SAFF

SAFF was awesome!  Made a ton of new fiber friends, hugs'n'kisses with old friends and sold a little fluff.  What more can a gal ask for?  The threat of Sandy scared a few folks off, but all in all, it was fabulous week end.

Shot out the window along i-75

Another pretty view along 

I always knot SAFF is just a wee bit further down the road when I see this view.

My LunabudKnits booth

My booth neighbors Renee & Esther lugging loot in my new sheep bags:)

My little friend spun some yarn with me most of the week end.

Linda got to hold the giant angora bun-bun.

Some of my hand dyed wool on the 'Wool Girl'.

What kept me busy during SAFF... Dizing roving like a mad woman!

Renee tail spinning.

The sweet and lovely Tunis sheep.

Carved pumpkins at Grove Park overlooking Asheville.  We dined on the patio and had a delicious meal with great friends:)

Southern Indiana FiberArts Festival SIFAF

It has come and gone, one of my favorite fall festivals of the year, Southern Indiana FiberArts Festival in Corydon, IN.  While, definitely not the largest festival I vend at, it is one of those charming festivals where you can talk to and get to know your customers as well as fellow vendors.

The town of Corydon is a charming little bedroom community and has a rich history as Indiana's first state capital.  Every year, I book a room at the Kintner House  which is within walking distance from the fair grounds.  Breakfast is served piping hot from the oven at specific times and all occupants sit at the huge dining room table.  Makes for great conversation where you meet many new people and share snippets of your life.

My booth set up this year for 2012

Dinner at 'The Real Enchilada #2'

On the drive to set up on Thursday.

Beautiful fall colors of Indiana in October

A stack of batts at the festival

My handspun yarns

This is my favorite batt from my mad carding sessions during the festival.

My huge score from Pam of Rooster Run Farm!

Little pot that could....

Little pot that could.... poach an egg that is!  This was one of the fabulous finds from way back in the corner of Granny's kitchen cabinet.  Pretty sure this little pot which barely fits on the small stovetop burner is made of aluminum.  The bits are easily bent out of shape and just as easily bent back.

Take off the lid and insert to add a bit of water in the bottom pan.

Dribble a wee bit of oil into the egg insert and once it warms up, drop in your egg.

It is hard to resist taking a peek, but as you can see here, it starts by steaming the edges of whites and works it's way to the center.

Depending on how well you want your egg cooked, the center can be a warm creamy mess that is readily sopped up with toast or cook it hard.  Probably not the contraption a huge family would get along well with.  That makes it perfect for me in the mornings.  Bill is usually up early and I sleep in a little, so I can enjoy starting my day with a little egg on my face;)

Felted Wool Pebbles Tutorial

These three little guys started it all.  After washing then reaching into the pockets of several pair of jeans on wash day and pulling out cute little felted grains, I thought, 'I so need to make more of these and totally on purpose and totally bigger!!'

So I have spent some time working them out and find that really anything goes when it comes to felting in the wash.  This is so simple and the end results are so fun that for a change..... I actually look forward to doing the wash.

Here is a simple pictorial on how to make felt balls in the wash.  My washer is set to run on a GENTLE cold cycle and I don't change to a warm or hot setting to get the little pebbles.  Of course, if you wanted to use a warm or hot setting to your wash, I bet they would felt faster.  Use your regular washing detergent and load  your machine as normal adding these little steps.....

Have a few little balls of wound roving or picked fluff ready.  One pair of jeans will do 2 pebbles.

As you put in your jeans in the wash, fill each front pocket with a tangerine or tennis ball size of fluff.  Make sure they are stuffed to the bottom of your pocket and if you have smaller pockets fold the jeans in half with the front, stuffed pockets on the inside.  Oh and do not use the little pocket on the front; for some reason fiber does not like to felt in there.

After a GENTLE cycle in the wash, you will have something similar to the ball of fluff above.  Notice that you can still see the seams where it was wrapped.  Do not worry and put your little compact ball back in the jeans pocket and toss your load of laundry in the dryer as normal.

When your jeans are dry, you will have a lovely round pebble!  Note, I have had a couple of pebbles come out of their pockets in the dryer, and the end result was the same.  A lovely felted pebble:)

From left to right or top to bottom:  Ball of fluff, out of the wash and completely felted.

The end result, fun little felted wool pebbles!  Notice the little purple tape yarn in one pebble!  It is a nylon yarn and the I had no idea it was in the pocket when it went through the wash.  Love that it is completely attached to the pebble!  Wool and angora goat locks felt great as well.  They felt slower than the other fibers so are a great way to add texture! 

A Tangled Yarn

Knit Night at the yarn shop is totally AWESOME!  This week, we had 15 people in the little shop all at one time!  10 regulars and 5 new faces.  As luck would have it, there were enough sitting places for everyone. 

