Fiber High

It's been a busy and exciting week. Since last Wednesday I've started this blog, joined an international scarf exchange, gone to a major fiber festival, joined Ravelry, attended a knitting group, and tonight I joined a spinning group. My mind is spinning, but boy am I high from excitement!

The spinning group was wonderful! I got my spinning wheel fine tuned and met several people, 2 of whom are going to be knitting-spinning buddies that do not live far from me. In addition, I now have another knitting group, will be knitting with friends on a weekday morning (learning how to spin with my Turkish spindle - one of my new knitting buddies knows how), and have yet another group that meets at a library on another weekday morning. So, 3 new face-to-face groups.

In addition to meeting new people, I was exposed to new wheels. I want a traveler and I'm leaning toward the Kromski Sonata. I love my traditional Ashford, but it's not portable.

I wound my blank yarn (Nature's Palette) but decided to forego the machine knitting for real knitting. B, the friend who introduced me to this group, decided she would knit the blanks with 2 strands of yarn from separate balls, so that when she dyed the yarn the 2 skeins would be more closely matched. Since we're knitting socks, matched yarn is a good idea. I plan to do this too. The idea of these blanks is to knit them in stockinette stitch, dye them in multiple colors making scribble-like patterns, set the dye, and then when the blank is ready, unravel the blank and knit a small project. The yarn ends up in unique patterns. I can't wait to see how it turns out. I think we're dyeing the blanks next month.

Ravelry

I got my Ravelry invitation around noon yesterday and obviously have been occupied. I have to confess I was a bit overwhelmed. I think I joined 31 groups in less than an hour and was so overstimulated that I needed to disappear from the computer to do something quiet - like knit! I keep coming back, but I can't stay for hours. I've had mixed experiences with Forums, but Ravelry is as much a tool as a forum, so it will grow on me. Don't mind me, I'm slow to warm to new things.

I have been knitting. I can't show most of my work because almost all of it is for someone else. I've been working on socks, baby gifts, and scarves and I'll show them after recipients receive them.

Spinning group is tomorrow. I have to start work early in the afternoon to be able to attend, so I'm signing off to read my get-sleepy-quick book, Harry Potter and the Half-whatever Prince. It works! I guarantee I'll be out before I've completed the first page.

Oregon Flock and Fiber

This was an Autumn Joy day - crisp morning air, flannel-shirt temperature, and mixed clouds and sunshine. We awoke early, ate a quick breakfast and checked my Ravelry status (510!!), and set off towards Canby about 8:45. The scenery was beautiful. I wish I could have stopped to take pictures of the Columbia River, but we were on Interstate 205. We walked into the Clackamas County Fairgrounds about 9:30. It was already crowded, but I do live in a fiber-loving part of the world and this was to be expected.

First stop of interest was to a booth representing predator-friendly certified livestock owners. I learned about guard animals like donkeys, guard dogs, and llamas, and how livestock owners use a combination of practices to protect their livestock and avoid killing livestock predators (i.e., wolves, mountain lions, coyotes). I'm very interested in the dog breeds - most of them are dogs I haven't heard about, but are common in Italy, Eastern Europe, and Spain. I would have liked to have stayed longer, but I picked up a quarterly called Home Range and will read that later.

I spent a lot of time in the vendor areas - they were everywhere - out on the lawn, in the barns, and in 2 separate buildings. If there were more, I don't want to know. There was a lot to see.

There was live music with a Celtic band. My husband listened to them while I shopped. He reported a hearing a song about a flock of sheep that froze to death. (Maybe this band should record for the Planet Earth show). I tried out spinning wheels (I'm looking for a traveler) and tried lamb samples.

We visited animals and I had a fleeting moment when I came close to buying an angora rabbit. Here are some alpaca beauties we saw:





And, here's a Shetland sheep whose name might amuse a member of my family (unfortunately, you can't see the sheep very well):



I was really excited by my purchases. Pictures follow:



A Turkish spindle made of carob wood, a booklet to help me learn to spin with a Turkish spindle (from Crown Mountain Farm), a wraps per inch tool kit and knit card, and a yarn gauge spinning control card (to help me keep yarn at a consistent gauge while spinning). Both gauge and WPI tool kit were from Woodland Woolworks.



American cashmere in white, which has a longer staple than Chinese and is thus easier to spin, baby camel/merino blend which is the golden brown and white fiber, and llama which is the darker solid brown (surprisingly soft).




All wool Black Face Leicester top. Machine-knitted blanks were completely gone very quickly, so I got Natures Palette in cream to knit next week in spinning group.



A merino-silk blend to spin for clapotis yarn.



Super-wash merino in I've Got You Babe Sock-Hop yarn colorway.



Sweater pattern from Chrissy Gardiner and Verts Creations Short-Wave Lace Scarf and Stahman's Shawls and Scarves by Myrna A.I. Stahman from Berry Meadow Farm (see below).




It was a wonderful day. I'm going to have to make this a yearly event and am so glad I took the day off to do go to Flock and Fiber. I came home to find my International Scarf Exchange partner info. I may have to return to the fair tomorrow!

Waiting, Always Waiting

I saw last night that I was at 1206 on the Ravelry wait list, which means I should be there in 1 or 2 days. It may mean Monday if Sunday is a day of rest (NO00!!!). Being so close to being at Ravelry makes the time move slower. It's not like I don't have other diversions though!

