Only three days left before I leave for the first fair of the year- counting today. You michgt be able to imagine the state of things here, and if not, let me give you a hint: all kinds of things are stacked, heaped, drawn out, moved around, checked, and scattered over the place. There's packing material and flyers and there's the box with stuff that is helpful when setting up, and there's the immensely helpful master packing list for fairs that needs to be gone through.

There's also an insanely long list of stuff still to take care of. Much of it is just small things, but things that should not be forgotten, hence they are on the list. Some of the things are seemingly small things that I very much hope will turn out to be actual small things, or I will be in trouble. One of those is making a new Fummelkasten.

The Fummelkasten (which might be translated as "touchy-feely-box") is a thing I invented as a solution to the eternal fibre-selling problem: no spinner wants to buy fibres without touching them. Few people also want to buy fibres that have been touched by a gazillion people so they are all mated and felty, or have gotten disordered, or both. So I have a box with fibre samples of all the fibre types I am selling, and people can touch these to their heart's content, and wen they turn all matted and felty, I replace tha sample with a new one. The only problem is that with the addition of the Rhoen and Valais blacknose tops, I don't have enough space in the box anymore... so I have a new one, which needs finalising the inner structure, and then needs the samples, and of course an info sheet saying which fibre is which. And that you are welcome to touch.

Also, this sometimes gives me these priceless moments of a child going to the box, reading the "welcome to touch" message, and going ahead to compare the different fibres. Quite often, the parent then objects to this, and then gets educated by their offspring that in this case, it is perfectly fine to "look with the fingers". This has happened a few times already, and I always find it utterly hilarious!