Coming Out of Hibernation

Only the blog has been hibernating.  I've been (in local parlance) covered up.  A few highlights...

Kitchen remodeling is mostly complete.  Cabinet knobs and a few minor issues remain (non-functional electrical outlets, but I am moving into my new kitchen and the rest of the house, but it's nearly done and I love it. 

The first picture is the view as you walk into the house.  The dining room wall is now green to better frame the mostly white kitchen and its orange accents.  Note the shiny wood floor.  There was oak flooring under those incredibly grungy tiles.  The best surprise of the project!

You'll also see new cabinets and appliances including the dishwasher (which I LOVE), a stove that heats up fast (the old extra slow stove has been moved to the (still non-functional) dye studio) and a counter-depth refrigerator with an icemaker.   I may not be in the 21st century, but I'm out of the 1950's!

Under-counter lighting, interesting tile work and a decent range hood make this a lovely kitchen.  It's not perfect, but on my budget, it's just fine. I now have a lazy Susan-equipped cabinet that gives me access to what was a wasted black hole, electrical outlets where I need them and a lovely space to work in.  There's more to it, but these are the best pictures.

Not having a kitchen for a month was annoying, but living on raw fruits & vegetables, yogurt, tomato sandwiches and roasted chicken from the grocery store left me 5 pounds lighter.  The garden was lovely and most of the produce was eaten raw, dehydrated or given away.  I spent a couple of quality hours last evening watering, weeding, picking beans and generally putting it back into shape for the cooler weather.  I need to shell about 3/4 of the 2 bags of Kentucky Wonder beans as they got WAY ahead of me.

On the fiber front, I finished and blocked 2 sweaters, made good progress on another, knit a few hats for the upcoming season and have spun a LOT!  I have gone to my spinning group most Wednesday evenings and have spun a good bit at home in the evening.  Not spending time cooking opens up time for spinning - a decent trade!

Because the kitchen stuff (and living & dining room stuff) had to go somewhere, the dye studio has been down.  After this weekend it will be back in force.  I have felting and spinning and knitting ideas and the right fiber colors are so important.  I need red!

The day job is also keeping me way too busy, but that's seldom blog fodder.  I think I'll keep it that way.

Success: 30 Hats in 30 Days!

I set a challenge for myself to knit 30 hats in the month of November.  With my hats in 3 shops, I need to keep my production up for the winter hat shopping season and this was a way to stay on or even ahead of schedule.  I did it!  It was close at the end, but I managed to knit a-hat-a-day.  On November 29th, with all 30 hats completed and logged into my handy dandy Excel spreadsheet, I cast on for a felt hat in a style that I've never made before.

I also made an effort to knit from the stash as much as possible and tore through several hundred yards, so I knit down the stash too.  However since part of knitting down the stash required me to purchase more yarns to go with the stash yarns, I didn't get too far out front of that.  But all in all, a fine effort.

Only one tiny problem - a good problem to have.  Almost as fast as I have been making hats, I have been delivering them to stores and they are selling!  Of course that is the point - I can't sell them if I don't have them!  Nor do they sell piling up in a nice stack in the studio.  And as I backed off the spinning, I have very little hand spun yarn to knit my always popular guy hats - so I am still a wee bit behind.

Thanksgiving weekend was busy here at the world headquarters of Smoky Mountain Fibers.  In addition to manic hat knitting, I did a bit of dyeing and carding and spinning.  I also visited a couple of my favorite local yarn shops (one on Black Friday - Hey, 30% off and I bought some lovely silk-merino spinning fiber for a sweater for me!), spun at the Locally Grown Gallery and shipped a healthy number of orders for the Etsy shop (Thank you very much!).

I also painted my bedroom, including 2 coats on the dreaded popcorn ceiling.  I'll spare you pictures.  Although I am very happy with the results, photos of dingy off white with drywall mud over the cracks  and photos of fresh off white aren't really that exciting to anyone other than me.

