Should vs. want

Late December is not by favorite time for my business. It means I MUST attend to things I don’t really like to do. The first one is done – inventorying both raw materials and finished products. I admit, I am much more of a rough calculator than I used to be years ago. When I was making jewelry I actually counted every single bead. It took HOURS!

Now I open a bin and estimate how many full cones the contents – which is usually a variety of partial cones – would comprise. I don’t weigh or measure anything. My spreadsheet from the prior year gives me a starting point and the initial cost of the yarns, so I print that out and scribble all over it with this year’s quantities.

Similarly, I count the number of finished pieces, but totally guess at the cost of the raw materials they contain. And this year I had some more guesstimating. Although I stuck by my guns and bought very little new yarn unless I planned to dye it, I did buy a fair amount of yarn from other weavers, all local women, some of it brought to a Guild meeting by individuals, some of it from the estate of weavers who had left things to the Guild to sell or use as we saw fit. The price of those yarns? Um, I truly guessed. I know for sure it was cents on the dollar of what I usually pay.

Anyway, that task is done, but I still have to do all the year-end record keeping. This takes much longer, as I have to do all the computer entries for the last few months, look at a full year report, compare it to last year’s, and figure out what I’ve forgotten or coded incorrectly, and find the paperwork needed to fix my errors. Yuck.

It’s also the time of year that I have to prepare my applications for jurying for shows for this year. Although I have several weeks to get to that point, time is pressing for me to decide what I will weave for this year’s professional photos. I have only 1 piece already woven that I know I’ll use, the rayon chenille jacket with supplemental ribbon warp.

So what I *should* be doing is planning and preparing warps for jury pieces. But at the moment I’m uninspired, and those pieces need to be inspired. I decided to stop making myself crazy, and instead wind a warp for towels. This is all 8/4 cotton, which I haven’t used for towels before. At 12 EPI it should get threaded quickly and the towels should be thick and thirsty.

After all, last year I sold 40 towels, and right now I have a grand total of 4 towels in stock! And this despite the fact that my towels don’t count in my monthly average totals, and I only got 3 scarves woven this month, 2 of which are already gone and I didn’t even get photos of them.

But hey, I’ve gotta do what moves me. And that towel warp makes me happy. Looks like the beach to me, a nice sunny day with a pleasant breeze blowing. Not the freezing temps with a frigid wind that’s actually outside my door.

With any luck, while I’m weaving the towels inspiration will strike for what to weave for jury photos.