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. :)