Flock & Flea

Friday morning I left at the break of dawn for Flock & Flea (as Sam and I call it) - proper name is OFFF.....Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival. Several carloads of fiber friends from this area drove up to Canby for the 3 day festival. Friday my vanload's first stop was Bronx Bagels in Sutherlin for breakfast, then Trader Joe's in Eugene for goodies for the weekend. Then up to Bridgeport Village on the south side of Portland for shopping at The Container Store, Crate & Barrel and various other stores. I told my friends no way was I going in Origins.......they went looking for me, couldn't find me because I was in Origins finding products to make my skin look like it did 30 years ago!

Friday night found 14 of us at the Sushi Track in Wilsonville for dinner - what great fun! Saturday morning we had to do the traditional ferry ride across the Willamette River from Wilsonville to Canby (very small very - 6 car max) to spend the day at the festival. Each year there are more booths to see and spend money at. I didn't spend much this year - some goodies I found are in the bottom picture. I didn't need the tote but I just couldn't resist at a bargain price. Saturday night found us at a tiny little Thai restaurant - this time 17 of us, hopefully we weren't too loud for the handful of tables of other diners.

Sunday morning it was back to the festival until mid-day......we then headed south to the Corvallis Fall Festival where I found these two glass pieces, I just can't resist gingko leaves. Then to Trader Joe's again for groceries and a case of wine and home.

What a fun and exhausting 3 days it was. I really wasn't going this year to buy so the best part was having fun with all my fiber peeps, those that went up from here and those from other parts of the state, Washington and British Columbia that I only see at conferences and festivals. What a great weekend of fiber bonding it was.

Bamboo scarf warp & mp3

Here's the same scarf warp I posted yesterday only this scarf I'm using a navy weft instead of black. Thought I'd add to the picture my new little mp3 player that Sam surprised me with last week. It's not the kind of thing I'd usually use but I thought it would be great for listening to podcasts while weaving. So far I've listened to two of the Weavecasts, I'm starting with the newest ones moving back in time. Today was on computers & weaving - it was great, especially since I'm thinking about buying an AVL 24 harness compu-dobby loom in the not too distant future, I hope. So far I've learned how to download the weavecasts off the site, Weavecast a part of Weavezine, and load onto the player......eventually I'll have to learn how to put music on it. Sam put a few albums on so I rocked to Foriegner after the weavecast.

Back to my first love..........

It's time to start spending more time at the loom, weaving is my first love. The dyeing is great fun but sitting at the loom with feet dancing on the treadles and the shuttle flying to and fro is what makes my heart sing. I put one of my painted warps on the loom today and got the first scarf woven (above). It's Bambu 7 warp & weft. This first scarf I'm using a black weft, the second scarf I'll use a navy weft. The weave structure is an advancing twill.

These 3 scarves are from the rayon chenille warp I just cut off the loom yesterday and washed last night. I wish pictures could convey how soft & yummy chenille feels. I still have to twist the fringes - those will wait for a time when I need a break from something else. I did get weft ends trimmed and pulled the waste yarn out of the fringe today.

Dye Day Results

Here are some results from yesterday's dye day. Above is some Falkland roving. I decided to play with semi-solid dyeing yesterday - I really love the way the two left rovings turned out - the top makes me think of buttercream. The bottom left was supposed to be a different color (I've dyed it before) but who knows what happened in the steamer - it came out very different but I love it.

Here are some of the devore silk scarves I dyed. Another whoops in dyeing process here. I usually dye them using fiber reactive dyes - much more vibrant results. This time I was thinking silk so used the acid dyes but I forgot that these are silk and rayon. So, the dye did not take on the rayon. Not the effect I was looking for but beautiful just the same. I also dyed two shawls and some 100% silk scarves.

These are two sock blocks I dyed using up leftover dyes in the squirt bottles. I'm going to start a pair of socks using the autumn color one very soon - will be very fun to see how the socks knit up.

I did finish up a chenille scarf warp today, need to get them cut off the loom and washed, will post a picture once that's done.

Temps are very high here today and will continue for most of the week. Two very scary fires burning, one in Ashland, the other in Medford. I checked on some Ashland friends and they're doing fine but am concerned about a fellow weaver who lives in the area of the Medford fire. Smoke from those fires is in the air over here already. The rains can't come too soon for me this year.

Falkland Hand-dyed Roving

Here are pix of the Falkland roving I dyed yesterday. Various amounts of each are available for purchase. I have a little piece of the center bottom roving (loden colorway) to spin up as an example. The bottom left is my harvest colorway that I spun and knit the convertible sox out of in blue face leicester. Tomorrow will probaby be another dye day, the rest of the falkland, some silk scarves and a couple of sock blocks.

I so enjoy playing with dyes, I'm getting good at predicting color outcome except the bottom center roving - it looks nothing like what I expected. When I painted the dye on it was 8" of forest green alternating with 3" of dusty purple - it's like the colors did something strange on their own in the steamer!

