Spun out!

Not really, but super excited with this new roving that I bought from Greenwood Fiberworks.

Colorway is Emily, the fiber is BFL

It's still pretty bulky, but at least I am getting more consistent!  My friend Jamie is busy learning a new knitting pattern so that she can knit me a scarf with it!! :) Thanks Jamie!

In other news...

The buffalo are getting bored with winter.  They keep venturing out to the gate between their winter pasture and their summer pasture and looking wistfully out (yes, buffalo can be wistful...)

You may have to click to enlarge this to actually see them, but they are there between the big tree and my snow shoe path!

Bruno (the bull) has pushed all three of his "play stumps" to the fence line.  Brian will have to go out with the sled and move them back to the trees.  Then Bruno can start his game over again.  They really are a riot.  I love to watch them do their work out, wherein they run laps and laps until their little tongues are hanging out.  Totally entertaining.

I am getting pretty bored with winter myself.  March is a tough time of year.  There are little spring teases, like a bright and warm day, robins, juncos and flickers darting about, but then alas it clouds over, gets windy and then storms (rain into snow).  Ho hum.  I keep seeing photos of people's first spring crocuses coming up... I have to keep telling myself: "soon, soon."

In the meantime, spring snow does reveal some interesting and beautiful things.

Sumi ink style snow sculpture.

Less impressive, but still interesting

Snow, grass stalks and sun. Natural beauty.

And I did have a perfect little snowflake land on my coat sleeve yesterday... (ok, I am reaching here- it is getting more and more difficult to appreciate the snow!)

One last question- (and a confession)- I am a stats junkie.  I look at the number of views of my blog daily.  And I don't get tons of traffic, but some people are looking.  My question is this: Why won't anyone comment?  A comment is like getting a surprise piece of chocolate (without the caloric guilt!)  So, if you know the answer, feel free to comment! (see how sneaky I am?)

Soap curing

Freed from their molds! I think the kitties are my favorite.

Yay! Last weekend I finally finished unmolding all the wonderful soap we made.  Now it will sit and cure for 4-6 weeks and then be ready for sudsy goodness.  Aren't they gorgeous?

Here's some more:

Horses and trees

Paw Prints! too cute.

When I first starting making soap, I always just cut bars- functional but not terribly exciting. Now that I have discovered the world of soap molds, I can barely contain myself.

Here are some with the lavender buds- unfortunately they did not react favorably with the soap making ingredients.  They turned kind of an icky brown...

Alright, yes, we did make bars too.

As you can see, the lavender buds did not stay the beautiful purple they started.  Calendula petals have always retained their color... interesting.

Table full of soapy goodness

So that is what ten pounds of homemade soap looks like.  I am sorely tempted to make another 10 pounds, just so I can use my new molds...

It is also good to have a Soap Guard Dog:

What's that?

NO, only mom can come up!

I have also been finishing some of my hand spun.  Here is a skein of Lorelei mixed with Greenwood Fiberworks' "Calypso".

Art Yarn!

Well enough with crafts, someone is hungry...

Come on already, mom. This soap guarding duty makes me hungry!!

Have a fantastic weekend!  Spring is inching our way...

how about some photos?

Smokey, aka Cutest Cat in the World with his mouse toy

So in looking back through here recently it seems too text dense!  Here are some photos that I never posted:

At the Hitchin' Post

These are the boys, getting ready to pick up the elk that Brian got, the day before end of season this year!  You can see they are very excited to be put to work.

Here they are- Mule loaded up and ready to roll. (figuratively, not literally)

Um... the coat makes me appear a bit larger than life, Really.

 These two were taken in our back field, just as we were approaching the final stretch.  These were taken after Episode One, in which the mule broke loose from us, bucking and running, managed to dump EVERY bit of meat out of his packs and get his pack saddle wedged under his tummy.  Luckily, he is not a dumb mule and stopped at the gate for our assistance.  We obliged by re-loading everything back on him...

Ahhh, the drafties...

These sweetie-pies helped my husband move this ENORMOUS tree that had fallen and blocked our road.  Brian cut it enough to move it and they first dragged it into the front field.

Then, since there was still not much snow on Thanksgiving weekend, Brian hooked them up to the logging arch he constructed and they hauled it out to the burn pile.

Good boys!

 And these last ones are for anyone that is feeling like the snow should go away, or anyone in a warmer clime that might be gloating about how pretty it is where they are:

Pink sunrise, from our front deck

Photos can't really capture how surreal and beautiful this was

Ice fog tree

Well, Lisa and I are making soap tomorrow- Hurray!  I'll let you know how it goes and I also have some handspun to show off!!

Happy Valentine's day!

My Sister's Birthday!!

Happy Birthday to you... Happy Birthday to you...

Yes, it's true.  My sister had a birthday last month and I have been dying to write about the placemats I wove for her!  But, I didn't want to spoil the surprise- now she has them and I can show you all photos!!

It all started a year ago, when she asked me to weave her new placemats for her birthday this year.  I tormented her with photos, questions- What colors, what pattern, what size?? And she dutifully answered everything, picked a pattern, suggested colors... so I went ahead and did something totally different!! I know, I know, I'm like that.

Four Placemats

I wanted to use the warp that I painted in the class I took with Kristie at Blue Flag Handweaving Studio.  It was originally supposed to be for scarves, but my sister didn't want scarves... She wanted placemats!  The painted warp is perle cotton and the colors don't show up very well in this photo, but they are the lighter stripes.  Then I had to buy some blue perle cotton for accent stripes and weft.  I did use some of my stash for the green and yellow (can't really see the yellow...) stripes.  This is also cotton, but it is cotton rug warp.

And then, I suddenly got tired of the blue perle cotton and was forced to buy some beautiful dark green- thus 2 blue napkins and 2 green napkins.

