I had a wonderful day with my Mom......

Which doesn't happen all that frequently as she lives over 303miles/487km from where I live.  It so happened that I had the day planned and she came into town and joined me in shopping for some material and fibre.

First stop was to Fabricland which had a sale on quilting fabric 'buy 1 metre get 3 free'.  So I added to the stash.

 I went to check on the discounted bin which was 50% off, and found some pretty yellow floral material which I'm hoping to make a top for the summer.  We'll see.  All good intentions pave the road to 'you know where'.

We met up with my sister Jackie and went for lunch after material shopping.  I couldn't eat lunch fast enough as the Hand Weavers, Spinners & Dyers of Alberta were holding their annual conference in Edmonton this past weekend, June 1-6.  That's where my Mom and I headed to next.  Unfortunately I don't know what I was thinking, but I didn't take one picture! UGH!  Thinking back to it now I was too busy looking at everything that it never occurred to me to get the camera out.  Not like Robin from For the Love of Fiber.  She blogged about her weekend going to 3! fiber festivals.  She takes some wonderful pictures.  

Anyway the following pictures are what was added to the fibre stash from the HWSDA 2010 Conference.

 Beautiful sock yarn from Twisted Sisters & Company Fibre Mill.  They carry beautiful alpaca rovings, but what caught my eye was this chocolate brown sock yarn with a tinge of blue through it.  70%Alpaca/15%Nylon/15% Merino.  It feels wonderful, it's very sturdy for sock yarn.  So I cast on that same evening for Birch Leaf Socks by Nancy Bush.  Pattern can be found in A Gathering of Lace, produced by Meg Swanson.  

The silk bag pictured below is from Studio Celeste.  I immediately knew that it would be perfect for carrying around a sock in progress.  Studio Celeste is in the midst of developing a website so there isn't a link I can send you to.  They have wonderful silk fibres, and imported wearables.  They're based in Lethbridge, Alberta Canada.

 Four skeins of Studio Celeste's silk/nylon yarn.  I had a heck of a time picking these colours.  There were too many to choose from, but I'm hoping to incorporate some of these in a weaving project.

 Another booth which I had singled out was Homespun Haven, owner Sharon Wickstrom.  I've visited her shop at her home when I've been on holiday in Armstrong, B.C., Canada.  I've also caught up with her at other fibre festivals, but this is the first time that I really took a look at her weaving yarn.  So this time I picked up 1/2 lb of 2/8 Tencel in red, and blue.  Then 1/2 lb of 2/8 Bamboo in green and beige.  I'm hoping to design some sort of runner for a buffet cupboard with some of the colours that I've been gathering.  It's going to take me awhile to figure out how to combine several colours that compliment what's going on in the colour scheme of my living room.  So hopefully it won't take forever to figure that out.  Coordinating colours just seem to be an exercise in exasperation for me.

 Last but not least I finally cashed in on Knit Picks book sale last month.  Vogue Knitting Shawls and Wraps is a varied collection of 43 patterns.  Knitted Lace of Estonia by Nancy Bush has been on my list for a long time now, and not only are there some great patterns, but some great information of the history of lace knitting in that region of the world.  Finally I'm really looking forward to doing some hand-dyeing, and the Teach Yourself Visually book really has it laid out well for the 

beginner dyer. 

 The dyeing bug bit me when I saw these jars.  

 Funny how these things start.

Snow and more snow......


Here in Western Canada we've been getting snow, but I don't think it's the dump that the East has been getting. I was shovelling for 2 1/2 hours this morning. It feels like it's never ending.

My DH usually does most of the shovelling, but this morning I was up and out of the house early to drop off our car to the autodealer to have them look at why the ABS brake light is now on all the time. Another 'never ending' thing to add to the list of our Mazda 3 '05 tweaky problems.



My DH has been leaving his winter touques laying around, and several days ago he couldn't find one when he was going out to shovel ...so back to the stash, and I came up with enough leftover Alpaca from other projects, and made this....I saw this touque on Knitty.blog and was delighted that she included the link for the free pattern Jacques Cousteau Hat. I used 4.00mm dpn's for this project, larger than what the pattern called for, as my Alpaca was spun thicker. I wanted this to be a tight gauge, no holes for the wind to blow through, or the snow to melt down into. Which resulted in my hands feeling the brunt of it.

In between resting my aching fingers I continued on spinning...

I consider myself still a beginner at spinning, and so far this is the thinnest I've been able to spin. This is the two ply of the kool aid dyed fibre I posted about earlier. It still baffles me how some spinners (Maia) can spin a three-ply and it comes out even thinner than my two. I guess these mysteries are there for us to strive for, but I'm still holding out that there's a spinning secret that I haven't heard about, and one day someone's going to tune me in. Actually realistically I know I'm going to probably be told it's all about the practicing, which of course means...you gotta put in the time to see the thin ply.

That's all for now...Stay warm everybody!!

Therapy..... I don't know if it's the weather, but I've been doing some spring cleaning. I haven't had a purging session for quite a while, and it sure felt good. I've had this tall dangling silk tree for approx 15 years whose branches would never stay in the main trunk. I would be vacuuming and it never would fail, just by bumping it it would drop branches. So it was very theraputic ripping it apart and putting it outside in the bin.

More therapy......

I bought some mystery fiber from Wool2dye4. Sheila doesn't carry this on a regular basis, but from her blog she's hoping to be able to in the future. It was selling for $10 per lb, and I thought it's worth the price to get for practice spinning. When it arrived it looked and felt great. Of course it didn't end there..... I saw an article on knitty.com about Koolaid dyeing. I was hooked. I like the fact that it's non-toxic and I don't need to designate any special pots for the dyeing process so I kept on researching, and these are some of my results....



My dyeing pots. An old canner, and stainless steel bowls.









In a stainless steel pot cooling down.












My drying technique....hanging the dyed rovings on a plastic hanger.







Some pictures of the completely dried rovings. The colours stayed pretty consistent.













I still haven't spun any of this up yet. It's been dyed, and rinsed, and then hung to dry. The dyed fiber doesn't have the same feel as the undyed stuff. It's feeling sort of stiff it's like it's lost it's 'loft' through the dyeing process. All of the resources on Koolaid dyeing mentioned to be careful of felting the fiber. As a beginner I was a little afraid that I might do so. As it turns out I can still pull it apart and fluff it up, but not enough to spin from it properly. So I'm going to have to handcard it before spinning. I don't have handcard's :( but I found out my mother-in-law does! They're in the process of moving back to Alberta, and I discovered that the handcard's are packed in amongst many boxes in a farm shed .....

So..... patience is not one of my virtues. This meant more online comparison shopping and I came up with a pretty good price on a set of handcard's at Paradise Fibers. They're presently in the mail so I'm going to have to wait to spin up this newly dyed fiber. It's been an interesting process, one that has made me appreciate all the effort that's put into the luscious handpainted roving and yarn that's sold online and in local yarn stops.