how this all started, pt 2
Wednesday, March 9, 2011 at 11:52AM My 11th grade English teacher, a man who I'll refer to as "Mr. Tweed", undoubtedly squandered much of his youth. I'm sure he spent untold hours holed up in a buddy's basement using controlled substances and staring at Pink Floyd posters under a black light.
In other words, his brain didn't work properly anymore.
A normal teacher might say to their students, "Why don't you get out your Norton Anthology and turn to page 487?" Mr. Tweed took eight minutes to get out the following:
"Hello.
Well,
I don't really
have anything for you
to
do
today. So
just work on other homework
or if you're like Sharon,
read."
In other words, even my teachers thought I was a big fat weirdo. Which can be a challenge for the teenage psyche.
I had my share of those adolescent ohmygosh *sob* I'm14and *sob* I'mtootall *sob* andnoboyswilleverlikeme *sob* andmyhairisallwrong *sob* andnoonethinksI'mprettyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy *sobsob* moments, where I wished I could just blend in with the gosh darn crowd of other teenagers at the mall and not be stared at for being a freak.
(I'm convinced that every teenage girl, whether too tall or too round or practically perfect in every way, has these thoughts in early adolescence.)
“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.” --Albert Einstein"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.” -- Winston Churchill
I still have all my quote notebooks, full of loopy cursive. They will be worth exactly zero dollars someday.
One of my really great high school teachers made the world so interesting that I couldn't wait to get home to talk about the Six-Day War and NAFTA with someone. A lifelong love of government, current events, and politics was born in that classroom.
I finished high school. I went to college. I became a teacher. I got married. I moved to California. I moved to the Washington, DC area. You can read the whole story here, if you like. At no time did the life of a creative entrepreneur factor into my plans.
I found my dream teaching job in suburban Maryland. I loved the subjects I taught, I loved (most) of my students, I made lifelong friends in my department. We laughed every day, we talked about current events every day, we ate chocolate every day. I couldn't have asked for a more perfect fit in a school. My department chairs knew that no two teachers are the same, and did their best to piece together the elaborate scheduling puzzle so that every teacher could at least be doing some of what really got their blood moving. I had the good fortune of being able to teach my two favorite subjects for eight years, Government and Law.
Here I am, with a group of Law students on the steps of the Supreme Court building. We met at the subway station early in the morning, took the train to Capitol Hill, and silently sat in the back of the chambers while the Supreme Court was in session.
I'd like to say that during this field trip I spent time reflecting on how if I had not had great teachers in my life, I never would have become a teacher.
But honestly, I didn't.
What I remember about this day is how worried I was that a student shouldering that adolescent, I'm invincible swagger would step out into a traffic circle and get hit by a car.
I yelled at them as we approached each (and every) intersection, "ARRIVE ALIVE, PEOPLE! ARRIVE ALIVE! LOOK BOTH WAYS! WAIT FOR THE WALK SIGNAL!" It became a joke for the rest of the school year, so that as the students jockeyed for position to leave the classroom each day I would yell, "ARRIVE ALIVE! BE CAREFUL!"
I'm happy to report that as a result of my efforts, every single one of these students arrived alive for their graduation.
Meanwhile, my students had no idea that in between the grading and the mothering, I was making stuff like this:
Which is exactly how I liked it. I didn't need would-be hackers looking for easy targets, disgruntled students placing fake orders, or seventeen year olds using the Contact Me button to write ARRIVE ALIVE, MS. McMAHON!
I didn't even tell most of my teaching colleagues about it. They already thought I was weird enough, I didn't need to add fuel to the fire.
My dyeing attempts became less abysmal. It helped that I actually started writing down recipes, rather than just trying to remember them.
People began asking if they could buy yarn from me, instead of having me knit something for them with my yarn.
God bless those people who saw through my crapola photographs and asked for yarn anyway.
I kept working on my pictures. My new point and shoot digital camera was a huge step up from the video stills I'd been using.
