Time, we all wish had more of it. You constantly hear people say, “If only I had more time.” Time is my enemy. There’s never enough of it. My day as a stay at home mom of five wild girls is a whirlwind of crazy. By the time seven rolls around I am ready to hit the wheel and work the night away.
I have had many people ask me how I do it. How do I raise five girls, school three of them, raise angora rabbits, along with other farm critter, and still have time to spin and craft. Well here’s my little secret, ready… I steal pockets of time and I set up a “work” schedule that I make myself stick to. If you love something enough you find time for it. I personally get up before everyone in the house and am crocheting or knitting away for about an hour or so. I may be able to sneak in ten minutes here and there in my day to work a row or two, but this is rare. Then no later than seven o’clock on most weeknights, I head down to my studio and work for about two hours.
But how do you know how long you are truly working for? For years I have gone to work in my studio and thought that I was spinning for an hour and working on a project for an hour. Oh how wrong I was. With life still continuing upstairs, I usually help to regain order when the children get crazy. So my “hour” at my wheel was really 20-30 minutes and my crochet time was less. My husband is here to help, but let’s face it, five girls can be a little much for anyone. So I make myself accessible to help when things get crazy. It has also helped a ton that my girls finally understand that Dad can do things too, like get juice. I wanted to see what an hours worth of work really looked like. I set my stopwatch on my phone and stopped it whenever I had to step away from my wheel, then when I came back I started it again. Guess what, I got a ton of work done in an hour. I usually takes me two weeks to spin a two ounce skein of yarn, it took me a week and that was with plying! For me this is huge! So I started doing it in the morning too. Again the results were amazing. I was able to crank out more work when I had that full hour.
Timing is useful when you need to price your items you intend to sell. You need to make sure you pay yourself when your crafting for profit and don’t sell your labor short. Take pride in your work. Too many people sell their goods for pennies. Sell for what you truly believe your labor is worth. Remember a part of you goes into every project.
So as you pick up your yarn, or sit at your wheel, grab your phone, stopwatch, smartwatch, or whatever it is you can time yourself with, make sure that you can start and stop it, and see how much you get done. You may be surprised.
Categories: Life, My Journey, Uncategorized
