CMC News

After much anticipation our popular 1½ and 2 yard electric skein winders are now available with a built in electronic digital revolution counter. The counter is beautifully inlaid into one of the feet of the winder for easy visibility and quick access to the reset button. Our revolution counter is electronic and magnetically triggered so it is completely silent and will never need readjustment due to the constant impact forces mechanical counters must endure.

The 2 yard electric skein winder with counter starts at $325, and our 1½ yard electric skein winder starts at $270

Benjamin A. Cooper

We have just returned from our first trip to the Best of the Southwest Fiber Arts Festival in Farmington, New Mexico. This show has the makings of becoming one of the best shows in the four corners area, and we are looking forward to seeing what comes about at next year's show.

The festival is held indoors at the McGee Park, San Juan County Fairgrounds convention center. The building is large and well equipped. The festival offers free power to any vendors who request it, as well as free tables and chairs. Quite a bargain for just $100. The booth spaces were nice and large, with plenty of room for traffic. This year there were about 20 vendors, but this convention center could easily hold four or five times as many vendors in comfort. There is more than enough paved parking for hundreds of visitors. McGee Park is by far the nicest venue we have been too yet, easily on par with some of the big national level shows. Vendors (or visitors) can even bring an RV and hook up for just $18 per night!

Farmington is a very pleasant city with plenty of hotels and restaurants, and the scenery is simply beautiful, if you like rugged deserts, which of course, I do. Hotel rates were reasonable and finding a room was easy with plenty of vacancies around town. We stayed at the Comfort Inn on Scott Ave. and were quite pleased. The hotel was only a few minutes drive from the festival.

The show itself unfortunately was a bit slow, and customers were sparse, although we did have enough sales to cover our both fees, which is better than I can say for a couple of shows we have attended. Several of the vendors had above average sales, including Blue Cat Beads who said she had one of the best shows of her career. The fudge booth even sold out of fudge and had to pack up early. To be fair this is really only the 3rd year for this show and advertizing and word of mouth are growing awareness pretty quickly now. I fully expect a truly good turnout next year and we are really looking forward to next year. We are even planning to teach a workshop next time since the facilities are so nice.

Benjamin A. Cooper

We have just listed 2 new yarn bowls in our Etsy shop. These bowls are sized to hold a standard yarn ball or cake. Each yarn bowl is individually hand turned without use of patterns or templates. Each one is unique. Our bowls are made of various exotic and domestic hard woods and finished in clear finishes, they are not stained or otherwise artificially colored.

Check out our new yarn bowl listings in our Etsy shop.

Benjamin A. Cooper

Following customer feedback and additional testing, we have decided to replace the foot pedal control of our electric Skein Winders with a hand operated turn knob control. The new turn knob provides considerably finer speed control and an instant press on, press off function. It is now possible to set a desired speed and press the knob to start and stop the winder without having to readjust the speed. Since the speed control is in it's own housing with a 3.5 foot cord, it can be placed on either side of the winder to suit your needs, or it can be used handheld.

Customers who have purchased a winder with the foot pedal control are eligible for a free upgrade. Simply send us back your foot pedal (or just the cord set, removed from the pedal) and we will send you the upgraded knob control. Send us an email to make arrangements.

Benjamin A. Cooper

This weekend was our first trip to the SLV Folk Art and Fiber Festival, in Monte Vista, Colorado. We had a great time and even made a bit of money. Laura and Crystal put on a very nice show. Everyone was laid back and friendly, and the show was nicely organized.

We drove down to Monte Vista Friday afternoon. The drive was pleasant and took about three and a half hours. When we arrived in town, we searched for the Dairy Queen (apparently a major landmark in Monte Vista) and found our way across the street to the Rio Grande Motel. Each room was decorated with different wildlife, and we got the ducks. There were tapestries on the walls with ducks, paintings with ducks, duck book ends, even a duck quilt. The motel is old but clean and generally well maintained, and the price was pretty good. Apparently there was no AC, but there was a ceiling fan, which we had to unscrew the light bulbs from so we could leave it on through the night (the pull chain was broken). Half way through the night I realized that we had left my centerpiece framed, hand printed, 11x14 B&W photograph, Grassy Rock Garden, #2 of 10, hanging on the wall at home. It was hard to get back to sleep after that.

After much lying awake for hours in the muggy atmosphere it became time to get up, and we made our way to the park. Marsh Park is a nice pleasant little park, long and narrow, with a few trees and a lovely lush and level lawn. Parking was easy for setup since there is a road on each side and there are no fences. You couldn't ask for a better venue for a festival. We unloaded the Element and got our tent and displays set up. We didn't have to wait long for the customers to start coming by. Throughout the day customers came by every 10 minutes or so. Business was not extraordinary, but it was steady. There were plenty of other wonderful vendors covering a nice range of crafts and art. We entered a braid of roving in the roving contest, which was voted on by the visitors. Unfortunately we didn't win.

After closing up for the evening, we headed back to the motel for a short rest before dinner and cake. While sitting on the bed, I noticed a white electrical cord running up the wall behind one of the duck tapestries. I thought it was odd since the only thing electrical anywhere near it was a wall lamp. But the lamp had a black cord, and this was white. I asked Christy what it could be and she went to investigate. Upon lifting the tapestry she discovered an air conditioner, and a window! Boy did we feel a bit studip. After discovering the AC, we went to find some food. We settled on JB's Burger Stand which was ok. The entire interior of the restaurant was completely covered with paintings, all by one woman. I have never seen so many paintings by one person in my life. After dinner we drove all around Monte Vista (several times) trying to kill some time before the SLV Fest reception (free cake). I stopped and took some pictures of some awesome old train cars that are just sitting on some old side tracks in the middle of town. Once the time was sufficiently dead we made out way to the Monte Vista Information Center for the reception and our free cake. There we hung out with the organizers and some of the other vendors. Afterwards we went back to our now air conditioned motel room.

On Sunday business was every bit as good as Saturday. The weather was once again pleasant, not too hot, and not cold, with a intermittent overcast for shade, but no rain. About midday they held a spinning competition which Christy joined. The first round was spinning for length. Christy started well, but about half way through the rubber band on her brake band broke. She still finished with a considerable length of yarn, about in the middle of the pack. The winner though had what must have been a mile of yarn. The other rounds were for weight, blindfolded, and spinning with a partner. Christy had a wonderful time, and the customers all seamed fascinated by the spinning demonstration. Later in the day they drew the winner for the spinning wheel raffle.

As we were all packing up, I managed to trade the two pine display shelves I had brought for a statue of a crane and 60 hand made glass beads! This was perhaps the best thing from the entire festival, since I didn't like these shelves since the day we got them.

The drive home was uneventful. We came home with 3 skein winders needing to be build and shipped, so Monday was quite busy.

All in all this was a great show. I especially like that being a hybrid show of art and fiber, we were able to bring a much broader range of our products. Most general audience shows are not suitable for yarn and roving, most normal people just don't know what to do with it. And most fiber shows specifically forbid anything that isn't directly fiber related, some even forbid anything that isn't made from local sheep. We will definitely be going back next year, and strongly recommend you do to, be it as a vendor, or just as a visitor, you will certainly have a good time.

Benjamin A. Cooper