Spindle Camp

I've thought for some time that my phone takes photos just as good as my camera, so I didn't take my camera to the retreat.  I was wrong!  Anyway, this is our last evening together.  Because of the oppressive heat, we couldn't stand to be under the canopy that was designated as the group area and so were rarely all together in one place.  That was the only disappointing part of the weekend.

Instead of gathering around the campfire, we gathered around the fans.  It was 102 on Friday and 106 on Saturday.  Yet we had fun.



 Those of us who participated in the pirate exchange gathered on the deck of one of the cabins.  This is a fun tradition and a variation on an old party game.  You bring a fiber item anonymously wrapped, then everyone is assigned a number.  The first person opens a package.  The second person can open a new package or take the first person's item in which case person #1 opens a new package, and so on until everything is opened.  An item can only be stolen three times, at which time it becomes booty. 

This was my "booty."  I think the gold will look great blended in bats with my black merino and some silk, maybe with some noils.  The first package I opened got pirated.

Wouldn't you know it - my wheel broke.  I was astonished.  It never occurred to me that these leads to the footman could fail.  I posted it to Facebook and Diane Soucy commented that I could make a cable from yarn and tie it up.

So that's what I did and I was back in business.  I had no idea how to do this but Sara Lamb showed me where the screws are and told me how to do it.  It was a much easier fix than I thought.  I also called Village Spinning and Weaving and ordered a replacement set - also a replacement niddy noddy. 

We had to bring all our food, much of which we shared.  For lunch the first day I tried something Melissa told me about - salad in a jar.  You put the salad dressing in the bottom, chopped items next followed by lettuce.  When you pour it out onto the plate and it all comes out in order.  She couldn't come but told me she had planned to bring four - one for each lunch.  Great idea!

Amy brought her latest creation, her Firebird wheel.  This the third spinning wheel that she has painted and they are all fabulous.

Hermi's plastic footman band broke on Saturday while we were spinning on the deck of our cabin, only she has a single treadle wheel.  She spun up a silk cord on her drop spindle and tied it back up and went back to spinning.  It could have just been coincidence or it might have been the heat.  I decided to not take any chances and put my wheel away.  I had plenty of knitting to last the last day.


I'll leave you with some entertainment from one of my cabin roommates, Barbara Sue, who is one of the funniest people I know.   I wish I had recorded longer because BSue wasn't done.  She concluded by saying - and that's what my parents got for their money.

Ian and I are getting ready to drive into town and pick up our rental car.  We leave for Bend, Oregon in the morning and I'll be taking my camera.  It's a busy month!

Spindle Camp or Bust

I've been trying to get ready for Spindle Camp ever since I got home from the conference on Sunday.  I prepared these bats yesterday.  I have a feeling that I'm going to run out of spinning before Sunday, so I'm taking a basket of knitting too.

And I finished these towels yesterday.  We have a little market of sorts and I wanted to have these ready for sale.

I always take soap for our little market, but this is all I have ready for sale, so when I went into town today to pick up our CSA box, I went by the artists coop, thinking I could pick up the bars that have these labels.  I have a box of soap there with rock art labels, but I'm way off.  The rock art show is next month.  That means I'll be labeling soap in the morning, but there has to come a point when you say - enough.  I did enough for today.  I made chili this morning for the potluck and it's in double freezer bags tonight, going into the ice chest tomorrow.  I made meatloaf for our dinner so I can have it cold for sandwiches.  Enough.

This is a quick shot of our CSA box.  I cooked the beet and turnip greens up to accompany the meatloaf.  Until we started in the CSA program, I shunned greens and I have no idea why.  They are delicious.  The two vague baggies are lettuce greens and that totally changes up my food plans.  I need to take advantage of their short life and pack them somehow. 

I just checked the weather and nothing has changed.  It's going to be a firecracker hot weekend, just like last year only worse.  Look for me deadman floating in Lake Francis in the purple bathing suit.

Conference of Northern California Handweavers

I think this might just be the coolest place ever for a conference - Squaw Valley, home of the 1960 winter Olympics.  The elevation at 6,200 feet was a bit troublesome for some of the attendees but I didn't hear any grumbling.

