MENU
Tinking Turtle Raverly Profile

Tinking Turtle

Four Pillars

Tinking Turtle Raverly

Follow-ups and a few other details, including a new LYS I’ll be teaching at!

by

Wow, I’ve gotten a lot of responses to my previous post  – I appreciate the support, emails, and congrats!

I wanted to talk a little bit more about the process of filming with Interweave, since I’ve gotten a fair amount of questions about it.

One of the biggest questions I got was: how did you manage to film four classes in two days?

First, Interweave’s got a great team that make the filming process smooth and intuitive.  They were a huge help in making sure everything went smoothly.  Having worked backstage more than once, I have a little bit of an idea of what goes on to prepare for a shoot.  The second biggest thing that makes a difference when filming the classes is the preparation I did before we even began filming.

When I began packing for CO, all of my clothes went into my checked luggage.  The luggage I carried with me, and refused to surrender?  Was filled with something called “step-outs.”

What are step-outs, you might ask?  Think of nearly any cooking show you’ve ever seen.  That moment, when the host puts an uncooked cake in the oven, and the next moment pulls out the finished product?  I bet you wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the entire filming crew isn’t waiting around for the cake to bake.  The host, team, or someone has baked a cake beforehand, to enable the host to go onto the next step.

When preparing for the filming, I did something similar.

The last two weeks have been a flurry of working the same project over and over, each time working one “step” further.  When we’re filming, I simply grab the project that’s on the next step, allowing me to skip ahead.  Each of these unfinished projects is called a step-out, and they’re an important part of making a film class run smoothly.

Different people manage their step outs different ways.  Each of mine went into a separate plastic bag, labeled with it’s order, and with a few different “hints” to remind me why I created the step out, and what it was supposed to be used for.  They then all went on a tray, where I could grab them in between takes.

These were the ones for the barber pole cowl, along with my notes.
Using step-outs for class isn’t anything new: I often create similar things for my workshops.  Still, having to have all the step outs for for classes has consumed most of my time for the last two weeks.  And I have to admit it wasn’t even very absorbing work: basically, I did the same project over and over, each time going onto the next step.
Even if I love a design, the process became boring.
Still, it meant on filming day, I could grab and go, use the step-out, and move onto the next step.  It also means that now that I’m back, I’m having to sort through everything that I tossed into my luggage at the end of the day.
Which kind of is a metaphor for how I’ve been conducting my life for the last two months.
I’m taking some time now to step back.  In a month I leave for TNNA, and there’s some larger-picture goals I have for the show this year.  Meanwhile, I have two guest bedrooms, and office, and other spaces around the house that have become a disaster.  I’ve went two steps beyond “I can’t find anything,” and have launched myself into “I must leap over the piles to get to anything.”
As Mr. Turtle has reminded me, the floor should not be used for a shelf.
So the next two weeks are going to be devoted unpacking, organizing and getting back into the normal Tinking Turtle grove.  If you haven’t heard from me, chances are your email is lurking in the bottom of my inbox – please be patient.

In other news, I’m adding a LYS to my teaching roster: Untangled Purls, in Fredericksburg, VA.  I’ve added the class offerings to my calendar – take a look.

Finally, I’ve been working the last few months with the Cultivar Design team to create a new Tinking Turtle website.  It was time, and I’ve been saving up for this endeavor for a while.  In the next couple of weeks you’ll be hearing and seeing some changes – and hopefully the result being a website where you can find out what you need a little bit faster.

One of the things I’m looking forward to is an updated calendar, which I’m absolutely excited and thrilled to have… since the google calendar I use now does the job, but not elegantly, and it’s really hard to add pictures.  You should, with the new calendar, be able to be able to see where classes are located a little bit better.

Crocheting and Atlantic Beach, repeat

by

Cameraphone Pic

Mr. Turtle’s parents have a tradition of going to Atlantic Beach in the off season.  This weekend we’re with them again, and I keep having moments of déjà vu.  Not quite a year ago, I was at Atlantic Beach with Michael’s family.  And again, I’m working on a crochet project for Annie’s, though their quite different.

I finished the main part of the crochet project about an hour ago, and while I still have to weave in the ends, the beach is calling to me.  This morning we woke to have the sky looking dark and ominous, but the rain cleared by lunchtime and I’m ready for a walk.

I promise, some better photos when I return home and have the powerful computer so I can download the pictures.

Marlinspike Seamanship – A Sailor’s Craft

by

Marlinspike. [mar-lin-spyk] noun: the tool utilized by a sailor to manipulate rope for splicing ropes and working out touch knots.

