Over the Christmas holidays we were chatting as a family about our move to Wales. We were trying to work out how long we'd been living here, and indulging in the usual family disputes about such basic trivia. Final piece of evidence, perfect for halting a younger brother in his tracks, was the date I opened my Etsy Shop, 25th April 2011. I then realised that meant Hilltop Cloud turns 5 this year. 5.... 5 whole years of doing this. I still can't quite wrap my head around it. I started out with a vague idea, spent a chunk of money from my final pay check as a teacher, evolving ever since. In some ways I feel very lucky to have got to this point. I get to do a job I love, and I make a decent living doing it. Then my inner feminist snaps in to place and tells me to not be so wishy-washy. I work hard, I've developed a lot of skill at what I do, and I'm good at running a business. This didn't all happen by accident! I've been pretty privileged to have some awesome role models amongst the wool-world. Natalie Fergie from The Yarn Yard patiently answered so many of my questions, and encouraged me to find my own path. Since then I feel lucky that my virtual office is filled with some of the most talented, clever, inspirational business women around. It feels so very good to know that I can be part of a community that supports each other, and want each other to do well. Since Christmas I've been planning various ways to celebrate. The biggest thing is the In5pire challenge running over on the Ravelry Group. I've always been a big cheerleader for using up fibre, and not letting it sit in stashes spoiling. Right from the beginning I've ben a fan of using images to help inspiration flow (I even teach classes on it now!), and this challenge combines both those elements. It's unlikely that I'll ever get to meet all my customers, but in threads like this one it feels like we're getting to meet up. It's like a giant spinning guild meeting, or an online version of a spinning retreat. It's a giant party featuring all of our favourite crafts, and it lasts until June! I also wanted to create something to commemorate the occasion, things that are useful items in their own right, but also beautiful and unique. So there's a very small number of 5th anniversary goodies available to buy if you'd like something to remind you that you've been part of something that's hopefully been about more than selling things. Lastly.
Thank You! You lovely people are part of this. Yes you buy things, but I hope our relationship is about more than that. When we all talk, online or at shows, we pass on knowledge, spark new ideas, and have fun. I'll finish this post in the way I end the club letters. With great joy and thankfulness, Happy Spinning Katie Yesterday afternoon I had one of those "oops" moments. I spent the day dyeing the Gradient Club fibre so I could get it sent out before I stopped work for Christmas. All went swimmingly well, but at 11pm last night I had a sudden realisation... I'd left one last tray of fibre in the oven for another 15 minutes to finish setting the dye... and I'd not taken it out of the oven. When I dashed over to the caravan thankfully there were no flames, but the place was filled with smoke. I turned the oven off, opened the doors and windows, and went back to bed. Everything usually seems better in the cold light of day! This morning I've gone through all the fibres I store in the caravan. Thankfully it's an awful lot emptier than it would have been during the summer. The only fibre stored in there at the moment is the undyed stock, and the extra blended top for Nordic, Ceilidh and Hiraeth. All of the fibre that's currently for sale online is stored in my house and is perfectly safe, as is the caravan and everything else stored inside it. Every bag that was partly open has unfortunately picked up the smell of the smoke. It's not a horribly bad smokey smell (think burned hair rather than burning plastic), but is still a bit pongy. If it was high summer I might try airing things out, but it's not, it's winter, and I have nowhere to spread out this much fibre. The undyed bases will be fine. Before I dye them they're soaked in water, then they're socked in dye stock. Once they're dyed, they're washed in hot water with detergent, before being rinsed again, plus nearly all of those bags were still sealed. However, I have got a lot of blended top that is perfectly fine to spin, so long as you can put up with a slight smoky aroma, so I'm going to have a Yule Log Sale! Purely for the educational value, this is what BFL top looks like when you cook it for 7 hours... the water is from the rain we had overnight, inside those sausages of clingfilm was a beautiful carbonised honeycomb. All the smoke damaged stock is going to be 50% off, which I hope is enough of a discount to entice some of you to give it a new home. If you do decide to buy some then there's a few things to do to get rid of the smoky scent. If you hang the fibre in an out of the way, well