Weaving

It had long been my dream to make a bit of a living spinning and weaving wool. When I retired the first time ten years ago I thought I might work at it for a year - just to see if I could weave or spin on a daily basis and equally important, if I could make any money at it. I never attempted it in part because at that point I lacked the courage to try. When I retired this time around last December I decided that it was finally time for me to see if I could work at this passion full time. My primary concern was whether or not I would still enjoy it if I worked at it daily. Playing with wool gave me such pleasure - I didn't want to lose that sense of fun just to make money.

I knew I could make money - not a lot - but enough to buy most of my food for the year. Starting just over a year ago, I had been selling my weaving at the Saturday Farmer's Market. I did it just for seven weeks in the spring and seven weeks in the fall. Much to my surprise, I had enjoyed the process of meeting potential customers. While no craftsperson enjoys people ignoring them or even worse looking at one's stuff and then not buying it, it was fun sitting behind my spinning wheel, chatting to the folks who stopped. On occasion little kids would become mesmerized watching the wheel go around and around. I always gave them a chance to touch the wool and see how soft it was. Men, who normally would have perhaps not approached a woman playing with wool occasionally stopped and chatted with me about the "machine" I was using and how it worked. On a reasonably warm Saturday - it was a great way to spend a morning. Even if I did need to be there by 6:00AM.

I never really knew how long it took me to make a rug or a shawl. I would buy a few raw fleeces in June and then slowly putter around washing, carding, spinning and then finally weaving the wool. During some weeks when I was doing little else, I did a fair amount of work. On other weeks when I had exams or papers to mark, or if something else was happening I might not touch the wool for a whole week. It was something that I looked forward to doing and something that I missed if I didn't do it for a few days. The product gradually accumulated over a few years until rug racks were overloaded and my bins were full of bags and purses. When I started to sell stuff if felt pretty easy. Pretty easy until this year when I had to replenish my stock. I had not thought seriously about how much work it took to make $3,000.00 worth of weaving.

In fact it is so much work that I am not too sure if it is sustainable. For the past three months and a half months I have done something with wool for at least five to six hours every day. I have taken time to write (over 30,000 words) and there have been numerous times when I just sat down and read a novel. But most of my time both during the day and in the evening has been spent with wool. The good news is that I still love doing it. As well I think I have learnt a fair amount about some of the techniques of my trade. I think I use my time more efficiently and certainly there is less waste as I have learned to better measure how much I am going to need for any project. However, I have found out that the amount of time that it takes me to process the wool before I start to weave is far longer than I would have guessed. At the end of the three and half months, I have enough to sell starting this Saturday but I am not over stocked and I suspect that by the fall (if my sales continue as they did last year) I will have to be working hard to keep up. For the past three and half months playing with wool has consumed me. I am not sure if I want to work this hard for the next few years. It is depressing.

The other alternative of course is to raise my prices. It seems to me that there is a fine balance between selling a fair amount of product at a low price and selling less product but at a higher price. I have no way of knowing how to find that balance. I want people to buy my stuff - not just because I need the money, but also because it gives me pleasure to know that someone likes what I do.

I am such a bad business person. I just wanted to play with wool and know that people enjoy using what I make.