Our thoughts on the past year.......

As this year is coming to an end, we take time to look back at this extraordinary year. Our thoughts go back to what has made this such a wonderful year and we could only attribute it to one thing---you our friends and customers.

Our goal was to make a quality product to sell at a reasonable price, based on our sales we think you the customer has agreed. We have tried to keep our selection varied changing colors to keep things interesting. The support we received this year did not go unnoticed, we tried to spice things up this month by giving away several Christmas themed spindles and discount coupons. This went so well that we have decided to show our appreciation to you our customers more then once a year. Keep watching the blog as we plan at our whim, just because, and when we want to.....we may just throw a giveaway out there or have a special one of a kind something. We aren't sure just yet what we will do but if you are reading this blog, you will be the first to know.

In closing, we would like to Thank all of our customers and wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We hope your new year will be as exciting and rewarding for you and your family as we hope it will be for ours.


Dale, Barbara, and Joshua Thomas
Thomas-Creations llc.com
ThreadsthruTime.etsy

The Winners of The turkish Spindles Are.......

Well, this has been a humbling experience....LOL! We had 20 people respond to the Spindle drawing either by blog or by email. I know I am terrible at blogging but geessh! LOL!!

Anyway, here we go the winners for the Turkish Spindle give away are ....#1 is bspinner of Millersburg, PA ....#2 Lisa responded via blog.... and #3....Michelle Eveans ....

I need each of you to email me your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choices on small medium or large Turkish Spindle in the Holiday Holly color, bspinner will get first pick and so on.......

Now for the 2nd surprise........ Josiah......bekknits, and Miss Cake you each won a 3 in 1 tool made by Joshua in the Holiday colors........we will pick for you....but I do need you to email me your address so we can mail these out ASAP.

Everyone else........gets a 10% off discount on their next purchase.............. I need Michelle of Boulderneigh....Jordan Buell, Ilse, Pam Ritch, Jennifer Mitton, Anne Schneider, Y. Ku, Anna, Erin (you silly tree frog), Geraldine Winter, Mimi D., Delpa, Baby Cakies, and Ruby Greene to send me a email ...... threads thrutime(AT) cox.net and I will give you the code for the coupon to use on your next purchase........

Congratulations everyone........we may be cooking up another giveaway in a couple of months........so stay tuned....... Sweetheart. ssshhh! it will be our little secret...LOL!

More news from the home front

I have added a new link to the blog it lets you see whats on the etsy site .....I wanted it to show new items only. I'll work on it some more maybe I can figure it out......I wasn't born in a computer world. :0)

I should have a dozen or so Turkish spindles to post later tonight or early tomorrow morning.... I also have a few more of the new shawl pins. We had a request to make one and Dale kind of likes them so look for more soon. Josh has made a few orifice hooks and once he gets a few nights off should be making more. (Josh only gets a couple of nights off a week and being young he sometimes likes to hangout with friends.) Another thing to keep in mind, Dale likes the dymondwood, Josh likes the "plain" woods. So unless they have a special request those are the woods they will be working in most of the time...

We have been working on the new updated version of the web site...it still needs work. If you want to take a look here it is http://www.thomas-creationsllc.com/ it will carry some of the big items for now as well as a link to the etsy site.

Only 8 more days until I draw the 3 winning names for the Christmas Turkish Spindle giveaway... See past postings for more details.......

Well that's all for now I need to go see what that crashing noise was.....anyone want a rambunctious kitten for the holidays....???!!!?? arg!

Happy Thanksgiving! and other stuff...

Happy Thanksgiving to our wonderful friends and extended family you our customers......

I wanted to let you know I will be adding more spindles intermittently throughout the next four days......some Christmas spindles and some regular spindles I have 4 large spindles to list a bunch of mediums and a few tiny spindles. I will also be listing some 3 in 1 tools and orifice hooks.......no photos at this time as I am in between stuffing the turkey and making gravy. So check the etsy site later tonight and tomorrow for new listings.

More big news....I do not think I mentioned this before......
I will be drawing the 3 winners names for the drawing on December the 12th about 1:00 pm Central time zone. I'm getting all nervous and excited can't wait...17 more more days and counting.....

Sneak Peek

As promised I will be posting the next batch of spindles about mid morning on Monday (central time zone). I am doing the prep work tonight taking photos, editing and cropping them to fit in etsy. I thought I would send you a sneak peek to see what I will be listing.

To the left of the screen are the spindles we usually have........ There is 1- large dymondwood spindle- 4 medium dymondwood spindles and 4 tiny spindles in various colors.

Here is the sneak peek at the first batch of Christmas spindles...there will be another batch next week. Included in this batch is 1 large, 5 mediums, and 4 tiny spindles.

