And so it begins…

Hello, and welcome to the beginnings of my journey. I am Shayla and I look forward to sharing this with you. There may be long periods of time before a new post comes about, but that is mainly because the beginning sometimes doesn’t have a lot of action. I hope you understand.

Several years ago I had this idea to buy a motor home and travel around the country, selling my herbal salve to tattoo shops and health food stores, homeschooling my kids on the road, and generally traveling around to wherever the wind took us. I was in a relationship at the time and I knew that it wouldn’t work out so I stayed where I was. I set the dream of traveling aside because it just didn’t seem to fit into my life.

Here I am, nearly seven years later and I still want to hit the road. There are so many new events that have happened since that long ago dream and they have all led to the time when I can say that I’m going forward with it.

My children are now grown (Anthony) and nearly grown (Brianna) and I will be living alone for the first time in my life. It’s exhilarating and a little unnerving all at the same time. There is a freedom that I’ve never had the chance to experience until now. At first, I only shared this with a very small number of people and was actually afraid to share it publicly. Silly, right? Nevertheless, I had a fear that people would be negative about my news and would try to talk me out of it. It finally occurred to me that this was my dream and no one had the power to take it from me except, of course, me.

I invested in an embroidery machine to help bring more sales into the business and I’ll be opening a new shop in December. The new shop will have a variety of embroidered goods, candles, crystals, and much more. My goal is to make enough with the two shops to cover the cost of keeping them open and to be able to travel to the places where my customers live and visit with them. I think it would really be wonderful to sit down with them and knit while chatting away with them. And, I promise not to overstay.

So… now I’m saving for an RV. Not anything fancy, but an older model that I can remove all the furniture and renovate it to suit my needs (yarn business, embroidery machine, supplies, cats, open floor space, bold colors). The main idea is to get it renovated and move into an RV park (I found one that is close to work and pretty cheap) and keep working where I am until I have a sizable chunk for emergencies in my savings account. Then hit the road and start meeting with my customers, attending fiber shows, and all kinds of other stuff. I’d mostly stay in National parks and such since they are free (it’s called “boondocking”) and I’m planning to get a solar setup for the electricity and a water filter that will allow me to use water from creeks & rivers. I’d incorporate my current kitchen filter, too, so that my drinking water is double-clean. I’ve been looking into rocket stoves and other items that will make the yarn-dyeing easier and more efficient and I’m happy to say that there will be a lot of ways to cut the energy usage.

Right now I’m in the waiting period. I need to save up enough to cover the cost of the motor home and some of the renovations I’ll be needing. I think, if I’m super careful, that I can have enough money in 9-12 months. That seems like such a long time right now, but I’ll be doing all that I can to bring in more money to reach that first goal.

I know that this won’t be easy. At the same time, there will be compensations that will make up for the challenges. Meeting with people I’ve only known through Ravelry or Facebook, attending fiber shows, seeing the country, and meeting with other people who live in their motor homes full time, all of these add up to a potentially wonderful experience. And I look forward to each step of it.