When last we spoke, we were busy preparing for our yarn show at Carolina Fiber Fest! We designed our booth layout, chose colors for the show and did inventory. Then we hit the dyepots to dye up all the beautiful yarn! And boy, did we hit them hard! Since we debuted a new yarn line, Coleman, we had to dye all new inventory of all nine colors, along with filling in any gaps in our regular yarn bases. Also, when we do big shows we design a brand new show colorway that is our show special and pick coordinating colors from our tonal lineup. For Fiber Fest, we created Spring Fling, which is a fun, fresh springy color. It makes me think of Easter eggs! We also dyed up a matching braid of fiber, which means creating a whole second recipe with the same colors but in a format better for fiber. Then Janis, our graphic design guru, takes photos and whips up these lovely graphics for marketing our new color!
Dyeing up all the Coleman, all day! This color is called Cherry Blossom.
Once the yarn is all dyed, it has to dry (which can take a couple of days, especially in our humid Carolina weather) then it has to be twisted, labelled, and packed away all with our four hands!
Janis is a pro at prepping and twisting to make those skeins look super neat, while I was busy slapping on labels and braiding fiber!
Once the yarn is show ready, it's time to organize and pack it away neatly so that we can easily unpack and hang it during show set up.
Janis is a whiz at yarn Tetris and takes full advantage of all the Ikea bags.
After the yarn is ready to go, there is still a lot of work to do! We have to go through our extensive sample stash and pick out the ones that have colors we are bringing with us.
Then there is the matter of getting all of our booth materials out of storage and going through it to make sure we have everything we need to set it up, along with signs, bags, cash, and anything else we may be bringing. For this show, Anne brought her spinning wheel to demo our handspun, so she had to pack up all of her bobbins, stool and wheel accessories.
And then we get to play the ultimate game of yarn Tetris to get it all in the van in an organized manner, along with all of our personal belongings since this is a multi day show and requires a hotel stay. Oh and you have to make sure nothing in the van rattles because listening to rattles and squeaks for hours on end is fun for no one!
I hope you like this peak into all the things that go into fiber shows before the show even happens. Next week I'll dive into what goes on once we actually get there!