Needle Felting Firmness Tips
This week we show you the different stages of firmness when needle felting. How firm should your needle felted pieces be? Learn how to gauge the firmness of your needle felting.
Check our online classes on needle felting
How To Make Felted Soap | Soap DIY
Felted soap is such an easy DIY that there’s no reason why you wouldn’t want to make it! It’s a loofah and bar of soap, all in one convenient package, so you — or anyone you make it – makes the perfect gift.
Check our online courses on felting
Wool Roving, Felting Wool & Needle Felting Wool Tutorial
Wool Roving, Felting Wool & Needle Felting Wool Tutorial.
Check the different types of wool for wet felting and needle felting in this brief tutorial. covering the difference between wool roving, wool batting, wool sliver and wool top.
We show samples of our merino cross batting, New Zealand corriendale, merino top, merino silk blends and more. Also covers which wool you might choose for your wet felting and needle felting projects
A Bit About Felting
We talk about fibers, needle felting, wet felting and I show a few of my creations! Share the word about felting. It is so much fun!! 🙂
FELTING is an age-old craft. Perhaps developed in the Middle East, perhaps the Far East, it is a process that has evolved with local traditions wherever it was used. And it is still used today, by kids in kindergarten to nomads on the great plains of Asia living in felt yurts. The technique is basic, requires very little experience or tools, and “mistakes” may well lead to interesting results.
How to run a honey factory
In the next few weeks you will be able to attend a virtual workshop on beekeeping and how to make mead a honey derived drink. The next logical step is that you be interested on How to run a honey factory, and here it is an interview with a honey maker on this topic. A brother and sister due make honey and honey vinegar.
Feeling Overwhelmed is Your Own Fault
By Beth Stratman
The world moves so quickly these days, it feels hard to keep up. With the proliferation of available information, you can trick yourself into believing that you need to keep up with all the information and happenings. However, it isn’t simply paying attention to everything that’s going on that makes you productive and valuable and keeps you on track with your business; it’s staying attuned to the things you’ve identified as important and relevant to your business that keeps you productive and on target.
Here are some tips for reducing feelings of overwhelm and keeping yourself on track with the things you’ve identified as important:
- Get comfortable with the fact that most information is just noise. Just because information is accessible doesn’t mean it’s relevant to you.
- Determine what’s fundamentally important to maximize your business and yourself. The really important things for business tend to be the basics: mission, vision, values, current goals, key performance indicators (KPIs), key relationships, and professional development for you and your staff.
- Base your everyday tasks and activities what’s fundamentally important. Look at your calendar. Do your day-to-day appointments and scheduled blocks for projects etc. reflect the fundamentals as they relate to your position? Whether you’re the CEO or the VP of Human Resources, there are things you ought to be doing to further the company’s current goals. Are you? If you find items that have low value related to the company’s goals, figure out what to do about them, including delegating them to others who have the capability and could grow from the opportunity.
- Reduce your connection to irrelevant information. Doing simple things to decrease distraction can reduce feelings of overwhelm, like turning off pop-up email notifications, creating email rules that dispense with low priority email messages, and unsubscribing from email lists that you rarely find helpful.
- Train your staff about your response priorities. Which topics are front-burner for you? What counts as an “emergency” when they should definitely interrupt you? What’s your response time for texts versus email versus phone calls and when should they use each method of communication?
- Build time into your schedule when you are intentionally available for drop-in conversations. This presumes that you set aside “do not disturb” time when you are focused on strategic and project work. Having “office hours” when you’re readily available encourages others to access you on your terms, not theirs.
- Find root causes to other disruptions or time wasters. “Fires” usually occur when they wasn’t a good process in place for handling a situation. Look at ways to create or refine processes for handling most things that are likely to challenge your staff, so they learn to do things without you.
- Question whether you really need to have or attend the meetings on your calendar. Maybe you do, but it’s good to review whether meetings are really a good use of your time.
Practice seeing through the “charms’ and “alarms” of life to keep your center. Knowing what’s important and saying “no” to the rest is the key to reducing feelings of overwhelm.
