A Pause...

During the last few months I've been reflecting on things and re-examining priorities.  Available time has been channeled into addressing the fact that a slow economy is turning my studio into a warehouse.  This can be ok up to a point.  When it gets hard to find things, there's no place to work on projects, and only narrow paths wind through equipment and wool, the situation is out of hand. 

I hadn't sold raw fleeces in years.  But since I have far too much clean, carded wool waiting to be dyed or sold as is,  I decided to sell the results of the last shearing at a very reasonable price in the Fleece Market forum on Ravelry.   Fleeces have been making their way to California, New Mexico, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Connecticut, and Canada.  I've also started listing roving in the same forum.  These listings will continue until I can move around a little in my studio!  I've added a page, listed on the sidebar of this blog, for photos of fiber that is for sale.  If you're interested and don't see the link it may be because you're reading this in Google Reader and haven't actually clicked through to this blog.  Click away!

It's not just a wool problem: I have more fiber equipment than I need.  So I'm looking with a critical eye at the equipment situation.  The Wolf Pup went to the home of a new weaver this week and The Big Wave will hopefully go to its new owner this weekend.  I'm trying to get to the point where my equipment better reflects the type of fiber work that I enjoy doing.  Not an easy goal for me!

I don't enjoy blogs that skimp on photos so it's time for one:

Japanese Indigo

I decided early this spring to dip try some dyeing with plant materials.  This is a small patch of Japanese Indigo, started from seed in my sunroom.  This month I'll be taking a three day workshop on the subject of natural dyeing at New England Weavers Seminar; indigo dyeing will one of the subjects covered in the workshop.

Finally, here's a farm shot of a few girls in my small kitchen flock.

Kitchen flock

And if you've stuck it out this far, you might enjoy a little video of my backyard chickens, produced a couple of weeks ago with my iPad:  Free-range chickens

Sojourner Design roving at WEBS

A couple of weeks ago I replenished the stock of Sojourner Design roving at WEBS.  It's always fun to stop by the store with a basket load of brand new colors... and even more fun to walk back out with an empty basket!  (If your plans involve a trip to WEBS, please look for my roving.)  But the MOST fun was visiting the WEBS Yarn Store Blog yesterday and seeing a photo of my roving along with a ball of yarn spun from it!

Chicken House on Wheels

Yesterday I captured an annual farm activity here:  my chickens' change of address from their winter  quarters to their summer house on wheels.  From now until sometime in October, they will lbe backyard nomads.  Every few days the house will be moved and the portable fencing will re-installed, providing them with fresh hunting grounds.  The house was built on an old trailer from wood framing and metal roofing, and can be hitched to my ATV.
After moving the chickens out, it was time to clean out a winter's worth of dust and debris.  It all got shoveled into the bucket of my husband's tractor and was deposited in our compost pit where it will mix with grass clippings, kitchen waste, etc.  This is very dusty work.

The photo is overexposed because the sun was streaming into the house... but it's clear that there was a need for cleaning!

And here's why: the fleeces from the last shearing in late February had been temporarily stored in the barn basement.  It was time to get them into a more suitable storage space.  I choose to store my raw fleeces in plastic bags.  The bags are left open for ventilation and are placed on temporary shelves constructed from cattle panels (metal fence sections) to facilitate good air circulation.  They will now be steps from my basement door, enabling me to pull out a fleece and get it sorted and ready for processing whenever I have the time to do so.  By midsummer they will all be sorted, skirted, and ready to deliver to the fellows at Twist of Fate Spinnery for washing and carding.

This whole process of moving chickens out and fleeces in has developed a rhythm and is a spring ritual!

SojournerDesign at Zibbet.com

 Zibbet?  Zibbet?  What's that?  I didn't know myself until recently.  I stumbled upon Zibbet.com when I had googled something or other and there I found a link to someone's shop on Zibbet carrying the item I was searching for.  I liked that.

Many fiber and handmade enthusiasts know about and use Etsy.  As an Etsy shop owner, I find the place very crowded.  And adding a listing to one's shop on Etsy really tried one's patience.  This is the year that I have to increase my presence on the web, so welcome to my Zibbet shop.

If you're reading this post in Google Reader, you're not seeing the button at the upper left hand side of my blog page for accessing my Zibbet shop because Google Reader cuts out all the stuff that appears along the sides of blogs.  So here's a button right in this post, just for you:




So far there's just one listing there.  But if you'd like to stock up on Angelina, hurry on over.

Zibbet.  Zippit.  Zibbet.  Ribbit.  Zibbet...

