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• Avoid all humans.
• If one must interact with a human, stay at least 2-meters away from the strange human.
• I'm the owner and only worker here.  I'm going to keep on working alone. If I need to import extra labour like feeding The Guard Llama, I will source that labour from within my household.  
• When outside help comes to the farm, like for sheering the sheep, we implement a 6-yard policy: no one is to go within 6-yards of the non-household-human.  It is essential to keep the people who care for our animals healthy and not endanger them in any way even if we probably don't have the virus.
• I panic bought handsoap, disinfectant, and even hand-sanitizer from a local company made from locally distilled alcohol.  And now I have to use it up so I'm doing far more cleaning than I ever wanted to.
• I am now ordering our beer online from the local brewery (and if you ever want to purchase some for me, ESB is my favourite!  Just say it's for Raven, they know who I am.). 
• I am no longer doing pickup and drop off orders until further notice.  Mail order only.
• To that end, I have released Tommy, the Attack Llama and his supporting troops, The Geese, to prevent unscheduled visitors from entering the property.  
• Reduced trips to the post office to no more than twice a week. 
• Sanitize my hands before and after being in the post office and after going anywhere humans might go.  Who am I kidding?  I'm washing my hands every half hour during the day because it gives me some measure of comfort and the illusion that I have control over the situation.

I want to know the best way to ship carded wool batts so that the fibres stay lofty and easy to draft.  So I did some experiments.

A batt is the result of preparing the fibre on a drum carder.  It can be a giant drum carder like they have in a fibre mill, or a tiny one like mine.  Not that I mind tiny.  To me, it's just the right amount for what I'm doing now and I'm hoping my carding adventures will earn my way towards a bigger, better, bolder machine.  

To be brutally honest, I never paid much attention to my Etsy shop.  It's there if people buy stuff, that's cool.  I might go through a phase once or twice a year where I take more photos and list stuff, but over the last 13 years, the number of hours I've put into improving my shop is pitiful.  Until this year, most of my sales have been wholesale, but with the uncertainty ahead and being stuck at home on the farm, I finally had the time and the need to increase my Etsy sales.

​My favourite yarn to spin and most popular in the shops are something I call Singles Boucle. I learned this technique from the book The Intentional Spinner, and it's one of the most popular yarns to sell at the local shop.  It's also one of my favourite yarns to spin as it requires minimal fibre prep and is like combining pying and spinning all in one action.  

For this tutorial, I borrowed an e-Spinner Super Jumbo.  Lat's face it, I'm not much of an e-Anything, but having a wheel with huge bobbins, massive yarn guides and orifice, and can spin at a quick speed!  This e-Spinner Super Jumbo is tailor made for spinning this kind of yarn.