Needle Felting Workshop

Today I taught needle-felting as a workshop after the Guild meeting. Yesterday I got together with Sharon and Mim to make some sample items to show folks some of the easy things they can make. The small ball was made by Sharon, Mim made the Christmas stocking ornament, and we all worked on the snowman.




Last night I continued making samples, including a pony (created by wrapping roving around pipecleaners), a sun, and a couple of "squiggle ball" ornaments. For the workshop, I showed folks the basics, passed out needles and sponges, and we all dove into the piles of fibers. Although many folks started with basic balls, Toni made a llama, Polly made a furry tribble with a shiny silver glitz hat, and Heidi made an ornament shaped like a wrapped present.





As the "teacher", I was pleased by the occasional silence, interspersed with discussion and laughter as everyone concentrated and shared their projects. I was also pleased that noone needed the large box of bandaids I had on hand! I made a third squiggle ball (I like playing with layer upon layer of bright colors). I sent everyone home with their needles and sponges, so I am looking forward to seeing what shows up at the next meeting's ornament exchange!

Day devoted to Craft

Today was the second half of my 2-part workshop on Japanese Wood Block Printing. Everyone had their blocks carved, so we went right to work printing. During the course of the day I made 9 prints, each with 3 seperate colors printed from seperate blocks. Although I can't claim any great results, I did learn a lot from each print run. Here is the best of them. Not exactly what I was going for, but what I've learned can be applied to better planned future projects.

After the class (and after a shopping spree in the Museum Shop) I took a tour of local thrift shops to buy stuff to use in my mosaic class. I am now the proud owner of a mass of ugly, but interestingly colored or textured, china. Plus I bought several wooden boxes, bookends, and a tray that could be the base to mosaic on top of. The best scores were from the bargain room of the local Good Will. There the posted price is $1 per pound, but the clerk eyeballed my shopping cart full of china and charged me only $14! And that included a cool vintage wall sconce that I may clean up, rewire and install somewhere.

Now on to knitting before bed.

Tiling inadequacy

Wednesday I had my first session of a 3-part Tile Mosaic class. While it was loads of fun, and I can really get into applying hammer to tile, my initial effort leaves a lot to be desired. Let me help you out - it's supposed to be a cow. Perhaps abstracts are more my style. This weekend I am off to thrift shops looking for odd items to break into little pieces or glue little pieces onto.

Creative stuff....

What a busy weekend! Friday was a holiday (Nevada Statehood Day) so I spent it getting a trailer hitch and trailer electrics installed, checking out campground and travel guides at Borders, and otherwise dreaming happily about my little trailer-to-be. I have been pondering the perfect paint job for her so I made up a template to try out designs. Here is my favorite so far. Since she will live most of the time in my lavender-filled front yard, I think this could be just about right. I have joined Sisters on the Fly, and am now proudly "Sister No. 606". Check out the Caravan Trailers on the SotF site.

Saturday I had my first session of a 2-weekend Japanese Printmaking class at the Nevada Museum of Art. At the beginning of the class, the teacher asked each of the dozen students to introduce themselves and tell their art background. I was a bit intimidated to learn that half the class have MFAs, teach college-level art, or have studied art in exotic foreign places. Toward the end of the day I went around and looked at what folks were carving on their blocks and most of them were using finely detailed ambitious images. My snake design is looking rather cartoonish in comparison. It was lots of fun, anyway, and as part of the class we got to tour the ongoing exhibit of Whistler's prints. I have spent most of today continuing to carve my blocks (and vaccuming any wood shavings that weren't already embedded in my socks). I will be printing one image using three different blocks. Since we will be using watercolor pigments, where the images overlap, the colors will blend. The final image (assuming I did this right) will be of three snakes intertwined against a patterned background. Yes, I know it is snakes again, but they really are easy to draw. Across the snakes I carved the words "SOME SNAKES SLITHER". When I planned this, I had no idea how hard it is to carve "S"es. We get to print next session.

A quick knitting note or two: The red socks came out of the wash wonderfully. They shrunk only the needed amount and they are now soft and thick. The fingerless gloves are coming along, but it turned out the stitch repeat causes the yellow to stack up in an unattractive way. Eileen and Laura have both suggested cures for this, but I have decided to just slog on and see what they look like in the end. The suri alpaca feels wonderful running through my hands and the gloves are knitting up quickly despite the size 1 needles. I'll post a picture when I get further along.

Busy busy fall...

