Category: Crafting

I Let It Go

A half dozen years or so ago, my yarn making, knitting, soap and salve making grew beyond what the family could use and a small cottage business was born. Etsy was tried and abandoned due to the fees and rising postage cost, a website store initiated with the help of Square. It was fairly easy to manage, but generated very little in sales. A few in person events were done each year and some product made, booth fees paid, but still, barely breaking even each year.

The tax ramifications, hassle with the income tax, the personal property tax, and state sales tax caused stress every year.

Then COVID struck and in person events ceased for two years. Though there were a few this year, even with low or no entry fees, it just got to the point where it wasn’t fun anymore.

First the webstore was taken down, the last couple of in person events done with minimal sales, and the decision to just let it go. Some yarn was gifted, a shawl traded for some hand woven kitchen towels to be used as gifts, some knitwear gifted, and body products donated to the museum where my goods are sold in their gift shop. This leaves a few skeins of yarn for me to knit, soap that will be used in the household, and a few more knit items that need a new home. This week, the tax certificate was mailed back to the State with a letter notifying them that Cabin Crafted Shop is no longer in business at this location or any other. I have kept the domain name, just in case I change my mind at some point, but for now, I have let it go. The decision is bittersweet. Some of the events I used to enjoy became too expensive for my little business, some just not busy enough to make them worthwhile.

I will continue dressing in Colonial clothing and spinning at events as requested, but only for the pleasure of educating others.

Seasonal change

Halloween is done, jack-0-lanterns and ghosts packed away til next year. The wreath on the door was a grapevine wreath with fall ribbon and ceramic turkey and pumpkins shapes so it stayed up until yesterday. Our friends, the wonderful flower growers that come to the Farmer’s Market, Stonecrop Farms moves on from fresh flowers to dried flowers and wreaths this time of year. Hubby suggested that since I had expressed an interest in purchasing one, that I pick out one for my birthday still more than a week away. When we got to the market, there were still several to choose from and though I was attracted to two, decided this one called me the loudest.

It is beautifully full with fresh greens and bright dried flowers. As soon as it arrived home, the skimpy grapevine one was packed away and this beauty hung to grace the door until it fades and the Christmas one is pulled out for a few weeks.

Yesterday was above normal fall weather, following the extreme rain from the late hurricane remnants on Friday, and this morning we awoke to below freezing temperatures, light snow falling, but only accumulating in crevices on the coop, deck, and corners.

It continued with light snow showers throughout most of the day. We managed our walk in spite of the freezing temperatures, wind, and snow showers.

While we were out, a birthday card was needed as one had been missed earlier in the week. It’s purchase, caused me a head shaking pause. The clerk rang it up, told me the total. I handed her cash, she messed with the register, paused and said, “I owe you (long pause)…” I responded, 95 cents, having quickly done the subtraction in my head. She counted out the change and as I was walking out, she called out to me and said, I owe you more money. No, I responded, the purchase was x, I gave you y, the change was 95 cents which you gave me. “But the receipt says z” she says. No, you gave me the correct change, you rang it in wrong, your register is right, my change is correct. She looks confused and heads toward the manage stocking shelves in the back. Poor girl can’t even make change. I fear for her future in that job.

After arriving home, some dried Amaranth and Eucalyptus that I had purchased fresh many weeks ago from Stonecrop and hung to dry with the idea of making a couple of decorations to sell at the last Christmas Bazaar, the last hurrah for the cottage business, was pulled out. The two tobacco baskets that had been display pieces for yarn and hats at events were decorated with the dried plants and dried Baptisia seed pods from my shrub were bunched and tied with Christmas plaid ribbons and floral wire hangers on the back. Hopefully they will sell and grace someone’s home for the holidays.

At the conclusion of that event, all of my display pieces that can’t be repurposed here will be gone. Hopefully, the stock of hats, mitts, mittens, scarves, soap, salves, and lip balm will be reduced to only what can be used as gifts or for personal use. It will be bittersweet to end CabinCraftedshop, but also a relief to not have to deal with the website, taxes, and deadlines.

It’s Done

The frost bitten garden was visited and cleaned up. Hidden in the burned foliage were a couple dozen more decent sized peppers that were brought in to use up quickly, or be sliced and frozen for later. The peas were left in place so the birds or other garden denizens can feast on the remaining small peas. The garlic bed was planted out with 36 cloves of garlic, hopefully to produce 36 decent sized bulbs to dry for next year’s use. This year as I didn’t plant garlic, all we have used was purchased from the vendors at the Farmer’s Market.

Once planted, it was covered in old hay, some erosion fencing, and two heavy garden posts as the chickens often get garden time in the winter and I don’t want them digging up the bed and garlic. The greenhouse will protect the greens, but the blueberry bed still needs a shield around it before the chickens can get in. If I can get a proper fence ring around the plum, there is enough erosion fence temporarily, but not effectively protecting it to protect the blueberries from the chickens digging out the mulch that has been used to thwart the weeds in that bed. The berry barrels still need to be moved. I haven’t attempted that task yet, but it will be easier now that I can take them through the long bed once the stakes are pulled. The overwintering of the stakes is always a problem. There is a galvanized can in the garage that leaks, perhaps it can be secured in a corner of the garden and the posts and stakes stood up in it until they are needed next year.

The chickens appear to be having pillow fights now. They have more feathers in the coop and on the ground than on their bodies. Molting hens sure aren’t pretty birds, but they will be so clean and fluffy when the new feathers grow out. They start with their heads and necks during molt and that really makes them unattractive.

Crafting this week has been very sporadic. Very little spinning has been done. Some knitting on a hemp spa cloth and on a gift, but little else.

With tomorrow’s day time temperature being very spring like, the hives will be opened one last time for the season, checked for brood, stores, and given sugar cakes. Some sugar was added a couple weeks ago when the orifice openings were reduced and the bottom boards added. With nights in the freezing range, they needed all the protection they could get. Whatever happens this winter, happens, I have done all I can. In the spring, I will take the beekeepers class, so hopefully I will go into next year better prepared.

I continue to go through “stuff” making donation piles, reducing files of no longer relevant paperwork, closing down parts of the cottage business as it dwindles away to non existence by the end of the year. Life needs to be simpler, and as I said before, we need people in our lives, not possessions.