The beginning of this month was all madness getting the Black Friday orders made and out!
I really didn’t expect to have such good sales, and life as I knew it sort of stalled to a stop. It was eat, lathe, package, and sleep!
Our two part European Belted Distaffs are our most expensive tool to date, but they flew out the door for Christmas presents at alarming speeds!
This design is back to the drawing board as the join got a bit iffy with the drastic temperature changes in transit.
But once we figure that out, I’m sure they’ll be popular again!
I tried offering different colored clay whorls, but surprisingly had no takers.
These shavings from the flat folkart distaffs are so fun to play with! But my plane-ing set up still has a few kinks.
And a customer reached out for help with the inverted slip knot in suspended spindle spinning, so I took those photos and made a little tutorial which is on our youtube channel.
I was so desperate for a break! And I didn’t want to be battling the shipping companies to get orders delivered on time.
So I shut down the shop on December 15th, and oh what a blessed break it was!
By the 18th all orders were out of my hands and we were free to focus on Christmas!
I got myself this braid and blissfully spun to my hearts content for a lot of the week between Christmas and New Years.
It was 3 ounces, I spindle spun the whole thing, and plied on the Great Wheel.
The last few days of the year I rallied and got one more scarf done!
It’s a beautifully wintery scarf, and I made a whole post about it.
2025 was a very unexpected success! If you sat me down last January and told me I’d have a successful Etsy store and barely be able to keep up with orders I would have been shocked!
But here we are! One of just a handful of medieval spindle and distaff makers in the whole world! Which is still so wild to me.
I made my first ones because I couldn’t find a medieval spindle and whorl without crazy shipping costs – and now I get to make them for people all over the US! What a treat!
The Apple Creek Farm 
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