ventilated spot for a couple of weeks that will help. You can also try popping it in a sealed box with a tub of bicarbonate of soda to absorb the smell. You can also wash it, which really isn't as scary as it might sound, all the dyed top you buy from me has effectively been washed. I thought it might be helpful to do some step by step photos. In short, you won't felt it unless you change the temperature of your water, or are too rough with the fibre, but gentle squeezing is fine., you actually have to try very hard to make felt! Nordic is a pure wool, blended combed top. Each colour is made of a combination of other colours creating shades that have a wonderfully deep, intense appearance, that work brilliantly together. Nordic is inspired by the lands across the North Sea and the ancient mythology of the Norse Gods and Goddesses. In total there are 7 permanent colours in the collection, a mix of warm, cool and neutrals. The pure wool content is perfect for creating warm bouncy accessories and cozy garments. The blend of Merino and Corriedale will be soft enough to wear next to skin, but by using the Corriedale wool the blend has a bit more tooth to it. This fibre has a more open crimp so you can spin a loftier yarn with more life to it than a pure merino blend. As a bonus you'll get less pilling, and items won't wear out as quickly. I've been developing the colours since the summer, but when I was out taking the photos I couldn't help but spot the similarities in the palette to the ones I was seeing all around me.
The fibres are on order, so will be available to buy very soon, and there will be close-up's of all the colours for you to take a closer look at shortly. The pattern, is Aranami Shawl. My Ravelry project, together with my notes, and the chart showing how I arranged the colours is here. I'm really pleased to be able to introduce my brand new fibre base... I started testing it out back in the summer, and also gave some to a few trusty local testers. They all loved it, so here we are, a brand new fibre for Hilltop Cloud. 50% 23 micron Merino 50% Tussah Silk Just like with all my other blends it's a combination I've had specially created. I wanted a wool-blend fibre with a high silk percentage. This fibre is ideal for next to skin purposes, so shawls, scarves, hats etc. You can spin it in to lace weight with ease, but it will also work as a thicker yarn. The high silk content gives you the fantastic sheen you get from silk, and allows me to dye incredibly intense colours, but by adding in some wool it makes it a bit more approachable for people to spin. You also get the bounce and memory that wool offers compared to the pure drape of silk by itself. I thought long and hard about the wool fibre I wanted to use in this blend, in an ideal world I would love to use British wool for nearly all my blends. In reality however we don't produce of the softer wools that the market requires. In part it's due to our climate, but it's also because for too long the British wool market has been in the doldrums, and as a result wool quality isn't of great importance to many farmers. I considered using Shetland, but for many that's not soft enough to go next to skin, and the high silk content of the blend dictates that this is what I feel the fibre is best suited to. I also considered using BFL, traditionally the BFL on offer in the UK has been the ideal Merino alternative, but increasingly I'm becoming more and more unhappy with the quality of the BFL tops I can buy. The fibre is no longer as soft and long as it was 2 or 3 years ago, and the increasing demand has pushed up the price dramatically. I'm not convinced it offers good value for money any more and I'm not alone in forming that opinion. The remaining BFL bases I offer will be sticking around, but in this situation I wanted to use a different fibre. In the end I've plumped for a 23micron, natural grey Merino. This coloured wool adds a wonderful depth of colour to the dyes, and is lovely and soft. One of my testers can't normally were wool of any kind, but her finished skein of yarn goes around her neck quite happily. I'm not normally a pure merino fan, particularly if you buy the commercially dyed tops, they've had all the life processed out of them and feel like spinning cotton wool. This merino feels very different, it has a lovely crimp, bounce and is a delight to spin. This is usually the point that I show off a finished sample of the fibre knitted up... my ill health over the past month put the brakes on any knitting, so you'll have to make do with an on the needles shot! I spun the yarn in to a 2-ply sport weight yarn, and am knitting it in to a lovely cozy garter stitch fabric. The new Merino & Silk fibre is available to buy in the shop now!
I'm a bit wary about putting this post out in the open, there are too many occasions when a business person uses ill health as a justification for poor customer service. What I'm very clear about is that this isn't going to happen in this case.
