It has been some busy few weeks. Sorry, I haven't even had time to fill you in cause when it's time to sit down then I just want to stare at the TV and not think about anything.

But I can tell you about yesterday.
This is my friend Kathy Rowe. She and my other friend Kathy Kolenda do natural dyeing. The most beautiful colors ever. And they have an Etsy shop where they sell their dyed yarn. I also stock their laceweights if you want to see the colors in person.

So they came to teach us about natural dyeing with 4 different plants including Marigold, Sumac...and I can't remember the others. The shawl was made by Sherri from Fourth Coast Fibers yarn. Lovely.
K. This is a mitten that Sherri made for her husband for hunting. Hadda have a photo of that.
So look at this beautiful Indigo pot. I never got a photo of Marilyn but she sat herself down by the Indigo and mostly didn't move all day. It's her favorite thing to do...besides Leon (that's what she named her spinning wheel and their relationship is a little too close for my comfort.)

Beautiful yarns. I love how dyeing looks but....don;t consider myself much of a dyer beyond the occasional Kool Aid and Easter Egg stuff.
The other Kathy at the pot.
Jeri and yet another Cathy...but spelled different.
I threw a little top in the pot. The brownish one is sumack, the two blues were just in indigo and the green went from sumack to indigo. I still have the rovings from the last class and I have plans to put them all in one project.
And this has nothing to do with the class but it was dyed by Amy at Spunky Eclectic. It's Lincoln. I'm going to leave it as a singles. It is a course wool and very heavy. Haven't decided what to do with it yet...maybe an inkle band. Look. Shiny.

So SOAR is in less than a month and the fall promises to be even busier. The webstore is coming along beautifully and I need a nap.

Where Have I Been, You Ask?

I'll tell you in a minute but first...here's Lisa. She is my hero and my lifesaver. She has been helping me at the shop for many months and has just taken over the job of filling up the webshop. I love her. She is doing it faster than I ever could have and the photos are beautiful and the descriptions are lovely. Blog love to Saint Lisa.
So I came home from the shop on Wednesday night. (Lou had taken the kids to visit the parents and I was home by myself and was having a very difficult week.) When I drove up to the house I saw this. It's a "heart attack". The the little girls from church had a day camp with a pioneer theme. Maggie and I went to teach them all to spin on low whorl spindles. It was great fun and many of them took right to it. So they came to thank me.
These are the hearts that were in the planters and shrubs and yard. I cried. In a happy thankful way.
So, right now I'm at Abby's house along with Jillian and Denny and I have no photos other than the mess we made of Abby's living room. There are 5 wheels in this picture alone.
So we are eating fab food made by the Mr of the Abby and we are spinning and I'm hoping for some ice cream...
And when I get back there is a box with about 4 pounds of Abby dyed silk that Saint Lisa will be adding to the webstore.

Back to fooling around now.

My Friend Ted

I met Ted in 2006 at Rhinebeck. Just before I bought the shop. I went to Rhinebeck and stayed at the Holididay Inn and on this very Blog I announced there would be spinning/knitting in the courtyard there each night. Ted and his friends showed up and we were fast friends.
So he was passing through during his vacation this past week and stopped by for some fun. He carded some wool he had dyed but didn't like and he brought his knitted lace to show. Of course I didn't take one picture but he left me the scarf from his most recent blog post. Spun and knit from Abby Batts. I've already worn it plenty even though it's August. I have a feeling it will get plenty more use this winter.
Sandy stopped by for some Abby Batt huffing and...
the fabulous Kat was in for some fun.
No pictures of Redford Phyl who also came by, but I love her anyway. I'm having issues with remembering to take pictures. Too caught up in the moment I guess.

Spinning Spider Jenny and Jofran also came by for shopping and some lunch...but this time I got one picture. Cute huh?

I have to go make my list for the week....crazy weeks coming up but I will try to do better with the pictures.

Things to Play With and Boy Toys

Things are fun and crazy and tiring and maddening and I think I need a really long nap and maybe a half a pound of chocolate and maybe a little snuggle with Lousmith.
This week I got some new hand painted fibers from Enchanted Wheel. The colors are lovely. Isn't it funny how you can have hand painted fiber from 12 different people and even if they all use the same colors they will all look different. On the very right in the picture is "My Little Pony". I really want to spin some of that...

It reminds me of a time when I was in my friends wedding and all of the bridesmaids were poor and lived all over the country so the bride bought the fabric and patterns for the dresses and sent them to us to make. We all had the same pattern and the same fabric and when we showed up we all had a different dress.

That's my next weaving project on the Wolf Pup. It is 5 colors from orange to pink to burgundy. I'm going to weave in a twill pattern with the same yarns (mercerized cotton). It will be two shawls when it is finished. Then I plan to a color study with Louet Gems Merino yarn.
Here is a beautiful shawl that my friend Denny made for me. The thicker yarn in the pattern is a 3 ply hand spun she mad on her drop spindle from roving I gave her. She masterfully matched it to some Malabrigio lace weight and knitted something lovely - squiggle knitting is what she calls it.
Hand spun scarf:-) I really like it. Hand dyed BFL spun intermittently with white BFL so you get a stripy scarf with no ends to weave in.
This is also a pile of stuff that Denny brought on her trip to the USofA. It is all still sitting on the table in the dining room cause I have this lame kind of thing about saving things people give me. It's all food and I need to use it.
My new friend Elayne brought me these most thoughtful of gifts. I love the little needle gauge and I've been wearing it as a necklace since she left. I have these for sale in my shop and it was such a coincidence that's what she brought for me. The spindle is bamboo and was hand made by her husband. It's definitely larger and heavier than the spindles I usually reach for but it spins forever. It's very lovely.
So, here's my newest toy. I've been wanting to play with one of these for years. Two weeks ago I was on the Louet website and saw that they finally had a few again and so I threw caution to the wind and ordered it. I do not regret it. The thing is fast! Like lightning. It's an accelerated wheel that has three ratios from 10:1 to 20:1.
I did a little fooling with it and then got out 8 ounces of the most beautifully dyed Masham that was given to me by my favorite designer Jillian. It was dyed by Black Bunny Fibers in my signature colors of pink and orange.

