October fades, november Focus

Happy November, friends!
I wanted to take a minute to let my social media followers know I will be taking a re-centering break from Facebook and Instagram for the month of November. I will take this time to focus on my blog and YouTube as I shift the vibe of my small business towards more of my passionate values—being wool-focused, and marketing more of my fiber arts educational opportunities (free online information and paid in-person classes.) I hope this will allow me to focus my zone of speciality, and do what I do better.
Don’t worry, there will still be chicken hats!
My most beloved products will remain, and the rest will be focused towards wool.
This was a jam-packed month. I started off my month with a big flamenco dance event, flamenco has been one of my passions for 15 years now, but I’m heading into a time-crunch season where my focus needs to be elsewhere, so this was just a really beautiful time for me to savor before my break.
The next week I had an action-packed time getting ready for the fall festival I was vending at, and seemingly right after that, my mom and I were off on our way to the SAFF fiber festival. There, I attended four classes, shopped, networked, and picked up my Great Wheel spinning wheel a friend had been holding for me for a few months. It all fit into the car and we made it back home, and had a much more calm week back at home.
I did a lot of crafting this month, with getting ready for the fall festival (I also did quite a lot of baking 😊). Then I had a wild hare to wash as much raw wool and process it as I could before the festival, just to get a handle on it before I picked up my big wheel. I filmed a lot of content for my wool of the week project. Each week I walk through processing a different breed of sheep’s wool from raw wool to a finished yarn. At the end of the series, I will knit a sweater with all of the handspun, hand dyed yarn.
I worked on several personal projects in October including my fall “Close to You” shawlette, and my “vanilla” Earthies socks.
Additionally, I got in on some Preptober action for NaNoWriMo (National novel writing month).
Along those lines, I not only planned for my November novel, but I also did some planning for my next feature project on my blog and YouTube, The Southern Roots Alpaca Project with my cousin, Angel Rockwood and her farm, Rockwood Farm, LLC. This is a collaboration of farming and fiber arts across southern states.
The first phase of this project was when Angel sent me raw alpaca fiber. After initial testing and familiarization of the fibers, I created the finished products, educational examples of drop spindle hand spun yarns, which all won a ribbon at each festival they went to. The second phase will consist of blend studies and knitwear tests with spinning wheel spun yarn. So we hope you will join us for that.
In preparation for the holiday season, things always seem to intensify. But that can be hard on us. For this month I want to have special focuses on presence, gratitude, care, listening and communication, and radical joy. If you can feel joy today, you must. Feel it for others, deeply and truly. Blessings.