Fiber Nights - Back-to-Back

Wednesday evenings are for spinning - at least most Wednesdays.  I find that setting this time aside, spinning with other reasonably serious spinners puts me with like minded people.  Our only connection is fiber.  I like them very much - many of us serve on the SAFF board of directors.  Kim took this picture last night.  She had just resolved an thorny issue with the IRS and had declared it Best Day EVER!  Our expressions say the same thing!

But tonight's fiber group is completely different.  We are a group of women who have dinner together once a month to eat, sometimes have wine and talk about life.  Sometimes work, frequently relationships, occassionally fiber.  One woman is an amazing quilter who crochets. Another is a very talented production weaver who dyes multi-colored warps & teaches lots of workshops.  The third likes about everything fiber and bead related.  She quilts and sews and crochets, maybe knits a little.  I think of myself as a spinner who dyes and knits.  We all have busy lives, work hard and came together through the music and dance scene.

We have lost a couple of members because of work commitments (if you are a special ed teacher who starts at 7:30 am, it's hard to carve out a week night - even if it's only once a month) and family responsibilities.  Anther person just didn't mesh with the group and stopped coming.

Sadly for us & happily for her, one of our group is moving away.  She has been one of our leaders so it is very difficult to lose her. We will be down to 3 and I'm not sure that that is enough to keep the momentum going.  But we are slow to invite new people.  We have invented a good bit of ourselves in this group and talk about our lives and families - the good and the bad.  One woman has gone through a particularly difficult divorce and this has been a safe outlet for her. We can't just bring in anyone.

So I guess that our group will have to figure it out.  With a few months before our amazing quilter (with the cutest dogs and the cleanest house!) leaves us, we will simply continue to share meals and lives and fiber!

At the Dyepot

I've been at the dyepot a good bit lately. My dyed fiber that fills the grab bags in my Etsy store and in the local yarn shop, Asheville Home Crafts  and the Locally Grown gallery has some been depleted.  So for the past week or so, I've been dyeing around the spectrum.  Here is a partial result:

These are semi-solid colors, perfect for felt makers and spinners.  Blues and greens and purples and reds - in a number of shades and hues.  Last evening I made up the blue and green grab bags as well as a few of the totally mixed colors, The reds had to wait,as most of the red roving was still wet.  Seems that I need more greens (as is often the case) so I am dyeing again this morning, including another semi-solid and a bronze-green.  If I can keep up the pace over the weekend, I hope to get back to my more artistic shades soon.

Tonight is my fiber night - dinner with my women friends where we have dinner, talk about our lives and knit or crochet or sew a bit.  Since I have mostly been spinning and dyeing this week, I think I'll take my knitting and mix it up a bit. 

Cobblestone Pullover Completed

I recently finished knitting the modified Cobblestone Pullover fro my sweetie. I use Cascade Ecological Wooland overall, I was quite happy with it.  It's not super soft, but it has a manly, outdoorsy look and feel.  I like the sweater a lot and am considering knitting one for myself.  Here is the Ravelry link.  You'll nitice that the handsome devil is holding the still attached yarn in his left hand. I did cut it off and he wore it around the house.  I did not weave in the end for a good reason.

But the more I looked at it, I wanted the neckline to come up a bit higher. My fiber group met and they concurred, including the husband of the woman at whose whom we were meeting.  Genuine guy feedback.  No sense in knitting a great sweater but falling a bit short.  So last evening, I pulled it out & knitted 2 more purl bumps and am finishing the knitting.  New pictures to come...

Working in the Etsy shop, adding knitting needles, new medleys of mohair locks. Back to destashing?

Counting Down the Days

Though I don't have children counting down the days until the guy in the red suit makes an appearance, I do have a number of students who are ready to usher the semester out the door. I make sure that their most difficult projects in my class are over earlier in the semester.  This way when they are covered up at finals time, I am not in competition for their scarce time, limited resources and failing sense of humor.

I'd rather spend my time on fiber!  I'd rather spin and knit and dye that read research papers.  I'd rather grade projects that demonstrate that they are learning.  Because of my work in teaching with primary Sources, I am working with a group of students who are creating a documentary about the struggle for civil rights, that is my real work.  These students are doing creative work whereby they have to understand the content as they build their group video.

Life in the world headquarters of Smoky Mountain Fibers has been hoppin'!  I have been spinning and knitting a LOT, shipping daily, working at Locally Grown, the crafts gallery at the Western North Carolina Farmer's Market.   I'll be there this Saturday and next, knitting and spinning as I booth sit next door for my friend Mac, who is doing a show.

I've been included in 2 recent Etsy Treasuries - in both cases my hand dyed Romney locks.  Here are the pictures.  The Reds are a real treat, the Purple locks  got a great spot in the upper corner.  Keep in mind, the links don't stay active long.  They get recycled pretty quickly.  Meanwhile, time to take a little walk to the Post Office, then get grading, work on budgets and generally put nose to grindstone!

