Procrastinating

I’m rotten with procrastination. I really can’t stand myself. Maybe I should buy a book on self-hypnosis (yay! all new fake self-help procrastination) and zap myself out of it.

Today’s form of pathetic and supremely boring form of procrastination involved HOURS surfing spinning and fiber sites from the new Spin-off. I am so fucking dull, I can’t stand it. This is what happens to me when Ron leaves town. I also bought a cheap wheel on ebay. For Yarn School. It was too cheap to blow off. I hope it’s fine.

A more productive form of procrastination (earlier in the week) was adding a bunch of yarn and fiber to our etsy site.

I had a lot of trouble pricing the yarn. On the one hand, handspinning is very labor-intensive, especially when you figure in dyeing or blending and plying and washing and listing and packing it up. On the other hand, I’m a complete beginner, and while I’m only selling the stuff that I’d actually knit (balanced, reasonably lofty, etc.), I’m also not experienced enough to really know my flaws. You don’t want to go too high out of modesty, but you don’t want to go to low and be the jerk who makes the fancy stuff look comparatively so expensive (when it’s expensive for good reason). And it’s not like anyone but other spinners can tell anything by looking at pictures. Anyway, I was wringing my hands about the whole thing, when I ran across this, which very eloquently articulates the quandary of pricing handmade goods. So I decided I’d price at about commercial yarn store prices (which in most cases pretty much just covers materials and listing/selling expenses) instead of what I think of as handspun prices, and consider it a learning experience. After all, I must make a bunch of different yarns to learn/amuse myself, but how many orphan skeins can I possibly use? But I’m also a big, apologetic nerd, so I included this goofy disclaimer under all the yarn descriptions, which will probably be off-putting enough dissuade anyone from actually buying my yarn:

P.S. Just as a little sidenote, without going too far into the complicated ethical considerations in pricing of handmades: I’m a beginning spinner, so I’m pricing my yarns on par with nice commercial yarn rather than fine professionally hand spun yarn. While I’m only selling yarn I’d be pleased to knit myself, I am definitely still learning the craft, and don’t feel I’m ready to charge much above my materials. I just wanted to make the distinction out of respect for the really fine, experienced professional hand spinners out there, who ask and really deserve much higher prices. Okay, enough with the dorkiness! Go knit!

But on the bright side, one of my skeins of handspun ended up in my destash pile and I picked it up and squooshed it and said (out loud) “Oh, this is nice! What is this?” before I realized it was mine.

I submitted a pattern to MagKnits today. I hope they pick it! My goal is to submit 4 patterns this year to various places. I also have a new very good book idea (I get one of those every 15 minutes, but seldom write anything up) that I want to suss out this weekend, but I need to quit adding new things to my to-do list. Okay, back to Spin-off surfing. Wait! Holy cow! It’s 4am. Nevermind. Off to bed!