International Fleeces was started due to a mosquito. Yes, you read that right. In the Summer of 2009, I was a student at the University of Wyoming planning to get a degree in Social Work. My husband, Michael, teaches Chemistry at UW. I had finished the first half of my Summer classes and my husband had one week left of teaching his two classes when he got sick, very sick. I mean really, sick. ICU in Colorado sick. My baby girl and I went down to Colorado to visit him. He looked terrible. They thought he had a stroke. It turned out that he was infected with West Nile Virus from a mosquito bite. The doctors let us know that he would be sick all Summer and probably the Fall too.
“How could this happen to a young man?” I thought. This incident got me thinking of important things that I conveniently avoided thinking about before like what would happen if one of us wasn’t here any more. Yikes! I knew that I would have to make some changes. Firstly, we signed up for life insurance. Secondly, I decided that going to school for X amount of years was just too long to wait for another income.
At first I thought about producing art batts and such and selling them to spinners, after all, I was a handspinner with fifteen years of experience. As I pondered that possibility another came to mind. What about importing fleeces? Not just any fleeces but ones that aren’t readily available to fiber artists in the USA? I love unusual sheep breeds and love learning about them. I also love doing business and working with farmers. It seemed to me that I may have found my niche!
Fast forward, I wrote this introduction as we were getting ready to open. It has been an incredible amount of work to get to this point and all of it rewarding. I look forward to serving your fiber needs and hope our products will excite and inspire the most experienced handspinner with the joy you once experienced when making your first “real” yarns.
Update, oh yeah, my husband, he is ok. He went back to teaching in the Fall and was very happy about it. One of his new students called him a “bad ass.” Yes, that is a very good thing to be called! His doctor says he’ll make a full recovery.
Me? I am happy he is on the road to recovery and that it was an illness he can recover from. I am really glad that we were able to reevaluate our priorities and hope to build this business as something to hand down to our daughter if she is fiber inclined.
Our baby? She loves bah-bahs (balls) and wuh-wuhs (dogs) so all is good there!
International Fleeces? Open and ready for business! I hope you will enjoy!
Fast forward once again! Our baby continued to grow as did our customer base. Imagine that! I came to the conclusion in the Spring of 2011 that I was not able to take care of the baby and the business at the same time. One of them had to go and we all know which one it would be, right?
On Sept 14, 2011, we closed the retail part of the site and decided to put what time we had into the other part of what we loved to bring to our fiber friends, resources and information. As of Sept 15, 2011, International Fleeces took on a familiar but new look that will focus on articles and resources for the fiber artist. We hope you enjoy our new endeavor. We would love to hear from you and hope you find the “new” site helpful in your fiber arts.
Oh yeah! The baby will turn 4 in November and is such a cutie. My husband is doing well too.
Happy spinning!
Cheers,
