The Clever Hen, open for business!

Winter is upon us.  Here in the Northwest the trees are barren, the skies cloudy, the garden is asleep.  The water for all our animals is frozen every morning, so we haul out warm water to thaw it out.  We begin our first week of winter break and hopefully will spend the days preparing of Christmas in our home and in our greater community on the Rez.  This year this has involved making several dozen sugar cookies and making a nearly forty fleecy gifts for the children who come to Kingdom Kids, which are now piled high in our guest room, aka Santa's workshop.  

I am delighted to share here that I have opened a little Etsy shop, The Clever Hen, for selling handknit items for all ages.  Over the years I have had so many friends and family members ask when I will begin to sell some of the things I make and I always shrug and end up deciding I haven't had time to knit what I wanted to knit and knit to sell.  Now that my little girls are a bit older and I squeeze in knitting during school hours and evenings, I took the plunge and listed a few of my favorite things in the shop that I actually reserved and began to dream about five years ago.  This has actually kept me so busy that I am just now catching up on all the private local orders I've had!  I've sold several custom knits to local friends this month and have a few more in the wings, not to mention a lot of exciting plans and ideas for the types of listings I want to create and list once there is a lull.  I am prepping an adult Anthropologie-copycat hat in a soft pink with satin ribbon (so pretty) and have a chunky cowl in mind after that. I am still working on sprucing up the shop with photos and announcements, and eventually will host a few giveaways, probably through my Instagram, so if you think you might be interested, go follow me over there!

I have made firm guidelines about which toys the girls are allowed to play with in a given week and they must ask to bring anything out besides the toys assigned for the week.  I was discovering that I either needed to pare our beautiful toys down a lot (which I hate to do because I LOVE high quality children's toys which is why we have several options) or create a loose system that avoids five different expansive play options all out in different rooms at one time in one afternoon.  Beyond the logistics of cleaning and tidiness, I was suspecting it would bring increased focus to their play and sure enough, that does seem to be true.  It is my sincere hope that having fewer toy choice at one time will make this winter survivable ... for me.  I am not yet really very good at keeping such a large house tidy while also balancing motherhood, homeschooling, and ministry. While I'm the first to acknowledge what a delightful problem that is to have... it's still a problem!  

So happy December to all of my friends who have found me here. Let me know you stopped by so I can visit you back!  Check out my shop and see what I've been working on!