2 blue, 2 green

Things I learned:

• a plain weave border looks nice, but takes up differently than a twill body.  Next time, use basket weave for the border (thanks Kathy!)
• Perle cotton and rug warp cotton are not the same, they have different stretch and shrinkiness (yes, I made that word up!)
• I hate sewing.  Well, not exactly true, I don't hate it, I am just not good at it- even seams, I couldn't sew a straight line if my life depended on it!
• Napkins and placemats don't HAVE to be square...
• 6 yds of warp is A LOT of warp.
• I love packaging things! One of the most fun parts was folding these up and tying them with pretty twine and a label.

Pretty twine and label (complete with pink kitty button accent!)

Beautiful placemat!!

Napkins and Placemats

So there they are- Birthday placemats!  (plus bonus napkins)

Next up... Crochet mania

Hope you all have a very Happy Holiday!!!

Bear Paw Spin In

Yay!

Ok, so the spin-in was almost 3 weeks ago.  What can I say?  I've been busy enjoying this beautiful fall weather.

For those who don't know, a "spin-in" is not like a "sit-in" or anything.  It is an opportunity to spend time with a bunch of other fiber fanatics doing whatever fiber activity you were able to cram into the car that brought you there.  Depending on the size of your vehicle, this ranges from knitting (you can even bring this on your bike!) to needle felting (also highly portable) to weaving (definitely need something a little bigger than a bike...) to the main featured activity at this event: spinning! Yay!

This is Kristie weaving on painted warp

Look at all the different kinds of wheels!

Oh yeah, shopping opportunities as well!

This yearly spinner's retreat is organized by the Pend Oreille Fiberarts Guild of Newport, WA.  It is super fun and is held at a camp (I told you I was going to summer camp!) right on the Pend Oreille river.  The setting is simply fantastic and you don't have to actually camp, there are cabins and dorms with bunk beds.  

You can stay for the whole weekend for $50!  This includes meals from Friday dinner (potluck) through Sunday brunch.  Yes, truly a screaming deal and sooooo worth it.  You do need to bring your own sleeping paraphernalia (I brought my summer weight sleeping bag and favorite pillow- worked perfectly) and the bathrooms are campground bathrooms (yes, hot showers!!) meaning communal. To clarify, the bathrooms are communal, not the actual showers.  Unless you want to share, but we don't need to talk about that here...

This particular spinning event also promised something mysterious:

PICKER THROW DOWN ON SATURDAY

with equally mysterious instructions:

SILVER, WHITE, AND PURPLE OR TWO SHADES OF BLUE-NO GLITTER

I had no idea what any of it meant, but imagine how delighted I was to find out it meant this:

silver, white and purple...

two shades of blue...

fluffing the fiber- I helped at this table for a couple hours and it was so delightful.

Isn't it lovely?

and finally- the picker!

 I found out the way the throw down works is you bring CLEAN, ready to spin fiber which gets weighed and added to the appropriate pile (purple/white/silver or blues).  Then the big piles are fluffed some more and the picker is used to gently blend them all together!

One of the many boxes filled between picker and scale.

Then everyone who put in some fiber, gets the same weight of mix back to spin.  Luckily, I had some freshly washed and picked white fleece from Snowball, so I was able to participate.  I have started to spin my take and it looks great (even if I do say so myself...)  I would show you a photo, but I forgot to take one (yeah, I know -BIG surprise)

I am not positive this is Snowflake (photo was taken at Skylines), but she looks just like this.  But dirtier now.

 All in all, it was a great weekend and I met lots of friendly and interesting women.  I would highly recommend this for anyone who has even the slightest interest in spinning or knitting or felting.  I am definitely going back next year!!

My beautiful, numbered, loom!

I have been wanting to post about this for awhile, and just haven't had the time!

I love my table loom- it is an 8 shaft Woolhouse Tools Carolyn loom.  It is very sad, but Woolhouse is no longer producing their wonderful weaving tools.  The Carolyn is by far the best table loom I have ever used!

I did, however, have one problem using it with my pea-brain: every time I pulled the levers down, I would have to count to see what number shaft I had raised. Observe this photo:

With plain weave it is pretty easy, but any pattern that calls for a sort of random assortment of shafts to be up at one time, well let's just say my husband was tired of me counting out loud every 10 seconds.

It is pretty typical practice to either use a Sharpie or a piece of masking tape to label your levers, but this is my beautiful baby!!  I didn't want to mar her perfection with my chicken scrawl.  My husband suggested the wood burner, but burnt chicken scrawl didn't really seem any better.  Thus, the search began.

I looked at scrapbooking stickers, stencils, fabric numbers, but nothing looked right.  What I had in my mind's eye was old type writer keys.  Now, that would be cool.  But try and find numbers 1-8 in one set for a price that wasn't as much as the loom...  Time to blink my mind's eye and find something new.

What I found was:

How perfect is this???

Yes, I know. It's a ring...  but you get what I was thinking don't you???  

I contacted Tracy at 3Fine Design on Artfire and asked her if she could make me a set of leather discs numbered 1-8.  Not only was she willing, but she even found me some thinner leather that would work better on my loom levers.  She did a fantastic job! They are perfect.  And I got to paint them myself.

They came like this

and then I got my paints out:

and did this!

and this!

Aren't they pretty?  And then my beloved husband glued them on for me (he is way better with spatial relations)

The lowered shaft numbers are blue and purple (my personal favorite colors)

  The raised shaft numbers are orange and yellow (my new personal favorite colors!)

Now I have the prettiest loom on the block.  All thanks to the wonderful artist Tracy and her ability to not only figure out what I was talking about but to work with me to to get the perfect diameter and thickness. 

I couldn't be happier.  Well, maybe if we won the lottery, but barring that...