This is turning out to be the busiest fall I can remember. Beyond work, which gets busier every year, I am signed up for classes in both Japanese printmaking and broken tile mosaic, I will be giving a workshop in needle-felting Christmas ornaments, and I am making an heroic effort to dig out my studio. Right in the middle of that, I have fallen for the charms of the perfect little vintage travel trailer. Isn't she cute?! I plan to make customizing her my next big art project. She will be perfect to take to Guild Retreats and Fiber festivals! And just think of all the possible handspun, and handwoven, and handknit items I can make for her! Guess what color I want to paint her...

Amid all this excitement I have finished the red socks. They are a bit big, but that is a good thing. I have noticed that the wool socks that accidentally make their way into the wash not only come out smaller, but they tend to wear like iron. I was planning to try turning them inside out and surface felting them a bit, but maybe I'll just throw them in with the next load of red stuff I do. Now that I have them done, I am allowing myself to start on the fingerless gloves.

Finally, it is just plain gorgeously autumn out there. So here are a couple of pictures I took today around campus.

The Results of Red (and a bit of blue)

All of the products of the crockpot are now dry. Except for the now-orange beast roving, which is truly ugly, I can imagine a future for them all. I am dying (and dyed) to start knitting the fingerless gloves, but I must be stern with myself and finish my red socks first.

Crockpot, dyepot, and red, red, red....

In order to launch into spinning the fiber from my last post, I had to clear out a few bobbins. I plyed together 2 bobbins of rather hairy grey alpaca. From its texture I think it must be suri alpaca. The result was a couple of skeins with enough yarn to make a pair of fingerless gloves. I work in a building with 1950's heat/ac and there are times my hands get almost too cold to type. To make the gloves interestingly striped, I decided to space-dye the two skeins. Bright colors would be muted by the grey of the yarn. In the throws of a nasty cold, I didn't have the energy to drag out the dyepots, so I sacrificed my crockpot to the greater good of fiberart. (In the past I have dyed in the crockpot with Koolaid only to keep it food-safe. One experience with acid dyes and it will never see food again. My mother suggests that I label it with a skull and crossbones.) Here is the step-by-step process I used:


I tied the two skeins together at 4 points so that the color variegations would be the same length in both skeins.




I soaked the yarn in warm water for 20 minutes or so, with a little dishsoap as a wetting agent.




I set up the crockpot with two glass canning jars inside.



Shuffling through my collection of dyes, I chose sun yellow, mountain blue, and grevillea (yellow, blue and red). A purist would have weighed out the fiber and mixed up dye solutions, adding just the right amount after careful calculations. I don't do math on weekends, especially not when I don't feel well. So I filled each canning jar, and the crockpot around them, about 2/3rds full of warm water. I sprinkled red into one jar, blue into another, and yellow into the surrounding water.

I stirred each color with a seperate chopstick (very handy items - I always pick up an extra set when buying Chinese food). I set the crockpot to low.


Then I stuck one end of the presoaked skein in the red jar and the other in the blue jar, letting the lengths between drape into the yellow. I put the lid on and left the whole thing to simmer for about 2.5 hours. Then I turned off the crockpot and let it cool for a couple of hours. The aforementioned purist has unending patience and would let it cool overnight. I'm not a purist.



When I rinsed out the skein it ran a lot, but the remaining color is anything but subtle.



Here it is hanging in the sun to dry.


Since there was still plenty of dye in the pot, I stuffed some white wool into the blue and now tomato red liquid (I accidently knocked over the red into the yellow). After simmering for a couple more hours, the blue was exhausted, but the red was still going strong. So I added more water and stuffed a bunch of "Beast" roving into the pot. Then I threw in some yellow roving to be overdyed. The pot was still not exhausted, but what was left became more and more orange. The next morning I threw in even more fiber. Finally exhausted!

All in all, the actual energy required for this project was low and the length of simmering time for each batch of fibers allowed plenty of nap time.

Spinning from Batts

In my feeble attempt to bring order to the chaos of my fiber room, I found a bag of alpaca/wool batts that I bought from Merry Meadows Farm at the 2005 Dixon Lambtown Festival. Having a short attention span, I immediately dropped all my ongoing spinning projects, and set out to spin these soft, luscious batts.


According to the receipt, I have 14 and 5/8 oz of the stuff (who has a scale that weighs in eighths of an oz?). This will be too much for some things and not enough for others. Ignoring all impracticalities, and assuming the resulting yarn will tell me what it wants to be, I set forth. The color ranges of the fiber run lengthwise in each batt.
I rolled the batt like a jelly roll, then pulled it out into roving from the end.This strategy mostly kept the color ranges together. I spun it fine, then plied it into a 2-ply yarn of approximately fingering weight. I love the way the swatch comes out! When I have all the batts done, I'll McMorran it to estimate the yardage. Only then will I be able to figure out its final destination.

