Kind of a short posting today…
We were very happy to receive in the mail yesterday an application from an artist to be an exhibitor for our June and October 2009 festival. This is very exciting. Of course, I had to run and update the website right away.
Our newest exhibitor makes hand made spinning wheels, sock looms and will be presenting spinning as her educational product to the public.
We were reminded that we live in Michigan this weekend. It was cold, windy and we had a layer of snow on the ground. The critters didn’t seem too bothered. Even with being sheared in October, the Icelandic breed is cold-tolerant and has an inch or so of fiber already. The llamas were shearing before summer arrived and this little bit of snow doesn’t seem to bother them at all.
Over the last week, I received several requests for information regarding the festival. I was very excited to see folks interested to learn more about our event on nearly a weekly basis now. The website statistics seem to reflect that feeling. We have had increased traffic going into what would I think be a rather low time of year for festival web traffic.
When we had a logo created last year, I never imagined how nice it would turn out. It truly captures the essence of what we are doing with the festival. The red appled wrapped up like a ball of yarn right in the middle of ‘Fiber Arts’ fits perfectly.
Since we only had it produced for local signs, I asked the artist if it would be acceptable to reprodcue it on one of our products in the store. She graciously agreed. We now have our logo on our canvas bag.
Tote Bag Backside
Tote Bag Front
I think it turned out great.
Over the weekend, I worked on the website. I added the blog and our festival store. I had to rework the menus a bit as I wanted them at the top and not within each venue menu. After some testing and fixing of some coding typos, it seemed to work out well.
Here’s a picture of our “Wolfie”. He’s an Icelandic Lamb and the picture is of him sitting under some brush. Now’s he’s on a mousepad for everyone to enjoy.
Icelandic Lamb Mousepad
We reviewed another venue for a potential third site. The new site has a great building for potential workshop and classes. However, the parking is quite small and the grounds are small. Outdoor events would be cramped and people would be parking on the street creating a potentially unsafe enviroment for customers. Unfortunately, the review of this venue did not turn out to be a suitable place for a third event. It was definitely worth reviewing though.
Over the last few weeks, we have started receiving requests for various things for the farm and festival from some great people. Some very qualified and well known instructors are interested in teaching at our festival. Another group has offered to host our festival. Yet, others have been contacting us about wool and lamb sales. It has been an interesting time.
It is easy to get over confident or fall into complacency regarding the spat of recent activity for the farm and the festival. It would be wonderful if this would be a continuous thing. However, I know better. There are always times throughout the year that are better then others for activity. Then, out of the blue, requests for information come in by the boat load.
Not too long ago, a person from France contacted us via the website regarding llama information. I remember thinking, ‘Why in the world would they be contact us?” It was a great conversation and I think we truly helped them understand why you wouldn’t want male and female llamas in the same pen year round.
The temps have been way above average lately. I have wanted to start new projects out in the barns. This also seems to be a recent, odd change of things. I know that painting would get ruined and the fence would not stretch properly in such variable weather as well.
It has been easy to get off track lately with everything that’s going on. But, the calendar tells me that we need to start putting breeding groups together for the sheep. So, this weekend, I am sure that is what we will be doing.
Over the last few weeks or so, I have collect many business cards from people asking for more information about the festival. It’s been great the response I get when I start talking about our event, the features for customers and vendors. The whole experience has been a great reinforcement that our format is working with everyone (customers and exhibitors) and not just one group or another.
Anyway, I was plowing through the business cards the other day. Some of them are just beautiful. From pastels, blank & white to whole texture like pictures on the cards. Some, on the other hand, are just difficult to read. Long e-mail addresses in some kind of script, faded print on a very busy background and the list goes on. I’ve actually gotten to the point that I put some of these cards on my scanner, blow them up and then turn them into a back and white image. Some of that hard to read.
Of course, after digging through all these business cards, I went over and looked at our farm’s business cards. The print seems small to me. So, I asked others if it was hard to read or difficult to see the e-mail address or website. Everyone seemed okay with the design. Perhaps I’m being overly critical of our own cards in light of the fact that I’ve now reviewed so many of other people’s cards.