Marlinspike seamanship is a catch-phrase for a level of proficiency a sailor has achieved in knowing their knots, splices, and uses of various lines, traditionally on a sailing vessel.  By utilizing these techniques, skilled sailors are able to transcend the operational use of their lines, and generate beautiful knotwork that can be both functional and art.

With a strong sailing background, marlinspike seamanship was a craft in which I have dabbled in on and off for many years now.  While nowhere near the level of proficiency of experts in the craft like Des Pawson, I’ve crafted a variety of items like door mats/block mats, and smaller knick knack crafts.  As an art, I’ve found that this type of use of rope is in many ways similar to that of crochet: the marlinspike is akin to a crochet hook, and you only have one running piece of line while you’re creating the item.  Unlike crochet, however, many of these ropework patters are planned out from start to finish before you even start, as they are worked from the end of the rope, in a way more like weaving as the rope is threaded over and under and around itself.


As a craft which as been around in its’ traditional form for centuries, there are any number of resources available to the budding seaman, from the lore of weathered sailors on vessels in a marina, to countless websites available in the craft.  There are also a good number of well written books that are worth checking our or purchasing as well.  Two that I highly recommend are written by Harvey Garrett Smith: The Marlinspike Sailor and The Arts of the Sailor: Knotting, Spicing and Ropework.  In Sailor, Smith provides plenty of detailed, full-page diagrams for complicated knots, splices, and patterns, and easily outlines the movements of the sometimes plethora of lines that are required to turn a jumbled mass of hemp into a beautiful finished product.  In Arts, Smith weaves a tale of how practical elements of knotwork on a sailing vessel because the decorative elements we see today, interspersing the story with diagrams, tips, and patterns for making some of the items he refers to.

Not commonly thought of in the fiber arts community, marlinspike seamanship is an age-old tradition with many parallels in history to it’s more domestic peers of knit, crochet, and weaving.  Certainly a facet of crafting worth exploring for it’s own beauty.

Updates, Holidays, Naughty Numbers

by

I’ve been sucked into plans for Christmas, but today I find myself with another rainy day and a pot of warm tea to keep me going through the afternoon.

Mr. Turtle and I pulled out the Christmas decorations out of the attic over the weekend, put up the tree, and decorated the living room and dining room.  I have extra fir branches to make into a wreath later this week, and perhaps some garlands to hang from the walls.  Last night I rubbed my hands in the branches of the tree, and enjoyed the scent that permeated my hands.

I have two super secret projects I’m working on for Mr. Turtle and my mother-in-law, and a couple of other hand-knits I made over the year to give as gifts.  A full post will have to go up after Christmas, when I’m not in danger of giving things away.  Meanwhile, presents that we ordered online are rolling in, and things are shaping up to finish nearly on-time, as far as I can tell.

Business – wise things have been a mixed bag.  I have a glove pattern that should be done, except my tech editor keeps catching numbers problems that aren’t working.  She’s doing exactly what she’s supposed to do – which is to catch problems before they make it into a publication.  BUT!  I just want this darn glove pattern done!  I want to wave my magic wand and just will the numbers to work!

… I’m told it doesn’t quite work that way.

Still, several other projects are in the works that will reach fruition come the new year, so I’m trying not to get discouraged.

I’ll leave you a picture of the naughty gloves, which I’m determined to get right!

From the Business Desk: Stakeholder Engagement

by

From the Business Desk is back.  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 revolves around managing the many important parties your business works with on a daily basis.


Due to the specialized nature of a fibre arts small business, you most likely are interfacing with a large number of external parties in your day to day business operations.  From suppliers and vendors to accountants and banks to individual customers, the web of interactions you weave is a significant challenge to manage for any business owner.

Complex web of your network.  Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Managing these types of interactions with all of these various individuals is key to a business’s well being, as often times a business is judged by the market not by it’s actual results, but by how it operates and delivers results against its’ expectations.  You see this a lot of times with Fortune 500 companies where although they could show spectacularly profitable results, if these do not meet the expectations of the organization, things like it’s image, reputation, clientele, or stock price can suffer. 

There are many in-depth training classes you can take from high-paid consultants on how you can accomplish this; what I’m going to do is share some high-level tips for how we at Tinking Turtle keep track of things here to best manage the expectations of all of the interrelated individuals we commonly interact with.

Constant External Communication.  Communication is absolutely tops in managing any sort of relationship that you have, be it with a vendor for ordering supplies, or a customer expecting a deliverable on a particular project.  Often times, when you know things are not going according to plan and you cannot meet a deadline, the earlier you can communicate this, the better.  That way things don’t come as a shock to those impacted, and if you can both communicate the issue and what you are doing to resolve it, you can ensure your relationships are positively maintained.  Studies show that customer loyalty can actually be increased if your business takes ownership and provides an exceptional level of service in the event of a customer service issue.