Tonight is spinning night at Friends & Fiberworks.  I'll be spinning some over-dyed blue-green that looks like a really iridescent peacock. A colorway that will never be duplicated, I can assure you.  Hope the yarn is half as pretty as the roving!

Mossy Green Moss Stitch

The mossy cardi continues to grow this week end, thanks to time in the passenger seat and a bit of porch sitting.  I finally made it to the arm holes - in fact the decreases are nearly finished and I can do a bit of mindless knitting until it's time for the collar shaping.  I am quite happy with it.  I love the color and the fabric, as well as the process.  I'm not having any trouble melding the 2 patterns, nor do I expect any trouble doing my own mods later.

I spent the weekend with a friend in North Georgia, with a side trip to Atlanta for a bit of retail therapy.  As I have mentioned in this blog, I have been spending some time and energy on my home.  Some delayed maintenance, some improvement and just a decision to make it a better place to live.  To that end, we went to Ikea where I continued that endeavor.  A classic bentwood 'Poang' chair & footstool, functional bed sidetables and a storage unit will go a long way to making my home a nicer place to be. At the risk of sounding like a commercial, I love Ikea.  The clean, modern design appeals to me and I love the tiny, model apartments set up in the store, though I always try to find a home for the spinning wheel, fiber stash and enough space for books.  Though I guess that's what all those storage units are for.   Then the fun comes when you get to assemble your goodies.  I am totally charmed by the elegant way everything fits together as well as the pictographic instructions.  

In the natural world:  It's raining!  A steady rain most of today, I came home to a naturally watered garden, lots of green beans but also evidence that some furry creature has been snacking in the garden.  Luckily bunny foo-foo (or whoever) likes the green bean leaves, but not the vines or beans themselves.  A few tiny okra pods have shown up and the butternut squash are turning buff.  The tomatoes are still green.

Not as Quiet as it Might Seem

Sometimes I don't blog because there is nothing happening.  Other times it is because the chaos is not blogworthy.  Then there are times that the busy-ness might be interesting, but I'm just so busy to take the time to blog.  You decide.

Day Job:  I am currently facilitating a Summer Institute for classroom teachers.  We are looking at using Primary Sources as we study the movements of people:  Immigration, Westward Expansion, Lewis & Clark, etc.  Lots more - you can fill in the blanks.  I've been prepping for this for the last couple of weeks & now I'm in the middle of it.  We'll repeat the Institute in July for another group. 

Fiber:  Although the Etsy shop is slowed down (and I have not been posting new items because of everything else going on), I've been dyeing sock yarn for the local yarn shops.  I'm also spinning some very pretty yarn, either for myself or the shops.  And if I'm spinning again, that means,...

Home:  It's getting put back together.  Walls & ceilings are repaired and newly painted.  Furniture is now in the correct rooms.  Soon there will be art on the walls and books in the book cases.  This is a very, very, very good thing.

Garden:  Cranking out  peas (still), beans, cukes, chard (very soon), summer squash (galore) and lots more.  Weeds a-plenty!

Knitting: Swatching for a new sweater.  It will be a moss green cardigan.  That's all I know so far.

Dance:  Just completed the Summer Soiree, a contra dance weekend here in Asheville.  My sweetie was on the committee.  I led an English Country Dance workshop.  I was rather nervous, but got very good feedback from the serious EC dancers as well as folks trying it for the very first time.  George Marshall was the main caller for the weekend and he danced every dance, so I think I did okay.  If not, he would have been gone pretty quick!

On the evening's menu, summer squash fritters (see above)! Yum!!!

Sunrise, Sunset

I got a lovely Etsy message yesterday afternoon from SplitRockRanch who included me in a lovely treasury full of mostly fibery goodies, with a bit of photography, beadwork and soap thrown in for good measure.  It's all in the colors of the sunset -  red, pink, orange, purple black - really remarkable work by all the artists.  I am thrilled to be in such fine company!  My roving that is shown here is my PhatFiber contribution, Fire.  I love this colorway to make and to spin.  Like much hand dyed fiber, as close as your recipes and processes can be, the work is always a surprise.  With this color combination, it it a pleasant surprise as well.

