being human, we make mistakes, and in some ways we should make peace with it.

The Yarn Harlot’s written about mistakes dozens of times. Elizabeth Zimmerman held the idea that there are no mistakes in knitting, as long as the results turn out the way you want. Heck, mistakes are so common in patterns that there’s a word for it: errata.

Yet, two weeks ago I was a stew of anxiety as I went through tech editing for three of my patterns coming out in the fall.

darning a hole in a worn out glove - repairing a mistake

Fixing a hole formed in a worn-out glove

It’s funny: a large part of my income comes from doing away from imperfections: repairing broken things, and fixing mistakes in pieces seen as unsaveable.

Yet, when it comes to my *own* mistakes, I’m hesitant to talk about them.

Perhaps it’s because of the scale. To me, a mistake in a blanket affects nothing except the blanket. If I make a mistake cooking, or gardening, or in any of my personal activities, the only person harmed is myself (and perhaps Mr. Turtle, if he’s forced to eat my cooking). In contrast, a mistake in a pattern affects someone else’s life. It can inconvenience them. A mistake in a pattern can take hours for a tech editor to untangle; in worst cases, it can derail publishing deadlines and hurt the bottom line. Mistakes on that scale can be costly.

I’m not one to let go of my own mistakes lightly. In 10th grade, on a field assignment, I broke a thermometer that my teacher was letting me borrow. I was heartbroken and that night I cried myself sick, thinking about telling my teacher the next day that I’d let him down. The whole day before I could go see him, I worried the situation over like a sore tooth: poking and prodding at it, envisioning the worst case scenario. By the time I got to last period when I could speak to him, I was physically sick and trembling. My small mistake had become so big in my mind it has physiological effects. When I went to tell him what was wrong, I ended up just crying from the stress.

It’s why I love working for myself: I can choose the people, and the situations, where I’m held accountable.

I’ve grown up since 10th grade, but big mistakes still have the ability to immobilize me, at least a little. Crafting an email in response to an irate customer can still leave me feeling queasy.

So two weeks ago, when I had not one, but two patterns in tech edits with some significant problems, I struggled to keep my composure. In a conversation to my friend Becca, she put things into perspective.

A while back I hired a woman to help me crochet some pieces that were on a deadline. They were samples, and the patterns were already written, but they needed to be worked up in different yarn. I had very specific instructions. I handed off the yarn to her, with a firm emphasis that if problems came up, if her gauge was off, if she made a mistake, she should contact me right away. I knew that she might make mistakes, but as long as she communicated with me, I could manage things.

Unfortunately, when she made mistakes, as sometimes we are wont to do, she kept working the pattern, hoping that if she went further the mistake would be less obvious. Instead, when I got the pieces, I had to do quite a bit of work to fix things she hadn’t shared with me.

I was angry. It wouldn’t have been a problem if she had just gotten in touch with me, but instead, she waited until the deadline to inform me of the problems. It left me with very little time to do damage control.

In the same manner, Becca pointed out, I should handle the mistakes I make. If I made a mistake, I should be upfront about it. I shouldn’t cover it up. Instead, I should communicate what my problem is, and ask for help.

Not so very easy.

Why am I talking about all this?

Well, I’m thinking about how mistakes are viewed in crafting, in the knitting and crochet industry, and in my own personal life. And I’m thinking about ways I can both respond to mistakes I make, and other’s make, with more grace.

Have you made a mistake in your personal or professional life? How do you handle them? I really, really would like to know.

Yarn Highlights from 2015 Columbus TNNA

June 1, 2015 by Jennifer Raymond

And again, a picture-heavy post, as I’m in the airport waiting for my flight to leave so I can get home. I wrapped up the morning by saying hello (and goodbye) to friends, wrapping up conversations, and running off with yarn to swatch. I also am in the process of going through my notes, making sure that I don’t get home and wonder what the heck happened.

It’s interesting to compare my experience to my first TNNA last year. This TNNA was a lot less frenetic: I didn’t quite try to fill every moment with something. I wasn’t quite as worried that I’d miss something, and was able to take breaks as I needed them: including going to bed on Saturday rather than staying up and zombie watching (there was a Haunter’s Convention next to ours). Tonight, when I get home, I’ll come home to a husband and house… last year I came back to a stripped-bare apartment, as Mr. Turtle had started his old job, and I was wrapping up things in DC. I think, in many ways, all these changes are good.

And now, onto what you all want to see: shots of new to me, or new to everyone yarn that stood out for me at the show!

From the Mountain

I may be a little biased, but this yarn, From the Mountain, is distributed from Chapel Hill, very close to where Mr. Turtle was born and grew up. It’s a yarn with a social purpose: it gives the women from Fayzabad, Afghanistan a socially viable way to earn a living and create a beautiful product. As the company has grown, so have their spinners: all the yarn is entirely handspun. It’s a lovely, lovely yarn in natural colors that creates a beautiful product.

mini-skeins of CEY's Big Liberty Wool in grey, pink and purple.

Classic Elite Yarns Big Liberty Wool

Classic Elite Yarns has several new yarns out this year, but the one that got me the most excited is their Big Liberty Wool. With the same look and makeup of the Liberty Wool, it’s about time they got a larger weight! Working up somewhere between an worsted and aran, it’s got the same lovely feel of Liberty. I’d love to do a kid’s sweater in these three colors: the purple, pink and grey work really well together, don’t you think?

Refuge Fingering Weight from Kismet Fiber Works

Kismet Fiber Works was a new-to-me company this year (although I believe they’ve been around for a while). I absolutely fell in love with the rich emerald of this particular yarn. Made from Baby Camel and Silk, it’s to die for, and the hand is meant for a snuggly shawl.

mini-skeins of yarn paired with normal skeins in yellow, blue, grey, and other colors

Wonderland Yarns’ Messenger Hat Kit

Wonderland Yarns has some fun little bundles I’m rather excited about: called Messenger Hat Kit, they’re enough yarn to work several different patterns that they have. Personally, because I’m not good at following the rules, I want to make something of my own. I really loved the hue of the blue and yellow pictured above.

The Yarns of Rhichard Devrieze had a new yarn made of superwash and non-superwash wool.

Saving one of the best for last: the Yarns of Rhichard Devrieze has two new yarns: one of which I’m working with soon, (and will talk about a little later) and the one pictured above. It’s created by spinning two types of wool together: superwash and non-superwash. The result is a yarn that takes the dye slightly differently, and creates a marled effect. I loved it. It’s a bulky weight, with a sweet hand, and of course, comes in Rhichard’s wonderfully saturated colors. I wanted to just hang it around my neck, but restrained myself.

Any of the yarns catch your eye? What do you think?

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