The red, green and yellow striped ones are called Jingle Bells, the red and green striped ones are Holiday Holly, and the white ones are American Holly in the natural color. The shafts are dymondwood in green or red or cocobolo which has a deep red look to it...

Those reading the blog will be the first to know they are being posted........ ;)

posting tiny dymondwood spindles to etsy

I will be posting 7 tiny Turkish Spindles to the etsy site in a little while....so this is a heads up for those reading the blog news. Six of the seven are colors we have listed in the past one is a new fall color......we hope to have more in a few days.

Pssstt! Want to know a secret!

I hear Jingle Bells and see the mistletoe hanging or is that a Turkish Spindle.

On December the 12th, we are going to give away 3 dymondwood Turkish Spindles in the Christmas colors shown to the right of your screen. All you have to do is send me a note through email here ..... threadsthrutime (AT) cox (DOT) net ...... and tell me you saw this on the blog, or leave a comment in the comment box. Since, very few people read this blog (according to my stats) your odds of winning just got greater..... ssshhhh! I will draw the names from a box and post them here on the blog on the 12th for all to see. Sorry one entry per person.

You will receive your spindle thru priority mail in about 3 to 4 days (US) it takes a little longer for foreign mail to arrive.

We will also have these for sale sometime around Thanksgiving.........

Stay tunes to the blog for the latest spindle news.......

New Spindles

I just posted some Medium and tiny spindles in the "plain" woods as many are calling them. Dale is working on two special Christmas orders so it may be a while before we have any dymondwood spindles to list.

We will have some new Turkish spindles to post around Thanksgiving.....they are in Christmas colors. They are made of dymondwood and some are red and green, while others are red, green, and gold. You will just have to wait until mid November to see them.

Joshua, is working on some support spindle bowls that will work with the Turkish spindles. It is something new to him so it will be a while before he has any thing to post to etsy. The wood he bought is a bit green and needs to season to keep from cracking . He may have to find some different wood to work with for now.

We are also working on a new item which probably won't be ready until the first of next year. Once we get the design the way we want it I will still have to write directions and take photos of it for the instruction book.

I will try to post more information on new items as I can keep watching the blog for more news. If you have any questions send me a email, I'll be happy to help in any way I can........

We're Back from vacation!

We are back from SAFF, we went through Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia before arriving in North Carolina. The fiber show was HUGE! I have never seen that much stuff in one place. Dale got to see all kinds of new to him wheels, spindles, and he finally got to see someone else's Tri-loom. Did you see us!? Mollie was with us so we didn't stay all day....she was getting tired of riding in a bag. Mollie, had a special prize for any one who recognized...since no one recognized us she had to bring it home.

After the fiber show we decided to go over the Smokey Mountains and the foliage was beautiful....... We spent the rest of the day traveling over the mountains into Tennessee. The next day we decided to head home so we had a day or two to work on spindles and rest a while....

We will be opening the etsy store back up later today, I'll have some tiny spindles to post later tonight. Dale is working on more spindles made from some new woods, I should have them listed by this weekend sometime.

Thanks to all of our customers for patiently waiting while we took our much needed vacation..........

A REAL VACATION

Dale and I haven't taken a real vacation in geesh.......probably 5 or 6 years .......maybe longer. Dale takes vacation days from work at Sinclair now Holly Corp., but we usually work on something around the house or in the yard. This coming Wednesday night, I will close up the etsy shop until we return from our trip to North Carolina. We are headed to SAFF.....Dale has never been to a real fiber festival or fiber shop for that matter and we plan on stopping at both. We are also looking forward to seeing the trees and hope the weather stays nice, although they are forecasting rain for Oklahoma. If you see us along the way stop to say howdy or just wave as we drive by.... We are going through Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi then North Carolina and up into the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee before heading back home. Poor Josh, gets to stay home, work and take care of the critters.....

Pssst! coming soon more information on a Christmas spindle give away.......stay tuned!

I SCORED A DOUBLE FLYER WHEEL!!!

SCORE!!! That's what I feel like shouting every time I walk by this wheel. From the time I first saw one of these jewels I wanted one, a few weeks ago on eBay I found one. I wanted to post pictures sooner but have been busy with dyeing and posting items on etsy. I finally have a few minutes to post some photos here...... isn't she purdy!?

Yes, she's a little wobbly, you would be too if you were made about 1850 or so.... both flyer's are there and as they say in the ads everything works... LOL! It has a few worm holes and it is missing a spoke as you can see in the photo. It is also missing the distaff and most of its bone/ivory? adornments but the most important stuff is still there. Dale can make a new spoke and a new distaff in time.....

