Rhinebeck 2017

Updated to add two more photos of the dyeing class.

It has been really busy around here and that is why there hasn't been any blogging. We were out in Europe for 2 weeks and I came back right before Rhinebeck. This year Rhinebeck expanded out into 4.5 days because I helped with workshop setup also. Usually I just help pack up on Sunday.

It ended up being quite tiring because I was there to help with class check-in at 7:30 (Thurs/Fri) and 8:30 (Sat/Sun). I thought I'd get home early on Thurs after class but class ran late. On Friday, I volunteered at the fleece judging as a scribe so it was late. I usually try to leave either early or late on Sat and Sun to avoid the traffic. So most days were long. It is a 45 min drive for me one-way. But it is so much fun that I don't care.

I took 3 classes this year. On Thursday I took 'Dyeing Cotton Naturally' with Jane Woodhouse. Jane is a great teacher. It was a long day as we made many, many samples. First we dyed natural colored cotton which had been mordanted with alum acetate. Then we dyed cotton that had been mordanted with alum and a tannin. Lastly we made stock solutions and did color blends.

Each of the first two sets twas done 3 ways: the dye as is, with an iron modifier and with an indigo over-dye.

The challenging part was labeling and dividing up the skeins so we each had a sample of each yarn. I finally got around to organizing my samples! I now need a big envelope to store them.

On Friday, I took a Navajo Rug Weaving class. We got small pre-warped looms and 8 oz of yarn to weave with. It took a while for her to explain the basics. She taught us how to weave vertical and horizontal stripes. Diagonals were not included in the curriculum for this one day class. It was fun and I need to get back to it. The teacher was Marilou Schultz who is a member of the Navajo Nation.

The last class I took was on Sunday. It was a 1 hour 'Made in the Moment' with Leslie Wind. That was a lot of fun! I made a pin and 2 cable needles. Plus, because we were the last class of the weekend, we each got some samples from her.

The top pin is the one I made. The other two are her samples.

The cable needles I made. The left one is called 'Hurrah!' and the right one is 'Angel'. 

Someone gave me 2 bags of unlabeled undyed fiber and another person gave me a bag of Into the Whirled fiber. The only fiber I bought was odds and ends that Briar Rose had dyed. She is getting out of the fiber business and just dyed these to use up the ends. I bought a featherweight Bosworth spindle. I haven't photographed any of my acquisitions yet so that will be in the next post.

Right after Rhinebeck, I had to focus on an educational forum I was helping organize and canvassing for the election. So the fiber content has been minimal BUT, I was able to warp and weave a scarf on my Baby Wolf loom. That was exciting. I am already planning the next project on it as well as what I'm going to do on my rigid heddle loom.

Scarf on the loom above and finally finished below. It is a variegated weft with an almost solid gray warp. Both yarns are cheap 'sock' yarns I bought in China. They are quite soft but not very durable for socks.

I also started a pair of Two-At-A-Time (TAAT) socks while I was traveling. I have finished them up to the heels. They are for a guild demo so I am going to stop there till the guild meeting. This way I can show back and forth knitting on the two socks as well as how to knit on them in-the-round.

I finished the wrap I worked on when I was on the first trip and also a little infinity scarf/cowl from a skein of the most luscious yarn I have ever touched. It is called Road to China. I don't seem to have a photo of the wrap. I'll take it and post next time.

Rhinebeck was very warm this year. But it was cold in the am so I wore a sweater or shawl every day and then ended up taking them off around 10 am. They went back on right before I left at 6 or 7 pm.  I did get a chance to finally wear my Grapevine sweater.

In order to catch up and write about both the travel and the fiber activity, I am hoping to do 2 posts a week for the rest of the year. 

Glass sculptures!

I am afraid that I don't have too many fiber topics to discuss today. I have finished one sleeve on my Grapevine sweater but I need to start the other one. I am hoping to have it done this weekend but there are so many things going on that I don't know if I will be able to or not.

Being away at the workshop and then having the first full week in August fly by meant that I had to spend a good bit of time in the garden this week. There were weeds everywhere. I have managed to weed everything but the flower bed by the mailbox. I hope to get to that tomorrow. I thought I could do it today but it rained last night and I don't want to compress the wet soil by walking on it.

A couple of things arrived by mail that are interesting. I bought a sifting litter box from Petco to wash fleece. I haven't used it yet but it fits nicely in the laundry tub and I think I will end up saving water by using it.

It stacks nicely together for storage. My idea is that I'll fill one of the pans with hot water for washing/rinsing, put the fleece in the sifter in lingerie bags so it is easy to move around, and then soak it by putting the sifter in the pan of water. When it is time to remove the fleece from that water, I can press out the water using the other pan and then put the sifter in it to drain while I change the water. It is about 4-5" deep.

