Working hard, but not weaving

I’ve just spent three days on tasks essential to my weaving business, but not actually weaving.

First, you know all those newly-woven scarves and shawls I’ve been posting here on my blog since early January? Yeah, well, they were all sitting in nice, neat piles on my dining room table, waiting to be tagged and put away.

Each scarf gets a tag that has my logo, identifies the fiber(s) it contains, care instructions, the size, and the color name(s). I hbelieve the law requires most of that information, just like any other garment you buy. Even if it didn’t, I know it’s appreciated by my customers. I haven’t made the transition to tags that have a whole list of fibers and care instructions and I just chedk the appropriate ones – all my tags include the information just about that particular scarf or shawl. So I make them all as needed on my computer. (Not one-by-one. I made a full page of each particular fiber or blend of fibers. I keep a little box with the extras so I don’t have to print every time.)

Then I have to measure each piece, write the size & name on the tag, make a little price tag, and pin them together on the bottom of the scarf. After that, I fold them roughly in half, roll them into a loose jelly roll, and carefully stack them sideways in a plastic bin.

Because I’d waited so long before doing this task, I had to go back into my yarn invoices and/or my blog posts to confirm the fibers on some of them. It was beyond me to tell by look or feel the difference between 100% bamboo, 100% tencel, and a bamboo-tencel blend. So that took more time than necessary. Certainly more time than if I’d tagged them as I went along.

I like the way they look in their little bedroll state. When I’m at a show, I have many scarves draped over rods and the like, some laid casually on tables, and still more on a hanging shelf system in one corner of my booth. I used to group them on those shelves by fiber, but last year another vendor suggested I group them by color, saying, “When you go into the store for towels, you want to look at the purple towels, not all the towels of a particular size or weight.” She was right. We are attracted by the colors that call to us. That being said, I’m still getting used to this, because my weaverly self prefers them grouped by fiber.

Once those scarves were all tagged, I had to face another task I’ve been putting off. Not a single one of those scarves one shawls was put up on my website. This meant I had to go back to my original photos, save it once in the ‘large’ size I use on the web, crop it for detail, and save it again in my ‘small’ size. Since, as I’ve mentioned, my internet speed isn’t really high, uploading photos, even ones that are relatively small and optimized for the web, is painful from home. I opted to spend hours in a little coffee shop that has free WiFi.

After I had all the photos loaded, I could go to my Dreamweaver program and start writing descriptions and laying out the pages. I’d wanted to update the organization of the site for a long time, and decided that if I didn’t do it now, another year would roll by with the same clumsy structure. Simplify, simplify, simplify. Don’t make your customers do a lot of work to see the results of your labor. At least not if you want them to buy from you!

Once again, my trusty MacBook worked just as hard as I did.

So I think I’ve got the pages done and uploaded. But it’s to the point that I can’t know anymore what I’ve already looked at and proofed and checked the links on. I’ll really appreciate it if you have the inclination to look at it and tell me where you find broken links, missing pictures, misspellings (I think I did spell check on them all), or bad grammar. Click around my website to your heart’s content (actually, don’t bother with any of the jewelry pages – they need to come down), then leave me a comment or send me an email (peg at handwovenscarves dot com) with your helpful suggestions. I’ll be grateful for your time and attention.

Now I’m going to get back to my loom!