New item being listed NOW!

I have added some new fibers, and weaving tools to the etsy site ....you might want to check them out.

We have decided to make the inkle looms out of hard wood Maple instead of the laminated woods they were made out of previously .....very pretty.

I have added some new jewel colored bamboo roving..........watch for samples in your orders.

We have finally gotten around to making some more inkle shuttles and small loom shuttles and they have been added to the store.......have a look more stuff coming soon.

TOO HOT!

OK! So Dale and I got out in the heat Saturday, cleaning out and rearranging the garage....it was 102 degrees in the shade........not sure what the heat index was. We have had temps in the 100's for about 3 months now......everything is dead or dying. Garden is gone, my cotton is about a foot and a half tall, trees are dropping leaves, its horrible outside. We did have a little reprieve the second week of August it rained for the first time since early May, the temps dropped into the 90's for a week it felt wonderful. LOL! I know that sounds weird but it felt good for about a week and now we are back to the really bad heat. Anyway back to my story........
Dale and I are both over weight and in our mid 50's........when we were younger and slimmer it was nothing for us to work from dawn until way after dark outside in all kinds of weather. We built the barn Dale has his wood shop in, the smaller barn, which houses, the chickens, goats and now storage but was his old wood shop. We have put up retaining walls along the creek to stop erosion, we still need to work on a few areas. Dale and Josh dug by hand our 20 by 14 foot Koi pond that is 4-1/2 feet deep, we then drove out in the country and brought back huge rocks to go around the edge of it. That is just some of the things we have done around this place...we have done as much at all the places we have lived so we are no strangers to outside work or heat..........but this time it ZAPPED us big time..........I guess there comes a time when even we have to admit when we are getting OLD!!
We had intended to work in the garage on Saturday and then finish up 20 or so spindles on Sunday and get them listed.....yeah! that was the plan! Sunday we were worn out, we stayed in the house and just zoned out! Both of us felt sick, my back was killing me, Dale didn't feel good. So we didn't get the spindles finished.
I listed 10 tiny dymondwood spindles last night and will be listing a few medium and large spindles a little later today. Have you ever wanted a Large spindle that weighed a medium spindle weight? Have you ever wanted a medium spindle at a tiny weight? That is what I will be listing......they are mostly made from the recycled Walnut, Pecan, or cherry trees lost in the winter storms and the cherry was lost in a strong wind storm several years back. I was talking to Dale about the trees last night and he said the Pecan tree belonged to a friend of his and was lost in the ice storm back in 1996 he thinks.... That tree was HUGE it would have taken 2-1/2 people to link arms around that tree to give it a hug. The walnut was a tree that fell during a bad ice storm about 5 years ago. It was a huge tree in a lot next to where Dale works....he managed to get a big piece of it to save. The cherry was a big old tree......big as a old cherry tree could get and was lost during a wind storm a few years back.....they say it has the sweetest cherries on it. While all the trees are lost they are not forgotten we can carry a piece of them with us to cherish for years to come....... So get them while you can they we do have a limited supply of this wood.

Sound the bells.....we have a WINNER!

OK! I didn't say you couldn't guess more then once so we have a winner of the, What is it? contest.
A couple of you came close..... = }
Dale, really likes some of the ideas you gave him for the needle case and the crochet hook case, and others .....so you might watch for those to come up later. Thank You to everyone who participated, I was getting ready to draw a name from the box. LOL!

Berni, will you email me with your full name and address...threadsthrutime (AT) cox.net....you are our WINNER!  You get to pick either the red one or the blue one..... Congradulations!

What is it!!??

In honor of August being my birth month, I thought we should have a little contest and give something away. Send me a note either in the comments below or a email and tell me what you think it is. The first one to answer correctly will get to pick either the red one or blue one and we will ship it to you as a birthday gift from me. If no one guessing correctly by Friday the 19th, I will place everyone who participant's name in a drawing. I will announce the winning name by the end of the day Friday. If someone answers correctly before Friday the contest will end and I will reveal the answer as well as the winners name.

One is 4 inches long and the other is about 4-1/4 inches long.......they are made out of dymondwoods. No, its not some strange new lipstick.......it is a tool but not necessarily a spinners tool. That is all the clues you get from me.....
You can click on the photo to enlarge it.......What is it!??

