Fall Fiber Festival of VA '08 and more!

by Caroline and Kathleen



I've been so eager for this vacation! Both a chance to visit with my sister and her DH and to return to the Fall Fiber Festival. Last year was the first time Kathleen and I went and it was such a good time, so I was really looking forward to this year. (And I was excited to have Caroline visit! I really enjoy sharing the festival with her. We used to go to a music festival in VT every summer back when I lived in the Northeast. Now I'm in VA and we have the fiber festival!) We had another beautiful weekend, although thankfully, a little cooler than last year. (And a lot less dust!) I didn't sign up for any workshops; I had decided to dedicate Saturday to the Sheepdog Trials. What an amazing animal the border collie is; so eager to be out there that they are turning in circles waiting for their people to catch up to them. They look like they are in motion even when they are standing still! I was able to ask questions as I watched and learned a lot about the trials and the dogs. I think you can click to make bigger. (I had a workshop on Saturday morning... Nalbinding. It was very interesting and I thought our instructor did a fine job with us. I guess I'd describe the technique as a mix of sewing and braiding; it produces a very nice textured cord. Doubt that I'll use it again, but since I'm on a mission to learn everything ever... that's one more technique! Only about a millionbillion to go!
Then I joined Caroline at the dogs...)





The festival food offerings were varied and tasty but I went for a hot dog and chips. (I had chicken teriyaki and LoMein... just okay. Better than starving. I don't know why I didn't get the lamb sandwich... I love lamb! And I happen to like the macabre irony of eating the lamb while admiring cute sheep.) Then, it was time for the highlight of the festival food: fresh apple cider donuts, tossed in cinnamon....mmmmmm! (Yummyummyummy!)


(After lunch, while Caroline continued to watch the dogs, I went browsing with Angie, who used to come to our Knit Night sessions when she lived down here but we never see her anymore now that she's left us and moved far away. Almost two whole hours away! She was looking for a drop spindle, but she bought half-price silk yarn instead... close enough!)

Saturday night we went to a concert, a fundraiser for a local musician who is ill. The music was great! I wish I had a music clip to put up for you all. Unfortunately, we had to leave at intermission so we could get up early for the festival. I have no links ready for these groups, they don't all have one so, in brief: 1. Faster Than Walking, 2. Danny Knicely & Burt Carlson, & 3. Neal Knicely, Steve Parks, & Bob Driver. (I met Steve when I first moved to this town. He's a musician and luthier, a fixture in town here, and a hell of a nice guy who has touched so many people's lives. This is a recurrance of his cancer... and there's not much they can do this time, but manage the pain.
So the community that he has touched so deeply, the huge and spread out group of friends and acquaintances, are pulling together to do what they can for him and his family. Dinners and concerts and CD sales all to try to help with the inevitable mountain of medical costs.)




After the concert, I did something that I thought I would never do:



Kathleen has been spinning for a while and as soon as the fiber fumes got me, she offered a lesson. (Bwahaha) The next day I bought some roving and a spindle (Bwahahaha). I'm extremely inconsistent but really enjoying it (Bwahahahaha).


Sunday I went shopping at the vendor's tents. I was glad to see Dianne ("creative" on Ravelry) from Creatively Dyed Yarn had returned and bought several skeins from her (she has added cashmere to the mix, whoo hoo!). I have a lovely fall-colored, wool & nylon skein from Bransonas (can't get their link to work) and a wonderful green Suri Alpaca (going to grow up to be the Lisha Lace Scarf) from My Favorite Yarn Shop.

And then there was the roving (now that I am a spinner LOL [Bwahahahahahahaha])! I bought several different colors but not a lot of any. Some Marshmallow & Fudge, a blend of corriedale and border leicester from Steam Valley Fiber Farm. I got several strips of corriedale from Carodan Farm Wool Shop.

Leaving the festival, we stopped in at the open house at Lagniappe Farm (another link I couldn't get to work [fixed!]) to view the alpacas. Raveler merianb and her husband raise alpacas and Kathleen and I enjoyed a visit, getting just about every alpaca related question we ever thought of, answered. (Did you know that alpacas don't give birth at night or in bad weather? They just hold it! And that they go into heat triggered by the sound a male makes? They had four pregnant females, two of which should be giving birth any day now... so we talked a lot about alpaca's sex lives...)


Finally, a picture of our combined haul, showing that we had more control this year than last. (Most of that is Caroline's.)

Wait! The spinning isn't done yet....it has to be plied:

And now we have yarn:

(Unfortunately the week has slippped by so fast... just like last year we're saying "We need more time!")
Yeah.

Quick again and it's Caroline's fault...

by Kathleen

This is a very quick post, but I wanted to share this (click for bigger)...