The weather earlier in the week had been blustery, but the Friday we arrived it couldn't have been better.  This was the first time for a Tailgate Market, organized by my conference roommates who were a committee of two.  They had asked me to help so I arrived that morning to help vendors get to their sites and set up since it only went from 1:00-5:00.  There was no booth fee and a wide assortment of shopping.  I bought two fair market trade baskets and 4 ounces of dyed mohair locks for my crazy batts.  I didn't take any money so I couldn't shop.  I forgot about the Square!

In keeping with the Olympic theme, we had games.  These shuttles are entries in the concours d'elegance.

Toni Lowden from our guild entered this one.  It's called Go Baby Go.  There were four contests, two after dinner Friday night.  The actual shuttle race had a chute, like a minature roller derby.  The shuttle slalom on Saturday was a course with cones that spindlers raced through.  The shot put had three shots, which were three pounds of BBs in padding with a felt exterior.  I took the names and wrote the distances while Rae and Shalet measured.  They were brave ladies as they had to dodge some of the wildly thrown shots.  A common comment was - This is hard!  We were really surprised at how much everyone enjoyed the games. It was rather riotous.

This is Beryl and me at dinner and before the games.  Do you recognize my blue ribbon sweater from a couple of fairs ago?  Talk about a collaboration.  I was trying to decide how to use some silk and Benita sent me the brown Merino all the way from Indiana.

My first class was dyeing with mushrooms.  These are samples from the instructor, Gail Still.  These are colors from a variety of mushrooms.  Our study was just the jack o'lantern mushroom and we got a variety of greens and purples with alum and iron mordants. I wasn't really interested in dyeing with mushrooms when I signed up for the class, but I always want to know more about natural dyes.  I loved the instructor and the class and I hope to collect mushrooms when we go to Oregon next week.

We were at the Resort at Squaw Creek and I took this picture outside my afternoon classroom.    I took  designing clothing using  handwovens with Susan Lazear.  I had looked at her software before hand and was tempted, but it's pricey.  She was also our keynote speaker and as a full-time college professor, she can stand and deliver.  She used to weave and stopped when she realized that her skills were as an Idea Person  We had to bring handwoven samples and she showed us how an idea person thinks.  I was inspired.  In fact, I was so inspired I bought the software.  I realized that I paid $16 for one pattern from Sew Liberated that didn't fit all that well.

I couldn't resist taking a picture of the rocks in the lobby.  Unfortunately, necessity dictates that they mar their appearance with attached signs stating that you can't climb on them.  The lobby was filled with knitters in between all sessions.

My last session was Sunday morning with Lexi Boeger on spinning super coils.  I had no idea what that meant when I signed up for it, but I just knew that I want to know more about making art yarns.  She's demonstrating how to built a batt.  I made four batts today following her suggestions which make it go so much faster.

This is my modified version of her super coils.  I won't do it again because the yarn is just too heavy, but I will use all the techniques she showed us.  The only disappointment of the entire weekend happened at the end of her class.  A lady who had struggled through the entire class, finished early and left early.  We realized after the fact that she thought the knitty knotty I loaned another student was hers.  Other students noticed she had one like mine, and she and my knitty knotty are gone from my life.  I bought it when I bought my first wheel in 1997,  Oh well, it's just stuff, right?

I'll get online and order a replacement tomorrow.  I wanted to finish towels and make batts to take to Spindle Camp.  Tomorrow I'll gather what I need to take - everything!

Saying an Early TaTa to May

I'm still experimenting with making batts and spinning art yarn.  This is what I finished this morning.  One week from today I'm taking a class at the Conference of Northern California Handweavers with Lexi Boeger.  I figure this yarn is practice so I'll be a very good student next week.  The conference is at Squaw Creek in the Sierras, the same place as the 1960 winter Olympics.  Lucky me!

I've tried making some hats with the yarn but I think I need to beef up the colors.  I say that because this looks washed out on me, but I got to thinking that it might be nice with dark hair.  I'm still trying to figure out what I can make in abundance for the three day craft fair in October.  I realize that I'm just not as productive a weaver this year as I was last year so I'm starting to turn my attention toward my yarn since I spin for an hour every morning with my SAD light.  I had thought I'd weave scarves with my prodigious output, but perhaps hats and skeins of yarn with hat patterns might be a healthy addition to my booth.