Internal Communication.  If your business has more than one employee, it is vital that all of the staff are on the same page and have access to information regarding the various stakeholders that they interact with.  Nothing is more off-putting than to have an external vendor be told “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about” in relation to an issue.  This could be something as simple as having a weekly staff meeting, or a common room whiteboard with a high level FYI list of things to be aware of for all of the associates to have access to.  There are also technology solutions to allow these relationships to be documented, having a CRM application is one avenue that Tinking Turtle uses, as to us, everyone we interact with from vendors to contractors to customers is tracked in our system.

Understanding Expectations.  The last item I want to stress here is the importance of actually understanding the expectations of everyone you interact with.  A classic example of this can be found in the Project Management Tire Swing analogy, which has been around for quite some time and is demonstrated in many introduction to Stakeholder Engagement classes.

The importance of understanding expectations.

By making assumptions about what is really necessary in a relationship, the chance for misscommunication is high, which then leads to situations where one party’s expectations are vastly different than the other.  A good way to think about this in any interaction is to ensure that both you and the other party have clearly understood conditions of satisfaction that need to be met as part of this relationship.  In ensuring that you have established these up front, it is much easier to then set expectations, and then identify areas that can be changed as the nature of the relationship changes.

These are only a few of the ways that small businesses can work to ensure that the relationships with the many individuals and organizations with which they interact remain strong.  It is the strength of these relationship, and how engaged you are keeping all parties involve that can really be a stragic benefit to the long-term success of any fiber arts business.

Mr. Turtle Strikes Again

by

Let me just start this by saying that Mr. Turtle has a habit of obliviousness when it comes to fibers.  See the acrylic hotpad and the felted hat, amongst other examples.

One of the lesser joys of owning cats is cleaning out the litter box, and most days, Michael and I compete to see who has to do the job (the tradeoff is you have to feed the cats in the morning and

One of the possible suspects. We brought them in for questioning.

forgo that extra 5 minutes of sleep).  The other day the chore fell to me, I had the unfortunate surprise of realizing the cat’s had left some… presents outside of the litter box, on the rug we have underneath the box to minimize the spread of cat litter.  I’ll spare you the details.

Anyway, after the “presents” were taken care of, I thought it was probably a good idea to give the rug a good wash.  After all, we have an ultra-powerful washing machine and a hot water heater that has more enthusiasm than sense!

The rug had been a find from my grandmother’s house, and the tag with the care instructions was long gone.  But it felt like cotton, and definitely did not feel like wool – so warm wash it was with a good dousing of soap.

In between the first wash cycle and the second (I opted for the super-wash cycle, considering I wasn’t sure if it’d EVER been clean), I took a quick glance in – and it was looking OK, so I nudged the water up to hot.  I was really feeling like this thing should be boiled within an inch of it’s life.  It was a sturdy rug, and I didn’t know when it would be cleaned again.  Off I go back to work.

That evening before dinner, I had my hands full with a particular piece of knitting, and I remembered that the rug needed to come out of the wash.  Again, thinking it was cotton, I asked Mr. Turtle, who was heading out to the washroom anyway, to throw it in the dryer.

You can see where this story is going, can’t you?

After dinner, Mr. Turtle hears the buzzer to the dryer sounding, and goes to get it out of the dryer.  Moments later, he comes back in, saying he needs my help.

My stomach sinks.  I’m thinking the same thing you are.  I’m thinking the rug was actually wool, and now it’s a felted mess.

No.

Instead, the entire dryer is blue/black.  Where there should be a white drum, there is not.

The rug, mostly in shades of yellow, black and red, REALLY did not have colorfast dye.  When I ask dear Mr. Turtle if he’d noticed as he was transferring the rug from the washer to the dryer
he said that he’d noticed some black on his hands.  He thought it was dirt. (Why a rug would be emerging from the washer dirty I have no clue… but.  I digress).

So, some helpful information for those people who have discovered their dryer has turned interesting colors, or who finds themselves with a not-so colorfast rug:

Dye can be cleaned off of a dryer with liberal application of bleach, providing you’re careful about where you’re inhaling.  Please do not take this as a recommendation to inhale bleach fumes while you’re head is stuck in a dryer drum.  But it does work.  So next time I put white things in my dryer drum, they won’t be coming away blue.  But as a note: after I finished, I wiped the drum down with a wet cloth, to make sure that I also didn’t get bleach on my clothes next time I used the dryer.

