This and that.........

 Yesterday I had enough ice to ice-dye 4 silk & rayon devore shawls.  I love how they turned out. They're now up for sale in my etsy shop and can be found in the Hand-dyed Silk Shawl section of the shop.

I finished plying the handspun I was spinning at the fair. It's a bit thinner than fingering weight. I love how it turned out. Not sure what it will grow up to be yet - I haven't counted how many yards are here yet.

Fire season is getting scarier here.  New fires are sprouting up each and every day, luckily we have enough resources to jump on them quickly. I heard a copter fly low over the house 2 nights ago at 10pm but discounted it being a fire as they stop flying at dark - I figured it was a medical copter. Found out the next morning it was for a fire a few miles up the road from us - luckily it was snuffed out quickly. As I type there's a fast moving fire south of us - not dangerous for us at all unless it really blew up, like some of those fires in CA. The road is closed between here and there as the fire is on both sides of it - this is very close to a fire from a few weeks ago where 3 homes and a few outbuildings were lost. There are level 3 evacuations which means get out, don't stop to gather anything, just get out........the road where my relatives used to live is in that evacuation zone, they're living in MT now. These fires have to be human caused as there's been no lightening here all summer. I feel like I'm holding my breath all the time.........it's tough to live under constant stress of possible forest fires........I don't sleep well, I think about fire all the time. The fall rains can't come soon enough for me but we've still got a month or more to go..........a month is a long time during fire season.........

Baby Blankets

 New baby blankets available for sale in my etsy shop.......



.....based on the Royal Crown Overshot Pattern....

.....they are incredibly soft and yummy feeling......

More painted warps

Warps painted/dyed yesterday now rinsed out and hanging to dry. I hope I can squeeze in time to wind more warps and get them dyed before the weather turns........which won't be too soon for me, I'm tired of this heat and fire season........unfortunately we have at least 5 more weeks of this if we get rain at the end of September..........if...........

Painted warps

 Yesterday I painted/dyed some warps for future weaving......this morning I rinsed, and rinsed, and rinsed them out. Mostly rayon or tencel. The couple of short ones are 5/2 cotton tied in a skein in the perfect size for putting on my inkle loom, I thought it might be fun to inkle weave some painted warps......I'll add some solid colors to them when I warp the inkle loom.  One of the short ones is ikat dyed - holey cow does it ever take a long time to tie those ikat choke ties.....not to mention removing them once it dries.

I had more warps to paint/dye today - here's one just painted ready to have the plastic put over top and rolled up to sit and batch until tomorrow morning when I wash it and the others out. Sometimes I paint a warp for two scarves, like here, sometimes for three scarves. I always vary the wefts so the scarves look a bit different woven up. Me, being in production mode most of the time would love to paint longer warps but I really don't want that many similar colorways for my scarves - I want more one of a kind.

Phew

Phew, the fair is over - had a great time visiting with my spinner peeps and the public. Thank goodness we were in an air conditioned building as it was 100, 106, 111 and 105.....yes it was really 111. The walk to and from my car wasn't too terrible although the car itself was incredibly hot to get into come late afternoon.

This is what I was spinning at the fair - I only spun this bobbin and got a bit into the second bobbin. I'm spinning fairly thin and these bobbins will hold around 8oz. This is from the rolags I made recently on my blending board.  So, what do I do today after taking down our fair display but come home and pull out the wheel and get back to spinning. I'm pretty worn out from this week and just sitting at home doing not much of anything is awfully inviting.........with the air conditioner running and the ceiling fan going overhead.

Now it's time to get back to weaving. I've also got to get to work on painting warps, they're all wound ready to go. Mid week it might be ok to work outside in the mornings, mid 90's are forecast for the high, but later in the week we get back to triple digits. I can't wait for cool rainy fall weather.

Not the traditional overshot

This baby blanket warp is not the traditional colonial overshot - the border is but using stripes in the warp is not. There will be this large border area on each end of the blanket. I love the look. This afternoon I got this warp tied on and started weaving, then it was just too danged hot to continue weaving, just got enough done to see how it will look.

Sunrise and other tidbits

 Sunrise this morning was spectacular although our trees are growing too much and obstructing the view of Mt Sexton. You'd think there were a new fire in the area with those colors in the sky.

 Saturday we put up my spinning group's fair display, the fair opens tomorrow. None of the finished items or skeins are in the fair for judging, they're for display only. The fleeces will be judged tomorrow morning and ribbons awarded. For the next 4 days we'll all be sitting in a big circle in front of this display spinning, carding, knitting, felting, whatever. It's always a great time visiting with the public........and each other. It's hard to believe that we can sit there for 4 days and never run out of anything to talk about.  Unfortunately tomorrow looks to be the only day below 100, forecast to 'only' be 99 tomorrow - the following three days will be anywhere from 105-108. We're in an air conditioned building but we have to walk back and forth from our cars to get there which will be a killer come afternoon. I wonder how this heat will affect fair goers.