Often, I am asked if it brings in sales.  To be honest, not a whole bunch.  But, Knit Night is not about making money.  It is about camaraderie, the joy of textiles and supporting one another in our fiber pursuits.  And I  LOVE IT!

Fred cuddles on the couch between knitters.  He would have preferred to sit on the pattern of the knitter on the right!

Regular feet mixed with new feet:)

 

We also had the new Juniper Moon Yarn arrive on Monday.  Gorgeous stuff!!!

 

 

A few of the rovings I made in the carding class over the week end.

Georgia Alpaca & Fiber Festival

Yes!  Those are cupcakes with adorable little knit cupcake decorations made of icing adorning their sweet pink tops!  When you see these in the entry way of a Festival you know for sure you have arrived at the place to be for a fun filled fiber weekend!

The Georgia Alpaca and Fiber Festival was a great first year festival.  They had contacted me several months prior about teaching a few classes over the course of the week end.  I am so glad I went  And as always, as things often go with me, I do have a little story to go along with!!

The day before leaving my throat was a wee bit sore and scratchy.  Needless to say, upon waking, I had a full fledged head cold.  You know, the snotty nosed, sniffly, watery eye, throat so scratchy it hurt to swallow.  Yep, one of those.  

A trip to the pharmacy later, I was stocked up on cough drops, pain killers & cold meds.  Honestly, it really was not as bad as it sounds.  The congestion was the worst and being completely wiped at the end of the day was no fun, but as far as sickness goes it was fairly smooth going:)  Unfortunately, it did not let up until after the very last workshop I gave!

And that brings us to the classes.  Had an absolute blast being the instructor for 3 classes:  Coming Unspun about knitting with fibers; the Science of Carding which is about carding smooth batts, art batts and making roving; the Fundamentals of Dyeing where we tackle not one, but 3 different methods of dying! 

Have to admit, I hated for the Festival to end.  The committee members were absolutely awesome and just so very wonderful.  Attendees were so very kind and a really joy to share knowledge with.  And there was a great selection of lovely fibers to choose from!  How could anyone want the week end to be over, even if they had a nasty little head cold!?!

Welcome meeting with some fabulous door prizes!

This batt was carded completely with teeswater locks!  Is that not cool or what?

Carding alpaca

Some merino about to head through the carder after the alpaca.

Look who made the most beautiful ball of roving ever! And I'm not kidding, her roving was the most perfectly made rope I have ever seen in one of my classes!

Wish I had remembered to take pics of my other classes, but I was a bit more concerned with keeping my germs to myself:)  Oh well, next time!

Location:Georgia Alpaca & Fiber Fest

The little bag that kept on giving.

During the Ravellenic games, I knit and felted this little bag.  It was one of those quick and easy little projects that made up for some lovely mindless knitting as I watched the Olympics.  (Looks over should as she really is not sure that it is OK to reference knitting and the Olympics in the same paragraph or post for that matter!)      

A bit later this summer, I thought it would be nice to line the little bag and put a zipper in it.  Well, to be honest those thoughts came after I thought......  Hmmmm wouldn't it be nice to embroider a couple of little flowers on the bag.  

The stitching was done with embroidery thread, handspun yarns and several all wool fingering weight yarns.  Have to say it was a very fun and enjoyable little project that kept on giving even when I thought it was finished:)

A few months ago, several skeins of yarn were returned to the shop.  The lady was a smoker and the skeins reeked to high heaven of smoke.  I definitely could not resell them smelling like that, so instead, I took them home and let them air out for a month or more.  Even though they no longer were stinky-smokey, I still couldn't sell them to an unsuspecting customers.  Instead, I am knitting up a little entrelac scarf to use as a shop sample.  While initially I was not very thrilled with the return of smokey yarn, I have to say knitting this little scarf more than makes up for it!

Remember these from a few posts back?  As you can see below, they have spun up into some lovely lace weight yarn.  I have a few chunks of the turquoise bits left to do and then the little pile will be complete and I can find a project for them.

All of the little bits of lace weight in a pile.  Each one was spun on my Bosworth Spindle from the Shipwreck batch of handcrafted spindles.

Batts in the Belfry

This past spring, I had a great time collaborating with Sheila Bosworth of Journey Wheel.  They had a new 'Special Spindle' made of Macassar Ebony and needed batts to go along with it.  We worked out a color and went from there.


Luckily, I did not have to think very hard!  A few weeks earlier, I had visions of a new line of smooth batts for spinners.  Not layered like my spin me batts, but smooth with streaks of glistening bamboo.  The one I had just finished spinning was a golden amber color, so with a little tweeking to the recipe, the Jewelz Batts were born!  Jewelz batts are a 50/50 blend of merino and bamboo with an extra healthy dash of angelina added for good measure.


What do you think?

Amethyst

Azurite

Garnet

This is a photo from Sheila of the spindles with one of the first batts produced.  Really, Really, REALLY wish I had gotten one of these.  They are absolutely gorgeous spindles!!

Yes, I think I am back.