Citric Acid. One of my favorite household multipurpose things.

Liberal application of citric acid (or vinegar, though you have to use a lot more) or any other household acid, though those are the two most common can help the dye become more colorfast, though you’ll probably still get bleeding.  I noticed instant results.  Just to be sure, on the last wash I added Borax, to make the wash more basic.  Why?  Because overly acidic solutions over time will degrade fibers.  I just wanted to get the fibers to a more neutral Ph, because I’d washed the rug in several fairly acidic washes.

The results?  Well, the dryer is probably the most clean it’s been in ages.

The rug?

The colors are more muted.  You can see in places where the flowers used to be bright red.  The yellow is definitely not yellow anymore.  But it’s clean.  And really, the cat’s don’t care what color their rug is.

It’ll do.

From the Business Desk: Leveraging your Strengths

by

From the Business Desk is back.  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 revolves around market evaluation, and some tips to find the right niche for your business.

As any small business owner knows, it’s a fierce world out there to break into any market.  Be it establishing a LYS, becoming your own design company, breaking into the teaching circuit, all of these arenas seem to have well established entities that have solid client bases that seem to have everything put together.  How will you ever be able to differentiate your new business and your ideas from the existing market, you may ask yourself.  One of the handiest tricks of the business trade to help you accomplish this is the SWOT analysis.  Standing for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, this analysis can help you start to make sense of your business’s place in the market, and areas which you can develop to better differentiate and market your ideas.

SWOT Matrix overview.  Image courtesy of wikipedia.org

Fitting neatly into a 2 x 2 matrix (one of my favorite visualizations for many different business strategies), the SWOT analysis can help you identify some key attributes both about your business as well as the marketplace.

Strengths are the things that your business does quite well or has a key competitive factor; items could include physical location of a shop in a high-traffic downtown area, or having a well rounded resume of instruction at a variety of locations.

Weaknesses are known areas where you could use some improvement; an example of this could be that you don’t really possess a strong skill-set on computer tools like Excel or Microsoft Publisher as a designer.

Opportunities are areas that in your opinion the market or industry has not fully realized, such as there being a wealth of crocheters living in a particular town, but no dedicated crochet instructor.

Threats can be anything externally that stands the chance of impeding the growth and progress of your business.  Threats can be micro, such as the fact that there is already a teacher who has been teaching a particular class that you want to start teaching at a regional fair, or macro, such as the overall state of the retail yarn market in a particular state.
Remember, these should be fairly high-level; while it’s good to have an in-depth analysis of your business and the market, for the first time that you do this exercise, try to distill it down to the top three or four attributes in each category.

Once you have developed your ideas and thoughts, it’s time to tweak the matrix to help understand how this can lead to a strong business plan development.

SWOT action item Matrix

By combining each of these categories in a grid, you can identify specific action items that emerge from the attribute clusters.  The two most important areas to be aware of and consider are the Strength-Opportunities  and the Weakness-Threat quadrants.  These two reflect the immediate areas for business development and defense strategy respectively.

Breaking down your businesses’ market position utilizing the SWOT analysis, you can simply and easily lay the groundwork for a comprehensive business plan that can help you take advantage of market opportunities.  One final note about the SWOT analysis; it is not meant to be a static market.  Over time, both your business strengths and weaknesses as well as your perceived opportunities and threats in the market can significantly change.  It’s a good idea to review and update this grid on a regular schedule (here at Tinking Turtle we review our SWOT items quarterly and develop a new SWOT matrix annually).  By doing this, you can ensure that you are aware of where you need to focus your business development objectives for the near future.

~ Mr. Turtle

From the Business Desk: Finishing Projects

by

After a delay due to some career changes that Jen talked about earlier, From the Business Desk is back.  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 revolves around ensuring that all of your business projects have fully completed.


As a small business owner, staying on top of everything necessary to run your business is no small task.  With a constant turmoil of new projects, new customers, and everyday business inquiries, it is important to understand what is required for you to close out your existing projects; by successfully and formally closing out a project, it can be put to rest with all parties comfortable that their requirements have been met.

Not all Project Management needs to be this complicated. A few
simple tips can keep you on track to successful completion.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart

One of the first items to be aware of in the closing stage of a project is that it’s important to identify up front what the final items on your project or to-do list are.  For example, if you are working on establishing and running a new class at your shop, you may think that the project is complete when the class runs.  Thinking this out ahead of time can help you identify  items that are always good to check off before putting a project to bed  Namely, ensuring that all compensation and contractual terms have been met and a project post-mortem to document lessons learned.  Following through with these steps ensures that you don’t forget some of the important elements of a project for any business: getting paid, and meeting legal obligations.  A post-mortem, either publicly or internally is a good time for one or more parties involved to learn from the project, documenting what went well and what could use improvement for next time.

