Meanwhile Back in Nashville: a visit to the Work Shop

Back in Nashville

I arrived safely back in Nashville on Sunday. The traffic on the drive was light for most of the day until I got to Knoxville. Between Knoxville and Nashville I hit at least 4 slow downs due to who knows what? There were construction zones a few times, but they didn’t have workers present. So, I finally arrived around 3:30 pm just as a rain storm was bearing down on Nashville. I got the trailer turned in the driveway and my luggage out before it poured. I waited for it to stop raining before unhitching though.

Back On the Road

I took the afternoon to unpack and rest a bit. On Monday I did the grocery shopping and some trailer restocking. Today, Tuesday, I washed and gassed up the truck, hitched up the trailer again, and packed for my next trip tomorrow. I am leaving in the morning for Michigan. I will be setting up the booth on Thursday for the Michigan Fiber Festival. I started vending at this festival in 2007. It is a three day show, Friday – Sunday and is at the Allegan County Fairgrounds. I have always liked this festival but improved more now that I am in the new Expo Building. The light and ventilation is much better than the old white building where I was for the first 12 years.

I will be going straight to Pittsburgh from Allegan on Monday next week. I am once again back for the Pittsburgh Creative Arts Festival in Green Tree, PA. We will be setting up the booths on Wednesday since the dates for the show are now Thursday-Saturday. It just makes more sense not to drive home. I’ll talk more about this show later though, because I wanted to spend some time in this post with a work shop update.

Work Shop Update

If you recall, we were starting a new batch of Yarn Boxes before I left for Charlotte, NC. While I was there, Jerry got the pieces all cut to final dimensions. That means that the next step is to cut ALL the finger joints. This is a time consuming process. Aside from the time involved in making the actual cuts, the jig is tedious to set up and tweak it until everything is lined up exactly right. If that doesn’t happen the joints won’t line up correctly when we start assembling the sides and bottoms together. Prayers for patience and wisdom are appreciated ;-).

While we are on the topic of the work shop and our processes, I’d like to share a new page I have on the website about that. I have had in mind for awhile to write up a gallery type page that not only shows but also informs interested visitors about what goes into making all of our various products. When people come into our booth at festivals or visit our website, they may not already know that almost everything they see there was hand made by us. From the wood knitting tools and accessories, to the hand dyed yarn and knitted samples, it is all us. That is pretty cool to me and I want to share what it takes for that to happen. I hope it will be interesting and informative and a work in progress itself as we add new items or change how we do things. If you’d like to check it out, here’s the link to a Sneak Peek at Our Production. Thanks for reading and let me know what you think. Is there something you’d like to see there that I didn’t include?