Greater Baltimore Weavers' Guild

This is the time of year when I get really busy. If you look at my schedule, you will see that I have a lot of shows over the weekends between now and mid December. I am not going to set my shop up, if the shows are back to back - unless you call and say you are coming. I did the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival this past weekend and sold most of my freeform yarns, so I will be working on new ones starting Wednesday.

Tomorrow evening I will be giving a presentation to the Greater Baltimore Weavers' Guild on Fiber Connections: Art and Science. I will be talking about how I got the nerve to call myself an artist. I designed two shawls to illustrate some of my points. I used funky yarns in both and elastic yarn in one of them. The photo above shows what happened when I took it off the loom. The ripples are a natural result of the elastic yarn. I never waste - so the piece above was woven to finish the warp. I will be dyeing it at the meeting.

This is one of the finished shawls. I used a variety of white fibers - all whites are not the same color. This piece includes Rambouillet, Suri alpaca, kid mohair, Merino, and tencel. The shawls will be available for sale after the November Textile Museum presentation.

Art and Science

 At Spinquest last month I learned a new technique for spinning a funky yarn from Wildhare Studios. I knitted it up to see what it would look like since she did not have a sample available. Very interesting effect - like a shag rug, but not a yarn that I will spin often. Too time consuming and not as showy as I would have expected. It did make a cute little scarf - about the size of my boas.

 At Spinquest, I realized that the easy coast fiber artists are much more traditional and that they really like the pretty packaging. I have the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival next weekend and I plan to take roving, batts and mohair locks in both plastic bags and the plastic containers above to see which sells better. All of the plastic containers have pretty tags and pricing in them.

 Marc and I are going to be pros at the Famancha method of determining when the goats and sheep are parasite ridden and anemic. The second vet I had come out said this goat is good. Is it not ugly? Marc and I have also taken a course on using a microscope and centrifugue to determine what kind of parasites are living in my animals. Gross subject, but I don't want to over treat and make the wormers ineffective. We have the microscope and test tubes. Just waiting on the centrifuge. This is a little too much like being a scientist for me. Marc has really taken to it.

 The chickens are now running around in a temporary pen. The grass is gone and I am supplementing them
with garden scarps and grubs and slugs. Yuck! At least the bugs are not getting a chance to reproduce!

                                   
 I am still listing yarns on my eshop and etsy. The west coast customers are mainly looking for the art yarns, so they are my focus.

I have been asked to give a presentation at the Greater Baltimore Weavers Guild on October 2, 2012 on Fiber Connections: Art and Science. The Textile Museum in Washington, D.C. saw that and has asked me to do a talk on weaving and its connection to science on November 29, 2012. As a basis for my discussion for the Textile Museum, I am weaving two all white shawls with lots of texture. One will be very traditional, while the other will be more like a tapestry weaving on a countermarch loom with a few twists - since it has elastic yarn in it. . One of the shawls will be dyed at the Baltimore meeting.

Upcoming post - we have bought a tractor. Does that make us farmers now?

Lazy Days of Summer

It would be easy to say that I am lazing around this summer, but not totally true. We have been gathering animals up almost nightly to treat the animals for worms. We have learned how to do the FAMANCHA test and about 10 animals are still seriously anemic. I am going to shear a few of them over the next few days, since the stress has caused them to blow their fleeces. My feed bills have become vet and medicine bills.

My garden is thriving. I love the sunflowers and I have been playing around with a few apps on my ipad to create some cool looks. This one is called Broken Wall. I love the Twirl the most.

I have been canning tomatoes in various forms. I have Thai peppers and have been adding them to make hot sauce. Seems like tomatoes are turning red every time I walk by them. I am picking them as soon as they start to turn red, so the slugs and worms do not get them.

My sister, Nadia, came to visit with her husband, so I took a break from spinning. I have to get back to carding, since I am going to Spinquest in Front Royal, VA, as a vendor this Saturday. If you are looking for some cool stuff from independent fiber artists, come check it out.

I am also focusing my yarn sales on my online eshop. I am listing periodically on etsy, but have discovered that people get lost there since there is so much.

