Continuous Strand Weaving Videos

I make and sell triangle looms so naturally customers want to know how to USE them. Written directions are great but I learn best by watching someone which is why I started this video series. There's 3parts to this series. Here's the links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOqr7fCtFQ



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-05kOsTSPQ



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnMtnVVP2lQ

Enjoy and happy weaving!

Dawn

For SALE: Commercial Wet Felting Machine

I've decided I need more room in my fiber studio so I'm selling my commercial mini-mill wet felting machine. This thing is awesome but I don't have room for it. It makes a 3x4 wet felted sheet of fiber in a very short period of time and it's way too easy to do it... just lay out the fiber, add soapy water, shut the lid, and turn on the timer. It really is that easy.

Here's a few pics of it:

This is NOT an item that can be shipped. It must be picked up in Axton, VA (an hour south of Roanoke, VA and an hour north of Greensboro, NC). Price is $3,500. You can see some of the items you can make with it besides felted sheets in my album on facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.115758885163564.18806.100001883600456&type=3

For more info please email me.

Sad News

Sad news to report. We found Zap's cria (36 hours old) dead from unknown causes. This is the first cria born on our farm we've lost in the 10 years we've been raising alpacas. It's definitely a sad day here on the farm.

Zap's New Baby

May 20th we FINALLY got our special delivery... Zap had her baby on day 356 and he's a dark silver grey! Here's a few pics of the new cria running around. He's less than 24 hours in these pics.

This is the latest cria who doesn't have a name yet and he's being checked out by Amerikhan All Star.

Right side

The white-ish coloring you see on this cria is actually very light silver grey with tiny little black spots in it. His front lower legs are spotted with black spots and light silver grey fiber.

This is Zap (mom) on the left, the new cria in the front and in the back is Amerikhan All Star.

Now let me explain the story behind WHY this cria is important. Zap, the mother, is a BEW (Blue Eyed White) out of two tuxedo grey alpacas. From what I've read and gathered over the years this is a big deal because it's thought that there are no known BEWs out of two tux greys because of something called the lethal grey gene. Zap is the exception and possibly the only known BEW out of two tux greys. The short version of what this means is that she would be something called homozygous grey which up until now was as mythical as a unicorn. IF Zap really is a homozygous grey it would mean that no matter who she's bred to she will ALWAYS produce a grey offspring. She's 2 for 2 so far. It's going to be interesting to see what crias she gives us over the next few years and I'm still looking into how we can definitively prove she's really the mythical homozygous grey the genetic gurus in the alpaca world have always talked about.

I'd love to hear your comments on the cria or the genetics of the cria. In the meantime... baby needs a name. It has to be an "electric" name. His mother is Zap (she eats electrical cords) and his full brother is High Voltage. His father is Dynomite. So far we've come up with Dynomite's Short Circuit. If you've got any suggestions we'll take them.

Carolina Fiber Fest 2012

Plyed and Dyed booth at the Carolina Fiber Fest 2012

 

I spent all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday having an absolute blast in Raleigh, NC at the Carolina Fiber Fest. I did lots of spinning and finished up a few skeins of yarn.

In this pic I'm spinning some super yummy watermelon colored baby cormo that I ended up plying with lime green. I finished this skein as we closed up the booth on Saturday and Sunday I spent knitting this skein with some lovely kid mohair boucle. I'm making a summer shrug and I'll post pics when it's done.

Hopefully I'll spend the next few days relaxing then I'll reopen the Etsy store with a ton of updates. Next month is the Charlotte Fiber Fest which means no rest for the weary.

New May Yarns

I wanted to show you a quick look at some of the yarns I've spun up in the last week. This is 14 of the 24 skeins I've spun in the last 9 days. These won't be listed in the Etsy shop because they are headed with me to the Carolina Fiber Fest http://www.carolinafiberfest.org/ next weekend.

That fuzzy beige one is a yummy super soft alpaca cria fleece! One the left of it is the darker blue mohair I dyed the other day and on the right is the light blue wensleydale.

Dying Mohair

Ok, so I couldn't help myself! I'm supposed to be spinning like a mad woman to get ready for the Carolina Fiber Festival but the mohair I brought back from the Let's Get Naked Festival was screaming my name. I skirted, washed, and dyed up 5 lbs of it on Tuesday and sat it out to dry. God rewashed it for me with an unexpected rain shower as I was out feeding alpacas so it got to be put back outside on Wednesday for another round of drying.

I spun up a couple skeins of the dyed fiber and a couple skeins of the white (not pictured) as soon as it was dry. You know of course that I spin more of a specialty yarn than a traditional yarn so I really loved lockspinning this mohair!

