So many hobbies!

I may be off-line the rest of the week

My sisters have been helping me rearrange my condo.  One of the results of this is the computer is now across the room and no longer near the cable.  The TV has the same problem.  I need to either buy or borrow some long cables to snake around the room so I can use my computer and watch TV.  I should have this done by Sunday.  I hope.  This morning, back at work, is the first time I've been online since last Thursday.

I have a few pictures from our trip to the Great Lakes Fiber Show in Wooster, OH.  We had fun but it was HOT!  Sunday, when we struck camp, it was 95F!  Poor Sheri fought a heat-induced migraine all the way home.  Thank goodness for air conditioning!  Friday night a thunderstorm blew through and for about 10 minutes we had huge wind gusts that nearly blew our tents down.  All three of us were in our tents trying to hold the walls up.  Rhonda was laughing so hard she could barely stand.  Fortunately, the wind only lasted a short time.  We did, however, have a fantastic lightning storm.  Just beautiful!

This coming Sunday I'm hoping to pick Strawberries.  If the weather is good, I'll be picking for jam, dried strawberries and fruit leather.  I wish I had more liners for the fruit leather but my dryer only came with one.  I'll be ordering more.  Hmm, I wonder if I can fudge the drying liners and use plastic wrap. 

Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival 2012 - part 2

I did pretty well in the skein contest:

It's interesting to me that the yarn I thought would do well, didn't.

My spindle-spun skein didn't win the prize for the best spindle-spun skein.  This is actually a good thing because it shows me that I'm not the only one entering.  I'll just have to spin better so I win next year.

The shopping, as you might imagine, was lots of fun.  The first thing I bought was the replacement for the spindle I dropped and shattered.  The next day I bought a Bosworth spindle:

The Bosworth spindle, on the left, is made from Bird's Eye Maple and spins really well.  The Spin-a-Bit spindle on the right is an identical replacement for the broken one.  I really need to find a good way to store and display my spindles.  I'd be grateful for some suggestions.

Next I bought a couple of gorgeous batts:

Unfortunately, this picture doesn't really show how beautiful these batts are.  Once they're spun up, I plan on using the yarn for weaving scarves.

Thanks to Sheri and Rhonda, I bought a 24" Kromski Harp Rigid Heddle loom.  The girls sat through the auction held on Saturday and bought my loom for me.  They bought stuff for themselves, too.  It was just so hot there was no way I could have sat outside for 3 hours while the auction was under way. 

Okay, it's a crappy picture.  Sorry.  The Harp folds up for easier storage and transportation.  It'll hold 5 yards of cloth up to 24" wide.  I'll be weaving scarves and probably a table runner or two.

To play with my drumcarder, I bought some dyed Merino roving, sparkly fiber and some Merino/silk roving.  I should get 2 or 3 batts out of what I bought.  Playing will likely commence this weekend.

That's red Angelina on the left and Firestar sparkle on the right.  One of the things I was looking for in Maryland were things to add to batts to make them more fun to spin.

So that's the last of the trip photos.  We had a great time this year.  Part of the fun was my sister joined us for the weekend.  Fortunately for her, she missed the thunderstorm and the rain since she didn't arrive until Friday.  A good time was had by all.

Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival 2012 - part 1

Thursday morning, packing up the van.  It was a great start to the trip.

Friday, after dropping off our yarn for the skein contest, we stopped at Michael's and bought some visors and the stuff to decorate.  We found some cute sheep stickers and letters to spell out our Ravelry names.

Finally, after waiting a whole year, we were back again!

These pictures were taken on Sunday but Saturday was packed with people.  There is a HUGE field next to the fair grounds that covers probably 6 acres of land.  The field was completely filled and cars were parked across the street in the overflow parking.  I have never seen so many people at the Festival before.  I'm curious to find out just how many people were there on Saturday.

They used tractors and wagons to cart people from the parking lot to the Festival.

We passed a fair goer who had purchased this amazing felted horse head puppet.  Someone did some incredible work on this piece.