We are going to strip it with steel wool and tighten things up as much as we can .... everything is put together with wooden pegs no nails. It's going to be our winter project, like we need another one....... ppffftt!

Does anyone know how to put a drive band on one of these!!?? I have several books on spinning wheels but can't find a detailed photo...I know it crisscrosses..well anyway well figure it out. I can't wait to take her for a spin. Wonder how long its been since she went for a spin!!?? Hmmmm! If only she could talk...what stories she could tell...

Dyeing and Spindles

I've been busy dyeing these last few days and hope to have it listed on etsy as soon as it dries completely. Dale has also been busy making spindles as fast as he can I should have some ready to list tomorrow.

If all goes as planned and something doesn't happen to change things we are going to take a week of actual vacation later this month. Usually when we take a week or a few days of vacation it's to work on something around the house or yard but this time we are hopeing to actually go somewhere. We are hoping to have extras items made so when we come back we won't have to scramble so hard to get things back up and running. I'll talk more about our plans later I don't want to jinxs anything. Hopefully there will be smoke on the mountains......not floods that's all I'll say. :) Back to work for now........

Window Shopping

I sometimes like to go to the etsy home page and scroll through the recently listed items, I call it 'window shopping'. One night several weeks ago this listing flashed by on the screen ... www.etsy.com/listing/54136939/needle-felted-cat-pinbroach it is a gold and white cat needle felted and made into a pin. When I saw it I at once wished she had made it into a calico, like my Patches. I thought about it for a couple of days and finally decided to ask the lady if she would consider making a calico pin. Now I wasn't thinking a custom order exactly just a generic calico would make me happy, to my surprise she asked for a photo. She did tell me she had never made a special order but she would try and if I wasn't happy I didn't have to buy it and she would then just go back to the original plan and make it generic. I sent her to this blog so she could see a photo of Patches (see August post). A few days passed and she sent me this photo back. At first I thought it was just 2 photos of Patches but then I looked closer........OOHH! MY GOSH! I LOVE IT! So of course I had to have it!
It took a few weeks for it to arrive form Eastern Europe......

This is what I found when I opened the package........

A pretty box and inside was this............

...... the back of the pin.

If you get a chance go check this ladies shop.......you won't be sorry you did! I love my pin and I love window shopping........

Meet Pearl

Meet Pearl, the new addition to our house of cards, she is a 3-1/2 month old rescue kitten we recently adopted. It has been 12 long years since I had a kitten in the house.... I had forgotten all the trouble they can get into. LOL!

Here she is getting between me and work on the computer. Its hard to get a good photo of a moving target, she has already moved into our hearts and into the family. She sleeps all night long, only getting up to go find the potty and then she quietly goes back to bed with Josh. She does not like to be left alone and will cry until you go find her, I think she is beginning to make a game out of it. I hope everyone else has a cluttered computer desk like mine....LOL!

We have a bridge!!

Yes, we finally have a bridge, the side rails and hand rails aren't up yet but it is usable. We will get them up over time and I am going to place some solar lights on the post so I can see at night, so it still has a few minor things to be done. Here is a photo of the creek before.....now that doesn't look like much does it!?








When they say flash floods in Creek County you better believe it looks like something. It can get from 5 foot to 20 feet across and you do not want to wade across it with tree limbs as big as you leg flashing through there. That water is moving.......we built the bridge at the narrowest point of the water flow. This is what it looks like now...

We also had a grass fire in the upper left of this photo so that is why the water hose is drug across and up the hill. Sorry about the messy yard....... that's Dale's wood barn way up on top of the hill in the back. The smaller barn to the right was his little barn but now it's the Angora goats, Angora rabbits, and chicken house. It's in 3 sections you just can't see it for the shade and trees.
Anyway, so we are back to work in the big barn working on floor inkles, wool pickers, and turkish spindles. Please be patient with us while we get caught up again! Sometimes life just gets in the way of playing.......

Best laid plans and all that...