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions as I've foundered in the scarf sea.  I appreciate everything and every bit of advice - much of it stowed in a folder for future reference.  As a rag rug weaver, I cannot believe that I didn't realize how sett affects how the weft packs in.  I went to a 6 epi sett for rugs to make them as weft faced as possible.  Doh.  Thanks to an email from Cindie, I realized that my 10 epi warp sett would be more weft faced than 12 epi, and I also realized that I would never be happy with it.  So I unwove all 10 inches, resleyed and started over, still using straight twill which was still smothering the warp.  Then I decided to try a point twill and suddenly the warp showed up at the party.

So I unwove it - again.  This is when I realized just how sturdy my handspun yarn is.  I'm using a cotton/rayon yarn from Henry's Attic for weft.  Laura called this morning, just to say hi from Oregon.  In our conversation I told her how the undyed weft was stealing my warp's thunder and how I thought I'd have to put it in a dyebath after it's off the loom.  She said no, that the cotton/rayon wouldn't take acid dye.  I said I had fiber reactive dye and she said no - that is death to wool, too alkaline.  I'd have to use Ritt.  It was after that conversation that I unwove and changed my treading to this.  I think it might work - hope so.  I hate being a beginner.

This is our new wind chime.  Kerry and I kept hearing an interesting clacking while we ate lunch in the courtyard at Sopa last Tuesday.  We asked the waitress what it was and she explained that they were something the owners brought back from Thailand.  The owner told us that they brought them back in their luggage and had four left, so we both bought one.  The wind catches that palm frond strip, which giggles the chime below.  Two arms dangle on the outside and clack again the center piece which the owner explained was mango wood.

I'm excited because we have company coming tomorrow - our friend Petey is going to visit us for a few days.  When he leaves, I also leave for the conference so I suspect this is the last time I'll have a chance to blog in May.  Ian and I  really enjoy documentaries but somehow don't seem to make time to watch them.  We've decided that each Saturday night we'll watch one from Netflix.  We call it DocSat.  I've included our viewings in my summary.

Documentaries:

Undefeated - Academy Award winner 2011
Jig - think Riverdance
A Life Apart: Hasidism in America - another face of fundamentalism and thought provoking

Books:
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Crept Out a Window and Disappeared, by Jonas Jonasson (it's Liz Salander meets Forest Gump)
Eventide, by Kent Haruf
The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat, by Edward Kelsey Moore
The Madonnas of Leningrad, by Debra Dean
The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Moshin Hamid
A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki

Limbo

I got home last night and realized the only photo I took all day was at Sopa, a Thai restaurant in Nevada City, where Kerry and I ate lunch.  She is the neighbor I talked into accompanying me to the Not 2 Square weavers meeting yesterday.  I've virtually belonged to this group for a couple of years but this is my first meeting and boy was the trip worth it.  It's an informal gathering of weavers who sit in a circle and share their projects and then answer questions, and was I ever full of questions.  It was a five-hour round trip, but I drove home feeling like I had attended a class.

I came home through Reno so I could pick up our CSA box.  This is our second pick-up and the third week for weekly subscribers.  Already the box is bigger.  I try to work the pick-up around other appointments but Nevada City was a pretty big work around.  We're going to have the fresh greens tonight - one day old.  Yum!

I like how blue glass looks when the sun shines on it so I hung a couple of bottles on the tree that I had emptied of essential oils.  Then I decided to try some orbs of recycled glass that's I've hung inside our windows.  They're heavy and ultimately the suction-cup hangers lose their suction and they drop to the sill.  Not only do they look great in the tree, they twirl in the breeze - such a happy surprise.

The Not 2 Square group has some extremely talented and experienced weavers.  I took my iPad, expecting to take photos and make notes.  I was so absorbed I completely forgot.  There was so much give and take and tips, like this one.  I had been measuring the warp as I progressed with a pin on the selvedge, then I'd measure the distance between pins as I advanced the warp.  My towels are not quite the same length.  Igor uses grosgrain ribbon and Ingrid uses bias tape, premeasured and pinned along the right selvedge.  Since I had already cut this measuring tape to 30" for convenience, I'm using it instead.  Ingrid said she doesn't wind it on but lets it dangle so she can remove it and use it for every towel.

I took all my handspun skeins and when they got passed around the circle, I got some admiration but more importantly I got some direction.  I'm always in awe of Dee Jones, as a person and as a weaver.  I want to grow up to be just like her!  From her comments I took the initial steps of creating a scarf.  I tried off-white commercial yarn but it washed out completely so I'm trying some hand dyed, handspun silk I did years ago.