We had a great time camping.  Friday night we kept getting molested by this butterfly.  Anyone who was still in the sun was a potential landing spot.  He hung out on Rhonda's head for a while.  And my head, my shoulder, the chair Rhonda's sitting in.  It was a welcome change from mosquitos.

We had great weather with the notable exception of Thursday night.  Starting about 9:00 and lasting at least until midnight, we experienced the biggest thunderstorm I have ever be in the middle of.  It was LOUD!  And when the heavens finally opened up, the downpour was impressive.  Happily, my tent didn't leak a single drop.  I highly recommend Eureka! tents.

This was the packing portion of Monday.  Sheri managed to get everything you see, and a few things not in the picture, all into the van and still left Rhonda with a clear sightline.  Sheri is the master packer!

We had a really good time this year.  My yarn did pretty well in the skein contest (although I didn't win for the best spindle-spun skein, which proves that I'm NOT the only person entering spindle-spun yarn), I bought a rigid-heddle loom, a couple of spindles and some spinning fiber.  I'll have more pictures later this week.

Fiber Expo

The Expo was fun, tiring and sadly, slow.  Saturday was a bit better than Sunday, but overall, it was a slow weekend.  Many of the vendors said the same thing.  Rhonda's and my booth, however, looked great:

Each of us on our own, we wouldn't have had enough to fill a booth.  Together, we put together a nice display.

I hand painted some canvas bags but this was the wrong market for them.  Still, I think they look pretty nice:

Rhonda and Sheri surprised me with the castle I told you about, all nicely painted by Sheri.  The big sheep in the picture is Darby, our mascot:

Finally, most of my sales came from the roving:

I made back my booth fee and a bit more so I guess it was a successful sale.  And we had fun.  (One of the best things in the booth was a bunch of flowers I picked up.  Flowers which Galen is currently trying to eat.)  Rhonda and I have decided to do more shows together.  This show was the last one of the season so the next will be the Michigan Fiber Fiesta next May.  We have lots of time to get felting, spinning, dyeing, painting, shearing and sewing.  I'm looking forward to it.

Gearing up

The Fiber Expo is next weekend.  I have a lot of work ahead of me to get ready for it.  There's some Merino/bamboo and Merino/Tencel roving in the basement waiting for some color and I need to get some spindle boxes completed.  I had been thinking of abandoning my Etsy store but I have all this wool and dyes and fabric that I need to do something with.  Might as well turn it into something useful for my store.  Besides, it gives me more things to play with, which I count as a win.

I filled out an inventory sheet tonight and labeled each piece of roving and yarn for sale.  I'm getting pretty excited about this sale.  I have a friend, Rhonda, splitting the booth with me so we'll have more stuff in our booth, which is always a good thing, and I'll have someone to talk to between customers.  More importantly, I'll have someone to watch the booth when I need to use the bathroom.  Rhonda found this castle dollhouse kind of thing at Michaels that looks a lot like my business logo.  It's one of those bare wood things that you need to paint.  I'm thinking a quick sanding and a coat of black spray paint and then a couple of bud vases on top with single red roses in them to look like flags.  Yeah, it's hard to picture and I don't have a photo yet but I'll be sure to post one when I do.  I'll be taking pictures of our booth so hopefully the castle will be done by then.  I'd really like to have it done by the show.

Aside from the Fiber Expo, I'm still deciding on the sashing to go between the squares in my Halloween quilt.  My sister thinks a dark green would look good but I'll have to audition different colors first.  If I have time this weekend, I'll visit my quilt store to do some shopping.  I'd like to have the top done by the last Wednesday of the month which is when the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild meets.  It's nice to show off what you've made to people who know the work that went into it.

Have a good weekend, people!

Festival leftovers

 

The silk hankies from my dyeing class are now a skein of yarn.  There's not a lot of yardage so I don't really know what I'm going to do with it.  I was going to knit wrist warmers but I don't know if 100% silk will be good for the job.

 

This is what we took home from the silk class.  These are the class samples we spun up.  As soon as the silk cocoons are dry, I'll spin them up and add them to that empty spot on the page.