Circle of Friends

It's the first Thursday of each month - that's fiber night for my women friends. We were acquaintances when we started about a year and a half ago, but have morphed into a close circle. All of us are full-time working professionals who have come together over a love for fiber.

We have a potluck dinner, a glass of wine, lots of talk and then knit, spin, quilt, sew or not. The food is always very good and the companionship is wonderful. We have seen each other through difficult relationships, deaths of parents, health challenges and the interesting activities of grown children. Ocassionally we have a special guest or sweetie join us, but usually it's just us. In real life we are (mostly) teachers and therapists; in our group we teach and heal each other and ourselves.

August finds us a small group, with people on vacation or with family commitments. So we will be three or four meeting at the farm of one woman who is a therapist who works with people and horses. I'll be knitting a Windy City hat - nothing terribly exciting.

Tonight I am fixing a mess of kale from the garden. The greens, onion and jalapeno are from the garden, but that really doesn't matter. The woman who planned on bringing dessert had to cancel. It is likely we will just pick up ice cream.

I love this group. I find it comforting and strengthening. Seven women who came together over the love of making stuff - quilts, woven bags, crocheted scarves and afghans, handspun yarns, knitted socks and so much more, have woven ( or knitted or quilted) together a circle of friends.

Slammed: Pesky Day Job!

Several interesting things that are very likely blog fodder have been happening lately. Unfortunately my actual workload has been getting in the way of my updating this blog. I am facilitating a workshop next week for area teachers. It's all about the contributions of children in history, including Child Labor, Hence the lewis Hine photo of the young spinner. I'm just slammed getting ready for it and loving every minute. Reading, researching, writing, building the online part of the course, but it does not leave any time for the SmokyMountainFibers blog. I've thought about it, done a wee bit of interesting knitting, even taken pictures, but it just doesn't put itself up.

In a nutshell...

• I got my totally cool Phat Fiber box - great fibers!
• I won a contest and got a very cool prize.
• I'm spinning nifty yarn
• I'm knitting LOTS of hats (works well with the reading).
• Last night was Fiber Group night.
• The Etsy shop is Hoppin'
• I got featured in 2 Treasuries.
• The garden is growing every single day!
• I called a way fun dance with one of my favorite bands, House Red.

Wait, no wonder I don't have time to write about it!

Art Walk in DC

I just returned from a trip to Washington, DC - one of my favorite places to visit. The trip was work related, a semi annual meeting of consortium members from colleges that use the digital resources of the Library of Congress to enhance teaching and learning. The program, Teaching with Primary Sources, is a terrific resource to K12 schools and colleges. I'm happy to be the person on the ground here in Western North Carolina. I enjoy my colleagues very much and always return from those meetings energized.

I usually go up to DC a day in advance - It's hard to fly from Asheville to DC on Monday morning in time for a 10 am start. While in DC I always go to museums. This time it was raining, so I spent more time that usual in the museums, rather than strolling about. The highlight of the trip was the Louise Bourgoise show at the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden. It was a huge show of large and small works, sculpture, paintings and drawing. One of her recurring themes is the spider. Bourgoise's mother was a tapestry weaver and both her earlier and later works use the spider and fibers in a number of different ways.

I have been visiting the Museum of the American Indian on nearly every trip. One of the current shows is Fritz Scholder's Indian/not Indian paintings (and more sculpture). Even with some disturbing images and his claim than 25% of something is nothing, he really changed Native American art.

The newest exhibit at the Library was the Lincoln Bicentennial exhibit 'With Malice Toward None.' This is an amazing collection of primary source documents - hand written notes, newspaper articles, drawings, photographs - even campaign buttons and banners. You can seee the online version here + the interactives will go up very soon, if not already. I saw anumber of other cool things, but these were the standouts of a fine trip.

Official fiber content: Nothing like time in airports, airplanes and hotel rooms to get serious knitting done. In this case, sleeve #1 of the Classic Lines Cardi in the rusty shades of Chipotle and Spice. Perhaps a bit too close in tone, I really like it.

Tonight is the monthly fiber group get together. I'll bring sleeve #2 and a tossed salad. We will be small. but mighty!

New Socks!

Bronze Berry! I love the official color name of these new socks and they got off to a great start.

After getting the ribbing done at lunch yesterday, last evening was the monthly meeting of my fiber group, so I knitted for about 2 1/2 hours, knitting the leg all the way down to the heel. We were a small group, but a good one. Dinner was roasted chicken, spicy peanut soup (yum!), tossed salad and black raspberry chocolate chip ice cream. I am responsible for the ice cream - in fact the hostess commented on that fact - I frequently bring ice cream, them leave it at the host's house so I don't bring it home and eat it myself. I hove no control over ice cream. If it is there, I have a large bowl every night. If it is not there, I can't. So better to go the the expensive grocery store, buy exactly what I want and then give it away. I get all the pleasure that the first bowl gives you and the husband of the host gets the rest of the calories and any associated guilt!

This weekend: Calling a contradance in Bristol, VA/TN.
Dyeing lots of roving - the grab bag selections are WAY down
Knitting socks!

Good post-holiday news: 126 lbs!