Here is the link to the treasury - see what trips your fancy.  But don't wait too long.  Treasuries are rather fleeting.  Thanks, SplitRock.  Love your batts!

I finally spun a batt or 4 myself last evening.  With my house under renovation, I kind of lost my spinning space to - well, everything. Boxes of books, an extra sofa in the studio, furniture mashed together and covered in old sheets, plus tools and plaster dust over everything.  But last evening I went to my Wednesday spinning group and spun the second half of a teal batt I carded a long while back.  It felt great!  The house is getting put back together too.  And that is a very nice thing.

Old Sheep in the News

I heard this fascinating article on NPR (or course) about Navajo Churro sheep and the people who raise them.  Thought I'd share it with you...

Though I admit that I never spun Churro wool, there is a shepherd who brings her fleece to SAFF.  I may test out a fleece this fall.  As the article says, it is a strong fleece, perfect for blankets and rugs - not that I really make woven blankets and rugs, though. I'd like to.

There was very little fiber activity going on at the world headquarters of Smoky Mountain Fibers this weekend, although I did some custom dyeing. But on the home repair front, things cooked!  The LR and DR are now painted - and looking good.  Don't look too closely!  We have not lost our amateur status as painters.  But as energetic wielders of the brush and roller, we did just fine.  Pictures to come!

Outside is a Good Place to Be

Since my house is undergoing destruction major repairs right now, outside is a good place to be.  I have spent a good bit of May digging in the dirt and am beginning to have something to show for it.  The sugar snap peas are a wonderful part of my diet right now, crunchy and full of green goodness.  I am having salads of lettuce (4 kinds) and radishes (Easter Egg mix) and baby beet greens.  I can probably start snitching baby chard leaves too.

The tomatoes are filling in nicely along with the peppers, eggplant and basil.  The summer squash seem to grow by leaps and bounds each day.  The Delicata squash are a bit slower, but they look good.  The winter squash are beginning their annual sprawl across the yard and this year I want to mulch them better, so I don't have a field of tall grass with squash runners amuck.

The flowers are happy too.  Each year we have poppies that self seed in seemingly random places.  I've been pulling them out of the beet bed, but I like them to grow in the flower beds, later I'll mow some of them, but their delightfully sculptural seed pods provide food for the birds as well as visual interest.  Next year's poppy surprise comes from them too.  This year we have doubles and singles.  Some are highly ruffled, others pleasantly simple.  Mostly red; a few purple.

Just above the poppies is the row of blueberries and eggplants; above them are the lavender roses.  This year I'm going to let the roses go natural.  No more sprays; just heavy mulching and frequent cutting back of the spent blooms.  Fine Gardening's article (though I can't find it on their site) has encouraged me to go organic and force them to toughen up!

One of my favorite totally (ok, nearly) maintenance-free plants is this big old-fashioned yellow rose.  I don't know the name of the variety, but I got a start from my friend Heather, how dug hers up from her grandmothers garden over in Brevard, NC.  Right now it has hundreds of fragrant blooms.  The only maintenance: cut it back now and them, tell it how beautiful it is, send loving thoughts to Heather & her grandmother and occasionally burst into a chorus of the 'Yellow Rose of Texas.'

Requisite fiber content:  I knit a bunch of hats!  My Memorial Day mini-break was to visit friends a couple of hours away.  While at their house, it rained a good bit, so swimming, working in their garden and hiking were somewhat curtailed.  Sitting on the porch, knitting, talking, knitting, eating, reading and knitting were in high demand.  My hostess knit at bit too, making an orange coaster.

I will be happy after the house is put back together and I can move around my dye studio more easily, every surface is not covered with non-fiber related tools and I have a place to sit and spin.  I am going a bit crazy in that department.

Back to the Dye Pot

I've been back at the dyepot lately.  Even though I have been working hard painting my studio, the bath and the hallway, I can nip down to the wet studio in the basement and get some dyeing done to restock the shop.  Neptune (the roving that you see here) is just one example of what I've been up to.  I've been dyeing red/gold combos and the blue/green as well.  Even did a blue/purple that I have not done in some time.  So simple and so pretty.  But the purple refused to be photographed.  I'll try again tomorrow under natural light.