In my (not very much) free time, I took pictures next to all the windows of my house to figure out where the best light was coming from.
I discovered silk yarn. I asked him to marry me.
In May of 2006, I collaborated with two other dyeing friends and started a yarn club. We rotated months, so no one person was in charge of completing shipments every month. I'm proud to say that many of the people who bought yarn from me in 2006 are still customers today. In fact, there is one person who has been a member of one of my clubs continuously for nearly five years now. I hope she's in it for 20 more.
Because I worked from my house, yarn had to dry wherever it could. When the weather cooperated, I hung it outside on a line.
When it was raining (which is a lot in the humid Maryland summers), I hung the yarn over the straight portion of my banister, on drying racks, and on dish drainers I bought exclusively to make use of the counter space in my kitchen and utility room.
When I look back now, I laugh at the innovations that did not even cross my mind for the first, oh, three years, I dyed yarn. For example, it did not occur to me that I could put the rinsed yarn into the washing machine, turn the washing machine to spin cycle only, and spin most of the water out of the yarn. Didn't occur to me.
It didn't occur to me to get more than one receptacle for dyes. I had one. One yellow glass pitcher from the 1970s that I bought at a yard sale for fifty cents. I would make one color, put it on the yarn, go back to the sink, make another color, put it on the yarn, etc. No, Gee, if I get multiple containers, I can premix all the colors I need and get done more quickly! No. To this day, all of my recipes are written to reflect the amount of water that one yellow glass pitcher held. I cried when it broke.
It also did not occur to me that I could dye more than one skein at a time. One skein at a time. One color at a time. Recipe for efficiency right there, my friends.
Here's a non-awesome picture of the kitchen I worked in.
If you bought handknits or yarn from me from 2004-2007, it was probably dyed right there on that island. You can still see some of the drips waiting to be scrubbed off.
****************************
One warm Sunday in late April, I saw an ad in the newspaper for some sort of sheep festival happening the following weekend in a neighboring county.
My husband went to humor me. The kids came to pet sheep.
I had no idea people were that interested in sheep and/or wool. 70,000 people converge on the fairgrounds in Howard County, MD the first weekend in May every year. It's a beautiful mayhem to fibery folk.
I got my first large wholesale order for yarn that summer. I placed the order for the undyed yarn, most of which came from a local Maryland farm.
Two days later, I discovered baby number three was on its way.
Now, if you've ever had children, you'll understand exactly what I mean when I say: Four year old. Two year old. One hundred degrees. Husband traveling on business.
For the uninitiated, I was completely, utterly, helplessly, horribly, exhausted, sweltering, cranky, and worried.
Pregnant-tired is a completely different kind of tired than regular-tired or even from new-baby-tired. Pregnant-tired feels like someone has hooked you up to a continuous dose of IV sleeping drugs and you are powerless to stop them. Nothing helps. Caffeine doesn't make the tired go away. Sleeping doesn't even make the tired go away.
I worried about this order so much, because I could barely see through the haze of exhaustion to cook something other than cereal for dinner. I had no choice but to tell the person that placed the order that it was going to take a leetle bit longer than expected because I wasn't normal-tired, I was pregnant-tired. Fortunately, she had three young children herself and understood.
It took me longer than expected, but I did get it done.
I sold all of my yarn in adorable little cakes with custom-printed bands that could fit around even the largest cake of yarn. I was so proud of this order than I had to throw a quilt over the couch and take some pictures of it. I'd never made that much yarn before. Every single skein was hand wound by either me or my husband on my little plastic yarn-cake winder.
Then came the turning point in the photographic road. The light tent.
Suddenly, I had a seamless white background and a degree of control over the lighting in an image. While far from perfect, this new generation of pictures were just an eensy bit better than this:
My schedule became more hectic. I was getting up early to get myself and two kids ready to leave the house, teaching school, picking up the kids, and spending the afternoons working on yarn.
