The new Jenkins Woodworking website is close to publishing. After months of building, photo sessions, set-backs, frustration and bumbling my way around the launch date is around the corner. The website I’d been working on through May and June showed its limitations only after most of the information had been entered, yanking the rug out from under me. Crawling, once again, through myriad web-host reviews one caught my attention that not only offered a free webhosting, with option for paying for more bells & whistles – the annual pro fee is very reasonable and has the capability to take it to the next level, as well as offering the quirky variables that our website needs, and a set-up that makes building an ecommerce website easy for a non-techie person. All but the final page is finished and I’ve been working on getting the domain name and email set-up properly, which includes having the Jenkins woodworking domain pointing to the correct host.
We’re also changing the name to one which is more pertinent and much quicker to type.
We hope it’s a good move – please comment here with your opinions.
The new name? YarnTools.com (not online yet)
Other than working endless hours on a new website as well as handling the day to day business, what have we been up to in the month of July?
Gardening
Spinning
Babysitting Violet every Thursday. (Ed watched her all by himself from 7:30 – 4:30 this past Thursday when I was away from home. Good man! He even changed some very soiled diapers.)
Spinning. Lots of spinning. Daily, to the point that there was no time left for checking in at Ravelry. Will do so this evening and tally the people who spun while exercising then use a random number generator for drawing the spindle winners.
Almost daily gardening (food type of gardening).
Dying cherries from our pie cherry tree. Ed’s not a huge fan of cherry pies so they get dried to use in baking and on hot cerea.
Spinning. Finishing spinning the 198 grams of merino/camel fiber Ed gave me for my birthday. The three singles were each spun as fingering weight on the wheel. The resulting worsted/bulky 3-ply yarn was too much for the wheel so one evening was spent plying it using my Navajo spindle.
ca 230 yards. Not sure what it will become.
Trying to keep ahead of the weeds and deter the deer. Two ongoing battles. (Picture taken Mid – July)
Picking blueberries.
Lots of spinning. Evenings were spent spinning with wheel and spindles.
Time to go outside with the wheel for some relaxing spinning and enjoy this mildly warm day – only 73F here.
Selling spindles makes for quick setting up time. We store the spindles in bins that ride on a trolly and sit under the cloth covered table. Assemble the display shelves hang our sign and we’re ready in less than half an hour. Which gave us time to look through the market to see others setting up without the pressure to scurry back to the booth.
The pleasant slanting evening light drew people out of their RVs to sit in scattered circles chatting to friends and acquaintances. The ladies of Abstract Fiber had set up their RV across the way from us and soon we found ourselves sitting down to pies that Susan had made the night before. Yummy! A huge marionberry as well as a huge apricot pie. Enjoyed every morsel of a sliver of each, and their delightful company, which included an engaging African whose booth was right behind Abstract Fibers, selling baskets, bags and jewelry. Sadly, his name is gone from my memory.
It was still light when Ed and I crawled into our sleeping bags. All night it was light. The nearby parking lot light was so bright I literally could have read my book.
Pitter-pattering against the tent woke us up. Rain. What started out gentle turned into a cold, day-long deluge. 
Diehard fiber and fiber animal enthusiasts braved the rain.
Sights and goods like these were well worth it. Such tempting vibrant colors and beautiful skeins.
I was quite taken with the young lady who was elegantly dressed as though for high tea. She and her friend sat there for some time as he knitted away. Our booth was right beside the main door and when I caught a glimpse of them leaving I couldn’t resist a picture of contrasts.
The rain hadn’t let up at all during the day, and at times it poured hard. About 4 that afternoon Ed decided to check on our tent and soon return with a gloomy face. The rain had managed to seep through one spot where we hadn’t been able to completely pull the rain fly taut. Being on asphalt we used the car to tie down two sides and water jugs for the other two corners. His sleeping bag was seriously soaked.
In January when I’d tried booking a motel room for BSG all the reasonable rooms were already reserved. Any motels/hotels with a room were asking close to $200 and up per night. The Olympic Track & Field Trials were beginning the same weekend as BSG, and Eugene as Track Town USA draws the running fans. We were prepared to pack it in and drive home if absolutely necessary but hoped to find a cancellation. Having a smart phone turned out to be a huge blessing! (We’d not owned one before but knowing there was no wi-fi in the barns we bit the bullet and bought one to use our card reader. Almost the very first thing after setting up and trying to run a card we discovered that the signal wasn’t strong enough and the call was dropped. The customer happened to be the very person who’d talked with us at Sock Summit about a new contraption he carried around to connect to the internet. Next thing we knew, he was back at our booth, mi-fi modem in hand with accompanying power cord. God bless him! He gave us his Mi-Fi to keep! )
Wow, the info one can access with a smart phone. Typing in motels, Eugene OR, a list popped up of all the motels with vacancies, and the number of rooms available, plus rates. Even as I scrolled through the list rooms were filling up so I frantically called one with decent rates (just over $100/night!) and secured a room for two nights. Apparently enough people who’d made reservations last January had last minute change of plans. (High gas/bad economy)
Shortly before 6pm the skies lightened a bit and the rain stopped. At six we were closing shop and rushing out to gather all of our camping gear, stuffing it in the car, wetness and all. About five blocks from the fairgrounds is a Five Guys. We were starving so pulled in for the first decent meal of the day. Just as we sat down with our hamburgers and fries the sky grew black and the rain drummed down.
Saturday brought a number of previous customers who stopped by to buy another spindle and/or show us what they’ve been spinning.
John, a friend of several years now, had just taken a workshop and one of the things they did was grab random bits of fibery fluff and spin it all together. His yarn is from various silk bits.
Ilisha, whom we’ve had the pleasure of getting to know since last year’s Sock Summit, had a bunch of yarn turtles she’d recently spun.
And what does she do with these relatively small batches of yarn?
She’s the Jazz Knitter! Look at what her creative mind does with yarn! There’s no end to the scope of her imagination for using colorful yarn.
Lauri stopped by not only with her spinning but with a tool that are over a hundred years old: Turkish distaff! How exciting it was to see her putting one to use.
There were a number of weekender kids who gravitated to our spindles (and probably all the other spindle makers!) Their enthusiasm is contagious. These two were in an RV next to our tent the first night. They were at BSG to show their sheep. The girl took home at least one blue ribbon, and they both took home a Delight. 
Hope everyone had a great Independence Day! I made good headway on the new website and hope that by this time next week it will be finished. I keep getting badly sidetracked by needing to maintain the ongoing regular office work.
This afternoon Ed and I headed in to town to help with the weekly community dinner (served 187 people tonight, down from the usual 450+). The core team had finished most of the prep work by the time we got there at 2:30 so we headed to the street fair happening downtown.
We saw a sweet, old spinning wheel that was in good condition for a terrific price, but alas, she didn’t take credit cards and we hadn’t taken the check book. My Tour de Fleece spinning was quite happy not to have the extra competition.