I'm back from the Let's Get Naked Fiber Fest

Wow what a weekend! To me, this was a working vacation in the mountains. Incredible surroundings at the base of Graves Mountain with vendor tents lined up in a row. I got to sit down and spin in this peaceful environment AND I got to shop for fleece while it was being sheared right off the animals. It doesn't get much better than that for me.

I have to show you pictures of my van when I returned home! It's full of fleece and I couldn't be happier about it. This is taken from the side doors of the mini van. On the left pic is bags of Cormo and  Rambouillet/Finn crosses. The brown bags in the right pic are mohair and there's more of them hiding in there... about 30 lbs worth! On top of the brown bags is a gorgeous CVM fleece. Not in the pictures is 5 cria fleeces, 4 lbs of roving and I'm sure there's something else I forgot about hiding in there.

With just a little over 2 weeks left until Carolina Fiber Festival I had to come home and SPIN like crazy. I'd love more than anything to sit down and process all this fleece but I need more yarn to sell at the events first.

the Let's Get Naked Fiber Fest is definitely one I'll attend again next year!

Fiber Fest THIS Weekend!

Don't forget there's a fun fiber fest this weekend. I'm packing the van and headed to Graves Mountain Lodge to attend. I'll have yarns and fiber goodies available at my vendor booth plus I'll be spinning and weaving throughout the weekend. Visit http://www.gravesmountain.com/toestoclothes.htm for info and http://www.gravesmountain.com for directions.

Join us for some fun, festivities, fiber, and friends!

Rectangle Loom... Another Addiction

Let me just preface this post by saying ...I did NOT need another fiber project right now but as usual I have NO WILL POWER when it comes to the fiber projects that pop into my head whenever they darn well feel like it.

I really wanted a rectangle loom to make some wraps and scarves. I would have preferred to purchase one but the logical side of my brains screams "try it before you buy it". It's not as if I can run to a friends house up the road and borrow one so... I decided to make one. The hubby has given me every power tool known to man and taught me how to use them so it's not as if I didn't already have most of what I needed. A quick trip to the local hardware store and my latest project was in the works.

I did pretty good with the building, drilling, nailing, finishng, but the waiting for the glue to dry pissed me right off. Did I mention I have no patience? I went out to feed animals while the glue dried, ate my own dinner, and finally it was time to begin my first weaving project.

I had a hard time selecting which yarn to use. I have a few events coming up and I really don't want to use up all my latest yarns on a practice project. I finally decided on this merino superwash I had spun and didn't care for much. I love the colors but for some reason this yarn didn't make me go "wow" so it was the perfect practice yarn for the weaving. Mind you, I'm doing this with no directions and it's truely a "wing it" project.

Here's what I've got so far and now that I've got my grandson down for a nap I'm going to go get some more done. I'll post final pics when it's done.

Cormo Lamb Fleece

This is an example of the baby (lamb) cormo fleece I'm working with this week. In the center of the picture is a sample of raw fleece. The raw fleece had to be washed prior to dying it to remove dirt and lanolin. The fleece at the bottom of the picture is what this fleece looked like after I dyed it and let it dry. Then I corespun it into clouds of incredibly soft yarn fluffiness. I just wanted to give a sort of "start to finish" look at what I started with and what the yarn ended up looking like.

I started with about 8 lbs of baby cormo and I've dyed up 6 lbs in various colors. If you're going to be attending any of the fiber events I'm headed to you can definitely expect to see some of these primo skeins there. You won't find them listed in my etsy store since I'm stock piling my handspuns to bring with me to shows. I'll update the store with some of my latest yarns after I get back from Carolina Fiber Fest next month.

The Moody Blues and the new dye pot

The Moody Blues yarn I mentioned in my "Goodbye 2011 paperwork" post. Creating this yarn helped me survive taxes by giving me a fiber fix I desperately needed.

My new dye pot in action...

There's a bit of a peacock color blend in this one. So what's cookin? Baby Cormo and I can not wait for it to dry so I can spin up this incredible fleece. I've skirted, washed, and dyed up 5 lbs of baby Cormo in the last 24 hours. I've got a couple more pounds to go before this batch is done then I'm moving on to some of the alpaca fleeces we sheared last Friday.

Goodbye 2011 Paperwork!!!

I admit it... I hate doing taxes! I procrastinate, stall, stammer, and whine the entire time I am organizing the bookwork for the year ends tax preperation. By organizing I mean finally entering all receipts I've jammed into a basket for the last 12 months, plus the remaining receipts crushed in the bottom of my purse, the ones I can find in the car, and the pile of invoices littering my desk. OMG! I'm most definitely NOT cut out for book work. My brain just doesn't work that way.

As an incentive to hurry up and finish my taxes I purchased 8 lbs of cormo lamb fleece to play with. It arrived squashed in a sealed box and sat unopened next to my desk. It screamed at me, "Hurry up, Dawn! Finish those taxes and dye me 12 different colors!" In frustration at being stuck at the computer imputting every wrinkled up receipt I could find I yelled back at the box, "Shut up, I'm hurrying as fast as I can!".

