Blank Slates

Don't you just love a blank slate?  One of the things I love most about my job is every day I start with a blank slate.  There is nothing better than taking raw fleece washing it, dying it, and spinning it. Each day brings new tactile experiences, new fibers, new colors. It excites me to no end when I am immersed in a day of dyeing yarns and fibers.  

Over the years, I have reflected on the colors I choose to dye, as well as how well colors turn out each day I dye.  When my mood is bright and cheery, the colors tend to reflect that as do dark and dreary, wild and funky, and dull and brain-dead.  The best colors come from bright, cheery, wild, and/or funky day. On the other types of days, well, let's just say it is a great thing I keep excellent notes on repeatable colors and color combos ;)

In all seriousness, in the past, I have held quite a few different types of jobs, some I enjoyed, some I hated, & a few I was indifferent to. Working with fiber is the first thing I have truly been passionate about and I hope it doesn't change anytime soon!

 

One of my blank slates. 

Buddy Sock Yarn in color 'Orchidea'. 

Picked cloud of mohair in the new colorway 'Poseidon'. 

The mohair being spun and finally plied. 

The first article.

In this weeks news...

How to card tweed yarn by none other than Stephanie Stratton, aka me, was published is the American Livestock Magazine!  Not sure if this makes me an author, but sure does feel good! 

The search is finally over for a cowichan style spinning wheel!  Cowichan wheels were traditionally used in British Columbia to spin a thick single ply yarn for traditional sweaters. The new addition to the spinning wheel herd is named Mildred and we are fast becoming good friends!

A copy of the article with the actual batt and yarn used to write said article. 

Mildred in all her glory with our first spinning venture together.

Our second spinning collaboration, a bundle of Corriedale wool bulky spun and plied back on itself. 

It did not take too terribly long to decide what the Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy wanted to be.  There is a longing in the air for stable warm temperatures that do not fluctuate at the drop of a fine cat hair in our neck of the woods.  If you live in Kentucky, you so get what I am trying to say and for those who do not,  in a few short days we have gone from 60 to 19 temperature wise.

So to not beat around the bush, why not shoot for thoughts of Farmer's Markets & long walks on sandy beaches with the sun shining on your back.  And that is why I chose the Ilene bag for my first Hempathy knitting project.

While the pattern is fairly straight forward, I did a wee bit of tweaking.  When knitting the base rectangle, I added several rows so that the edge would be tidier when picking up the side stitches.  What I will do next time is knit a few more rounds after picking up the stitches in blue as I think it might look a little better.  Not saying it isn't cute as it is, I just like to tweak things a little here and there:)

The color was then switched to the two pretty little green chartreuse balls of Hempathy.  As I had never knit an expanding market bag before, I opted to knit a couple of extra rounds in the mesh pattern.    Once happy with the length, the color was changed back to the original blue and a quick switch of the needles for a 1x1 rib which was knit to my desired length after which I followed the pattern to a tee;)

From the photos, it should be quite visible that extra rounds were not necessary, but I opted to err on the side of caution.  To give you a good idea of what I can cram in this bag.... Stuffed with in are: 2 lbs of wool roving, 6 skeins of Noro Kureyon, 1 skein of Noro Silk Garden, 2 huge skeins of handspun yarn (1 pounds worth) and a couple of felted flowers.  Yes, this bag is that huge!!  And the kicker.... I could have crammed in so much more!!!

When switching colors, I knit with the end of the old ball and the beginning of the new ball for a short length of time.  The mesh lace hid this very well.

Next time, I will pay more attention to where the 1x1 rib is placed for the handles.  Would have liked this much better if the join could have been kitchnered.

One ball of blue

Two balls of chartreuse.

And Fred did a great job of over seeing my knitting!

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!

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.

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.

Tour de Fleece 2012

The fun has come and gone from the Tour de Fleece... sigh... I miss it so.  In the event, you do not know what the 'Tour de Fleece' is, it is a group of fabulous crafty people on Ravelry who spin yarn during the Tour de France.  There are prizes, fabulous ideas and fantastically crafty and speedy spinners who share their yarns with everyone.  I find it to be very inspirational.  Had a fun time this year on team 'Breakaway' which is the hot spot for art yarns.  With out further ado, here are my yarns.....