Each of those bobbins is holding about 4 ounces!
And here's the finished product. I LOVE IT! I forgot to figure the yardage. I'm going to guess about 500 yards. I'll get back to you;-)
So we got a new camera and Lousmith has been playing around with it. Here I am working and looking a lot less wrinkly than in some other pictures I've seen lately of myself. Heh.
Maggie's been busy making Maggie batts for me to put up for sale on the webstore. That lovely sparkly yellow and pink one has been removed (by Maggie) because the tiny girl takes after her mother and has decided to spin that one herself.
Also, I found this picture of me floating around the internet. I wonder if any magazines will pay a lot of money to publish it.

A Bee in My Bonnet

Sunday night again and it's been some week!
This is Michelle. She comes to the shop to play most Tuesday nights. She is a fantastic quilter and does a lot of art quilts. It was her dog hair that I spun a few months ago. In exchange she is finishing the hand quilting on a quilt I made years ago. It's a hand pieced quilt and I thought hand quilting would be the best thing but...
Anyway, Michelle is working on my quilt in this photo and also trying to find out if she is sensitive to the new Chameleon Colorworks Merino/Tencel roving and the hand dyed alpaca lace weight yarn. (That's why she shoves them down her shirt. The merino/tencel was a winner!

On Wednesday Maggie and I went to teach about 10 8-11 year old girls to spin. It was so fun and several of the girls actually caught on in the hour we spent with them. There was a fleece to huff and spinning wheels to touch and a drop spindle and wool for everyone. Course I didn't even take one photo cause I was teaching.
This is the latest handspun from Maggie. Spun from an Abby batt that was made especially for her. It's very pink with some cut up yellow threads. It made a very lovely yarn which she is now knitting.
On Thursday the group arrived for the Janel Laidman workshop extravaganza. Denny and Elayne got a ride from Toronto with Lousmith and arrived in Howell at about 2:30. Then we all piled back in the car and headed to the airport to pick up the Janel. We stopped for a delicious dinner and then went to the shop and touched things for a while. We stayed up way too late and had a delightful time.

Friday was down to work after breakfast. There were class kits to make and furniture to move and details to work out..among the laughing and talking and harassing of Abby who couldn't make it due to "deadlines".

The picture above is all of the fiber (Chameleon Colorworks BFL) that each person got in their kit for the Saturday class arranged beautifully on a cupcake stand.
Friday evening after a delicious dinner was Kitchen Sink Yarns - blending old, trashy fiber on a drum carder to make something beautiful. Maggie was the teachers assistant.
A motley crew - but serious about the class. (Elayne, Maggie and Denny)
Carding in action. These girls were serious. We had 5 different carders from 3 companies and so the ladies got to try out a few models.
Card Faster!
After class came the sleepover. We all laid down to sleep about 1:30AM I think. There was plenty of goofing off and I was trying to finish some yarn I started...I'll tell you why in a minute.
Saturday was Janel's Painted Rovings class. This is Jan and Deb ready for action.
And Janel, Carla, Jillian, and Kathy in Andean Plying action
This class was fantastic and I came away with lots more experimenting I want to do. So many things were learned about how to spin a painted roving beyond just spinning from the end. Part of the class included Fractal Stripes which was featured on the cover and inside the Summer 2007 issue of Spin Off. Here Janel is holding up the actual sock from the magazine. It is beautiful in person.
Here's the Denny version of Andean Plying. Notice the tangled yarn and the angle of the central finger.
So the shop was trashed again...nothing like after Abby's class but Ellen couldn't come and so the Wall O'Fleece was mostly intact.
There was a little gun play at the sleepover. I usually am scared of guns but it came in handy to handle some issues.
And there was the enhancement surgery. Above is the before photo.
And after. I think that from now on all enhancement surgery should be done with Abby Batts. They are safer than silicone, will not puncture and if you run out of fiber you can spin them and get more.

Also notice the new tattoo. Denny stamped herself with my address stamp.
Plus, there were new deliveries this week. This book is a fantastic book about needle felting a wide range of animals.
I'm not usually a huge felter but I do love this book. The photos are beautiful and the instructions are very complete.
Chameleon Colorworks arrived. Three different fibers - BFL, Merino/Tencel and Optim.
The optim colors are saturated and luscious. I've been spinning some Optim...which brings me to the late night production spinning.
Also this week I got this lovely Majacraft Rose. Every one of these is different. The wood ranges from very light to a lovely dark toasty color. This particular wheel had a very light handle, a dark wood veneer on the wheel and a dark flyer head. I fell in love with it right away...so I started spinning on it. Well, Elayne fell in love with it too. So it now lives in Toronto after a nice train ride. I have a full bobbin of Optim to be plied this week.
Also finished today is this scarf which will be a spinning kit for the shop in a range of colors. It was fun to spin for it and fun and easy to knit.
Watch for details.

So, now everyone is home and tomorrow I will clean up the carnage of the weekend and get to work on my next projects. It was a fantastically fun and stressful week. Always worth it in the end.