The house work is coming along nicely.  I am a very neat painter.  Now I am not one of those people who doesn't get a drop on my person.  In fact, my clothing is one of the ways my work stays neat.  The elderly T-shirt makes a handy spill cloth.  But the 2 tone watery blues in the bathroom looks lovely.  It is the same colors as before as I had about 2/3 gallons of each color left from before.  But the studio and hall are a color called 'Heirloom Lace' from Olympic paints.  It's creamy with a tiny touch of peach.  Sweet!

Looming Ever Closer...

...so it's time to change my mind about what to knit for people. Oh No!  Instead of the scarf for person E, how about fingerless mitts?  Found a cute pattern that should be a fun knit and I can convert it to knitting in the round (or not!).  Truth is, I hate to knit scarves.  So don't already. 

The picture that you see here is my kitchen window about as decorated as things get around here. Yes, they are hot pepper lights which I purchased in Long Beach, CA back in the mid-nineties. Even though I don't decorate my hoe or office, I like to visit Christmas and that I will do that when I travel to see my sister and her darlin' family.  Now they do Christmas!

Dyeing Mohair

I have been having fun dyeing mohair lately.  While at the Southeast Animal Fiber Fair (SAFF) one of my jobs was to assist the director of the Fleece Show and Sale.  The upside of that task is that you see the fleeces as they come in, so you get early pick of the fleeces.  Now I was not really looking for a wool fleece nor alpaca.  I have some left over from last year and really want to get the remainder carded and spun.  But  I was on the lookout for a nice angora goat fleece.

When I got the the show a few mohair fleeces were already there, including the fleece of Brooks Hill Farm's Minnie Pearl.  Now I must say that picking a raw mohair fleece requires a great leap of faith.  The fleeces are quite dirty, they can smell a bit...ummm...goaty.  They might look dingy and grey and Minnie Pearl was no exception.  Her fleece was grey, smelled like she had spent her life outside laying in the dirt and living in a barn.  But she felt right.  The ringlets were long and I had a great belief that she would wash up beautifully.  Turns out I was a fine judge of mohair fleece and Minnie Pearl's took the blue ribbon for white mohair.

Once home I began the process of turning mohair from funky to just fine!  I soaked it.

I washed it.

I dyed it.






And created a number of fun colorways including Beach Glass above and Autumn Sky to the left.   I've left some white and may tail spin the locks, though it is not my favorite spinning.  I'd rather spin my own hand dyed roving or carded fleece that I have processed.  I spent a bit of time carding a sweet brown lamb fleece I purchased at the Mountain State Fair this fall.  I've knitted a couple of nice hats from it.  My sweetie gets first pick, but they will likely end up in one of the local gallery shops.

This long weekend has been great fun.  As I have a serious aversion  to traveling on Thanksgiving weekend, I've spent time close to the house and studio  In addition to carding, dyeing, spinning and knitting, I've caught up on some chores.  With a bit of time off for unstructured play, I was happy to clean up the yard, catch up the mountain of laundry that accumulated when the house had plumbing issues, and tidy up the studio.  A fine holiday weekend indeed!

Being Thankful

As today is the American Thanksgiving holiday, I want to spend just a couple of minutes reflecting on gratitude. 

I grew up in a family that understood that it was important to be thankful for our blessings.  We were not wealthy - my parents were depression era, working class folks trying to get a better life for themselves and their daughters.  We didn't waste food nor money.  But we knew that we had a darn good life.  A warm home, good food, an education, people who love us. I thank my parents and sisters for the life that I have led.

This year is no exception.  Work has been gratifying; my creative work is exciting.  My house is still standing, though with rather interesting cracks in the walls.  My garden has been a delight; still giving me greens and herbs and flowers with promise of new beauty and sustenance in the future.  I am in love with an endlessly entertaining man.