The amount of time required for a non-professional photographer, non-professional computer programmer to dye the yarn, take pictures of the yarn, edit the pictures, and create product listings was far more than I could have imagined. Hours. Hours for two skeins of yarn.
In the pre-etsy world of online sales, my hourly wage was a pittance. When you figured how much the undyed yarn and dyes cost me and factored in the time it took me to photograph, list, and ship the yarn, I was making less than $.50 per hour.
But I loved it. I loved it so.
When yarn entered my life, she didn't politely knock on the door, inquiring if I might have space for her.
She arrived in the middle of the night, unpacked her suitcases, and settled down with a movie and a bowl of popcorn on my living room sofa. When I awoke to find her occupying my home, she put her hand on my arm and said, "I'll take it from here, dear."
I should have asked her exactly where she was taking me.
To be continued...
Reader Comments (16)
More story! I love reading the "How I got here from there" stories.
I love the story of your journey!
Are the yarn photos pictures of the yarns you dyed "back when" or are they current projects?
Wow!
I'm glad you didn't ask. The answer might have been a bit overwhelming looking at the jump from here to there...and you might have said no! :-) And then I would have had nearly as much beautiful yarn in my stash.
Gwen, those are skeins I worked on way back when -- all of them were custom orders, except for the Maureen (the pink/purple/brown).
lovelovelove. moremoremore!!
Love the post. As a mom of 3 boys.. I could 'hear' you on so many different levels. Of course I drooled over your pics. You were given a great talent. Thank you for not ignoring it and not asking any questions. Ride the wave!
As long as you keep dyeing yarn, I'm going to continue to amass yarn in one of your wonderful clubs. I still remember joining the club. My mom wanted to get it for me as a birthday gift, and I was so worried it was going to sell out which it did, and there was a long waiting list at one point, but I got in before all that went down. I'm so glad I did because I have been getting a wonderful gift from you every month for years now and can't imagine not getting it. All that to say you are awesome and wonderful and I love reading your how it started stories.
Enjoying reading your story--thanks for sharing it!
Great stories, and great passion!
Thanks, everyone!
Mona, we need to have some kind of anniversary celebration! (Just for the record, Mona is not secretly related to me. But she does have really excellent taste in yarn clubs.)
Although I miss the days of talking about current events and eating chocolate with you, I'm so happy that you are doing what you love.
Oh, I love this! Thanks for telling your story!
I clearly (well, maybe "clearly" isn't the best way to describe it. Okay, I'll be honest and call it hazily) remember that "pregnant-tired" feeling, though it's been over 30 years since I struggled with it. Believe me when I say that I am DEEPLY impressed with all you achieved in spite of it (that pile of yarn cakes on the couch made me gasp!) - and I do believe you've attained status as a complete LEGEND (at least in my mind) to be admired for all you've accomplished. Discovering you via your awesome yarn (Ms Peach, I'm looking at YOU!) was a very happy accident for me (if not my pocketbook)!
I'd imagine your (former) students were not happy to see you go, however. You sound like you were the kind of teacher we all remember decades later as "THE BEST".
I love the blog and your stories. A real person who remembers how it is to start out, and to use this great talent!
Thanks for sharing. I believe that so many people have great stories, I wish everyone could tell theirs.
Anyway, I love the girl who bacame tall AND beautiful. Yes, we all (or at least mostly) can relate to how we felt as teenagers. At 58 I still have moments of angst (still too short, still reading constantly) and recall vividly the years that were hard, and the blessings in between.
I love reading your story. You reminded me of myself with the reading at school. My senior year I read all of WEB Griffen's historical fiction books, usually in my English class, after quickly doing all the work and being bored to tears otherwise.
I'm in awe of all you got done during the pregnancy exhaustion All those cute yarn cakes... Adorable!.
And i'm so glad you fell in love with yarn because I love your yarns! :)