Butternut Woolens

I came home from town yesterday and this care package from Cassie was waiting for me. Rowan! A beautiful little bird! Hand creme! and Yarn. Ooooohhh, cashmere.

The yarn is hand-dyed 100% cashmere from Posh in the UK, and it is amazing. I kept petting it. Cassie made the Cream of Spinach scarf from Larissa Brown's blog and I think they are both right on. A little lacy scarf is just the thing.

I couldn't wait, so I wore it uncooked.

Thanks, Cassie!

The process of divorce is invasive. Having to give my lawyer bank statements irritates me. I can't help but think this is just a wee bit too much snooping. Of course, it isn't snooping, it's simply the process of professionals helping me identify how much money I have, where it is being spent and what my choices are. Still, there's a little voice in the back of my head justifying every purchase I make and pointing snottily to what look like selfish purchases X2B has made.

I don't want to live like that. I forgive him and me. The truth is, I don't know very much about money, I'm kind of afraid of it (OK-I'm a lot afraid of it), and I feel like I don't have control of it very often. I also feel like I don't have, or might not have, enough. Consequently, I hate looking at numbers with this sign $ in front of them. I find it depressing and frightening. I get chest pains and asthma. I avoid it.

For the past 6 years, I've been making less than $0.50/hr, as best I can figure. It's horrifying and not horrifying. Horrifying that I can represent myself as a businesswoman and yet go so long making decisions that are not benefiting the bottom line, and not horrifying because so the hell what, I love doing what I do.

I've recently come to realize that I don't like working for money. I never have. If I don't like the work, no amount of money will make me happier about it, but if I love the work, I don't really care that I don't make any money from it. Does anyone else feel this way? I feel like I'm the only one.

I remember my first geology job out of graduate school. So exciting. I moved from Pocatello, Idaho, to Seattle. I bought a wardrobe that included navy blue wool slacks. I bought a used Subaru. The first morning, traffic was stopped miles from the exit to the office in Bellevue. I thought, "Wow there must be a bad accident." I hoped no one was hurt. The next day, the cars were all stopped again at about the same place. I thought, "Someone should do something about the dangerous road conditions. There must be some problem with the engineering to make accidents happen right there." It took until Friday of the first week to figure out there were no accidents.

The work, however, was fun and I couldn't believe I was getting paid for it. I told a friend it was "mystery money" that just showed up in my in box every other Friday morning. Wow!

This type of relationship I have with money is useful for mothering, farming, writing, and making art. These are activities that take a lot of time and you're just not going to be paid for all of it and so what? I'm perfectly OK with that.

Divorce professionals are definitely not OK with it. They look at my numbers and raise their collective eyebrows. They bite their tongues. They sigh and lean back in their chairs with their hands locked behind their heads and they look at me. Then the chair springs forward and they lean heavily on their desks, hands clasped and look at me over the tops of their glasses. "Ms. Whitman, you need a job." And they don't mean they want some indigo socks.

It's with a heavy heart friends that I have to tell you I've lost the battle: I must sell the farm and close Butternut Woolens.

It's been a tremendous pleasure for me to explore the dyeing arts with you these last 6 years. The first show I did was the Spring Fiber Fair at Abernethy Grange. I sold $35 at that show, just enough to pay the booth fee. I was so excited that some people really loved my dye work! And how much I grew as an artist in those next years. Hours in the Studio Under the Porch after my little boys had gone to bed, experimenting with new colorways and new fibers, remembering beloved people and landscapes where I felt most at home.

It wasn't long until I had my own hand spinner's flock of selected Shetland wethers from prize winning flocks around Oregon: Lynn at Cedar Haven Shetlands in Estacada, Lois at Stonehaven Farm, and Susie at Misty View Farm. And of course, a very fine herd of German and German-hybrid angora rabbits from select breeding stock brought over from Germany. Thanks Leslie, Gail, Margie and the others at the International Association of German Angora Rabbit Breeders for bringing these amazing rabbits to North America. Thanks to to all of you who bought bunnies, it was you who paid the feed bills for all the other animals.

When I was young I lived with my extended family at Beartrap Ranch in southwest Montana. My grandparents lived in what we called the Big House, the new ranch house that was built in 1959 after the Hebgen Lake earthquake scarp ripped across the front lawn of the horsehair-chinked homestead cabin where they had lived. The Big House had picture windows facing the southern Madison Range and Hebgen Lake in the distance. From every chair in the place you could look out across the sagebrush to the navy blue, white-tipped mountains and see the glint of the lake. You could see who was coming up the 1/2 mile dirt road long before they got to the house. You could see the couple of dozen horses in the corral and lower pasture, see the forest just to the north where the cattle were pastured in the summer and when on any given day the phone might ring with the news that the cattle were out and Mom would saddle up a couple of horses and with my 10 year old aunt and baby brother, we'd ride out to round them up. To me, landscape, family and home are entwined, to lose one is to lose the others.

I guess what I'm trying to say is it's about killing me to sell this little 5 acre farm in the Land of Milk and Honey, where everything grows like it's in the Garden of Eden itself. It was a dream come true to live and work here and I thank all of you for your part in it.

Butternut Woolens will be at Black Sheep Gathering, Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival, and the Knitting and Crochet Guilds of America show in Portland this summer. I'll also be posting a lot of yarn and fiber on this web site. Check back every day or two, I intend to post and sell my personal stash of yarns, too, and I only collected the good stuff: Rowan, Mission Falls, etc. There will also be loads of books. Somehow I've got to get a 2400 square foot house, a 1200 square foot barn, a 800 square foot shop and a 200 square foot rabbit barn into a 2 bedroom apartment. I'm counting on your help! Then in October or there abouts, I'll hold a farm sale and you locals can come and get sheep feeders, hog panels, wool fleeces, tools, tractor, furniture, etc.

I'm taking all the fiber I've grown myself off-line, that includes Homegrown, Meadowspun, Rabbit's Foot and Targhee (not my sheep, but sentimental to me). I'm sure you understand how I have to keep these woolens for myself and my children as a reminder of this time in our lives when we were farmers. Instead, I urge you to contact iagarb for angora blend yarns and support other small farmers and their custom yarns. You can find them at the wool shows and festivals in your area.

Will you take it upon yourselves to spread the news to Ravelry and the PDX Knit Bloggers and any other groups you love?

Thank you, everyone.

Thanks to Tammy for letting me know the links to the superwash merino/alpaca weren't working, I've fixed those. This fiber is a great value at $6/4 oz.

Thanks also to Cassie who has been waiting patiently for the new Super Sock yarns to be posted. They're in the Yarn Store now, Cassie! There's even some indigo-dyed yarn. Cucumber Sandwich is on my to dye list. I know the weather will warm up sometime, right? It is Spring after all, even if rain and snow are still spitting and the winds pushing against the trees.

The web host/email transfer was completed this morning thanks to X2B stopping by to fix it. 'Nough said.