Well we had planned on taking a week off from the etsy store to work on a few things around the house and hopefully find time to make items for the store. You know what they say the best laid plans......
We did get the yard mowed and trimmed....the trimming part was way past due... I don't think the two cottontail bunnies are very happy with us trimming all of their hiding places down.
Our main goal was to build a bridge across the creek so that when we have a flash flood we can get back home. The wood barn is on one side of the creek and the house is on the other. When we are working out in the barn (no windows) and it begins to rain we don't know it until we open the door to a big surprise. Anyway we were going to build a bridge.....we got the cement part done and then Dale had to go back to the Lowe's..... He came home telling me all about the sale they were having and I maybe we should go have a little look. What the heck it was too hot to work outside so off we went to Lowe's.
The little item he was telling me about was already sold so we looked at the others that were on sale. We came home with a new washer and dryer on order to be delivered in a week. Now my 15 year old patched up several times washer and dryer needed to be moved out so we could get the new ones set up when they were delivered in a week. The walls hadn't been painted in a while so we painted the walls, then we decided to check on the plumbing and found a leaky pipe so of course we had to fix the plumbing. Then the cabinets looked a bit dingy so we decided to replace them after ALL the building supply store was having a sale. Then we decided a new kitchen table would be nice after all our 20 year old one was beginning to split a bit at the base. Sooooo a week later I have a nice freshly painted and plumbed laundry room with a brand new washer and dryer. The kitchen has a new dining table and the bridge...well the cements dry now. Unfortunately we didn't have a chance to work on items for the etsy store so things will be a little sparse for awhile..........

Patches 1996-2010

I lost a good friend this week....... Patches was born May 10th, 1996 and died of bone cancer August 4th, 2010. What can I say ...... I can't even find words......... Patches was always a heathy cat I never had to worry about her getting sick. She suddenly went from 16 pounds down to 6 pounds, I never even thpought about cancer....... if your reading this and your an animal lover....give those pets a hug for me and Patches.

Spindles in the making

Dale is working on more spindles out in the barn. We usually work on them together but it s raining and I decided to stay in the house and get a few things done.

Here is a photo taken the other day when he brought a few to the house so we could decide what color shafts they should get.

I will be adding more things to etsy as I can, I have a walnut Kromski Fantasia I need to get listed. I also have a Sonata in the clear finish I need to list. There always seems to be something to do and the days are just too short to get them all done in...

Joshua is now making spinning tools

Joshua (our son) has recently began making spinning tools out in the wood shop, his most popular is the 3 in 1 tool sold on our etsy site. I thought I would give a little more back ground on Joshua.
Josh began spinning when he was 13 years old, which is when I also began spinning. I became frustrated with the wheel and put it in the corner for a couple of weeks before trying again. I noticed my spinning seemed to be improving at times. This is when I discovered it wasn't my spinning, Josh was using the wheel when I wasn't looking. I soon was sharing my wheel with him and his spinning was much better then mine.
At some of the spinning meetings other parents were bringing their kids, soon the kids were getting together in a corner and spinning or weaving. Another lady suggested they should form a kids guild so they did, they went to 4-h demos and craft shows where they gave spinning demos. One of the old Spin-Offs has some photos of some of the fiber spun by the kids from Oklahoma.
Joshua liked to spin on a drop spindle because when we went to demos....no one knew what a drop spindle was, they had a faint idea what a spinning wheel was but no idea about drop spindles. Josh eventually after about 2-3 years of spinning moved on to other things....
He has recently discovered making spindles and nostepinnes in his dad's woodshop so now the business is a family affair. Look for Joshua's items in our ThreadsthruTime etsy shop...

Where DID the time go!!??

I am going to try to do better and get this thing caught up. Where to begin, I think I'll go back and then forward a bit.
Back in January of 2009, Dale had a torn rotator cuff and had to have surgery. While he was healing he could not work on his wool pickers or tri-looms, doctors orders. To keep himself occupied he poured over his magazines on wood working and then when the doc said it was ok, he began playing with his wood lathe. He had been playing with it some but really never had the time to play on it a lot. He began making nostepinnes, orifice hooks, drop spindles, and other things to get his arm back in shape. Once the doctor released him he began in ernest making things on the wood lathe and finally went back to making the wool pickers and tri-looms.
Now flash ahead a year and his arm is bothering him again so we have made the decision to stop taking orders on the Tri-Looms and Wool Pickers and concentrate on the smaller items that don't irritate his shoulder. We still have 2 orders for Wool Pickers and 2 for Tri-Looms to get finished and then we are done with them. He is taking his time working on them to keep from aggravating his shoulder. We are also making Turkish spindles and other small items to sell in between working on getting these orders out for the bigger items.
So we are as usual behind on both things.....the spindles are selling well but we are also working on the woolpickers and looms trying to get them finished and out the door. We also have day jobs, Dale at the refinery in Tulsa and me here at the house taking care of emails, orders, critters, the house, and whatever else that falls into my lap. We are extremely busy....... please be patient with us while we get these pickers and looms out the door so we can concentrate on the other items.
Now Joshua, our son, has decided to finally try his hand at making items on the lathe to sell so it has truly become a family business. Joshua makes wrist distaffs, nostepinnes, and his 3 in 1 tool, which is a nostepinne, wpi gauge, and wrist distaff all in one. He is thinking of trying his hand at making spindles so stay tuned...