More Photos Than Words ... well, almost.

View from the bathroom:




View from the kitchen sink:



On assignment in the neighbors' back yard:



Helena would be so embarrassed if she knew I'd caught her with her eyes closed.




A couple of the youngest members:




Love the coloring on these two; notice the knees.




FOR SALE

My latest Mary Alice roving (see a description of this method in my 04-20-09 post): hues of cantaloupe and watermelon with a bit of mink. One bag weighing in at 14.4 ounces; one slightly different in coloring at 8.4 ounces. $3.50 per ounce. These will go to the Fleece sale at WEBS in a couple of weeks; if you like it for yourself, just e-mail me.

A Weekend of Ragweaving!

This was one of those stellar weekends. I hear that the weather was superb; I was stuck indoors at WEBS here in Northampton all day both days and didn't mind one bit. I was participating in a workshop with Johanna Erickson (author of Rag Weaving Gimmicks and Tricks) on the subject of Wearable Rags. We spent the whole weekend weaving up samples using several techniques and multiple materials. Rather than yarn for weft we used strips of materials.

This appeals to me as I have stockpiled old items of clothing for several years with the intent of doing some ragweaving. I also think that much of what I learned will apply to weaving with wool roving.

Here's a closer look at my samples:

This one included a quilted floral fabric like one would use to make a bedspread, then some pink knit fabric woven three different ways, then some shiny purple synthetic material interspersed with a weft here and there of multicolor; a large knitting needle was used to create the clusters of loops with the purple fabric.


The sample below was woven with a rather dense chenille warp. I experimented with wefts of batik-like cloth, seam binding, ribbons, rick-rack (the yellow stuff), and some brightly-striped fabric that had been pre-cut and supplied on a spool. I would have chosen a less-dense warp to allow more of the weft to show.


This piece involved weaving with strips of knit fabric such as tee shirts. It was particularly fun to weave with the blue and white-striped material, fiddling with each weft to create a checkerboard effect.




This was probably the most fun: picture weaving. A fabric with a design such as flowers is chosen, cut into strips, and the strips woven in order so that there is a squashed-down version of the images on the original fabric. The larger and simpler the images, the more the more similar the woven results will be. Here you can see I experimented with several different patterns.

I love attending workshops that involve creating samples rather than a finished item. Good food, good people, good weaving.






THOSE COMMENTS...

Thank you Michelle Ward, Sharon Bogon, and Tammy for your recent comments.


FIBER FOR SALE



These were two very successful and rewarding dye jobs in which I tried a new technique. In each bag there are several continuous strands of roving, each dyed a hue that is harmonious with the others. Because the colors are in separate strands the spinner can control exactly how the colors are worked up; either blended all together, spun intermittently, or even spun into separate colored skeins. The batch above includes strands ranging from a pale, polite yellow through several shades of green to aqua.

My friend Mary Alice bought a bag at the recent meeting of the Nutmeg Spinners Guild. When I saw her a few days later she told me how delighted she was when she looked closer at home and discovered that she would have so many spinning possibilities. So I've decided to call this dyeing technique my Mary Alice roving. It was nice to get good feedback from someone who appreciated my efforts to put more control into the spinner's hands.

Since Mary Alice asked me to set aside another bag of this, I only have one bag available now; it's 6.6 ounces of Finn Cross for $23.10.



More Mary Alice roving here, with shades of shrimp from pale to medium as well as a touch of pale mauve. I have four bags of this, each approximately one half pound; if you're interested I'll get you the specifics. Priced as above, at $3.50 per ounce.

I'm getting ready for my next selling event which will be the Fleece Market at the WEBS Tent Sale on Saturday, 16 May at WEBS here in Northampton MA. Although the main sale is a two-day event, the Fleece Market will be limited to Saturday. I have a new (to me) EZ-UP shelter which will hopefully function better than my shelter last year which blew down. My border collie Bud will be with me that day to welcome visitors.

Fiber for Sale

I've been quite the slacker when it comes to posting fiber for sale and am going to try to be a little better about that. This is a dye project with which I was very pleased. It's the roving that Spike showed you in my entry on 21 March.

Spinners at the Nutmeg Spinning Guild were pleased too; more than half of the dye lot sold there this past weekend. The color of this Border Leicester cross roving can best be described as smoky opal; the hue reminds me of the lichen that grows on rocks with shadowy areas within that hue. The shadowing is consistently inconsistent; if your project calls for consistency you'll need to take this into account in your spinning. I have a total of 20 ounces available, and it's listed on Etsy so you can purchase it there.