My LYS, On the Lamb, has put together The Great American Aran Afghan. It's going to be raffled off to benefit an arts center in Staunton (and yes I have my ticket, DH has his and MIL hers). It was made with by volunteers using yarn donated by Claudia Handpaint.
Volunteers including yours truly who did this square...

The Tipsy Cable Square! (By the way... check out that gorgeous cabled edging!)
An additional volunteer was Marcia from my Tuesday night knit group who did two squares...

Now, I've got to go home and clean the house because somebody is coming to visit for the weekend so that we can go to the Fall Fiber Festival!

psst... Caroline remember, it's THIS weekend not next!

OCD much?

by caroline



9 Amanda hats, 4 or 5 Pretty in Pink baby blankets, & 30+ wee tiny socks...yes I'm project obsessive. But for this last swap, September's Back to School theme, I really let go. School colors was the suggestion, either mine or my swap partner's. But I thought school supplies was a little more fun so I knit a pencil:





But the pencil seemed to need an eraser. Remember those half & half erasers that erase pencil & pen?:





Oh, but if you are going to knit a pen & pencil eraser then you need a pen as well:





You know what's next, don't you? Pencil, eraser, pen....it just needs paper:





I packed them all up with the real objects and sent them off in a pencil case. I had such a fun time making these (I am so easy to entertain) but I am feeling like I set my bar a little high for the next swap. How will I go back to normal wee tiny socks, now?

Slap and Dash...

by Kathleen

When Caroline and I talked about setting up a blog together we both agreed that we shouldn't feel we had to apologize if we didn't post for a while... to each other or anyone else. (Pretty cocky weren't we? Assuming there would be anyone else reading this... though we knew Mom would.) We never felt that other bloggers needed to apologize to us... they didn't need to feel bad for having a real life.
Funny though... how you do start to feel kind of guilty for going away.

So...
I mentioned (somewhere back there) that I had gotten a spinning wheel from a colleague here. It was an odd wheel made in a four post frame manner with an antique cast iron wheel...
Here it is...

It's beautiful. Really a work of craftsmanship. And heavy as all get out to treadle.
We've fixed a few problems (the bobbin was split and it spun loosely on the spindle without activating the flyer), but have a few more to go before it spins well (the leather belt is too loose and doesn't have a good enough grip on the wheel).
I don't know how much spinning I'll do on it as it's made for making thick yarns. But it sure is pretty.

Then in the "If everyone else jumped off the bridge would you do it too?" category...

Yes, apparently I would. This is "Flat Feet", a different way of dyeing yarn for socks. It's a machine knit blank that is handpainted. Then to knit it you unravel it from one end and knit as you go.

The pattern changes based on the size of your sock and your gauge. It's really just another kind of variegated yarn... but it is kind of fun to see what the pattern as dyed does when it gets knit. However I'm finding it not so much fun knitting with bumpy pre-knit yarn. It's not terrible, but it's not a great feel.
So I'll probably only jump off this bridge just the one time.

Other knitting news... I'm up to 17 of the 20 squares needed for the Lizard Ridge Afghan. The second Can-Do sock is close to finished.
And I'm knitting away on DH's sweater...

I've been working on this for over two years now. It's my first full size sweater and I'm making up the pattern as I go. I also had some issues with basic math and lost a skein of yarn in a port-o-potty (I was NOT going in after it).
It will have a full post of it's own someday. It deserves it.

A while ago my guild had a synthetic dye workshop. We made a colorwheel, mixing the dyes by a percentage based formula, and then immersing the fabrics in cups to get the mottled effect. It was quite fun...

My first few reds are too similar in color, but the yellow to green to blue worked out well.

Our guild had a picnic at the end of July and there was a challenge due to be judged that day. Unfortunately I got really, really, really sick, and couldn't make it. So I can't show my challenge project until the next meeting but here are the ingredients...

By the way... the 4th of July Parade we were in?.. We won first place! We beat out the float with the kids in the pool! Nobody ever beats out floats with kids on them... especially flatbed trucks with a bunch of middle to elderly ladies decked out in red, white and blue while knitting, spinning and weaving. Hmmm... must have been the hooking that did it. (Rug hooking that is!)

And this is why I've been off the blog and am going back off for another few weeks...
I'm doing costumes for a production of Shakespeare's Richard II at the American Shakespeare Center. The show opens in a couple of weeks.

I need to go sew now.

BYE.

p.s. A big "Thanks!" to all the members of the ManchVegas group who were knitting that night I called Mom about our spaghetti sauce. Adding sugar did the trick (but we boiled a potato in it too just to make sure).

p.p.s. To the left at the bottom of the sidebar you will see a little white egg labeled "My Dragon". If you would not mind clicking on it I sure would appreciate the help getting it to hatch. Thanks!