Today I will take a walk, enjoying sunshine and nature in the UNCA Botanical Gardens.  I will dye and spin and knit, and prep fiber for my business. I will cook a bit and eat a wonderful dinner.  Later I will call the contradance at the Old Farmer's Ball in Swannanoa, NC sharing music and dance with my community.

I am happy, healthy and grateful for the life I lead. 

Going Solar

Over the last few weeks, there has been a bit of home renovation/repairs/improvements and minor disasters here at chez Annie, aka world headquarters of Smoky Mountain Fibers.  The most interesting piece has been the installation of a solar water heating system.  Once the new roof was on (and the roof infrastructure was brought up to code), Sundance Power installed 2 solar panels on my roof facing in just the right direction.  In the mean time, a big honking water heater was installed next to my regular electric hot water (aka Old Faithful) and pipes containing glycol (basically antifreeze aka solar juice) threading from the basement to the attic and back again. 

So when the sun heats the panels to a certain level, the pump begins to circulate the solar juice in the solar water heater.  When it get hot enough, it starts circulating hot water over to Old Faithful which then provides hot water to my house.  If there is enough sun, the element in Old Faithful won't kick on and I'll use solar hot water.  If Mr. Sun hides for a few days, I'll just use vintage hot water.

The funny part was that we fired up the system as tropical storm Ida was dumping a couple inches of rain in our region.  So we not only had ZERO sun for about 4 days and actual rain water oozing into the basement.  Chilly, non-solar heater totally natural water.  The kind you sweep into the floor drain with the big, wide broom.

But then on Thursday morning I was sitting in my office computing away when I realized that the sun was out.  My first thought was, Hey, we're making hot water!  I checked the readouts when I got home and saw that, yes, even in the early evening, the system is up and working. Yestredays warm temps were even more exciting!  Because of unrelated plumbing issues, I haven't spent every sunny moment doing laundry and dyeing fiber.  But that will soon be all better.

Annoying knitting content: Having finished the sleeves, I cast on the body stitches for the Knit Picks Classic Lines Cardi last evening as my trip knitting.  I knitted from Asheville to Charlotte, in the Charlotte airport and as we were preparing for decent into the DC area, I admired my inch and a half or so of fine work.  Every knitter can tell what comes next: there was a twist!  The kind that doesn't come out.  Sadly, out it came.  I have cast on again and am about to check the cast on edge. Wish me luck!

Post-Conference Wrap up

All in all, the AASLconference was a good one.  I didn't become a conference blogger, because I didn't want to carry my laptop the 4 blocks from the hotel to the Convention Center,  I went to a couple of session that I found engaging and enlightening.  I found some answers to my questions, about how to add elements of inquiry as I work with veteran teachers.  I also learned about some new resources for using images in my work.  Schmoozed the Washington crowd too.  Had yummy Thai food.

I also knitted 4 lovely hats, including a ribbed ski hat made from my newly hand spun yarn in a rich brown.  Still a bit of lanolin, it will get a nice bath before it goes to its future home, wherever that may be.  Perhaps it's time for an Etsy hat listing again.

This is the yarn that I spun at the Mars Hill Heritage Festival and it is much prettier than I expected.  The fleece has a good bit of grey, but it didn't really come through in the yarn.

Once home, I called a dance Saturday evening in Jonesborough, Tennessee with the Contra Cowboys.  About a year ago we worked together at their premiere gig, but we have not had the opportunity since.  They play fiddle tunes combined with a Texas swing style that some contra dancers don't like, but it certainly brings out my inner cowgirl.  I tried to pick dances that complemented their music.  Kind of fun!  I tried waltzing on my bum knee and I was not in pain later, and that's a good thing!

On Sunday I spent some quality time with my drum carder, making batts in sparkly blue grey and also sparkly hot pink.  I spun a good bit of the blue-grey, but haven't plied it yet.  I'll start spinning the pink this evening.

Remember that Great Things are About to Happen?  Tomorrow the solar hot water should go live!  Stay tuned...

Progress Check

In my last post, I made a list of what is/will/should be happening. All in all, it has been a very good week! Here is the update...

