And Now for March!

Unbelieveable!  It's now March - where is the year going?!  We were busy in February - clearing the fallen trees in the pasture, repairing fences, working on scarves and hats, taking fiber to Superior Fiber for processing into roving and yarn.  Not to mention making more cheese and taking care of the farm and the kids etc.  Oh- and the day job, can't forget the day job. 

Thanks to my day job I spent two sunny days in San Leandro, CA learning how to safely climb ladders and drive defensively.  The upside is I get to see if I get a discount on my insurance since I passed the driving class.  Yay me!

This weekend I'm headed to a three day retreat focused on spinning with my Hansen E-spinner.  It's the first spinning lesson I've had in YEARS, if not actual decades!  I'm very excited about it and can't wait to be on my way tomorrow!

I mentioned that I spent Frideay making scarves and hats and I actually have the pictures to prove it.

hat and scarf ensemble

This is a matching hat and scarf made from beige fiber from Samson.  I thought it needed something so needled on the flower and leaves.  The two were created using warm soapy water - the scarf was rolled in bubble wrap and the hat was made "on a ball". 

I made four sets of matching hats and scarves including the black hat on the right.  I'll post pictures of the other two as soon as I take some decent photos - the pictures I have are terrible.


I also found a wonderful scarf idea in the handbook I got with my new felting machine from Anne Vickrey Evans (FeltCrafts).  These are two scarves, silk, that started out the same length and width.  I used white fiber for the scarf on the right and brown for the other one.  They were rolled on the machine and then fulled in the dryer.  Besides color the only other difference was the amount of fiber used - I used very little for the brown scarf and quite a bit more for the other.

For the scarf on the right I used a navy blue dyed fiber and filled it fairly full.  I'll have to add a finished picture when I get it along with the picture of the scarf I filled with black fiber - that one is pretty amazing.

I'm also working on more fish and have decided to try a slightly different approach - insted of felting the tail and fins as part of the body work I'm going to needle them on after the body is complete and stuffed.  Along with the lips, eyes and other details. 

My goal is to make a bunch that I can take with me when I got to Detroit for the rest of my training in April.  I'll be there six days and this should give me something to do - plus I can always bring my e-spinner and fiber (-:

Where Did January Go?!

It's now February 1st and I don't know what happened to January?!  I know some of it I spent in CA with my parents.  Dad is in a rehab facility recuperating from a car accident back on Thanksgiving and Mom was having eye surgery.  Mom got to try spinach souffle (cooked in an 8 cup Pyrex measuring cup no less) as well as home made butternut squash soup.  I made Dad a black mouse with teal ears/nose/tail for his room while we sat and talked one visit.  We also mailed the pieces of a felt mobile to hang in his room - of course I didn't get any pictures of the pieces, but they were based on the Celestial Mobile by Marianne S. Dubois in "Designer Needle Felting".  I hope it brightens it up for him a bit.

I've also taken two cheese making classes with Julie Steil of River Valley Cheese in Snohomish, WA.  I'm still working on the aging side of the process - I've lost the rounds of Tomme, Blue Tomme and Camembert I've tried so far.  But Julie says that aging is the most difficult part of cheese making so I haven't given up.  My goat cheese and goat/alpaca cheese are coming along - my favorite is still the blended goat/balsamic vineagar cheese.  Next on the list is to make provolone from my stock pile of goat's milk.  I have the culture, now to give it a try and get the aging process going.

We're starting to ramp up for the 2012 market and festival season - we're back at The Redmond Saturday Market and we'll also be doing a Spring show in Duvall in March and probably the Duvall Plant and Garden Art Sale in May.  I'm hoping we'll have the llamas and alpacas at some of those venues.

My taxes are calling, as is the scarf I started that needs to be wetted down for felting. 

Happy 2012!

Heart of Dreams in December

This is a poncho I made using natural brown and black fiber and osnaburg fabric (kinda' like muslin, but a little bit heavier).  The alpaca shapes were cut from prefelts I made from the same fiber I used in

the poncho.  It's come in handy in some drafty venues I've been in since I finished it.  The best part is the fiber itself doesn't appear to shed.  Wearing black pants tends to tattle about any shedding that might happen - so far nothing.

I'm also doing snowmen for the season:

I'm going to track down different styles of camouflage for snow-people in different "sitautions" and there might even be a snow-smurf at some point.

This is a wall hanging I made for my niece and her fiance' for their wedding.  The "P" is in Microsoft's Parchment font and I needle felted it onto a white prefelt background.  The is another laminate like the poncho - one side had the black border with white and hints of turquoise in the middle, then the osnaburg and finally the design itself.