For the past month my health has been somewhat rocky. There are various diagnoses being suggested, all of them are inner/middle ear related, and all have similar symptoms. Basically at the moment I'm very dizzy on an almost continual basis, at times the dizziness is so bad I can't stand up and I'm left with horrific motion sickness. The rest of the time I'm utterly exhausted, as a result of having to compensate for the fact that my world is continually rotating around me. All in all not particularly conducive to my line of work... For now, everything that I have committed to doing will still be happening, I will be at Bakewell Wool Gathering, I will be honouring the teaching commitments I have made. There are plans in place to make sure those things can still happen. Fibre Clubs will also happen as normal, the only thing that there might be less of is fresh fibre in the shop. However, everything that is in the shop is already dyed, in stock, and ready to send out. Please don't feel that by not ordering you're helping me out in someway. If anything the opposite is true, the business is my only source of income, so the stocks of fibre that are ready to go out do need to be sold. After a month of being up in the air about what's actually going on the doctors and I now have a plan, and some treatments to try. I'm crossing my fingers that everything starts getting better soon. Comments are turned off on this post. One of the things that makes me happy to working in the fibre arts community is the level of collaboration. They say "no man is an island", or in this case it would probably be more appropriate to say "no woman". This industry is filled with strong, vibrant, creative women, running successful businesses. Nearly everywhere you look there are people offering help and advice. I've lost count of the times I've had a customer referred to me by one of my "competitors", and I try to do the same, if it's not something I sell or can make then I'd much rather see that person go elsewhere and get exactly what they wanted. While there are certain pieces of advice I won't share because they're things I've spent time and money developing, there are many things I'll happily pass on. There's a world of difference between "what's your recipe for that colour way?" and "I'm after a blue-toned black or grey, can you help with dye companies to try?" The first will always be met with a polite, sorry I don't share that information (it would also rely on my using recipes, which I don't). The second will be met with try Jacquard Silver Grey, and World of Wool Grey. As time has gone on I've put together more and more samples. I put a variety of them up on display at festivals, but also have a list of them on the website. They let people get a feel for how the fibres work as spun yarn, and also give me experience of working with my fibres. When someone comes up to me and asks "I want a yarn that has good stitch definition" I can turn around and say "try the Superwash BFL & Ramie". At first I just picked out patterns I liked from the huge collection on Ravelry, but I was always being asked for printed patterns when I was at shows, so as time has gone on I've developed a slight bias towards patterns that I can also stock in paper form. With the rise in print on demand it's become so much easier for designers to supply printed patterns, and an increasing number are doing so. Some designers are really great to work with and this post was prompted by a lovely experience with Tin Can Knits last night. I contacted them about stocking the Vivid Blanket pattern. I made up a sample using my Ceilidh Collection and when mooching around the internet discovered their wholesale pattern page. One quick email and I have printed patterns on their way to me, and access to their industry list so that I can carry on making samples using their patterns. Such a refreshing change to one nameless designer. I'd purchased printed patterns via the wholesale section of their website, and a month later nothing had arrived. I sent numerous emails which weren't replied to, and in the end had to open a paypal dispute to get my money back... that designer is off my Christmas Card list, and no longer one that I'll recommend to anyone who's after a pattern to use with their handspun yarn. However, back to the positive, that was very much an isolated incident. I also now stock printed patterns by Woolly Wormhead. Woolly is a specialist hat designer, with a great understanding of hat architecture, and how to use construction to create different shapes. I love her patterns because they come in a minimum of 4 sizes, so it's very easy to get the right size hat even if your gauge is slightly different to the commercial yarn used. I took along her printed patterns to a workshop I did for Gloucestershire Guild last month and they were a huge success. It's a win-win situation, I get to sell the pattern, Woolly gets some income as well, and gets exposure to a new market who for the most part aren't online, but might now go and buy more of her patterns. The designer I've had the longest relationship with is Kate Davies. I've sold a bundle of fibres to make the Sheep Heid Hat for a long time as a result of a conversation on Ravelry where a spinner wanted to spin the yarn, but didn't have enough natural colours, and didn't want to buy whole 100g of each colour just for this pattern. I've now sold a large number of the printed pattern, and the kits that go along with them, everyone benefits. So I guess the general gist of this blogpost is that we all have to work together, yarn and fibre sellers can be a great showcase for designers. We can take their patterns out in to the wilds, it's hard for a designer to justify going to a festival with a stand as they have to sell a lot of patterns to cover their costs, but by supplying yarn and fibre dyers they can still have a presence. By retweeting, and commenting on Facebook, and sharing with different social circles and networks we get a larger community and exposure.