Next up, I bought an almost new Züca bag on Craigslist. I haven't put the minispinner in it yet as I have been too busy. We had guests all last weekend and they only left on Monday.

It is really pink! but the black and white bag sets off the pink rather nicely. The price was good so I am embracing the pink.

The last item is an amazing prize I won in the Tour de Fleece. It is exactly something I was thinking of buying so getting it as a prize is really awesome.

It is a purpleheart 2-bobbin kate from Hansencrafts! My lazy kates are all 3-bobbin so I was thinking of getting this one for workshops as it is lighter and smaller. The bobbins can be held vertical or at a 45 degree angle.

Now on to the eye-candy. Yesterday, we went to see the Chihuly exhibit at the New York Botanical Garden. They have a Chihuly Nights event every so often as part of the exhibit and that is what we did. No commentary here, just photos.

It was really beautiful at night because there was very little ambient light except for the gorgeously lit glass sculptures. The NYBG had an interactive map that showed where I was and where the sculptures were, along with the walkways. So I could navigate using my phone. When I got near a sculpture, it popped up a description of the sculpture and the name and a photo of it in daylight.

I was able to lay out the collapse weave project based on warp and weft calculations and my yardage. It will be a scarf as I don't have enough weft for a shawl. I hope to warp it next week and also finish the Grapevine sweater. 

Tour de Fleece 2017

The Tour de France started yesterday and in parallel, our Tour de Fleece started at the same time. This is the first year I am going to be home for the whole tour and since I recently retired, I am hoping to get a lot of spinning in the next 4 weeks.

I had a plan for the major project I wanted to do but I didn't work out the details till sometime between Friday and Saturday. I like to learn during the TdF by doing something new to me and over the years I've learned a lot of techniques this way - long draw, ply-on-the-fly, extremely fine spinning, etc. This year's project was to spin for a collapse weave scarf or shawl. Remember all the samples I made? They were to figure out what I wanted to do.

I have a secondary project that I want to do - spin from the lock with fiber I have processed myself.  This is in case I get bored or finish the collapse weave spinning too quickly. Since I am spinning singles for collapse weave, it goes fast. No plying!

Therefore the first factor in selecting fiber is the objective of the project. The second factor is what equipment I will use. When I travel, I am limited to spindles. Since I am home this year, I can use my e-spinner and my wheel. I am going to do the collapse weave yarn on the e-spinner and the spinning from the locks on the wheel.

The third factor is what teams I can be on. I try to double up on teams for the same projects :-) This year they are Team Footloose (e-spinner), Teams Fiber Optic and Gorgeous Gradients, and Team DIY and Dye.

 This is the gray Corriedale I bought in New Zealand. I used it for the collapse weave samples and spun a S-twist singles. This time I am going to spin it Z-twist so that I have the option of alternating S and Z twist in the warp. I may not do it or I may. But if I have singles with twist in both directions, I have options. I also have a lot of this so I don't mind giving some of it up to loom waste. :-) This will be the warp for my shawl/scarf.

 I had spun a bit of this before yesterday, but very little. Rather than starting a new project, I thought I'd continue with it and spin singles for the weft. I had split it into two and that is why I was torn about using it. But I decided that it was for the better. If I spin it completely end to end, I am tied to the length of the transitions as they appear. By stripping it vertically, I reduce the length of the color repeats. This means that I will get all the colors in a scarf or, if I end up doing a shawl, I can remove the last color from the second half and weave it in reverse to make a mirror-image shawl. So I'd start with gray (say) and weave to the magenta, Take off the magenta from the other singles and weave back to gray. Or just weave to the blue, remove the magenta from both singles and part of the blue from the second one and weave back to gray. I think it will give me more options. Since I've never done this before, options are good.

 These are the locks I dyed last year at a class in Rhinebeck. I had previously washed the locks so I started the processing with the fleece itself.  I am not sure how I am going to handle the colors. I may just let them come as they may or I might try making a self striping yarn.

 This is the first day's spin. The top is what I had done previously. As you can see, it is very little. I wasn't able to spin yesterday till after dinner but I got a bit more than an hour of spinning in.

 I also went to the yarn store and got photos of myself in the zippered hoodie.

I have made progress on the Grapevine pullover. I am halfway down the first sleeve. I decided to put a band of the lace at around the elbow. I picked a spot where I had the right number of sts for the repeat of the lace and put in an insertion. I will also do the same at the cuff.

No progress on the weaving. I was busy trying to get all the yard-work done before the heat set in in earnest. And I made it. Now I just have to keep the weeds down by doing a patrol every few days and it doesn't take much time to pull out the ones that have sprouted in the mean time. I think my sage is dying though. It is wilted even though I been watering regularly when it hasn't rained. The rest look good.

I am going to try and collect some flowers for dyeing in the winter.