This is an example of using Insightly to keep track of project tasks.
This is the project list for the pattern Sweet Strawberries.

Keeping track of all of this can be overwhelming; fortunately there are several options available that are easy to use in web form.  I’d recommend ZOHO Projects or Freedcamp as two of the better solutions available out there for someone just getting started.  Other options include systems that link Customer Relationship Management and Project Management.  Here at Tinking Turtle, our CRM system, Insightly includes an integrated Project Management module.  This provides additional functionality to link projects to various associated parties, and track when a project is waiting on a third party to take action.

No matter how extensive or basic your knowledge of projects is, ensuring that you take some time on all of your projects to double check that your steps are completed is well worth the peace of mind..  The more projects that can be completed without final steps left un-done, the easier managing the entire workload of your business can be.

~ Mr. Turtle

Idea of Thirds for Online Content

by

This is the next edition of a semi-regular series From the Business Desk I am writing to look at some of the important factors in running a Small Fiber Arts Business.  This feature revolves around some ideas and concepts that you can use when posting content online and via social media.

Driving content to any website or blog isn’t easy.  Especially with the proliferation of social media and so-called link aggregation sites like Buzzfeed or Tumblr, online viewers are faced with an overwhelming amount of content to sift through.  How can you, the publisher, rise above the noise, and provide your audience with a healthy variety of content to keep them engaged and continuing to return to your site?  Social Media giant Facebook has some analysis from their experience, much of it is good advice: ask questions, vary your style, and keep up your volume.

In terms of content, however, there’s a quick little memonic that I’ve always believed in to help you not only have varied style and volume, but different topics as well.  I think this is particularly apropos for the fiberarts industry, where so much of the culture and community is derived from sharing new ideas and teaching others’ new tips and techniques. It’s called the Idea (or rule) of Thirds for Online Content.  It goes like this:

1/3 of your content should be Informational
1/3 should be Instructional
1/3 should be Personal

Here at Tinking Turtle, we try (and emphasis on try given life’s challenges as mentioned before) to come up with a monthly posting schedule and theme, and then break down the posts based on these buckets.

This is our Posting Schedule for last November.  Note the other topics for me at the bottom… I’m just now getting to writing about the Idea of Thirds!

Each of these buckets can engage a different set of readers, or engage frequent readers in different ways.  The Informational grouping for content can encompass topics such as reviews of new patterns, new yarns, new books, or other knowledge based topics that you the poster want to share with your audience, for example this post you’re reading!  Instructional topics are pretty straight forward, and engage the folks’ who peruse your site hoping to learn something new (like Jen’s Embroidering with Crochet piece) or with a question to be answered.  Instructional topics can also lead into a more active offline engagement with readers, as once they have learned a technique or style they may want to pursue that with you through one on one interactions or even taking an in depth class.

Personal topics are topic matter most commonly associated with blogs; they are stories, experiences, and musings of the poster (such as my German Restaurant post about the origins of the Tinking Turtle name from last year) and add a human element to a website.  Readers want to know they are dealing with people, not robots, and having this down to earth content helps drive that connection to keep them coming back.

There are any number of ways you can break down posting content to achieve variety to provide engaging and provoking content.  The Idea of Thirds is one great concept to keep in the back of your mind when contemplating your online content, whatever the platform, going forward!

~ Mr. Turtle

Snowday, again.

by

We got about 5 or 6 inches of snow today.  Needless to say, everything was pretty much shut down.  Mr. Turtle and I stayed holed up in our apartment.  Mr. Turtle was recovering from a cold, and every time he coughed the cats got startled.  For once in my life (shockingly!) I was the preferred human to cuddle, which was a little awkward as I was working on an upcoming pattern.

At one point both cats were poured into my lap, a rather startling feat.

Michael snapped a picture.

Me, lovely in my “Knitter” Sweatpants and Penguin Sweatshirt;
the cats, keeping my lap warm.

The pattern was giving me fits today.  It’s a new sock pattern, and the heel took three tries to get right.  It’s a perfect fit now, but I had to try out everything that didn’t work before I settled on a shape that worked.

Stay tuned – next week I’ll be announcing some exciting news!

Latest Posts

Social Feed

Tinking Turtle Ravelry

Email Signup

Don’t miss a stitch!

Be the first to learn about classes, patterns. upcoming events and more.