 When I met friend Linda at the fairgrounds today (to add the tablecloth I forgot to bring on Saturday) she brought me some of her home grown tomatoes. On the way home I stopped at the Ft Vannoy Farm Market to pick up other veggies. I made one of my favorite kinds of sandwiches, fresh tomatoes, banana peppers and fresh sweet onion. Ft Vannoy has the best corn around here - it's still not as sweet as corn back east but it's pretty danged good - at least it's not field corn to feed the pigs, as my father would call the rest of the corn here. We'll be having fresh corn tonight with a tomato basil salad (my homegrown basil) and northwest salmon.

It would have been perfect if the farm had the hot banana peppers but they only had sweet so I added hot pickles to my sandwich. Yep, I know this would kill some people's stomach's but not mine. My Dad used to make sandwiches like this - I come by it naturally.

Baby blankets

Baby blanket warp going on the loom - will have overshot borders for a girl blanket, a boy blanket and a few that could go either way.

We've been lucky so far this fire season but now fires are popping up all over the region. Luckily they've jumped on them quickly but Friday evening 3 homes and 4 outbuildings lost in the fire 20 or so miles south of us.........a human caused fire, perp already in jail but probably won't stay there for long since no one in our county wants to pay for law enforcement.  Sore subject for me - lowest tax rate in the state, we pay 25% of what most counties pay - these morons in my county vote down any taxes for services. Personally I have never understood why we get to vote on things like law enforcement - that should be a given and we shouldn't have the choice of voting it down just because we don't want to pay any taxes.  We also no longer have a county library system - thank goodness a group finally got together to take over the libraries and make them a community library funded by donations. Folks like us donate each year but everyone can get a library card whether they donate or not which means those same morons that vote down having a library now get library benefits for free. I think being inside in this 100+ degree weather is making me grumpy so enough of my ranting because I could go on and on about the craziness in this county.........



More rolags

I spent more time playing with my blending board. Here are more little piles of rolags ready for spinning - there are 4 identical coiled up rolags in each pile. Now I really must get back to doing the things I'm supposed/need to be doing........

New towels for sale

Newly woven and hemmed towels for sale in my etsy shop

There are many colors in the warp - mauve, pink, purple, off white, light turquoise, mint, teal and coral. I used a dusty pink for the weft here......

.........a deep mauve for the weft here.......

.......and a light mauve for the weft here

Life is good..........

A bit of weaving on the coast - I finished up the false damask towel warp (now awaiting washing and hemming) and put on another cottolin warp in a 2 block twill pattern.......off white warp, oatmeal weft. If my oatmeal cottolin lasts all towels will be woven using it, if not I'll choose another color to finish up the warp. I love neutral elegant but kitchen worthy towels and have nothing neutral for sale at the moment. Will get back to weaving on this warp next time on the coast.

Bailey sure enjoyed the temps in the 60's & low 70's on the coast - what a relief from the weather here in the valley which will be back up in the triple digits in a day or so - ack. I keep telling myself "at least there's no humidity" but it really doesn't help when it gets up over 100.

Life is good

Love this shawl

Here's the shawl that was blocked yesterday - I love it. I spun the yarn out of some mystery fiber I received in a raffle basket at a conference. This will make a lovely spring shawl but I think if I wore it over brown it would work for autumn too. I might have to knit this pattern again in the not too distant future..........but first back to mukluk knitting for holiday gifts........

Blending board fun

This afternoon instead of doing things I should be doing I decided to play with my blending board. I'm going to stop beating myself up for not focusing on my business all the time, it's the time to do more playing with less guilt involved.

I pulled out a bit of roving bits & bobs and separated them into color family piles

I put together an autumn color scheme including some bamboo, glitz and silk sari bits

Then I put together the blues, greens and purples along with bamboo and glitz

I decided to play with the blues, greens and purples randomly putting them on the board and then pulling off the rolags for future spinning

And this is as far as I got - there are 9 piles of rolags - 4 rolags in each pile/color order. This is approximately 1/2 pound. I still have a huge pile of roving on the floor waiting to be finished up which will probably make around 1 pound total of this colorway. Can't wait to start spinning it.

Pulling the rolags off did 'smart' my right thumb to my wrist. Recently I had to lay off knitting for a few weeks to let it recover but this has made it flare up again.  I've got to be more wary of repetitive tasks.

Shawl spending time on the deck.......

This morning I finally got around to blocking the last shawl I knit out of my handspun. It's now spending time on the deck until it's totally dry.........which won't take long in 10% humidity, 90+ degree weather.........still thankful every single day that we no longer live on the east coast where we were born and grew up, that humidity was a killer.......of course the trade off is living in an area of high fire danger since it doesn't rain here for many months at a time. 

And yes, you're right I have not been complaining about fire season, yet, it started a couple months ago and will be for at least a couple more months. A couple of ODF copters flew over the house heading west yesterday afternoon, no buckets (for water) though, not sure where they were heading as I haven't heard of a fire in that direction.  I hate fire season..........

Knittin'....

Been knitting away the past couple weeks on Mukluk slippers for gifts (Pure & Simple Mukluk pattern). Very fun to knit and very comfy on the feet. These and others knit so far are out of acrylic chunky yarn for easy care for those who do not enjoy hand washing......enjoy is putting it lightly, detest and never wash is more like it if they had to hand wash 100% wool.