Textile Tales II

Here is another of my favorite children's books with textile themes. Ursula K. Le Guin's (yes, the one of SciFi fame) A Ride on the Red Mare's Back is a wonderful tale of a girl from the snowy north who takes a journey to rescue her little brother who has been stolen away by trolls. She is aided by a magical wooden horse toy, and ultimately she rescues her brother with the red scarf she has lovingly knit for him as her first knitting project. The watercolor illustrations by Julie Downing are absolutely beautiful. My copy is signed by the illustrator, who added this little horse drawing.

Retreat to Davis Creek

The 2006 CSSW Spinsters' Retreat was this past weekend. The weather was perfect, the company was fine, the Swap n' Sale shopping was great, but sadly I forgot to put the chip back in my camera when I cleared it out to take with me. Sigh. So there are no pictures. To make it up to you, I humbly submit these two pictures from last year's Retreat.
Each year we hold the Spinsters' Retreat at Davis Creek Park in Washoe Valley. Northern Nevada weather being what it is, sometimes we fry and sometimes we freeze. Occasionally we do both in the same weekend. This year the weather gods smiled upon us and it was just right - warm during the day and cold enough at night to make roasting marshmallows at the campfire a necessity. The only casualty of the weekend was the loss of my telescoping weenie fork, which rolled off a rock and was stepped on in the dark. Ah well, it roasted many a perfect marshmallow while it lasted.
The Retreat is all about unwinding with friends and fibers. This year Becky and her daughter Jerica made it all the way from Battle Mountain and Wayne came all the way from somewhere in the general direction of Yerington. Some folks stayed all weekend and some just for Saturday. Linda gave a workshop on fiber preperation, and we all did some shopping from each others' fiber stashes. Saturday night included exploration of the perfect marshmallow roasting technique, along with how to spindle or knit by only the light of a campfire. Each night concluded with the puzzle of fitting 3 coolers and all other edibles into a single bear safe.

Sunday morning we all concluded that it would be fun to have a spring retreat out Becky's direction. Maybe at Rye Patch State Recreation Area. Stay tuned for details. I promise to double check I have all my camera parts next time!

Defenseless against clever packaging

Blue Sky Alpacas, the people who tempt us with yummy soft alpaca yarn and comfy colored organic cotton, are now selling irrestible little tins filled with sets of five 5" wooden needles. Different sizes come in different color tins. They have the charming little phrase on them, "FOR KNITTING SMALL THINGS". Since I like to knit both socks at the same time, I was moved to buy 2 sets. Aren't they too cute for words!! The 5" size is great for stowing away in my purse without causing puncture wounds whenever I reach for my wallet.

(Almost) Immovable Objects

After a long, busy week at work, I was looking forward to a quiet weekend immersed in fibers. It didn't work out that way. Saturday I went to Costco for new tires. While they were installing them I walked across the parking lot to check out Bare Naked Furniture. They had the perfect dining table. And it was on sale as the last one of that model they had. I immediately started thinking about all the designs I could make with my wood burning tool! Yes, I had to have it! So when my truck was ready I helped the salesman load it into the back of my truck. Solid birch and REALLY heavy. This brings me to the 'immovable' part. It is still in the back of my truck. I cannot move it on my own. The one drawback to living alone is that there is noone to hold up the other end of a piece of furniture. Happily, my friend Linda (of the fabulous mohair eyeglass cozy) is coming over today to help me shift it.

I spent all afternoon yesterday clearing off, dismantling and removing the old table. That left a big open space in the kitchen, just right for cat olympics. What do you do with old cash-register tape when you get a new model? I unrolled several full rolls in tangles all over the house. Zach particularly enjoys diving into it and rolling around.












As for me, I am thinking about all the possibilities for finishing my new table. More vines, I think, and perhaps frogs....

Textile tales

Birdsong's latest post about teaching knitting to kids inspired me to think about some of my favorite books - children's books with knitting or spinning or weaving themes. There are plenty of great one's to be found. I went through my disorganized bookshelves and pulled out my small collection. It was fun to revisit them. In some the textile is a major theme, in others it is part of the background. My favorite is probably "The Mitten", adapted and illustrated by Jan Brett. This is from a Ukrainian folk tale. A young boy begs his grandmother for white mittens and when he loses one in the snow, it is inhabited by a progression of animals from a little mole to a great bear. The mitten stretches to accommodate each new occupant until finally the bear sneezes and the mitten is thrown up in the air and the boy sees it silhouetted against the sky. The final page features the grandmother looking with puzzlement at the two mittens, one stretched much larger than the other. I told you the whole story because I wanted to relate one of my most successful knitted gifts. When my niece was little I sent her a copy of the book, along with a pair of white mittens. (I added a black row to the beginning of the cuffs, so she wouldn't lose them in the snow.) My sister told me that the book became a favorite and she would see my niece outside, throwing one of the mittens into the air to see it silhouetted, just like in the book.

