Fiber Arts & Furry Critters

Nothing like a festival to ignite some enthusiasm!

I managed to get to the New Hampshire Sheep & Wool festival both days this weekend.  This is definitely one of my favorite events (that and the Quilter's Gathering in November).  There's nothing quite so inspiring as seeing all that activity!  I love looking at the wheels, spinners, spindles, fibers - well, all of it!

This year I spent a great deal of time there both Saturday and Sunday. Yesterday I went with DH and DS. We got to see just about everything, and had a very good time. On my way in I had spotted the truck collecting fleeces to go to Zeilingers Woolen Mill for processing. I had intended to collect all of my alpaca fleeces to send out to be processed into roving but that was just one of the things I hadn't gotten around to yet. I came home with two new spindles (a turkish spindle made from bamboo, and a lightweight mid-whorl purchased with the intention of using it for cotton, because I couldn't find an akha spindle) and small amounts of luxury fibers - cashmere, yak, and a baby icelandic blend. I'm not particularly fond of icelandic but lamb of almost any breed tends to be quite fine.

I spent a couple of hours last night sorting, re-bagging and labelling my alpaca fleeces, and went back this morning to spend some more time at the festival. I had over 100 lbs of fleece (the person collecting the fleeces said I should have my rovings back sometime in July). My DD and a family friend went with me today, and ambled off on their own while I wandered the festival. I did find an actual akha spindle, and bought that and a small amount of dyed cotton in oranges, so I'd have something to keep my hands occupied. Now I'm back; bread dough is in the breadmaker, eggs have been collected, animals have hay, laundry is out on the line. Here are some of the pictures I took.

Some of the outside vendors.  One of these is Carol Leigh's Hillcreek Fiber Studio, where I found the akha spindle, and also saw some lucets from the Rouge Lucet that made me want to come home and dig out my own.  She does such beautiful work!

First building, which housed not only the fabulous Bosworths, but my friend  Nancy Zeller of Long Ridge Farm (she has CVM sheep, which produce my favorite wool!)

Second barn. Some gorgeous stuff here! The booth directly to the right (where the man in the red jacket is standing) had some adorable small distaffs (distaves?) made from twigs with the bark peeled off. I need to go out in the backyard and try to find something similar.

There were four indoor barns and three (double-sided) rows of outdoor barns.  There were a lot of vendors, fiber fanatics, and fiber animals.

This woman was trying out spinning wheels.  She had on wonderfully colorful hand-knit socks!

She had the most awesome messenger bag!

These are Russo wheels. They are indescribably fabulous, and pictures can't do them justice. Even more incredible, they are still selling for less than $400 each!

More Russo wheels.  The one in front has gold lacy circles (perhaps brass?  gold-colored regardless) inset in the wheel.

Sunday was the sheep-to-shawl contest. Teams had four spinners and one weaver, and had to start from fleece (which could be pre-washed) and a pre-warped loom. Then they have to card and spin the wool, and someone has to wind the wool onto weaving bobbins, and the weaver weaves the shawl. They have a total of four hours from start to finish. I participated in one of these once, and it was loads of fun!

Team number two (of three). The third team was on break when I was taking pictures. This team had two adults and three kids. The third team was all kids!

Outside tent, a fleece sorting/skirting class.  Nice fleece on the table, but I'm always partial to grays.

Insanely gorgeous (and expensive) Golding spindles.  The Rolls Royce of the spinning world.
I really wanted one of the spindles that appear in the bottom left of this photo. They were tiny, and about a half-ounce, but were $64 each!

The spindles below (especially the ones with the heart cut-outs) were my second choice. Small ultra-lights, these were only $40 or so apiece. None of these came home with me either, but I shall lust after them nevertheless.

Very, *very* tired Border collies! These were the dogs doing the herding demonstrations all weekend. You'd never know they were tired to watch them at work, but boy did they know how to take advantage of their downtime!

Washing fleece

I've been helping someone learn to spin lately.  We had one session with spindle spinning, and I sent her home with a toy wheel spindle and a CD spindle.  She came back with two full spindles of yarn, and we worked on plying, and I sent her home with a PVC niddy-noddy and a nostepinde.  She's done a little wheel spinning as well.  This week I showed her how I wash a fleece (in parts) in a washing machine, and we worked a bit on hand carding.  Next time we'll drag out the drum carder.

We're still working with wool at this point, but we could also work on cotton or flax or other animal fibers if she wants to later.  I grabbed a bag of fleece from the cellar the other day to wash, and was quite pleased at what I found.  In a large trash bag were three grocery bags of fleece.  They are each labeled "Cocomo" and "Corriedale/Rambouillet".  It's quite fine, with beautiful crimp, and gorgeous shades of gray.  Here's a picture of one batch washed and one batch unwashed.

Here's a close-up of the lovely crimp.

I haven't been spinning much lately, except for helping my friend learn, but this stuff has me antsy to start!  I do need to finish DNiece's baby quilt first, though...

Gee, New Hampshire Sheep & Wool is in two weeks!  Think that has anything to do with it?  LOL!

Quilts in progress

I finished the sampler blocks for the baby quilt last week.  Here are half of the blocks.