One of my favorite yarns from the tour.  It is also one of the last yarns I spun.

This one is from a batt I traded for from Cobblestone Creek Farm.  LOVE IT!


From my Wicked batt



Sometimes my favorite yarns come from batts that are often overlooked at festival.  This batt hung out in my booth for the entirety of the 2011 Festival seasons.  So glad no one bought as I truly loved spinning it and adore how it turned out:)


The very last of my hand painted combed top was finished during the Tour.


Also spun up a quick little sample of my cloud for the shop during the tour:)  I also did a bit of spinning on my Bosworth spindle which I didn't finish in time for the tour to finish, but will post a picture of it soon!  All in all, I had an absolute blast as always for this years tour de fleece.  My only regret is that we have to wait for next year for the camaraderie to begin again!

Mid-Ohio Fiber Fair

The week end of August 20-21 found the LunabudKnits booth at the Mid-Ohio Fiber Fair in Newark Ohio.  The setting was absolutely wonderful.  All of the vendors were indoors in the Reese Center on OSU's/Central Ohio Tech Campus; completely air conditioned and out of the rain!

It just wouldn't be right if our fun little handpainted Louet S17 wasn't there to say hello to everyone:)  Of course it is cushioned with a few of the art batts!

For a first year festival, there were a ton of great vendors there as well as a very good little crowd.  I had a ton of fun getting to know the customers, other vendors and playing with the Strauch Mad Batt'r as a demonstration.

It was pure joy to meet the gals from the Ohio Natural Fiber Network.  I especially had fun with the girls from That'll do Farm picking out colors, fibers and things that glitter for their first go round of art batts!  What fun!!

The tidy side of my booth.

The messy side of the booth.  One would think by now, I would have learned to hide my hot pink bins BEFORE taking the picture!

Spun and knit sample of the Baby Camel and Merino blend.

Handspun yarns.

A few of the new hand dyed colorways from left to right:  Acerbitas(dark reds), Orsus (blues and purples), Chronos(browns/grey), Thanatos(purple/black), Euryale(gold, blues, browns, touches of green, etc)

2011 Tour de Fleece - Project #5

Like project #4, I think project #5 will be hanging out on my counter top for a little while so that as the abbominal snow man of Bugs Bunny fame says, I can pet it & hug it & squeeze it & call it George. I don't just like to tempt; I absolutely love when I am tempted by other indy artists' creations as well. Think this one came from Chimera on Etsy. Sorry to say it took me close to a year to spin it up! 100% Merino wool, 4 ounces & 300 yards.

Mythic Proportions

I decided I needed to change it up a little to not only liven up the Etsy side of the business, but to also make life a little easier. So I am introducing new colorways of mythic proportions!  You can find the new colors here:  http://LunabudKnits.etsy.com

The name sake of each new colorway is from Classic Greek or Roman Mythology or simple words or phrases. To find the meaning you can do a simple word search on the internet using a greek or or latin dictionary.  Of course, you could always knit or weave along in blissful ignorance of the colorway's name, but where is the fun in that!?!

And we are now dating our yarn so that dye lots can be more easily identified!  For example:  4/11 means the yarn was dyed on April of 2011.  Yarns dyed prior to 4/11 will not be dated.  Although the date might be the same, I would like to remind you that hand dyed yarn can vary greatly from skein to skein.  Needless to say, if you have a large project in mind for the yarn, I recommend alternating the skeins every other row;)

Hydra

Verte

Vae

Caelestis

Gleba

Acerbitas

Caelestis

Gleba

Orsus

As a side note:  I would like to point out to my Mom & Dad .... See, I am FINALLY making good use of the 2 years in Highschool of Latin & in College 1 semester each of Latin & Greek terminology.  You know the 'dead languages' all thought I would have absolutely no use for?