Turtle-like progress and flowers

I have been rather busy with yard work. We had a cool and rainy spring with some warm spells. This sent all the weeds into overdrive so I had weeds everywhere in my flower beds and under trees and shrubs. We have been battling weeds since they grew uncontrolled during our China stay. They all set seed and developed strong runner root systems and therefore we generate a large crop every spring. The key to getting things back into control is a ruthless weeding every spring - to pull up every little weed sprout. Then it is possible to keep the new growth under control over the summer and fall, resulting in fewer runners and seeds for the next spring. It is getting better but things are still a bit weedy in the spring.

I go around the entire house and remove all the weeds while patrolling already cleared beds for new entrants. It is pretty exhausting in the spring but makes the rest of the year better. It also leaves very little time and energy for fiber crafts.

I haven't taken photos of the flowers I planted this year yet so you are going to see the spring flowers that are already done and gone.

 I missed most of the lilacs due to really bad allergies. When the trees are flowering, I have to stay indoors because my allergies get really, really bad despite all the medications. But I caught the tail end of the lilacs. I have also got 3 Josee re-blooming lilacs growing in pots on the deck. We've had really bad luck with the ends of our lilac hedge. The first and the last 3 plants keep dying. I am trying to see if letting them grow a bit bigger on the deck before planting helps.

 Rhododendrons. I have 3 colors and this is one of my favorites.

 This is the least favorite of the 3 although I still love it. I love all 3 so it is merely ordering the top of the heap. It is peculiar, though, because I usually love purple.

This is my other favorite. I love the white flowers.

 Spider worts. These are a source of my weeds. They spread their seeds far and wide and I am still finding plants that entrenched themselves in odd places when we were China.

 One of my two azaleas. The others are pink.

 A pink weigela. I also have a darker rose/reddish color.

 I love this combination of colors. The blue of the fescue with the pink creeping thyme and the red of the Japanese maple.

 Tree peonies. My disappointment with these comes from their very short flowering period. But the flowers never disappoint.

 A gratuitous sunset. I've been taking fewer sunset photos this year.

 Blue irises with the last of the azalea in the back.

 Pink herbaceous peonies. I have a white also that wasn't photographed this year.

 The red herbaceous peony flowers with a light flare from the sun. Why is it guaranteed that there will be a heavy rain when the peonies flower? The rain makes them bend over till they are on the ground no matter how much I stake them.

 Siberian Irises.

We put up a bird feeder this year. I got a squirrel proof one and very carefully positioned it more than 18" away from branches as recommended. One morning we found a squirrel had happily swung a branch close enough to the feeder to grab it - Tarzan style. It was then happily holding on the feeder with one hand and eating with the other. The feeder will close if the squirrel's weight is on the feeder but this way the branch was holding the weight of the squirrel. Smart squirrel!

We then pruned all those branches so there is a dome now under the tree, as you can see. Our next non-bird visitor was a chipmunk. A chipmunk is light enough that its weight doesn't close the feeder. It just climbed down the wire hanger and was siting and eating. Birds didn't come when the chipmunk was there. My husband took an old metal sheet and bent it and made the baffle you see in the photo. It is unstable and slippery and is far enough from the feeder that the chipmunk hasn't climbed down over it. I've seen the little guy on the tree and down on the ground foraging for dropped seeds. But I haven't see it on the feeder so I think we've baffled it. Let's see.

The birds keep me busy filling the feeder every few days. They love it.

I started weaving the color gamp scarf in squares, which is the traditional thing to do. But I got tired of changing colors that frequently. So after doing one set of squares, I switched to rectangles. Each rectangle is 3x the height of the square. After two sets of rectangles, I will end with a set of squares so the ends match.

 Here is a rectangle and a half.

 I found it easier to knit in between other things. I finished the body of my Grapevine and have started on a sleeve. I've modified it to add the lace at the bottom and will add lace cuffs. I am debating throwing in a band of lace further up on the sleeve too.

I also, unusually for me outside of Rhinebeck, bought some fiber. Juliespins had a sale and I bought 2 braids from her. This one is called Fig Tree.

 This one is Fushimi Shrine. I tried to buy some colors that were not my usual saturated choices.

Inglenook fibers dyed a couple of colorways for the Tour de Fleece and I bought a batt from them. You can see the inspiration photo on the bag. I probably won't spin it in this year's Tour de Fleece but maybe next year. My plans for this year are pretty well set.

The CSA farm season has started. We had a few weeks of great strawberries. We picked more than my husband could eat and I can't ear fresh strawberries due to an allergy. So I make these strawberry crisp bars which we love. I am on the third and last batch this week. I think it is now too hot for strawberries. I eat raspberries and blueberries fresh so I don't bother making these with those fruits.

Next blog post will be about my Tour de Fleece plans.