I have never been one to take medications or drugs of any kind but I imagine my addiction to fiber is bad enough to need some sort of therapy. Between shearing day (I hid all that fleece in the fiber studio) and tax preparation, I had gone 2 whole days without spinning. That's severe punishment for someone like me. The withdrawls were causing me more stress than the taxes. Enough! I decided to card up ONE batt to spin just to ease my pain. I've named that yarn "THE MOODY BLUES". It turned out gorgeous and while it was on the back porch drying the next morning I went back to work on that declining pile of receipts.

Just hours away from finishing the taxes I was feeling the withdrawls again. Next thing I know I had a knife in my hand and the box of cormo lamb fleece had exploded into a white fluffy cloud of awesomeness. Taxes were on the back burner and the dye pot was on the front burner. "Just two colors", I told myself. Then I'll get back to the taxes. Next thing I know it's midnight and I felt like I'd just eaten a Thanksgiving Day feast... satisfied, happy, and ready for a nap. I had cormo and finn in several colors drying on racks in the living room and I'd just finished corespinning another skein of yarn.

I woke up this morning and finally finished the taxes! I hit the print button while doing the Happy Dance. I practically ran to the car, drove to the book keeper's office, and handed over the paperwork saying, "Goodbye 2011 paperwork!"

Now I'm off to play with fiber. The dye pots are fired up. There's cormo being skirted, finn in the wash buckets, and there's 1/2 a bobbin of corespun on the wheel. Life is normal again...

Shearing Day Delay

Today is shearing day! There's a giant green blob on the weather radar screen that's been hovering just 2 counties away for the last 24+ hours. Every year we battle with the threat of rain during shearing season and it appears that this year is not going to be any different.

Rain makes shearing a mess for everyone. The shearers don't like the rain because it's difficult to shear a wet animal and there's delays when driving from farm to farm on a tight schedule. Farm owners don't like the rain for shearing because it's difficult to keep the animals dry and wet fiber needs to dry out after shearing (takes forever!) before it can be stored, plus there's that added rain bonus... delays in the shearers schedule.

At 10:30 last night I got a call from the shearing scheduler to tell me there's been a delay... SURPRISE! Apparently there's a farm that the shearers didn't get to yesterday because of washed out roads and yep, you guessed it....rain.

To all the wonderful people that I told to show up between 8:30 & 9... We've declared a 2 hour delay for shearing day. The weather prediction has changed again.  Now the rain threat is gone for our county so my breathing is back to normal and we'll begin shearing some time around 11am if the shearers don't run into any more delays on their way here.

The good news is that the pulled pork slow cooked all night and even though it's not even 7am I'm ready to eat it. My house smells like dinner. As soon as shearing is done we'll wash up and eat!

Solar Dying Today

Solar Dying... Found a good use for those pretzel stick containers hubby keeps stacking up in the pantry and the empty animal crackers container my grandson finished off. I must remember to get hubby more pretzel sticks because these are awesome for solar dying!

I started the day, after coffee of course, skirting a Finn fleece. I sorted it into several grades and placed each in mesh laundry bags for a nice hot water bath. After the fleece was washed I put it into the solar dying "jars" which already contained boiling water, vinegar, and dye. While the sun dyes my finn fleece I'm going to work on some other fiber projects. :)

My Shawl on Carolina Fiber Fest Website

I'm so excited! MY shawl (A Touch of Heaven) is being featured on the Carolina Fiber Fest website as an example of triangle loom weaving! 

Check it out: http://www.carolinafiberfest.org/craft-continuous-strand-weaving

How cool is that? That made my whole day. :)

Spring Means COLOR!

I love the spring and summer months! I love the warmth and the color coming back to the earth. Lately I've been busy washing, dying, carding, and spinning ALL DAY LONG because it's so darn gorgeous outside. Here's a couple of the yarns I've spun up in the last couple days. They are corespun with some of the new art batts I created to list in the Etsy shop:

I'll be doing a shop update next week with a bunch of the new creations. In the meantime... I am headed back outside to get to work!

Touch of Heaven Shawl

Finished the shawl named "A Touch of Heaven". It was inspired by my next door neighbor, Heaven, who is only 12 years and battling leukemia. I started this shawl right after we helped her mom get her in the car to rush her back to the hospital. Her 3rd round of chemo has been especially hard on her. The orange in the shawl happens to be color of Luekemia Awareness ribbons. :) This shawl contains black finn spun in three different styles, orange lockspun wenslydale, grey and orange huacaya alpaca, lockspun mohair, corespun angora, and it's trimmed out in tail spun suri alpaca.

