…Joining Ginny’s YarnAlong, sharing what I’m knitting and reading…

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Last night I just finished a little surprise project I’ve been working on, to get it done in time for our trip. That’s a peek at it above. I’ll show it to you in next week’s YarnAlong, so I don’t spoil the surprise for certain readers. 

I need to get a knitting project ready to bring with me tomorrow. I’ll be leaving the socks at home since double pointed needles don’t travel well. I can’t imagine going anywhere without my knitting. That might sound funny, unless you are a knitter and then you will probably know exactly what I mean.

I’m still reading ‘How To Live On Nothing’ by Joan Ranson Shortney. So far I haven’t found very much that I can apply to my daily life, most of the information thus far doesn’t pertain to me so I’ve been having a hard time keeping my focus while I read it. (Some of that probably has to do with the fact that I have a lot on my mind and am full of excitement for our trip!) I’m looking forward to getting to some chapters that hopefully have more ideas I’ll be able to relate to. 

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I’m lumping some other things into my YarnAlong post this week:

I officially started packing on Monday, but I’ve had a list going for awhile so I don’t forget anything. I told a friend yesterday that I needed to get home and get to packing and she said “all you need is a swimsuit and some flip flops!,” which made me smile. I started packing food this morning, for us to bring along to snack on during traveling. And I finally located Bracken’s sandals that had gone missing. I’m getting there…

I want to thank you for your ideas and suggestions for traveling with children! I really appreciate all that you shared with me in the comments from last week’s post. 

I wanted to let you know that no orders from our Wooly Moss Roots shop will be mailed out until I return from our trip. (We get back on the 19th.) That way Jeff can completely focus on working and not need to worry about getting those orders mailed out for me. I know how he works and he will most definitely be “in the zone” while he has all that undistracted work time. (Mystic Orb orders will be mailed out, though, if you need to order a gift and receive it quickly.)

I was going to wait until I got back from our trip to share this with you, but I’m too excited to wait. I guess I should back up and say that since the beginning of our business we’ve been wanting to offer all of our handmade items very affordably. That can be a challenge when you put so much time and energy into what you’re making because you want it to be the highest quality that it can be. It’s felt ironic to us over the years that quite a few of the handmade things we sell are out of our own family’s price range. Sometimes people tell me how much they love our buttons or {insert item here}, but that they honestly are not able to afford them. If anyone understands that, it’s us. We want there to be items in our shops that everyone can afford. So the wheels have been turning for a long time… Jeff and I both coming up with ideas constantly. We have natural body care that’s affordable and wooden earrings and many other lower priced items (thank goodness, lower priced items have saved us at market)… but we especially wanted some lower priced buttons. As you saw in yesterday’s post, Jeff puts an incredible amount of time and energy into each button, so we weren’t sure how to get the price down. Then, recently, I had a very clear and lucid dream with a strong message. I woke up with two words: Fabric Buttons. Fabric buttons? I didn’t know anything about them, had never even thought about them before. I told Jeff about it right away and he researched online. I had some pretty cotton fabric that I had been saving for an unknown project, with blue flowers on it and thought it would be perfect. 

Jeff ordered some materials to make them. We got our package in the mail yesterday. We headed home and I put Bracken down for a nap and started getting some packing done. Jeff came in to show me… he surprised me with the very first fabric button he made! Today I posted our new fabric buttons in the shop. I hadn’t planned to do that until I got back from my trip, but I was just too darn excited about it. (Ignore the cards saying: Handmade Wooden Buttons, we haven’t made new cards for the fabric buttons yet.) We have friends who make clothes to sell and they love to use our buttons. If they pick ones for a jacket (or some such thing that requires many buttons) that are $6 per button or even $4 per button, they have to charge a lot more for that garment. I’m looking forward to telling them about our fabric buttons now. The fun thing about the fabric buttons is that we can take custom orders so that people can choose fabric to match their projects.

You can find our new fabric buttons in the shop here. They are only $1 a piece! I’ve set up the listing for a single button so you can add however many you’d like to your cart. We have them currently available in two sizes: 3/4 inch and 7/8 inch. Soon we’ll have more fabrics too. Yes, this is the start of something very exciting! Now, I’d better get back to preparing for tomorrow, we leave very early in the morning.