Canine Angels Dog Walk

We are just back home from the Canine Angels Dog Walk in Grants Pass. Such a worthy cause to make a donation to. We got there around 8:30 to register to walk around Reinhart Volunteer Park (formerly All Sports Park). It's a beautiful park with a foot bridge crossing the Rogue River. We then saw a duck herding demonstration followed by JD Platt and his world famous K9 Kings doing tricks and frisbee retrieving (he was on that reality tv show Greatest American Dog, we don't watch reality tv but did catch one of these episodes because it was dogs). With our donation we got a few goodies and a couple raffle tickets. And wouldn't you know it - we put both our tickets in for the grand prize, a dog bed filled with goodies, and we won! Bailey is beside himself sitting in his new bed surrounded by his loot.........and napping now after such an exciting morning. He met Pumpkin, one of the canine angels in training, and new friends Gracie & Jilly Jean.

New Roving..............Value of Money, not related

This is the merino roving I dyed on Monday - the light dusty peach and yellow are the only braids of those colors, they were from playing with leftover dyes. The others are repeatable colorways - 4 pounds dyed Monday of each color. These will be going up in the etsy shop for sale shortly.

On another note - how do you teach a dog the value of money??? Today we bought a cute little stuffed pig dog toy, it lastest maybe an hour.......triage at the ER for dog toys loaded it right on the stretcher and pulled the sheet over it's head, no amount of stitching will revive it. So, why do some toys die a painful death a short time after being adopted and others last years??? The lambie has been around for as long as we've had Bailey now, he was pretty yucky and went through the washer & dryer recently and is back to looking somewhat decent. And then there's the tiny little lamb Bailey's foster mom gave him - no legs anymore but he's still around too. Bailey is a little depressed this evening after losing his new friend the pig..........maybe next time he'll be a little gentler so he can play with the new toy a bit longer before ripping it's guts out!

Chenille Scarves

Here are the 3 rayon chenille scarves that came off the loom yesterday, got them washed, now they need the fringes twisted. It's too bad one can't tell how yummy they feel from pictures. Am considering getting another chenille warp on the loom today - there's nothing like quick warping and weaving for instant gratification.....then I'll go back to longer warps for towels and more painted warps for scarves I have waiting to be woven.

Convertible Mittens

Last night I got the first convertible mitten finished out of my handspun blue face leicester in my Harvest colorway. I still need to sew on a button that the little loop hooks over for when I want the mitten top back so I can use my fingers. The palm part is a bit bigger than I would have thought but they fit just fine. I'll get started on the second one right away. I was thinking I need to spin more of this colorway for a hat & scarf but now have decided rather than both I'd make a wider scarf that I could pull up over my head - that way there's no hat head! Will probably weave it rather than knit it. Guess that will have to be the next roving to be spun so I have the scarf to wear this winter. Oh, forgot - the book this pattern came from is Not Just More Socks by Sandi Rosner. It's a pattern book for using self-striping commercial sock yarns for items other than socks, some very cute projects.

New handpainted roving for sale

Here are some pix of the roving dyed at the end of last week - some colors are limited, others I have up to 4 pounds of at the moment. Above are pictures of the blue face leicester. Below are pictures of wensleydale. Worked on cleaning up the loom room, piles were everywhere...roving and such. After clearing some floor space I warped up the loom with 8 yards of rayon chenille for three scarves in teal and olive, first scarf woven, hopefully will get loom time tomorrow to finish up that warp so another can go right on.

Yo's handspun

Yolanda just sent me the pictures of her handspun from my hand-dyed roving in the Rainbow colorway which she plyed with some Ashland Bay Merino, Blue. I just dyed more of the Rainbow colorway in Blue Face Leicester this time - just put more up for sale in my etsy shop. And the Ashland Bay rovings are available in my other etsy shop. I love seeing pictures like this and hope others enjoy looking at them. When I spun some of the Rainbow colorway I plyed it on itself and knit some socks out of it - so very different looking. The post showing my socks is October 8, 2008. I love Yolanda's version plying it with blue - it's lovely.

Katie's handspun

This is Katie's handspun from some of my hand-dyed roving. Katie is a newer spinner, she took my drop spindle class earlier in the year and then a wheel class at Black Sheep Gathering in June. I think she's doing great!! It's so hard to imagine what a roving will look like when spun up - I think this one turned out beautiful. This particular roving was a dye day surprise - I painted the roving using the leftover dyes in squirt bottles at the end of the day. There were only two braids - both sold. I wish I were able to spin up samples of every single colorway but I just don't have the time, when I get some spun up I include them in the listing in my etsy shop. Thank you Katie for bringing your skein by yesterday to show me!!

What I've been up to.......

Here's what I've been up to the past 2 days - dyeing roving - around 30 pounds of it. Above there's a bit of superwash merino for Lynne (white with black & red spots) in the Abalone colorway (formerly dalmation until I saw it spun up). The rest is all Blue Face Leicester.
Below is a bit more of the Blue Face Leicester and the rest is all Wensleydale. I love the luster of the Wensleydale - sure wish it were a softer next-to-the-skin wool. It's great for rugs, wall hangings, saddle blankets, people blankets and socks - makes great socks......would probably be good for a vest since that's not right up against the skin.