I hope it made up for the earlier multi-colored pair I sent that, when left to dry by the radiator, bled bright-colored permanent stains onto my sister's carpeting.

Victory through Procrastination

I have completed the Oh-So-Boring socks! And as I predicted, I like the finished project way more than I liked the process. Although my weekend goal was just to finish the insteps, I had so much work to avoid that I made it through the toes and Greek zig-zag cast-off. Now I am afraid that I can no longer avoid getting to work. At this rate I will be building PowerPoint slides far into the night. Sigh. Maybe I'll go cast on some red socks....

Yes, I do have very wide feet.

And thus begins the back yard....

Here's a picture of my newly furnished backyard office.

The view from the lounge chair is especially nice.

Today Wayne Johnson, State Horticultural Specialist and all-around nice guy, dropped by my office and gave me 4 grape seedlings (2 Suffolk Red and 2 Steuben). They were already acclimated and ready to be planted.

So.... Here's my back porch at 5:45pm.

Here it is at 6:25pm.

And 35 minutes, 4 holes, and 2 smashed irrigation pipes later, the grapes are in the ground. The perforated irrigation pipe is part of a leaky in-ground system that I do not use, so I refuse to worry about it.

This weekend I'll have to finally get around to installing the back yard drip system.

Brief scarf interval

My Oh-So-Boring Socks have gone into the seventh inning stretch. I have turned both heels and now must knit down to the toes. For some reason, this always feels like it takes forever. So I have taken a brief break to knit a quick scarf for a friend's birthday using two strands of funky eyelash yarn and size 17 needles. Now it is back to the socks. Sigh. On the plus side, today I purchased a lovely padded lounge chair for the back yard, so I can knit while reclining under the shady canopy of the cherry tree, listening to all the birds hanging out in my giant lilac bush.

Busy week and boring socks

Even though it is only a four-day work week, I have been up to my eyebrows and beyond at work. So there has been no time to attack any new creative fiber projects, or even move a few rocks around the front yard. My only fiber therapy has been to continue plowing along on the oh-so-boring blue and purple socks. Normally it is my rule that I don't have to continue any (hobby) project that I am growing to hate, but in this case, I know I will really like the product. And how long can a single pair of socks take, anyway? So on I plod. My only amusement is to consider the oddities of perfect sock geometry. Since I prefer to wear my socks cuffed, I have found that the perfect number of rows in the cuff of a 68-stitch-round sock is 68. And the perfect number of cuff rows in a 72-stitch-round sock is 72. And so on. Funny, huh? And when I have finished the sock (to fit my foot), the length from top of cuff to botton of heel is almost exactly the same as from bottom of heel to end of toe. Cool, huh? OK, so this isn't terribly profound. Just ponderings of a tired mind.

On a more amazing knitting topic, my friend Joan just completed the most amazing baby blanket I have ever seen. I already knew her to be possibly the best knitter I have ever met, but this project just astounded me. Since the blanket is meant for the baby of a fish geneticist, she created a lace design that included a central panel of waves, with a band of DNA strands and a ring of fish swimming around the outside. The whole thing was done in soft delicate white lacy yarn. The most amazing thing is that the designs are all 2-sided, so the fish can be seen from either side. Here is a picture of her fish lace design.

Joan - I can only bow to your mastery!

Busy day in the garden

Now that the Fair is over, it is time to get back to gardening. I spent this morning digging up more old lawn, spreading more cedar bark mulch, and deadheading the marigolds, all the while waiting for delivery of 6,770 lbs. of ledger-cut quartzite rock from Rainbow Rock.

The rock arrived on a big truck, along with a Big Cat to lift it off the truck and plunk it down in my front yard. The man driving the heavy equipment (is this the stuff you are not supposed to operate when taking medications?) did a fabulous job putting the pallets exactly where I wanted them.
I had been afraid the rock would be put in the middle of my driveway, so I am really glad I could be there for delivery! Tomorrow I start digging the foundation trench for my dry-stack wall. Then one by one I will move the rocks to their final destination. I fully expect that the piles of rock waiting for installation will be a long-term fixture in the front yard.

One more picture is in order: My Salvia reptans (west Texas grass sage, A.K.A. blue willow sage) is now blooming. The ones I planted last year are reaching as high as 5 feet, surpassing the 3-4 ft estimation of the High Country Gardens catalog! They don't bloom densely, but the flowers are an intense clear blue. They are so pretty that they have converted another neighbor to the pleasures of xeriscaping; a woman from a few houses down the street dropped by to ask what they were and where she could get some. She left with the stated intentions of getting up with High Country Gardens right away!