Tea cosies, slippers and spinning supplies

Phew! It's no wonder I'm so bleedin tired. I can't stop at one thing - gotta take on more than I can cope with (rolls eyes at self) So, I've been dabbling with a new technique of feltmaking, looking at expanding my product range and learning about marketing. The jury's still out on the new technique - instead of laying down several layers of fleece and felting them all at once I've been trying semi felting one layer at a time. It's easier to lay down but I can't really get to grips with getting it fully felted. I've done three tea cosies with the new technique and a new shape to see how they go. Here they are:

I dunno - whaddya think?

I've also been playing with some polystyrene shoe lasts and making adult and baby slippers. I don't have a pair of adult ones finished to show you but some baby ones look like this:

I think they're cute so hopefully my customers will like them and I'll sell lots .

I've also decided to venture into selling spinning supplies. I've been dyeing and carding up some alpaca fleece I have and blending it with silk. I'm itching to spin it myself but I have to try to build up enough stock for Wonderwool in May and then Woolfest in June. Here's some of the Alpaca blend :

I've rainbow dyed some merino as well but I think I've overloaded this post with pics as it is - lol.

Some exciting news is that I've been asked to stock some extremely well made and beautiful hand carved spindles, nostepinnes and various other items. They are really special and I'm looking forward to taking them to Wonderwool to see how they go.

I've started a course, one day a week, on Marketing for Creative Practitioners. It's interesting but also scary. Hopefully at the end of the course I'll be a lot more comfortable selling myself and talking about my work. One excercise he's had us do is work out our living costs and calculate how much of our product we'd have to sell to reach that. That was extremely scary and it's clear that I'll have to be able to get off my capacious derriere and get on with it! I don't want to earn a fortune, I don't want to be famous and I don't want a Porsche, I just want 'enough'. We'll have to wait and see if that's possible doing what I'm doing