Clara's Window

For those of you who celebrated it, merry Christmas. And for all of us, I wish you a healthy, love-filled and prosperous 2004.

I've been enjoying an unusually long period of time at home, no trips to Portland to mar my sleep habits. This area is beautiful and extremely quiet during the holidays. There was no snow for Christmas, so I celebrated the day by installing weatherstripping on the front door of Clara's Window to prepare for the Monday night knit-ins that begin in January.

And today I did another exciting, possibly crazy thing: I looked at a house that would serve as KR headquarters for wholesale and retail order fulfillment as well as a storage area for the growing mass of merchandise that is inching me out of my home.

It's a lovely old farmhouse just up the road, currently serving as a seasonal shop and originally a general store. It has very little land, it needs new roof shingles, it has no central heat, and it has no basement nor insulation under the ground floor.

But it's charming and adorable and holds good energy. There's an adjacent greenhouse and spacious sunny upstairs room that would be perfect for my loom, yarn, fiber, and wheels. And the fact that it actually has three mini kitchens, one of which would perform quite well as a dye workshop, well that's pretty nice too.

So I sit and ponder this latest event. If only so much else weren't up in the air. At the end of January I'll be taking the KR show on the road to TNNA, the National Needlework Association's major annual trade show where shops go to buy for the year. And then there's Clara's Window, closed for the season but due to reopen on May 1st. The shop location is charming, but the space is rented and thus subject to the whims of its owner.

Any thoughts, advice, or wisdom, dear readers?