Blogging In My Mind....er....On My Mind

by Caroline



You know, blogging is so much easier in my mind. All my imaginary commenters think I am so witty.


A Blog in Three Parts


Part I: Yarn on the move!
I've been going to The Yarn & Fiber Company in Windham for Friday night knitting for a long time now. We managed to fit a pretty large crowd into a not large space. There were nights where, if you didn't arrive early enough, you sat on the floor.....good times! Last month, it was time to move to a bigger shop, this one in Derry. Yes, Yarn & Fiber was not only growing but it was moving closer to me! From 1/2 hour to 10 minutes. Yay! So, on a Friday afternoon, knitters arrived to help pack up. It was amazing how many times you heard someone say, "I haven't seen this yarn before." As a group of motivated knitters, we had that shop moved in one weekend. They were closed only 4 days! And that Friday, we partied in out new digs. Lauren documented the move much better than me so I am going to send you here, here, here, here, here, and finally, here. Several were heard to comment that they have never enjoyed moving a friend so much. And I have to admit that I feel so much more possessive of a store that I helped to set up. My LYS, indeed.


Part II: wee tiny socks continue
The addiction grows. Again, I am sending 2 little socks at a time. The theme was heat wave so I knit up an Amanda sock with some red Cambrio. I used the lace pattern from the Amanda hat, dropping the K sts at the beginning and end of their rows. I'll post the directions if anyone is interested. So, I knit that up but looking at swap pal, I noticed she was a Girl Scout. In honor of G.S. I knit up another sock, Sereknity's Campfire. I'll have to post the sock I received later. I thought I had a picture of it but I can't find it. It is an awesome little sock.

















Part III: Knit & Crochet Show


I went with the plan that I would not buy anything. Meaning, of course, that I would allow myself maybe 2 or 3 purchases. Look what I got:

1. Duets Flying Carpet Socks: Lorna's Laces & Mountain Colors and a Cat Bordhi design. So cool.

2. Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, edgewater. I am compelled to buy blues & greens.

3. Habu, 100% bamboo. Softest thing ever.

4. Habu, spiral slub color 7. That's some copper color running through it, yum yum.

5. Sereknity, beachglass in superwash merino

6. Sereknity, dragonfly in superwash merino & seacell

7. Moonrise shawl pegs

There's those blues & greens again and by my favorite, Heather of Sereknity. I am compelled, just compelled. Then, when I was all done....Gigi of Adventures in Crochet showed me this lovely booth where Moonrise was set up. I could not turn away from these two shawl pegs. On the left is the Triskele with, I think, a turquoise bead. On the right is the Goddess with a mother of pearl bead. OK, a bit more shopping than I had planned. But to finish it all off: Jess & Casey of Ravelry walking by the Yarn & Fiber booth. Groupie time!

Is This Thing On?

by Caroline

Boy, once you stop posting it is really hard to start again. But Kathleen is really piling up the posts (and FOs, as well) so I guess it is time to try to catch up.

I've been indulging in a little project obsessiveness again: wee tiny socks! I blame Lora for this. I saw the adorable little socks she knit up for a swap, way back in March or April (way back, anyway) and decided to sign up for the next one. My first swap I sent to RunningKnitter in AZ (I forgot to take a picture first) and I got mine from .... NH! From Lora, in fact. I don't know how she kept it a secret at knit night. I would have been smirking and giggling each time we talked about the swap.

I fell for these little socks immediately and when discussing baby shower plans with friends I opened my big mouth and said, "Wouldn't these little socks be cute favors?" *insert forehead slap here* One of those friends had just learned to knit and jumped right in with me in this foolhardy notion. We needed 60 wee tiny socks and agreed to knit 30 each. She got lucky with her sister-in-law who offered to help and quickly became addicted to the little socks. I got lucky with friends in my knit group who helped, as well. So, a big public thank you to Beverly, Jackie, Lora (linked above), and blogless Amanda. Below are: (left) socks I knit and (right) socks my friends knit.

During this time the famous (infamous?) crochet hook incident happened. And during all this, I did another swap. Why? Cause I'm just that crazy. This little sock (left) went to wenat (Ravelry) in Canada and I received one (right) from Andi in AZ.

You know what comes next ..... the next swap. This time I sent 2 socks (I just couldn't decide which to send) to springermama (Ravelry) in NC and got one from gaylet (Ravelry) in Scotland.

I also knit one up as an angel to send to kwesty (Ravelry) in MI.

Yes, I think you can say I am addicted. There is one more swap coming up. I wonder who I'll get?

I'm working on several other objects, too. But they are all bigger than wee tiny socks and are taking me longer to finish.