Scheduled Events

Shearing Day 2012

April 6th, 2012 8am - 1pm This once a year event is full of fiber, friends, food, and lots of hard work! The farm is open to visitors who would like to participate or watch. We will be serving food after the hard work so please let us know you're coming so we can have an accurate head count for food. Dawn@MadaVemiAlpacas.com

Felting The Easy Way Class

April 14th, 2012 10-4 Join me in the fiber studio for this super easy felting class. In this class we'll make a gorgeous scarf and eat lunch while it's felting! Just $75 per person includes lunch. Email Dawn@MadaVemiAlpacas.com for registration or more information. Space is limited.

Let's Get Naked: Toes To Clothes

April 28th-29th, 2012 - 9-4 This fun event combines all aspects of fiber... shearing demos, vendors, classes, and FUN for all ages. I will be teaching spinning classes at this event and have a vendor booth shared with several other alpaca farms called the VA Alpaca Consortium. You can check us out here: http://www.bestalpacasinvirginia.com/ For more info on the event visit the site at: http://www.lgnfiberfestival.com/default.html For more info on Graves Mountain Lodge visit http://www.gravesmountain.com/

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Carolina Fiber Festival

May 18th-20th, 2012 - NC State Fair Grounds in Raleigh, NC. I'll have my handspun yarns, plenty of art batts, felted scarves, and gorgeous woven shawls with us. I'll be spinning in my booth throughout the day so stop by and say hi. http://www.carolinafiberfest.org

Corespinning

May 12th, 2012 - 10am-5pm Bring your wheel and join me in the fiber studio for a day of corespinning. $75 includes lunch. Email Dawn@MadaVemiAlpacas.com for registration or more information. Space is limited.

 

Learn To Dye Fiber

June 2nd,2012 · 10:00am - 4:00pm Join me in the fiber studio for a day to DYE for! $75 per person (includes lunch) You'll learn how to dye yarn, roving and raw fiber using various dyeing methods. Learn how to dye fiber in a crockpot, solar dyeing, rainbow dyeing, and more. Email Dawn@MadaVemiAlpacas.com for registration or more information. Space is limited.

Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival

September 29th-30th, 2012 - 10-6, 10-4 Come enjoy the fiber festival in Berryville, VA. There will be vendors from all over, classes, food, and fun. I'll be teaching a corespinning class on Sunday from 1-4 if you're interested in learning some corespinning techniques. http://www.shenandoahvalleyfiberfestival.com/

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Virginia Fall Fiber Festival

October 6th-7th, 2012 - 10-5,10-4 Join me for this exciting fiber festival in Montpelier Station, VA. I'll be teaching a corespinning class on Sat. http://www.fallfiberfestival.org/

Southeastern Animal Fiber Festival

Oct 26th - 28th 2012-Join us in Ashville, NC for this incredible event! This is one of the largest fiber festivals held on the east coast and Plyed and Dyed will be there selling our products inside the McGough arena on the lower level straight across from the entrance at the far end. http://www.saffsite.org/

Shearing Day April 6th, 2012

The BIG day happens once a year and this year shearing day is scheduled for Friday April 6th. We have a team of 4 guys scheduled to show up first thing in the morning. They move at a fast pace and will most likely be out of here shortly after lunch.

We'll have the alpacas rounded up and waiting for them. All we have to do is hand them a lead line and collect the fleece. Sounds easy enough, doesn't it? Actually, there's alot of work involved and we can always use the extra hands.

Once the fleece is collected it needs to be bagged and tagged with that animal's name. Ideally, it would be incredibly wonderful if I could get it skirted at that time too. In all these years I've never managed to pull that off but I'll keep dreaming about it. :)

After the bagging, tagging, the fleece is taken to the fiber studio to await further processing. By then all of the alpacas will be naked, enjoying the spring breezes, and we'll be ready for some food. We set up a good buffet for the shearers and guests to pig out on after a hard days work. Most likely the shearers will eat and run because they will have to move on to the next farm on the list and with any luck I'll start skirting the fleeces so they can be washed, dyed, and processed into yarns at a later date.

If you're interested in watching or participating in shearing day please let me know so I can keep a head count for food. You can reach me on Facebook, or through our website http://www.madavemialpacas.com or you can give me a call at 434-770-1972 to let me know you're coming. You can also find me on Ravalry as "PlyedandDyed".

The Blog is On...

To blog or not to blog? That was the question. It's time consuming and basically a PITA unless you have something posted worth reading, right? After quite a bit of thought I decided to begin the blog as a way to reach a broad spectrum of people who were interested in fiber arts. I get alot of calls, emails, and PMs, asking how I did something, what I dyed with, what process I used, etc so I'm hoping if I post some of the things I do using this blog it might help someone else out there. It's also going to be a place I can let people know what's going on here in the fiber studio, where we're going to be if you want to see me in person, and possibly some goodies about the alpacas that hang out here with me.