• The Roofing dude is about to fix the creaking rafters. Check.  We have raised high the roofbeams, carpenter.
  
• The Plumber has my leak on his schedule (as soon as he gets back from Europe!).  Still broken, minimizing the use of plumbing, which means that laundry is piling up and I skipped my shower this morning.  I did spin out some dyed fiber, but captured some the grey water to use in soaking mohair locks
  
• The Solar guys are about mid-way through their installation. And should finish up tomorrow!
• New entry.  The furnace dude comes tomorrow to give the old geezer of a furnace it's yearly tune up.
  

In the world headquarters of Smoky Mountain Fibers...

• I'll be working at the Locally Grown Gallery this weekend at the WNC Farmers Market. An excellent day, selling lots of yarn, patterns and hats.  I spun a good bit too! 
• New entry. I weighed, bagged, photographed and listed a few bags of hand dyed locks I have had hanging out in the studio for too darn long.  Send them to a new home!
  
• New entry. Keep on spinning - I'm dangerously low on dyed yarns in Locally Grown.

• The day job has been requiring excessive reporting to finish the federal fiscal year, but they are nearly complete.  Done!

• I will lead my first full program on English Country dancing on Sunday. Although not a groundbreaking success, everybody lived through it and my fans were quite pleased.  Lots of new dancers!
  

Great Things are About to Happen

If I saw this message in a fortune cookie, I would be feeling about like I am right now.

My house is in flux right now. Let's think about pretty dyed wool.

• The Roofing dude is about to fix the creaking rafters.
• The Plumber has my leak on his schedule (as soon as he gets back from Europe!).
• The Solar guys are about mid-way through their installation.

Then I get to finish up the remaining stuff - like those giant cracks and then painting everything!

In the world headquarters of Smoky Mountain Fibers...

• SAFF is over and was delightfully successful and fun in so many ways.
  
• My booth-sitting was financially positive
• I'll be working at the Locally Grown Gallery this weekend at the WNC Farmers Market.
  
• My Etsy shop has been quite busy, thank you!
• I hit the blogoshere, thanks to Ms. Ashlee of My Cellar Door!

The day job has been requiring excessive reporting to finish the federal fiscal year, but they are nearly complete.  This makes me happy as I don't enjoy the reporting part of the job.
I will lead my first full program on English Country dancing on Sunday.  Last night I sent the tune list to the musicians.  Wish me luck.

So with this fortune, I am felling happy, lucky and expecting Great Things!

Thank Goodness for Knitting

Although my life seldom mirrors the Yarn Harlot's life, we seem to be in cahoots these days.  My elderly furnace is behaving, but perhaps because I haven't turned it on yet.  Not a part of the Canadian contest, I just avoid turning it on until it has been tuned up.  After my experience a couple of years ago, I can put up with a lot of chilly indoor temps.

I have a new roof which looks lovely, and it has a ridge vent so it should be a bit cooler in the summer.  Back when this house was built and for about the next 50 years or so, a couple of guys carried as many shingles as they could hold on their shoulder up a ladder and used a hammer and nails. My dad spent much of one summer re-roofing our house just that way.  Now it's  'Roof-in-a-day.'  But all the commotion on the roof caused some icky cracking in the ceiling and walls. The Engineer came yesterday and although my house is not an official disaster area, a bit of shoring up of the roof beams is in order.  OK, I'll be getting estimates very soon.

Look at some wool - Autumn Leaves Merino, recently dyed.  Isn't it pretty?!

Apparently the basement was jealous of the attic and sprung a leak.  In the outgoing water pipes (because it sounds less awful than saying raw sewage) there is a drip.  Well, more of an ooze.  Not pretty.  And because my house has cast iron pipes and they are rusted through, a healthy quantity must be rerouted and replaced, including the vent pipe.  That will be a thousand dollars, please.

I think I'll be knitting (or spinning) again this evening.  It's been a rather productive time of late.

The Deadlines Are Upon Me!