We all do better when we work together. Call me weird, but I like doing my accounts.
I enjoy making spreadsheets do my bidding, and going through the paperwork. March however ended up in something of a surprise... For a while now I have been aware that Hilltop Cloud was growing, it's one of the reasons I left Etsy this winter. I also knew that I was heading towards the point where registering for VAT was no longer an optional choice, but instead something I was legally obliged to do. VAT is a sales tax calculated as a percentage on the price a customer pays for an item. The seller collects the VAT, and then passes it on to the UK government via HMRC. All customers in the UK, and the EU have to be charged VAT once a seller registers to collect the tax. As a result, from 9th April 2015 Hilltop Cloud is now VAT registered. Writing that sentence is somewhat scary, VAT registration is a sign that your business is something serious, and many small businesses don't survive the period after the registration, as their prices are now higher. Understandably I'm rather keen to avoid that fate! I have spent today eyeball deep in coding, spreadsheets and help pages. I think the basics are now sorted, hence me making this announcement. From now on all purchases made by customers in the UK, and the EU will be charged VAT. If you live in a non-EU country (USA, Canada, Norway, Australia etc.) you will pay the VAT free price. The online shop now display the different prices, so I hope that everyone will be able to clearly see what price they will pay. The extra price that you pay in the EU is not a case of me bring greedy, and making more money. Every penny of that 20% will go to the government, it's used to pay for important things like hospitals, schools, libraries and all the things that are important in our daily lives. I have to collect this tax. Not charging VAT would lead to me paying large fines, and general nasty stuff! My basic pre-tax prices have all now been lowered, this is partly because I can claim back VAT that I have been charged on my supplies, but also because I’m taking a slight pay cut. That mostly means that the prices you pay in the UK and EU haven’t risen by a huge amount in comparison to the price you paid yesterday. For example, a braid from the Hiraeth collection was £8, it’s now £8.50 A braid of Superwash BFL/Ramie was £13, it’s now £14 The Camel/Seacell,/Faux Cashmere was £16, it’s now £16.50 If you’re not from the UK, or an EU country you will now pay less! Some things have increased by more; Dad’s tools are particularly affected. I always passed on the majority of the price you paid, to him, I kept a small amount to cover the payment processing fees, and the packaging supplies, and paid myself a very small amount for the work photographing, listing, and packing the tool. As he’s not VAT registered I can’t reduce the price I pay him, so I have to pass on all of the VAT to the purchaser. One other thing about prices, all my stock for Wonderwool has already been labelled and priced. I am not going to take off all the labels, print out fresh ones, and re-label the whole lot. For once my ultra-organisation has come back and bitten me in the bum! All prices charged at Wonderwool will include VAT, and be at the old price. What about clubs I hear you say! Clubs are going to be the most affected by these changes. I have always tried to keep them affordable, and good value for money as a reward for trusting me with a surprise each month! As a result I can't eat up as much of the 20% as I have with the online shop. This is the inclusive price for everyone, European prices end up being the same as all the other countries, the extra VAT in the EU is cancelled out by your cheaper postage compared to other international countries. Time Travellers 100g UK- £11 International- £12 200g UK- £18 International- £19 300g UK- £26 International- £28 Gradient Club I know I only just set this up… to say altering prices after just one month is irritating to say the least. However, I have got to do it. All members will now pay £15 I know it’s quite a price hike in the UK, but given postage is £3 you’re still getting a braid of hand dyed, gradient fibre for £12, which I think still offers good value. You might have noticed that the Luxe club is missing off that list. For now I’m going to wind up that club, I’ve got a lot on over the next few months, and doing all the extra paperwork that goes with VAT registration will take me a while to sort out. I’m going to take the pressure off myself, and shorten the monthly to-do list slightly. A few payments for the next round have already gone through, I’ll be refunding those shortly. Club members, please watch your inboxes, I will be sending you emails letting you know what you need to do if you're happy to continue in clubs. Or something like that. Things are crazily busy here. I'm getting ready