The last few weeks have been a whirlwind. It took 3 more trucks and a 7 ton flatbed trailer to get (almost) everything that was left home in the last two weeks. There is one more flatbed of equipment left to move — the pieces require heavy machinery due to their weight and dimension, so we are waiting until the resources become available to move them — which will take us to a total of three large flat bed trailers and seven 26′ box trucks for the move. It has been an intense journey so far — Vic lost over 30 lbs in six weeks from how hard he was working, taking everything apart and moving the(very heavy) pieces around the mill building so that we could expedite getting them onto the trucks. The two largest machines we got, the spinner and plyer (with a combined footprint of about 100′ by 15′), were located on the fourth floor of the mill. We were very lucky that there was a freight elevator, which was about 8′ wide — most pieces fit in there. Only about 120ish individual pieces were too large to fit and had to be carried down the stairs one at a time.
This sounds like a lot, but it’s a small percentage of the pieces. There were literally thousands of individual parts and at least ten thousand fasteners by the time it was all dismantled. The pieces are in our barn now; walking in there is pretty difficult due to the sheer volume of items. We have the technical manuals for the machines (which have assembly and parts diagrams) and lots of photos of the disassembly process to help guide us in reassembly once we get the building built to run the equipment in. We were initially planning to do an extension on our barn, but it has quickly become apparent that a new standalone building closer to the road will be better for logistics in the long run. While we save up money and raise funds, we’ll be spending our “spare time” individually sorting all of the fasteners into labelled bags — the speed with which disassembly was required, due to the deadlines, didn’t allow for sorting them as we went.
I would definitely characterize this as the most difficult thing we have done since we got out of the military. While nowhere near the longest we have had to be apart (our first two years of marriage were spent with the Pacific ocean between us, due to the needs of the Navy and our country) it certainly didn’t feel any easier. It has also been extremely rewarding — we have made a lot of meaningful connections and learned so much so far. I am really looking forward to the future.
We botanically dyed our first batch of lace weight organic wool (18/2) yarn during this time too, which will be for sale. Vic delivered the first half of the batch to H&H Mercantile today after he got off work. We’re still working on reskeining the rest, but I love how the colors turned out — despite our stove running out of gas right after all the dye was in the pots! Luckily, we have a wood stove that we finished installing a few months ago, so we were able to heat everything to the appropriate temperatures to set the dye. The hand-painted ones turned out paler than expected due to this, but I think they are beautiful regardless!
We will be working on dyeing and packaging yarn, and packaging roving, every weekend for the foreseeable future. We have registered as a vendor for Fiber Frolic (Maine’s premier fiber festival!) at the end of May and will also be attending NEWS (New England Weavers Seminar) in July with our very good friend Alice from Belfast Fiber Arts.
I hope to get our online store up and running as soon as we have enough product ready. After the stove fiasco, I want to make sure our colorways are consistently established before setting them up for sale online. One to three 600yd skeins of matching, limited edition botanical colors is beautiful and inspiring .. But perhaps not the most desired for consistency’s sake.
Thank you so very much for your attention and for caring about what we are doing. We’ll post again soon — and in the meantime, we hope to hear from you!