I hate waking up at 4:00 a.m. in a bit of a panic about all the things I need to do.  But that's what I did on Sunday morning.  I began realizing just how many things were due at the end of October.  Some are on the good side of the work/fun continuum.  SAFF for example.  Even though I have to keep up with a web page or 2.  Dyeing yarn and fiber for my Etsy shop and delivering yarn, fiber and hats to my LYS accounts. Knitting and spinning.  Again, a good kind of work.

But my actual day job is definitely slanted in the other direction.  And even though I love what I do, occassionally all the deadlines kick in at the same time.  So instead of lying in bed worrying, I did what sensible people all over the universe do.  I made a List.

So on this very Monday morning, I have taken said List and begun completing items on it.  This blog post, however is not on the List, so it will be quite short and only mention that...

I have been featured on another blog,

http://jennytheartist.blogspot.com/2009/10/farmville.html.  Thank you Jenny!

My house is newly re-roofed, but now has several giant cracks in the ceilings and walls.  Kind of scary, huh?
This was not in the contract.

In the interest of getting back to the List, I'll be signing off! 

Busy is the New Relaxed

It's a lovely, cool, relaxing weekend. I'm working in the garden, going to lunch with a friend, dyeing my new bump of wonderful, natural roving in shades of reds and oranges. I visited my biggest customer and got an order ready and planned my next spinning 'production run.'

Weekends without too much to do are truly delightful. But with plans for the next 6 - 8 weekends, good thing I like to stay busy. So the rest of this weekend is all about dyeing, carding and spinning; working in the garden (though the grass has been cut!) and reading whatever I please! Tomorrow I'll be at the WNC Farmers Market tending Locally Grown, the crafts gallery and spinning dark brown roving overdyed loden.

In the meantime, a bit of housework and laundry, delivering to the Grove Arcade store, Saturday public radio shows and some quality time with the drum carder. I love my life!

Hot Colors!

I admit it. Red is my favorite color. But not just simple red - tomato, russet, fuchsia, purple, orange, pink - really just about any shade on the red side of the color wheel. So my first round of dyeing the mohair locks I recently 'inherited' are on the red side of life.

When Wilma went out of business, I purchased a bag of fiber that she bought a few years ago, but never did much with. Along with several bags of dyed Romney fleece, she had a few pounds of mohair locks. These are fine, adult mohair locks from Sandy Melton's goats who live quite happily in Madison County, NC at Nowhere Branch farm. Although they have been in a paper grocery bags for a few years, they cleaned up very nicely, took the dye like only mohair can and the first batch are in my Etsy shop. I am working on Blues now.

The yarn I've been spinning came out lovely, so I'll be able to take it to Durham with me for wall flower and hotel knitting. The hats in my head might just get out. Here goes!

Another nice note on the Etsy front, I am in a lovely treasury right now with my Pink Petunias roving. The whole treasury is Pretty in Pink and I'm happy to be among the featured artists.

Just a couple more days until Spring Break, then I am off to play with fiber, dance, hike and have all kinds of fun. I will have papers to grade, but that is a small price to pay for the ability to sleep in, work in the garden, ruminate about my kitchen and live a life of leisure!

A Bit of Everything

I had the kind of weekend that I like the best. I dyed, I knit, I worked on a design, I called a dance in Jonesborough TN. I spent time with others, helping out at the LYS Sit & Knit & communicating with my test knitters. I spent some time alone. I - wait for the drum roll - cleaned my house.

Between the fiber business and the full time job + night class, it has gotten a wee bit ahead of me. I had a round of house guests in the fall, but I haven't given it more that a lick and a promise since. But after spending time at my friends' houses, I realized that my house was beyond the pale. So now my floors are clean throughout, the bathroom is lovely, the kitchen and living room are heavily de-cluttered, the studio is a space I can work in. Still plenty left to do - including a bit of retraining for that fellow - but much better than before.

The new hat is coming along nicely. The test knitters have given me excellent feedback, plus they enjoyed knitting the hat. My intention is that it will be a Ravelry free download, though the B&M shop wants to sell it. Now I'd like to do a worsted weight version. Sounds like fun!