The blocks are only 7-1/2" unfinished, though.  I will definitely be adding borders to these! 

I went to a quilt shop on Saturday and picked up some yellow fabric that will work well for borders.  I also picked up some fabric panels with these blocks on them:

These will be the alternate blocks.  The top ones, Ma & Pa Rabbit, are 11" square, and the bottom ones are 9x11", so they will need a border as well.  Today I ironed all of my sampler blocks (and had to re-stitch two of them that were wrong), and cut out these alternate blocks.  I also spent some time on my eternal handpiecing project - a double wedding ring.  I'll post pictures of the few finished circles at some point.

The baby shower is scheduled for May 4; although I'm not planning on attending, I'd like to have the quilt at least close to finished by then.  The expectant mother lives nearby, so it's no problem to get it to her after the shower.

Quilt pictures, and an old *electric* machine!

I finished uploading my pictures from the quilt show on Friday to a Webshots album.  There were some incredible works there, and some fantastic applique!  I enjoyed going through the pictures again to create the album.

Look what followed me home this weekend!

It's the cutest little National electric sewing machine!  It's a vibrating shuttle, and has the bullet shuttle and long skinny bobbins that I love so much.  It has a little drawer (you can see the knob at the bottom right in the picture) and came with not only the shuttle but four total bobbins, and a bunch of attachments, including a ruffler (someday I may learn to use that).  It was made by the same company who made my most-favorite "Reliance" treadle machine.  And look at the adorable pincushion, hanging from the spool pin!

Here's a close-up of the pincushion.

Oh, and look how cute this is - the foot pedal is shaped like a footprint!

World Quilt Show

Today I went to the World Quilt Show in Manchester, NH.  I only had a couple of hours there, and could have used at least another hour.  I did get lots of inspirational pictures, though.  And there was this quilt, which I really want to make.

Here's a close-up:

I know I've seen this pattern before, most likely in one of my beloved quilt history books.  I believe I saw it done in red and white, but I'm not sure.  Does anyone know the name of this pattern, and/or where I might find a copy to purchase?

UPDATE:  The name of the pattern is Whig's Defeat.  I found a couple of different copies and variations of this pattern, including one for sale and one available for free.

Playing Hooky

Eldest DS went to New York City to attend a book signing for his favorite author and podcaster, and I allowed DD to play hooky and go with him.  It was a whirlwind one-day trip (left at 5 am, spent the afternoon in the city, and drove back after the 7 pm book signing concluded).  I thought DD might learn more from a day spent in NYC than she would for that one day (two days, really, because she's home today but one of them was only a half-day at school).  I do believe I was correct.  And she brought me home a bunch of wonderful pictures!

And here she is riding the carousel in Central Park.   

DH and I are contemplating going to NYC for a long weekend over April vacation.  Youngest DS, a born geek, has been wanting to visit Bug Labs for months.  It would definitely be a great learning experience.  I lived in Brooklyn once (eldest DS was born there) but haven't been back since 1983 or so.  I'd love to take the kids up the Empire State Building (DS went already, but I'm sure she'd be happy to go again), and see if we could go to the Statue of Liberty.  I've never done that, not even when I lived there.  (The same thing happened when I lived in Germany - we rarely got to visit the tourist places, but did participate in local cultural events).

Maple sugar open house

This weekend is the NH Maple Producers' Open House.  There are four sugar houses in our area that are open to visitors.  We will be visiting three that are quite close to us.  This morning we went to the two closest.

On our way we stopped at a small country store and I just had to get a picture of this bench.  It's made with two-by-fours for the back and seat, and branches for the framework.  I love this!

Our first stop was Wilson's Sugar House in Brentwood.  One of the children welcomed us as we approached the sugar house.

This is the inside of the sugar house.  The sap from the trees is filtered through a pre-filter that looks a lot like an extra-large version of the filters I use for our goat milk.  It goes into the Rubbermaid tank (black) on the right hand side of the picture below, and then is released through tubing into the wood-fired evaporator tank.  Did you know that it takes forty gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup? 

 

This is the outside of the Wilson's.  The small portion of roof at the top right actually raises up to help clear out the steam generated by the boiling-off process.

The second one we visited was Folsom Sugar House in Chester, NH.  I forgot to get a picture of the outside of their sugar house, but they do have a web page.  They also have a wood-fired evaporator, but in theirs the sap runs from one compartment to the other automatically as it boils down.  The Wilsons said they had to move it through a tap from one section to another.  The Wilson's evaporator was much smaller; I don't know how long they've been doing it, but the man at the Folsom's said they build their current sugar house in 1990.  He also told us that the season runs about six weeks long; they run their evaporator 24 hours a day during that time, and boil about 80 gallons a day.  The lady manning their store said they had produced about 50 gallons of finished syrup so far.  That's a lot of sap, from a lot of trees!

I did get a picture of this visual display at Folsom's.  The glass jug is a gallon jug; I don't know the size of the small jug, but at the 40-to-1 ratio the small jug is probably about 3 ounces.

