Ah, the weekend. Picture it: two whole days stretch before you, hours and hours of time. All you have to do is a few loads of laundry, a week’s worth of dishes, a bit of tidying up, and (of course) some spinning. Plenty of time. And then suddenly, it’s Sunday evening. You’ve baked a cake, watched three movies, and gone dress shopping. Looks like you’ll be wearing your paint stained jeans to work, drinking tea out of a wine glass, and stepping around those dust bunnies for another week. And what about the spinning?

That’s why I love craft fairs. Kirstin here (on Mom’s computer), with a meditation on forced productivity. I always take my wheel to our craft fairs and for 8-12 hours, I sit and spin. Sure, I talk to people. But I can spin and talk. In fact, if I stop spinning I feel like I’m cheating the crowd out of their chance to see a somewhat obscure process in action. At our last craft fair, I spun 337 yards (8.5 ounces) of “Storm Clouds”. That’s twice what I’d get done in a weekend!

This yarn is spun from a 90% alpaca, 10% merino blend. It’s fluffy and has great memory. The alpaca, Zane, belonged to our shearer Scott. We often spin the fiber that others don’t know how (or have time to) process. Usually, we simply split the finished product, taking a few skeins as payment. It’s a great arrangement for everyone. We get more diverse fiber, and they get a service that can be hard to find. So if anyone needs a bit of contract spinning, let me know!