This means I don't have to make a decision between Flock and Fiber or Ravelry tomorrow. I've been perusing the F&F website to see which vendors I want to visit. I'm looking for merino-silk blended and dyed fiber to spin and knit my own clapotis (Google this if you don't know what it is because I can't figure out how to just add a one-word link) and I'm definitely planning to visit the Crown Mountain Farm booth to look for Sock Hop yarn. If there is no yarn, I hope to get some fiber dyed in Sock Hop colors to spin my own yarn. I always miss their Sock Hop sales. I'm also looking for a Turkish drop spindle. The one I have is big and clunky and these are apparently lighter and easier to maneuver. I'm going to try and resist buying a pygora goat or angora rabbit. I'm going with my husband. I've been told that there will be plenty of things happening that will be interesting to him, including listening to harp music.

I took some pictures of some of my favorite areas of the yard today.

This is the patio/deck combination right outside the back door. My husband recently finished this deck and the lower portion has the bar table I bought him for his birthday, and the upper deck has a swing (you can barely see it in this picture). On the patio is our Ashiyu. We had to empty it and move it so we could have at least 4 people sit around it. Some of the tiles came off the lower portion of the stand, so it's not positioned the way it will be positioned eventually.



This is the side front yard and it is a nice sitting area in the morning. My husband has done the majority of the work here and I need to take pictures to capture his hard work. We really do have a backyard paradise in this suburban neighborhood.

Knitting with blanks

I found out today that the spinning group project next week is going to be knitting with blanks. We'll be bringing our own yarn and there will be 2 knitting machines that we'll use to knit our yarn into square blanks. We will be dyeing these blanks, steaming them, and then knitting a small project (I'm thinking fingerless gloves). Apparently there was a young woman doing this at the Black Sheep Gathering in June and she made a big impression on everyone. I think the knitted blanks will be sold at Flock and Fiber, so I may be getting some there since I don't think I have time to spin enough yarn or order bare wool from Knit Picks before next week's session. Yes, this is a spinning group, but the leader of the group is interested in knitting, too. I'm not complaining!

An exciting discovery today is that I see I have now reached below 2000 on the waiting list at Ravelry. Since they are sending 500 to 600 invitations a day, I should be getting my invitation in 3 to 4 days. At the beginning of the week I was in the 5000 range and thought it would be another 2 to 3 weeks. I've been waiting for this invitation since July and am very excited that my invitation will arrive about the time my weekend starts. If it arrives on Saturday, I might have some trouble deciding between perusing Ravelry and going to Flock and Fiber!

Want to see another miraculous thing that I just chanced upon last week? It's eye candy!


This is Wollmeise in the color Poison No.5. I didn't think this color was really my style, but I love it. I like to be surprised. I started a sock right away, but the needles are too big. I need to frog the sock and use smaller needles.

I got another one!










This is Rhabarber (or Rhubarb). I love the colors in this skein. They are exactly what I like.

I don't know why I was so lucky. I just happened to check my e-mail at the time The Loopy Ewe alert went out. It was 9 minutes exactly from the time of the sneak-up alert to my financial transaction. Within the hour all skeins of Wollmeise were gone! I got two and promised my husband that these were my last 2 sock yarn purchases for the end of the year. I did point out the gift certificates he could get for me from The Loopy Ewe for Christmas, but I don't think he took me seriously!

I've been Googling German independent yarn dyers, and quickly decided I'm going to start looking for a refresher course in the German language so I can read the blogs. I love what I've been seeing lately!

Introduction

Welcome to my blog. Yes, I'm a one of tens of thousands with a knitting blog, but I hope to write about other interests from time to time. I've had my blog for a few weeks now, but I've never found an appropriate time to write (plus I'm feeling a bit shy about this). However, it feels like autumn outside and it's the time of year I'm most eager to start new things. The blog looks pretty bare, but I'll be adding pictures of projects I've finished and adding lists and sites I like to visit. I'm sure it won't be bare for long.

This is a good week to start my blog because there are several activities happening in the next few days that I'll be writing about. I've started attending a knitting group, Flock and Fiber Festival starts Saturday (I have the day off), and I begin attending a spinning group next week. The projects this group gets involved in sound very exciting.

In addition to the face-to-face knitting activities I do with people, I have also joined 2 online sock knitalongs and plan to join some online swaps. It's very useful to have a blog for these activities.

A few facts about me: I'm a new empty nester (last young adult child moved out in May) and live in the suburbs of a Pacific Northwest city. I live with my husband, 3 cats, and 2 dogs. I work at home though I'm employed by a local hospital, and spend whatever spare time I can get knitting alone or with friends, spinning, playing with pets, walking with my husband, visiting my 3 children (who do live in the area), soaking my feet in our new Ashiyu, reading, coaching the gardener (my husband), and dreaming up new home projects to make our home more energy-efficient and compatible with the environment. These interests aren't listed in preferential order, nor have I listed all my interests. That will come in time.

I thought writing this was going to be hard, but I see I've posted a bit for an introductory post. I'm excited that I finally wrote something though. Since it's the wee hours of the morning and I tend to babble on when I'm tired, I'll continue writing and adding side bars to the site tomorrow.