Before and After

We are often asked to custom make a certain mix of colors in the dymondwoods. I have to explain to them we do not make up those woods, we buy them already mixed and glued up. The woods come to us pre-dyed and pre-glued sometimes the colors are not as dark or light as the previous colorway. We  as spinners should understand this....we know to order enough of the same color yarn or fiber to finish a project. So sometimes a spindle of the same wood may be a slightly different shade from one block of wood to another.
 I thought it would be interesting to show you some before and after photos of the woods and the spindles made from them.

(If you click on the photos you will get a larger version so you can see up close.)

The smaller blocks with the oval holes are the spindle arms or whorls that have been pre-drilled but not yet cut out. Each tiny block with make the small arms, and the large arms for a complete set. They will be cut apart, sanded, buffed, and polished. We will then turn a shaft that also has to be sanded, buffed, and polished before completing the spindle.

Spindle alert: I will be listing several tiny and medium dymondwood spindle some time tomorrow. Each spindle gets 5 photos each....I then have to edit the photos for clarity....before listing them. This means if I list 10 spindles, I have to take 50 photos, which all have to be edited and then positioned in the folder so I can get them listed.....

We do have a few new colors and a few old colors not seen in awhile......we are working on them now.

Thanks for all your support.......

Hello! Is any one out there......

I laugh! ROFL!!! I am so funny!

Anyway.............I will be listing some really light medium spindles made of recycled walnut and pecan here is a couple of hours. These are the ones made of the trees felled in the ice storm and wind storms that blew through here a few years ago.......they live on as Turkish spindles. The weight on these beauties is 0.8 ounces.

I will also be listing 8 dymondwood medium spindles in various weights........ so stay tuned .......

Wholesale and bulk discounts!!??

I get this question all the time, " Do you do wholesale or bulk order!?"

Unfortunately, NO! Not because we don't want to but because, we just do not have the inventory on hand to do it.

Let me try to break it down this way......... Dale still has a day job and works 8 hours a day....not counting the 20 minutes to and from work each day. He comes home and takes a quick 45 minute nap...... We then eat supper...were from the South ya'll we eat supper. Around 6ish he then goes out to the woodshop and works for 2-3 hours a night.........he then comes in and we take care of packaging and getting labels put on items that need to be sent out.  Depending on the day it can take from 30 minutes to 2 hours.....A shower and then he lounges/naps in front of the TV until about 11:30 or 12:00 when he retires to bed.....gets up and does it all over again.

It takes at least a week (7 days) for him to make 10 - 20 spindles......if he doesn't have to stop to do something around the house...you know husband chores. We do not have (spindle and looms) inventory except for what you see in the etsy store. Dale is a hard person to work for....I've tried, Joshua has tried, and other people have tried. If it isn't up to his standard it doesn't get put up for sale.... period! Joshua, has started making his own stuff but if Dale say nope it isn't listed.

From start to finish......the spindle whorls are rough cut out...then they go to the router to have the holes cut out. Then they are sanded smooth, polished, and buffed. He then takes them to the wood lathe where he turns the spindle shafts, fits them in the whorls, sands them, test fits again, polishes and buffs them.....one at a time.

We can't do shows anymore....for one I have stomach problems which makes it hard to travel. The other reason is we don't have the inventory to go to shows......we would hear you all screaming for miles if we stopped selling spindles on etsy so we could carry them to a show somewhere. For this same reason we do not have bulk discounts either.

We used to do shows......we have been down that long hard road.......getting everything packed to go to a show....driving....hotels...eating out.....setting up for the show....packing up after the show.....driving...eating out.... unpacking when we get home and are too tired to even care if it gets unpacked.........been there done that and have the t-shirt to prove it..... =+}   I'll sit at home in my fluffy slippers, sipping tea in my pj's......Thank You very much! I do miss meeting the people, and talking to everyone but a body can only take so much.....

I know I've probably repeated myself here several times ...I'm not that good a writing........I tend to write like I talk .....run on sentences and all......... LOL!


On another note:

I hope you all understand we are doing the best we can.......Oklahoma is in a drought temperatures are the highest they have been since the 30's grass is all brown and dry.......Dale is working in a air-conditioned barn but even at that while the temps outside are high (115 degrees today) in his barn its in the 80's. We are loosing animals to this heat........they have cool water and we even have fans on them.......its hot! Night time lows are in the high 80's.....its hard to breathe when you step out the door...please help us pray for rain..........I know there are other states that are needing it as bad as we are.........Texas is one of them. Water rationing is looming and has begun in several small towns .........rolling black outs are being discussed....its bad!!

Ok, I'll shush now........thanks for listening!