Signs of Spring and How to Be An Enabler

Well, I told you the newness would wear off of this blog thing. lol Last post was on 1-3 and here it is 1-21. We're now a full month into winter and I can see it's staying light longer in the evening already. Instead of closing the chickie girls in at around 5:15 pm, I can wait until about 5:40 or so and still see to walk down there without falling on my face.

Back in October I had dropped a couple of fleeces off with Ozark Carding while I was at SAFF. I got a ship notice last Wednesday, the 11th. The post office finally delivered the box with the roving yesterday, the 20th. NINE DAYS! They must have been sent from MO to TN via Anchorage. One fleece is just carded roving, which I'll use for spinning students (if I ever have any more ) or other demo type stuff. The other, heavier, fleece I had pin drafted after it was carded, which aligns the fibers much more than plain carding does. It looks like it turned out really nice and should be easy to spin, although there is a bit of VM in it, as all the fleeces from "that" place do. I should mention that the box is about 12x14x14, and AFTER I took the fleeces out of the box and opened their bags, they took up 4 or 5 times that space. I've already rolled all the roving into balls so they'll be easier to use.

The first of this year's planting has been started. There are 25 each of small Chinese cabbage, broccoli, and red and green pak choi seeded in trays out in the little homemade greenhouse. They were all planted on Monday, the 16th - first day of the 4th quarter moon, in Virgo. Yuck! We also have seeds for full size Chinese cabbage; they'll be started in a week or so.

Now, about that enabler title - A new woman at the Limestone Creek Fiber Guild wants to learn to spin and weave, so I said I'd bring my small looms, the Dorothy table loom and the Harp rigid heddle. (She already tried her hand at spinning last Saturday) I have to warp the Dorothy with something small to play with and I'll just measure the Harp warp, maybe enough for a scarf, and will warp it when I get there, to show Betsy how to do it. I'll have to read up on it to remember. Plus I'll haul all the various accoutrements with me. I might even take that enormous fly shuttle. Now I just have to get my butt in gear and start measuring. And I have to get everything ready by Feb. 18th. I hate measuring warp. Gee, I can't even add a picture of the Dorothy because I'm on the wrong computer. Have to get that DSL line switched back.

The grocery store has hyacinths in bloom already. I ALWAYS stop and smell them. Spring is coming!

SAFF

Only two more days till SAFF. OK, so it's REALLY only one more day, since it opens tomorrow, but I'm not going until Saturday. It runs through Sunday.

SAFF stands for Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair. I've been going since 2002 (or 2003 maybe?). Can't remember exactly. It's held at the Western NC Agric. Center (read here: fairgrounds), right across the road from the Asheville Airport. There are a bunch of vendors selling all sorts of fibery stuff - supplies for spinning, weaving, knitting, etc., raw fiber, commercially processed fiber, yarn, stuff made out of yarn and other forms of fiber, books about fiber and what to do with it, plus live fiber animals - sheep, llamas, goats, and rabbits. There are also three days' worth of classes and workshops offered. There's even a guy who makes chairs, rockers, and weaving benches with woven cord seats. Way cool! It can be overwhelming for a first-time visitor, but probably just as exhilarating as for a Disney-phile visiting the Magic Kingdom for the first time. LOL

This is actually a small show compared to some others. The first one I went to is the Maryland Sheep and Wool Show, held the first weekend in May just west of Baltimore. That one is maybe twice or 2 1/2 times the size of SAFF. And the Dutchess Co. Fiber Festival (I THINK that's the official name), held in Rhinebeck, NY, is about half again as big as SAFF. There are other big ones around that I've never been to (yet). There are shows all over the country, but I've only been to Kentucky Sheep and Fiber (their first year in 2010), Michigan Fiber Festival (just a little smaller than SAFF), and Garden State Sheep Breeders show (small at the time, but may be bigger now; it's been at least 10 years since I was there), besides the aforementioned Maryland, Rhinebeck, and SAFF. Charlotte, NC, will host a new show next year that I hope to attend. Fortunately, it's not on a race weekend, so traffic will be manageable.

I have a few sheep fleeces that I've been holding onto for about five years now that desperately need to be washed and carded. I MUST take them with me and drop them off at Ozark Carding's booth. I think I might use the resulting roving to braid into a rug or maybe chair pads for the kitchen chairs and front porch rockers. It'll have to be dyed because the wool is white and there is no way I'm putting a white rug on the floor in OUR house. I'll just have to decide at what point I'll do the dyeing; while it's still roving or after braiding. Braids would be much easier to handle, but as roving, I can do different colors and then blend them as I braid. Or maybe a little of each. And I have a little bit of light gray roving left from a previous fleece, so I should be able to work that in too.

Fibery Stuff

Wow, it's been over a week since the last post. I guess nothing earth-shattering has happened around here.

This weekend is Alpace Farm Days, when alpaca farms around the country have open houses. So I took DGD and visited two of the four alpaca farms here in our county. The owners of farm #1, Silver Thunder Alpacas, are former spinning students of mine. I see him around once in a while because he works at our local Tractor Supply. Her I don't see but once a year or so. It was nice to see how their farm is coming along, with new gates (can never have too many gates), a new little farm store building, and a new cria from this spring. Baby alpacas and llamas are called crias. They're building their herd up slowly and have 8 females and at least 5 or 6 males (though not all the males are used for breeding, some are just for fiber).

The second farm is Appalachian Alpacas. I did a spinning demo and display there two years ago for Alpaca Farm Days. The first day was very windy and blew all my display stuff all over. The second day it rained just sideways enough to get my stuff wet (I was in a gazebo). So that was a flop. Today was much nicer. A friend of mine, the hostess of our local fiber guild, was weaving on a small triangle loom and a man, who I knew from a local weaving guild, was spinning (yes, men spin too, for you non-spinners out there). This farm has a bigger herd than the other one because the daughter and SIL of one owner lives next door and keeps their alpacas with mom's. So they had 8 crias, all fairly young, with their mothers, plus a few females with no baby. Didn't see where the males were.

While I was there, our guild mom told me about a new fiber fair that will be held in Charlotte, NC, next June. They have a website, but there's nothing much on it yet. I hope to go, if I can save up enough spending money. Charlotte's about a 3 1/2 to 4 hr. ride, so I don't know if it warrants an overnight stay or not. Depends on how much walking around I do. There's another show next month, SAFF, or Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair, just south of Asheville. That's only 1 1/2 hr. away, so that's easy to do in one day. I have a couple of fleeces (sheep) that were given to me that I desperately need to have processed (since I don't want to wash them myself). I don't mind carding, but can't stand washing. Which is why it's taken me about 3 years to process another fleece that I bought. I still have about 2 pounds left to do. So, anyway, I absolutely MUST take those 2 or 3 fleeces with me and drop them off with the fiber mill that will be there as a vendor. They're in Missouri, so they'll then ship back a box or boxes of nice clean roving (long continuous strip of carded wool).

In keeping with the fibery vein, I need to wash yarn this week. The yarn I've spun for Howell Farm needs to be washed, measured, weighed, and labeled before Thursday. That last half pound of wool that still needs to be spun? Yeah, well, I guess it's not going to get done before we go, unless I get ambitious tomorrow. LOL