We finished packing the yarn, the fiber, all of the booth “stuff”.  Now we gotta pack ourselves.  We’re taking two days to travel north and west…it’s only 700 miles, but when you are pulling a trailer it is more work and you go slower than you do (at least I do) than when I am traveling without an attachment on the back!!

Hopefully taking our time this will give us a little time to rest up before we get to the show.  Who’s coming??  Well Jen who works with me, and has been for over 2 years now and myself.  The great husband is staying behind so he can get over the flurry of our insanity for the last month, and take care of the pups - my livestock!!

Contest!!!!!

Looking forward to seeing everyone in Chicago (Crystal Lake).  I am bringing 150 Ravelry name buttons…they will be available free until gone.  I would suppose they’ll be gone by the end of Friday evening. Hey, that could be a contest…Whoever guesses closest to the correct time that the last button is gone gets a free skein of sock yarn!!  Put your guesses in here or via my contact page.  I will have my computer with me so I will be able to announce the winner at the booth and here!

See you there!!

We have been busy dyeing and reskeining and labeling and just generally in the last throes of heading to a show. Here’s some of the yarn we will be bringing to the show.

and more yarn:

and some fiber:

I have been trying to figure out how to deal with the fact that we are taking “everything” to the show, and whether to “zero” all quantities available to buy on the website as they may be gone by the end of the show. I don’t have a separate inventory for online sales from show stock at this time…..It basically all goes with us. The studio is getting ready to get very empty!! after weeks of becoming increasingly full.

I have updated my workshops and show page for this year (duh…how does that happen?? that so much time goes by?) Jen and I will be heading to Norman, OK in about 6 weeks to do a dyeing workshop for L&B Yarn Co. at their annual retreat! Can’t wait to meet the folks in Norman. Oklahoma land looks so much like some of the land where I grew up in southern Illinois. I love an expanse of land where you can see a long horizon. It feels very comforting to me. It also lets you see the storm clouds gathering up at a long distance…I always loved watching the huge clouds move across a wide sky. I’ll try and bring some pictures of what I mean by this.

I absolutely adore Marigolds. I love their smell, their audacious colors, they are wonderful in the dyepot. They have many positives and no negatives, as far as I am concerned. Jennifer was standing at the door of the studio yesterday and noticed the marigolds in bloom and she thought a picture of the marigolds with our new monochrome “French Marigold” would look good.

And by the way, the daylilies are in bloom!!  Pictures of those to follow in the next few days!!  We are busy getting ready for the show in Chicago…I will put some pictures of yarn racks up so you can salivate!!  They look great!!

Cleopatra, Pookie, and Van Gogh are the three colorways that I developed from the winning entries from a colorway naming contest held for me by Jen of WoolGirl. These are some pictures of the yarns (actually I dye these colorways in all my standard yarns) knitted into socks!

Cleopatra:

Pookie:

Van Gogh:

I have been knitting a shawl in Cleopatra and it has been patterning/pooling in some very striking ways. I will get it up in the next few days.

I love the process of developing colorways…and some unintended consequences can occur, like finding new colorways on the way to the first goal. More on that later!

Well, the first half of the year is gone…and the second half is starting tomorrow!!

A Dyeing Fool - is what I feel like.  We are headed (Jennifer and me) to Chicago (Crystal Lake) on the 15th of July to go to the Midwest Fiber & Folk Fair. This is the second year of the fair, and our first year there.  Since I have Midwest roots, I am looking forward to spending some time with some midwesterners!  Of course, I grew up in Southern Illinois, which is “far” from Chicago.

I will have loads of “monochrome” yarns that are great on their own or coordinated with colorways.  Pictures will be coming in a a day or so. I am also bringing some ravelry name buttons that I ordered that will be available free to the first 150 folks who show up at my booth for them.  (One to a person, please!!) These should be here in a couple of days.

The days before shows are always exciting as the big brown truck seems to show up more frequently bringing supplies.  I love opening boxes :o)  !!

Well, I know I don’t post very often and I plan on trying to do better in the future. I have lots of pictures to share, but thought I just had to share the results of one day’s dyeing. I was in a rush to get everything done (as usual) and needed to be ready to drive one of the dogs to the vet with my husband in the early afternoon. I would love to blame my husband, but it was MEEE!!!

But this really looks like Medusa to me. Jennifer, who works with me, came up with the sign.

Two and a Half Wonderful Days of Felting and Dyeing!

We started on Sunday evening with a presentation by Theresa and Mehmet showing pictures of felt and seeing many examples of felt, including a beautiful caftan made with silk, wool and cashmere! We were all given the assignment of making outline materials with brown wool.

Monday was a great day - Sunny and the daylilies were Blooming with color!

   

We were able to get started the next day with getting our designs laid down.  With this process, you work in reverse.  In other words what you lay down first is what is seen first.

The wool that we use in laying out the rugs are naturally dyed by Mehmet in his studio in Konya, Turkey.  A great palette - and it can be further extended by carding colors together.

Not everyone worked on the floor! Here’s some more layouts

Laying out the design took all of the first day….and into the next. Some folks were able to finish on the first day - but mine took forever with lots of detail!  Here is mine getting ready to get rolled up to start the felting process.

The next day meant it was time to move from design to workout! Felting on the table to felting on the floor (kicking and rolling.)

We were doing some natural dyeing all throughout.  Here are some of the colors we got.

Aubergine, Weld exhaust, Weld with additions to get gold, oak mordant overdyed with indigo, both Welds overdyed with indigo, indigo - no mordant, indigo with mordant, indigo with multiple dips and additions to deepen color.

And after all the hard work! Here are most of the rugs!

and last, but not least:

This is my rug - an interpretation of Klimt’s Tree of Life.

 

What a Way to Treat a Woodstove!

At the end of spring, I had a bunch of yarns that needed a resting spot to do that last bit of drying - and the woodstove came in handy!

I think it looks great dressed up this way!

These are some cotton and rayon yarns that will be coming soon to the website.

On a beautiful September (9/10/06) morning, 13 members of the Blue Ridge Fiber Guild gathered at my home to explore natural dyes. Late summer is a wonderful time to do natural dyeing as many dyestuffs are available, such as goldenrod, marigolds, dahlias, pokeberries and more.

Members of the guild participated in gathering many of the dyestuffs we used. Gathered dyestuffs included:

** Bronze Fennel **
** Marigolds – Dried and Fresh **
** Pokeberries ** Goldenrod **
** Sumac ** Sassafras **
** Dahlia ** Tomato Vines **
** Walnuts **
** Red Onion Skins **
** Yellow Onion Skins **

Other natural (but purchased) dyestuffs used for dyeing included:

** Cochineal ** Iron Sulfate Mordant **
** Indigo **

In the morning we did 12 dyepots using premordanted samples, yarns and fibers. The afternoon found us dyeing with some additional colors plus overdyeing some of the samples from the morning to get additional colors.

and REDS

We got a total number of 23 colors. All members were charged up by the number and variation!

And the potluck lunch was great! At least that’s what Miss JJ said….

This is the original “monochrome”.