This past Friday and Saturday I had a holiday market to sell art at. It was at Ken’s Garden Center in Wasilla. This is a huge greenhouse. Not a high tunnel type, but a built type, with the metal frame and polycarbonate panels. It’s heated by in-floor heat as well as big heater fans around the perimeter. It’s a beautiful venue, and was a fun, new place to try selling art, and it was successful, lots of people came through and I had a lot of fun meeting new people, and trying out a new location.

Whenever I go to a show, I love to look around at all the fun, creative things people are doing. I enjoy visiting with the vendors that are around me, and overall just enjoy the association and a bit of comradery with those sharing something they love to do with the world.

I had an aisle on one side of me, and on the other was another watercolor artist, who also made handmade watercolor books, out of really good quality paper, so I had to splurge a little bit and grab one of her beautiful books. Her business was called Little Cabin Studios. I have no idea if she has an online store, so I won’t link to anything, but you can try searching for her if you’d like. She has an Etsy store, but I am Etsy illiterate and can’t figure out how to find anyone’s actual store front, including my own, from the Etsy main page.

Saturday as things slowed down now and then I wandered some more, and there were a couple of new vendors that hadn’t been there Friday. One of them really intrigued me. They had skeins of dyed wool, but not thread. There were also drop spindles there as well, so I figured spinning. I have never tried spinning of any kind and have always wanted to, so when I had a few minutes and she wasn’t busy I stopped and visited with her.

She came by my booth a couple of hours later and found several items she thought would be fun to have and struck up a deal with me to trade a drop spindle and 2 skeins of wool, along with a quick lesson on spinning. In return she wanted to get 4 of my tote bags. I excitedly agreed and when we had another break in the traffic, she taught me how to use the spindle and let me pick my 2 skeins of wool.

For some reason learning to spin wool has been something I have always wanted to try my hand at, but had thought I had to have a spinning wheel until a few years ago. But I hadn’t had so much opportunity dropped in my lap before to learn about it, so yesterday was the day to take advantage of the opportunity.

I now have the basics for spinning, I’m sure I’ll mess up quite a bit along my way for the first little while, but I am so excited to learn. I am not sure what I’ll do with my thread when I’m finished, I don’t think 4 oz of wool is enough for a project of any kind, but I am going to have fun with this step of the process. Maybe I can knit myself a wool headband. But I’d have to relearn how to knit as I haven’t done that in quite a few years either!