 

This little skein is the result of my spinning angora class.  If you look closely, you'll see one of the plys changes color.  (The other ply, BTW, is Cormo.)  Each color change is a different breed of rabbit.  There are four but you can only really see three.

I'm hoping to pick raspberries this weekend.  I pretty much missed blueberries so I need something else to fill my freezer for winter.  I also bought a new foot for my sewing machine that'll sew down the bindings on quilts.  I've got a particularly large quilt that needs binding and I'm going to try it out on that first.  Some bindings will be sewn by machine and some by hand.  It just depends on the quilt and my mood at the time.  Blind stitching quilt bindings can be rather time-consuming.

What are your plans for the weekend?

Michigan Fiber Festival: Part 2

My first two classes were soapmaking classes.  There are two ways to make soap, the cold method and the hot method.  The cold method uses natural oils and fats like olive oil, palm oil and coconut oil and mixes them with lye.  Most people with kids and/or pets choose the hot method because it doesn't use lye.  Lye is extremely dangerous.  This is the soap from my first class:

 

I know it doesn't look like much but in about a month, after it cures, it's going to be awesome lemongrass scented soap.

My second class was spinning and dyeing silk.  We dyed silk hankies and silk bells/caps.  We boiled silk cocoons in washing soda and water to soften them and to release the silk.  Did you know you could spin right from a washed and dried cocoon?  I never thought about it before but I guess it makes perfect sense.  These are the hankies and bells I dyed in class:

 

We learned in class that in Japan, silk hankies are used as fiberfill, or batting, for kimonos.  Apparently, some Japanese think we're nuts that we spin the hankies.  In case you're wondering, the hankies are on the left and the bells are on the right.

My third class was spinning angora.  We learned about four breeds of angora rabbit:  French, German, English and Satin.  There's another breed called the Giant but we didn't spin any of that fiber.  Here's a shot of our instructor spinning right from the rabbit:

 

It doesn't look like much fun for the rabbit but apparently they don't mind too much.

The next best thing to classes is shopping:

 

I didn't really buy too much.  I bought some roving:

 

The stuff on the left is 80/20 Merino/silk and the stuff on the right is 50/50 Merino/silk.  I guess this is the year of spinning silk.

I want to play a little bit with natural dyes and so I bought some cochineal and alum and cream of tarter to act as mordants.  I should be able to get a beautiful raspberry pink using alum and cream of tarter:

 

A new foray into natural dyeing requires a book on the subject, and while I'm at it, a history of cochineal:

 

Lastly, the skein contest netted me a first and a second place:

 

I'm sad it's over and I'm already eager for next year.

Michigan Fiber Festival: Part 1

 

I had a great time camping with my three friends!  The weather was great - only one rain storm - and my classes were lots of fun.  My camping kitchen got a lot of compliments:

 

The festival has lots of fiber animals to see, including Humphrey the camel:

 

This was Humphrey's first year at the Festival and he was a big hit.  He was sweet and gentle and according to his person, curious about everything.

 

This little alpaca cria is only 2 or 3 weeks old.  She was so tiny and looked so so soft.

Next door to the alpacas was this very handsome llama:

 

When we weren't shopping or in classes, we were sitting in our camp knitting or spinning:

 

Tomorrow I'll tell more about my classes and the all-important shopping.  Woot!

Camping!

 

Galen's all dejected because Mom's going CAMPING!  I leave today and I'm totally psyched!  I'm taking a couple of soap-making classes, a spinning/dyeing silk class and spinning bunny.  I'm far more excited about the classes and the camping than I am about the actual festival.  It's not like I need to buy anything.

Another camping trip

Next weekend is the Michigan Fiber Festival.  I'll be taking my happy little self to Allegan on Tuesday for some classes and 5 glorious nights of camping.  I'm taking two soap-making classes, spinning & dyeing silk and spinning bunny.  I'm so excited I can hardly stand it.  The weather is supposed to be fairly cooperative with nice, cool temps at night.  I'm working on my menu for the week.

I'm also quilting.  I'm turning squares like this one:

 

Into squares like this:

 

I've got two squares completed.  Ten more to go.