Proof that I've been working on something

I finished the top to eldest DS's quilt!  This is a pattern by Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville.  Her version is called Buckeye Beauty.  This one is done in black and white prints.  I have fabric for the borders ready.  The first one will be a red with thin black threadlike lines; the other is a black background with bright multicolored dots.

In the meantime I need to start and finish a baby quilt for a niece.  The baby shower is scheduled for May 4.  I have a packet from a local quilt shop - last year's Block of the Month, with fabric.  That one is red and I think a yellow print.  It will be twelve blocks, of course, sampler-style, and I plan to use the same black with bright dots from DS's quilt for sashing.  That one will also be done on the Reliance treadle that is my current favorite.

Here are some new residents that just came to stay with us yesterday.  Abby is beside herself with adoration for these babies.

We got six Araucanas, four Buff Orpingtons and two black sex-links (Daddy picked those two out for himself).

DD's birthday, and yes, I do still do crafts!

Happy Easter!

We had a wonderful service at church today, which mitigates somewhat (RANT ON) the amount that I really detest the commercialization of this holiday.  When did we go from dyeing eggs and hiding them in the backyard, to buying $100 baskets of (no doubt made-in-china) useless plastic trash (oh, and candy, let's not forget the candy!)  Needless to say, my kids don't get those. (/RANT OFF)

DD officially turned 16 on Friday.  For her birthday she went to Anime Boston.  She was gone all day Saturday - up before I milked the goats, and she and her friends took commuter rail into Boston and then  the subway to the Hynes Convention Center.  She had a great time, and was surprised (after all that, and being on her feet all day) that she was very, very tired today! She took lots and lots of pictures of characters I don't recognize, and one photo especially for me:

On the vehicle front, we have ascertained that DH does not fit in a Toyota Prius, at least not in the driver's seat.  We also sat in a Toyota Sienna van.  He fit in that just about as well as he fit in the Chevy Astro (and its previous lookalike, the GMC Safari).  Actually, I think the Astro and Safari had a little more room for him, but I have to admit I loved the fold-down third row seats in the Sienna.  We are hoping to put off a purchase until September if we can, the main problem being that DH's truck only seats three, and there are four of us here.  I did ride my bike to church today, and loved it.  I'm planning to ride it a lot more over the summer, and not buying gas for a second vehicle won't bother me a bit.

I am working on eldest DS's quilt.  I have all the rows (16) sewed, and am sewing the rows together two at a time.  I think I have three sets together so far. 

I also picked up some knitting!  Yes, really!  I know, I haven't knit anything in ages, but I grabbed a gorgeous shawl kit I bought online, and decided to make one of my favorite patterns with it - Connie Delaney's Wrap-Around Shawl.  I'm doing it without the lace, and I'm now at the  easy  (aka I can read while doing this) part.  Now I just knit the knit rows, and purl the purl rows; and on the purl rows, do an increase on each side of the four markers.  The picture on her website doesn't do it justice.  It's a fabulously comfy shawl that comes out in a rectangle (slit halfway up one side) like a ruana, and it actually stays in place wonderfully when you wear it!

Since I have no knitting or quilting pictures to show you, I'll share some other pretties:

Abby, who likes to cross her paws daintily.

Daddy, giving Abby hugs.

This one was taken as we took a walk around the block.  The alpacas always line up to spy on any dogs walking by, even ones that live on the premises!

And then there was one...

One vehicle, that is.

DH had an accident last week while driving my van. The weather turned unexpectedly snowy and slippery (the weather forecasters totally missed this one!). The damage didn't look very bad. Most of it was to the front end corner on the passenger side.

Well, apparently the insurance company thinks there was more damage than at first appeared, and has totalled it.   Our question right now is what to do.

DH has a very old pickup truck that doesn't have much time left.  While we would dearly love to purchase a fuel efficient vehicle, even a Toyota Prius (if 6'6" DH can fit in one!) we do face a problem.  We actually need a large vehicle!  I buy hay and grain for my animals on a regular basis, and we also pick up fencing and building materials once in a while.  None of those will fit in a Prius.  DH won't even consider one of the alternate hybrids - SUVs and the like, calling them "fake hybrids."

For now we'll make do with the truck, at least until September.  I'm hoping we can remain a one-vehicle family.  I think we'll end up looking for a used truck with a back seat, and not one that has the uber-plush interior of most of the fancy trucks we've seen.  They take up all DH's much-needed headroom.  We need a real workhorse truck (or another Chevy Astro) that can seat 4 and that DH can fit in to drive.  I like the idea of another van - we've had plenty of occasions to haul alpacas and goats in the back of the van.

I have been plugging away on eldest DS's quilt lately.  I have all the individual blocks pieced together (and ironed... sigh...  it took me a couple of weeks to force myself to do that).  I have been piecing on my Reliance treadle for the last two days, and am just about finished assembling half of the rows.

I also took out my poor neglected Majacraft Suzie Pro.  I've been spinning up some neppy oatmeal colored roving.  It's happy to have some attention.

Sorry no pictures.  It's another very gloomy day, not very conducive to photography.

OK, one picture:

Farm dog, waiting to go to work.  Isn't she pretty?