thank you, Thank You, THANK YOU!!!

Well, y'all pulled through for me and it looks like I get to keep on weaving for a while longer. (I keep phrasing it this way because I'm never sure if or when I'll make the mistake that sends this business in the direction of most other startups.) Now that show season is officially here with my first "big" show in Seattle's UDistrict this coming weekend, I think I've made it for real.

There are a few more shows with fees to pay, a few booth modifications, a tune-up for the van, loan payments, and the ever-present "overhead" but otherwise the money that I make at these shows will be going toward new yarn to keep it all running and, finally, profit!

Thanks to the folks who heard my call and preordered black cloth, the same amount of money came in as I had expected to earn at the show last weekend.

I continually struggle with the question of who makes up my community. Is someone a friend, just because we've known each other for a long time, even if we rarely influence each other's lives? Is someone a friend because they clicked "Add Blossom As A Friend" on Facebook? How about if we read each other's blogs but have never met in person?

Experiences like this past weekend blur the distinction even further. I was laying in bed, high on pain drugs, getting up to change burn dressings a couple of times a day, and answering emails from people who want to place orders for cloth: a nurse in Colorado, an alternative energy consultant in San Francisco, a member of my spiritual community, living in Chico.

And the answer that I come to is that the words don't matter. We're all one big, complex community of sorts. The internet makes it all that much faster and more complex. I really just need to focus on these definitions for the people I expect to live with. Everyone else, unless they've shown themselves otherwise, are friends.

Thanks, friends! I can't wait for us all to see the results of our investment in this batch of black cloth. It's coming...