This is the "P" in more detail and after it's been felted a bit.

Ultimately I think I fulled it a bit too much and because the letter had that little bit more fiber it definitely fulled more than the surrounding area.  It may not be a wall hanging anymore, but hopefully it's a good lap rug for the newlyweds.

And here are the fish - (the instructions are from Lori Flood, an amazing felter and teacher):

holiday show today

With less than two hours to go I've decided to update the blog.  It's that or keep spinning with my Hansen e-spinner and listen to my book "on tablet".  The blog won out.

I was about to start kvetching about once again not selling anything, but a customer just bought a shawl I made (spun, plied, knitted by me).  It looked absolutely gorgeous on her - and I bet you're wondering why I don't have a picture posted.  I did take one, honest, but I forgot to save it!!  I doubt I have one in my files, but I'm going to look.

I've gotten some ideas from my fellow vendors.  One lady recommended making kid versions of a poncho I'm wearing (I'll upload a pic later).  Another lady gave me the idea to needle felt small dogs so people can have their own vanity pooch without all the bother and must have accessories.  If nothing else the results should be amusing.

All in all it's been a fairly quiet holiday show.  We're going to check into two shows/fairs in Lake Forest Park and we still have the Duvall show on the third.  So there's still time to get your alpaca fix - including scheduling a tour or felting class.

So this was a quickie update, but at least I got it done.

Latest endeavour - pillows

This is a Tlingit salmon.  I've been carrying the picture this is based on for years wating to be brave enough to attempt it either as a flat piece or in this case as a pillow.  It wasn't until I had finished making the pillow form and starting on the design details that I realized I messed up the tail - I left off the actual tail fin.  So now I get to figure that out in addition to deciding if I'm going to put the designs on the reverse side (I already did the mouth, but nothing else).  I also have to decide if I'm going to extend the mouth a bit.  But it's definitely a start.

Hats for the last few days

And yarn.  I'm plying the singles I spun up last year at the Redmond Market - around making a few more hats.  I had some leftover hearts from a scarf I made a while ago and they worked perfectly as prefelts.  This is a bit on the small side, but I think it's cute.

I've got the pictures of the start of this when it looked like a big, green, fuzzy blob, wrapped in the nylons and this is what it looked like as soon as I took it off the ball.  The shiny stuff you can almost see inside is from the thin layer of silk hankies I used.

Here is my son, Edyk, modelling (mainly so he can stay up and watch some TV).  The highlights from the hankies are a bit more visible.  This is also after it took a "hand wash" tumble in the washer (front loader - yay).

Assorted Fiber projects this weekend

This is me plying my two suri singles while watching "Ice Station Zebra" last night. This is the same yarn I started when i got my e-spinner, Essy, last Saturday. Each single is about 3.5 ounces and I finished plying just as "Where Eagles Dare" started - It was "movies based on Allistair Maclean books" night last night. When I'm done here I'll wind this off into a skein and start some brown huacaya from our boy Evgeny. If Tim gets going on the scarves with his sock machine he might be able to make one using this yarn!

I started a scarf earlier using white suri fiber and red/yellow silk hankies (finished project below). I completed that and it's now drying over a chair. I decided to do another scarf using the suri. I also decided to not be as careful about the fiber layout this time around - which is the chaos in the picture to the left. This is actually a picture of two layers of fiber. I did a total of three and then filled in the thin spots after the first round on my machine.

In case I didn't post this before - this is my felting machine. It's a Celtic Moon Princess. Projects can be up to two feet wide and the length is only limited by what can fit between the rollers. It won't completely full the felt, but it comes awfully close. The last step for most of my projects is to go for a vinegar rinse in my front loading washer. I don't have that in the rental, but I found out today that our builder can hook mine up at the house sometime this week - yay!!!

This is the result of the chaotic fiber layout. I left the edges alone to keep with the primitive or organic look. The locks are visible in the felt which is another cool effect. This will definitely go in my Charlie line of scarves. At some point I'll beat or rub the pattern left by the pool mat. Sometimes I leave it because it can make the lace felt look even lacier.

This is the final result of the suri with silk hankies scarf. You can't see the edge that didn't felt to the body of the scarf. That happened because I didn't do the plastic right for the straight edges I wanted on this scarf. What I did instead was put plastic between the edge and the body so instead of a nice straight edge I had what you see in the last picture.

Instead of folding the stray fiber over to the body of the scarf, somehow the plastic was folded between the body and the fiber. The edge looked straight but obviously wasn't. I'm probably going to have to try and needle this edge into place or simply snip off the excess fiber.