Someone suggested a 2/2 twill but I felt that smothered my warp.

I remember Cindie saying that sometimes the best solution for an interesting warp is just good old plain weave and so that's what I'm doing.  I have a feeling that I'm going to be weaving a lot of "projects" before I finally get my scarf sea legs.  I had it in my head that my novelty yarn had to be warp (the up and down threads) but this is looking a lot like upholstery.  I'll finish this off and the next project scarf will be using my novelty yarn as weft (side to side).  I was called this afternoon to sub tomorrow so this is in limbo for now.

Wild Flowers

I spun up a couple of my batts this morning and this is my singles.  Next I plied, or rather bound it, with a silk thread.

 

 I took my camera this morning when I walked the dogs, hoping to catch some wildflower shots.  I'm always surprised to see them thrive in dry sand.  This is desert lupine.

We are inundated with wild mustard, which looks kind of pretty right now, but when it's dry will become a serious fire danger.  It's overwhelming.

Mim posted a picture on Facebook of the fiber she recently dyed.  Robin and I decided we needed to see it for ourselves and buy some, of course.  She picked me up at 11:00 and I made her stop the truck a couple of times for wildflower pictures.  Mim's end of the valley is wetter and the Mules Ear are prolific.

As are the wild iris.  Mim's husband Bob hates them because they're useless.  Cows and horses won't eat them, but they really are pretty. 

I have no idea what these are but they remind of a Victorian postcard.  I've only seen them on the road to Mim's.

And here they are close up.

These are some of the things we wanted to tempted ourselves with.

Robin and I stayed too long, talked a lot and spent too much.  We had a great time.

I chose these rovings to make into future batts.  I bought one of them to take to my class next week.  I'm taking Spinning Coils from Lexi Boeger at the Conference of Northern California Handweavers.   I'm looking forward to have someone show me how instead of trying to figure it out on my own.

I washed my skein and let it hang to set the twist.  It's in my bag to take tomorrow to the weaving group.  This is the closest I've come to intentionally spinning art yarn instead of accidentally getting something weird.  I'm finally starting to get the hang of what  my hands need to do to get the results I want and I'm pleased.

Clean Up

The fourth and last looper rug is done.  I think I might have had room for a fifth on the cloth beam, but I'm glad I didn't warp for it.  I want to clean up my mess and try some scarves.

This is the mess I'm talking about.  One side of a looper is a raw edge where it was cut from the loom.  I have looper lint everywhere and suspect I will for months to come.

I hauled our heavy vacuum cleaner up the stairs, shoved Lilith back to the wall and sucked up this mess.  And then of course, since that part of the rug was clean, the rest looked messy.  I ended up vacuuming everything and I realized when I moved Maudie Mae and found a half inch of lint that it's probably been over a year since I've done it.

 I recently realized that when I used this kind of knot (I don't know what it's called) when I lash onto the front apron rod, when I'm done weaving, I can quickly pulled it open and I don't have to cut anything.  The loom is clear in minutes.

I bought eight ounces of silk noil in my Yarn Barn order.  I've never worked with it and didn't know that I had just purchased a life-time supply.  Not knowing the first thing about it, I thought I'd just do some lumps using Gaywool dyes.  It only took a few crystals in hot water for a lump.

Today I blended more stuff together.  I've spun up my other batts and I'm still learning how to make ugly yarn.  My soil noils are on the left behind the pile of silk.  The lavender fluff is mohair and the white wool is badly processed, neppy Cormo which actually does well in these blends.  I'm using the last of the dyed roving I bought from Mim and need to get over to her place soon for more.

These are my first batts.  

These are the second.  I left out the mohair but added sari silk.

These are some of the yarns I've spun up and want to weave.  I'm driving over to Nevada City on Tuesday to attend the Not 2 Square weavers interest group.  Instead of taking something I've woven to share, I'm planning to take these yarns and ask for advice.  The drive will be five hours, round trip but I've talked my neighbor Kerry into going with me. 

Ian loaded up the bark from the firewood he cut and was taking it to dump.  The dogs waited in the cab while he went back into the house.

Was that the front door?!!!

Oh it was and he's coming, he's coming, he's coming.  It's been two minutes!!

Oh happy day, we're going to haul the bark away.  Happy dogs.