for Unravel, which means preparing enough stock to do this. It gets easier after this first show, as there's usually some stock leftover I can use as my starting point. I always try to bring enough fibre so that people coming on the Sunday still have plenty of choice, so usually end up taking some home with me. For now however, I'm in a dyeing frenzy, particular as I had 3 club parcels to get out at the end of this month. Enough of my moaning (not really, I enjoy my job, and like hard work). There's something new to show you. I launched the first colours of my Gradient Packs just before Christmas, and the second set of colours are now available as well. All the gradients are based on an image that I've found on the web somewhere. Pinterest is great for this, if I find a picture I like I can just pop it up on my gradients pinboard, and come back to it when I'm ready to start developing new colours. Follow Hilltop Cloud's board Gradients on Pinterest. The packs are 140g of fibre, sometimes 100g is a bit of a tight squeeze for some patterns, so this gives you a bit more felxibility. In them are 20g of 5 main colours, and the 10g of 4 transition colours, these let you move from one main colour to the next without an obvious stripe as they contain elements of the 2 shades either side of them. Just like with all my fibres there's more to them than meet the eye. Each blend is made up of a combination of colours, all with a base of undyed fibre to tie them together. It makes for a really subtle, shimmering gradient, something really special. I hand card lots and lots of rolags to work out what colours to use, making notes and altering as I go along, once I'm done the rolags all get spun up in to a skein of stripey yarn, no point in wasting all that hard work! Two of the original 4 colours have sold out (or are about to), these are limited edition, once the 25 packs have sold then they're gone for good. In a way this is good though, as it means I can keep evolving the collection each month, creating brand new colourways. Here are January's colours. If you head over to the Pinterest board I'm pretty certain you can work out what inspired them!
I'm about to start work on developing February's colours, and I'd like your help! Do you know of any awesome pictures out on the web that would make for a beautiful gradient? Don't be shy, share a link in the comments, and your picture might become a gradient pack of it's very own. You can find the Gradient Packs in the shop. It seems appropriate, at this time of year to be talking about sales. The "delight" that is Black Friday seems to have jumped over the Atlantic, and people are desperately trying to grab a bargain. Quite literally in some places.
Even my twitter feed has become full of small independnet companies like mine that feel they have to jump on the sales bandwagon. It's something I have quite strong feelings about. I respect the business owner's decision, and their right to run a sale, but I happen to believe it's not a healthy thing for a small one person yarn/fibre business to do. I work hard, as does every other single person business out there. Every single thing that is listed for sale in my shop has required work, with my own hands. When I calculate my prices I look at all my costs, and work out how long it takes me to do something. I then calculate how much I'll be paying myself for that item. If I run a sale I'm effectively taking a pay cut. I'm saying that my work isn't worth as much as I believe it is. I'm not Amazon, it's employees will still earn the same amount of money when they work on Black Friday. If I run a sale then I still do the same amount of work, but will be paying myself less. I value my time, and my expertise too much to do that. I'd also like to think I have a close relationship with many of my customers. We chat in my ravelry group, interact on twitter, and have conversations on Etsy. You are more than just a meaningless address, where the packing of orders is as close to automated as it can be. When Mum and I pack the parcels we spot the names of people who buy regularly. We get to know the colours and fibres you like, and speculate on what you might be making. We look on a map, and imagine what your life is like in those far away, exotic countries. I value your custom, without you, I don't pay my bills. I believe you're entitled to pay a fair price for my items, and that means not having an artificially high price, so that I can afford to run sales. I also don't believe it's fair to put pressure on you to buy just because there's a sale on. I want people to buy the fibre they love, in a colour they love. That way they'll use it up, create something beautiful, and not just have fibre sat in a storage box becoming compacted and deteriorating in quality. I also know the sinking feeling when you see a sale happening, and know you have no money in your bank