Saturday, June 25, 2011

Completing projects

I have so many projects in the semi complete stages.  It rather sad and somewhat overwhelming.  Purchased a little notebook to jot down ideas for the blog and a running list of things to do for the Etsy site and products.  I did take some photos yesterday and today/tomorrow will be fulling yarn and scouring the Romney wool fleece.

This is my Llama/Soy silk roving (2oz)




This is roving made into yarn which turned out pretty nice and the 4oz roving made a 178 yd fingering weight yarn. 



This is my cotton cowl knitted with Patons Grace yarn.  Finally took photos and posted the item in the shop yesterday.

Had some connectivity glitches with Etsy last night so the roving and yarn have not quite made it onto the site.  It sucks when you can't get a webpage to work properly for as any of us who sell on the internet know it does take a bit to get the listing to look just right before you publish.  Now I have to start all over and hope this time everything goes well.

I have had a soon to be open yarn store reach out to me to carry my handspun yarn.  Thinking that I will give the shop in Morrison through the end of July to carry my pieces and if they haven't sold I will add them to the Etsy store or perhaps this new shop.  They have had my white alpaca diamond lace scarf and a hat since December 2010 so I think it is time to find a new outlet.

I should be getting the yarn and roving from the mill this week.  The owner of my LYS will be picking it up from the mill when they do their tour this week so I don't have to drive down to Kiowa just out to Arvada to pick up the items.  I have skirted all but one fleece and I really need to box and ship them to the mill this week.  The knee is doing better so hopefully on Wednesday I can make the trip to the post office - we shall see. 

Well I'm off to post on Etsy before I lose steam!

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Fiber festival update

2 posts in one day!  I just learned how to send photos from Flickr to Blogger so the cotton yarn was posted all on its own.  Today was the Estes Park Wool Market and I was there for 3 hours.  My Facebook Page has a few photos of the cute sheep and goats I remembered to take pictures of while there.  The Shetland sheep are so cute and small.  There were quite a few tiny sheep at the festival today.  I also learned that Jacob sheep can have 2, 4 or 6 horns and there was one with 4 horns (no I didn't take a picture).  Picked up lots of business cards of ranches to visit this summer/fall.  There were lots of CVM breeds there along with Border Leicester and Wensleydale breeds.  Tomorrow is the sheep to shawl competition but I am not sure I'll make it (4 hour roundtrip commute to Estes from my home).  I did a lot of shopping and viewing of animals today.

There was one yak rancher at the festival who lives about 2 hrs from me and allows visits to their ranch.  I bought 1 ounce of a yak cloud.  They also sold Quivit ($50) which I had heard was expensive but didn't realize how expensive until I got there.  Quivit is the fiber from Musk Ox which are in Alaska and Canada and is rare.  I am going to blend my precious yak fiber with alpaca fiber and make it into a yarn.  Yak, Quivit and Paco Vicuna are some of the most expensive fiber to spin around the globe as they are rare animals.

I am an hour away from winning the bid on some wool carders (90 TPI) which will be good for the CVM fibers and Romney fibers in my stash.  We had great weather for the festival and it was a relaxed event.  My fiber shopping is done for the year.  I have so much to play with plus I will be picking up the mill processed fibers this month. Well I am off to rest my tired feet and spin up some dyed superwash wool from the stash.

Spinning cotton

Cotton bolls with seedsCotton without seedsCotton on spindleSpun cotton single ply

Spinning cotton, a set on Flickr.

Cotton Bolls with seed, cotton without seeds, spun on top whorl spindle, single ply yarn

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Festivals and Spinning

It has been and will continue to be a busy weekend for me.  Yesterday I participated in the Spin In at The Recycled Lamb Shop.  There were lots of Ladybug spinning wheels in use and a few of us on drop spindles.  I brought the cotton to spin on the drop spindle plus some blue merino/silk roving to spin on the wheel.  Met lots of new spinners and learned cool things about birds and spinning dog hair. 

Today was aiding in setting the booth up at the Colorado Renaissance Festival which is called Raven End.  We cleared out what was the storage room to aid it in becoming a demonstration room.  I learned to use a sander today and even did some minor painting.  The owner would like me to do some demos during the festival which will be really cool.  I have to be in medieval garb which we will be working on before the big day.  Made some connections with a fellow knitter who is a writer and her hubby is a photographer.  When I am profitable enough to outsource I at least have contacts.  It was a good morning/afternoon of physical labor. 

As the Estonian lace scarf is finished I have begun another hat.  It will be in the lilac Aran wool yarn and I am tweaking the woven texture pattern to work in the round for the hat.  Here I go designing again!  So far it is turning out well but to get the pattern to show well the stitches are tight thereby making the hat smaller than originally attended.  Oh well, if I get the pattern to turn out well I can always make others and increase the width by casting on more stitches.  It is a work in progress and I am toying with adding garter or stockinette stitches into the design to break up the woven pattern a bit.

Tomorrow we are off to the Capital Hill People's Fair being held in downtown Denver.  Of course next week is the highly anticipated Estes Park Wool Festival of course we are all still waiting to hear if the camelid animals will be allowed in this year's event due to the EHV-1 virus but according to the site all other animals will be there (sheep, goats, yaks, etc.).  I am still on a mission to obtain hand carders.  I tried to buy some from Woodland Woolworks but they sold out then went to The Recycled Lamb shop and they sold all of theirs.  So third times the charm I am sure they will be many vendors selling these and I am in a serious mood to learn to rolags!

June is shaping up to be a busy and productive month and I hope the rest of the summer is just as busy!  Off to knit more rows on the hat.