Ok, so what are we doing?

Woolen Wood as this blog is aptly named also applies to our brand.  We are a husband and wife team creating handmade items from soft and hard fibers.  AB spends time in the basement turning and I spend time in the basement hooking ;)  AB's wood turning skills have developed over his lifetime, but he first learned the skills from his father.  I have lots of art skills and I like to use them all but I have been honing my knitting machine savvy since a fateful workshop in grad school.

We have slowly been building this brand for a while, even while I was still living in St. Louis I was daydreaming of our collaborations and came up with the Woolen Wood name.  It really hasn't been until I got more comfortably settled in Madison that we have collaborated on items (certainly we have the house project always on the list) but it has been a recent thing to pool our talents towards handmade wearables and other functional home wares.  I originally went to AB looking for a good solution to fasten my scarves.  AND he came up with a great solution!  Check below for his wood pins.

Together over the past months, we have been making items to get onto Etsy.  Thus building a bit of a collection.  Recently the opportunity to join in a craft show featuring cozy items presented itself and we were selected to participate.  So on October 25 we will pack up and head to Poynette, WI to be a part of Apple-Palooza at Lapacek's Orchard.  We spent this last week prepping the booth display and trying out our borrowed tent to make sure we could figure it out.

We will use rentals from A la Crate in order to display things in and around, and we think these amazing vintage items will really help our pieces shine!

Here are some preview images from the setup:

Shawl Collars with various dye and felt techniques.  These are perfect for the cooler days coming, you can add distinction to any plain shirt by simply wearing one of these all day long.  (I firmly believe I survived last winter due to my wearing of these styles.)

AB's bowls will be proudly featured on little mini wood pedestals!  We used bowl blanks, elm bases, doilies and white enamel table from A la Crate!

On the left side of the table, we have a small but certainly important container holding the turned wood pins that AB has made.  These pins are the very key to keeping a shawl collar on and allow you to wear it in multiple ways.
There are some felt bags that coordinate with some of the shawl collars and a few quirky and warm head pieces as well.  

Here we have one of our ladies displaying the shawl/pin system.

Overall booth layout should provide good room for browsing, trying on and getting to know us.  We are going to get our logo onto the chalkboard on the right, and use that as a way to get people into the tent.  The chalkboard is the Raggedy Ann chalkboard from A la Crate.

A second table for bowl display and another mannequin named Penny, showing off a different collar style.  The mint green metal folding table and orange folding step ladder are from A la Crate.  

Close ups of these marvelous pins! 

Another bowl closeup... there are some really lovely pieces in here.  AB's turning has amped up and in no time we will have enough wood curls to insulate our garden plants over the winter with!  Double bonus!!

Next weekend we will work on pricing and getting ourselves set up to do money exchange.  But for now, it is back to the knitting machine for me!