account to buy anything, and that next week when you do have cash, the price will be higher again. Or even worse, you've just treated yourself, and then see the same item reduced in price a short time later. It's also horrible to go through your stash and discover the item you bought because it was on sale and you felt it was too much of a bargain to resist, but actually, it's not your colour. So I keep everything the same price all the time, that way you can buy at the time that suits you, and know that you've paid me a fair wage. The only time I ever run a sale is the Pot Luck Sale at the end of show season, and then it's because items have been handled and it would be unfair to ask full price for them online. I spend a lot of time developing my new fibre collections. Putting together colour combinations, fibre combinations, then seeing what they are like to spin, and then using them to create fabric of some sort. It's usually months of preparation and a lot of investment of time and money. Usually to start off a concept and to get the creative juices flowing I use pictures and images. The latest collection of fibre, Hiraeeth, is all about the landscape of Wales, the history of Wales and the legends and myths that surround this beautiful country I start off by writing a basic outline of the sorts of colours that I think I might like to use. I'm not a wordy person so the notes at this stage are usually pretty brief, seriously, most of the time I have a colour, then a colourway name and all the rest is in my head. I find writing descriptions of things really hard, it takes forever, though I am getting better! Instead I'll use pictures to get an idea of colours. You can take a look at the Pinterest board of the images that inspired Hiraeth here. Once I get started the colours tend to flow quite naturally but I can't get an accurate idea of how they going to look until I see the finished fibres. I then order some prototypes, quite often what I think I wanted to use can change considerably at this point in time. I take a look at the collection as a whole, I want a good balance of colours, warm, cool, light, and dark. I look at how the colours interact together. This is also the point that I start test spinning. Colours become further blended and darken when spun. Sometimes my first idea becomes the fibre blend that you see on the shop shelves. Most of the time the colour will go through two or three further development stages. When I'm happy with the colour way I'll do a larger test spin of around 100 g, at the same time I'll also be on the lookout for a pattern that I can use to show off the colours. That way you, the customer, can gain an accurate idea of how the colour will end up in your finished projects When all that is done I'm ready to launch the new collection. I'll spent a lot of time taking photos. I try to capture the colours as accurately as I can, not always easy with this complex blend of fibre types and colour. This is where I also try to translate the inspiration swirl of images and emotions in my head in to words, so you can see what I was trying to capture.
Hiraeth has been months in the planning, and due to an issue with one of the components I’ve not been able to finish of the collection. I’m so pleased to be able to say that the wait is nearly over. The final colours are on their way to me, so will be in the shop very soon, along with the sample packs. Pray for good light over the next week so I can get the photos taken as soon as I have the fibre! Those of you who keep an eye on the Ravelry group will also know that something else new is on the way. I’ve been posting teaser photos over the last few days of some spun skeins of sparkly loveliness. Just like with Hiraeth there’s a theme behind them, and a whole collection of wonderful colour. I’m currently at the second round of colour development and hoping to get this collection rolled out in a shorter time frame than Hiraeth. The blended fibres are always popular, they spin beautifully, and a re a nice low cost way to inject some colour in to your world. I've been having a think over the past few days (hurting shoulder leads to less doing, more thinking!), and I'm wondering wether a Blended Fibre club might be of interest to people. You get the benefit of my colours, in a smaller quantity (though nice large quantities are also possible), for a similar price to the BoB club curently. There's always people who are desperate to join the BoB club, but I can't fit more of you in without neglecting something else, this is hopefully a way for you to get a different sort of club membership. Edit to add- wow you lot are keen. The club is happening, you can find out about it here. |
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Beautiful fibre you'll love to work with. Established 2011 VAT Reg- 209 4066 19 Dugoed Bach, Mallwyd, Machynlleth,
Powys, SY20 9HR |