Fog? Yarns!

I took this photo early yesterday morning. Makes me think of fall. I had just let all of the angora goats into Watusi's area, since it is now fully goat proof. Watusi got moved up to the pen near the house.

 This was taken in the afternoon. The goats are making a serious inroad into the ragweed, so I will not have to mow! The farmer is coming to build the 3 sided shelter for the alpacas in this area tomorrow. It is the last one that we will do this year. Next year we will fence in more areas where tractors can't get to mow the hay and put shelters there. It will allow me to rotate pastures and keep the animals from having so many parasite issues.

I listed these yarns on my eshop last night: www.uniquedesignsbykathyshop.com. Buy 2 or more and get free shipping. Let me know, so I can send you an invoice.

Colors

My multicolored sunflowers are now opening. The colors are very close to the colors inside my house. I love them! I will dry a few, but will probably give most of the seeds to my African Gray and the goats. They love them and it helps their coats shine.

These are two of the photos that I took for someone who wanted to see what colors I have in kid mohair. The tan skein above is Suri. I have been spinning for projects and just realized that I need to be spinning for the shop! Most of my colors have gone pastel. I am going to have to spin and then dye to get some vibrant colors.

These are all kid mohair batts. I have almost finished spinning the one on the left and will over dye it with slate blue. I plan to spin and dye each one a different color. The sheen shows up beautifully in this photo.

Above are mohair locks from two "black" kids. The silvery gray one has taupe tips and is as soft as a white fleece. The one on the right is the blackest fleece that I have ever had. It is funny since the black kids all start out pitch black when born.

Published!

Ever since we arrived in Woodbine, MD, the Shetlands, Merinos and Mounds have hung out at the top of the pasture. I have to go way up to check on them. I managed to capture them with the bank barn in the background. They sure do love the grass.

Now that our chicks have arrrived, we are back to our "normal" from Tucson. These are Speckled Sussex and we chose them because they are supposed to lay 4 eggs a week and be good brooders. I would like to hatch our own chicks nex year, so I got a straight run. There are definitely a few roosters in the bunch.

My Green Crochet Shawl pattern was chosen to go in the 2013 Crochet calendar. It is featured for April 12th and was renamed Lacy Shawl. Kind of exciting, even if I did know about it months ago!

I am going to weave two white/natural colored shawls for a presentation that I am giving for the Greater Baltimore Guild on October 2nd, 2012. Title - Fiber Connections: Art and Science. The yarn is spun, so I am working on tying on my loom.

I was able to catch a photo as my first sunflower started opening this afternoon. I took an even cooler picture of one about to open, but I don't want to bore you!

There is always a lot to do here. I turned my compost, dealt with some animals that have health issues, and sheared a buk who looked too hot. This is his fleece. It is 5 or mre inches long - but it weighed only 23 ounces - even though it is a full 6 month fleece. His fllece feels like it has already been washed. No vm in it and no grease. Guess the rain does a good job. I have been delousing them routinely, so there is no back scratching and no felting. His fleece is superfine. I am thinking that eating grass and clover gives a finer fleece.

And here he is - no nicks or cuts. He is registered and for sale ($350) - out of a great line. If he does not sell, I will use him with the older does.

Spinning Yarns and Gardening

I am bouncing all around in my color and fiber selections right now. The coiled one is going on my eshop, while the rest will go in the physical shop here in Woodbine, Maryland. I am alternating between listing on my own shop: http://www.uniquedesignsbykathyshop.com and my etsy shop: http://www.uniquedesignsbykathy.etsy.com.

I am not sure whether you can tell what is growing in Watusi's pasture, but it is ragweed. The goats, sheep and alpacas had all been eating around it. My neighbor finally informed me the other day that it is ragweed. Sure enough, I did an Internet search, so I could be sure, and then I was out there mowing it down. It really needs to be tilled under, but then I would not have the grass and other "weeds" that Watusi has been eating. It pulls up fairly easy, so I am weeding a little each time I go out.

This is my real garden. The sunflowers are over 5 feet tall. They tower above me now. My beans, cucumbers and tomatoes are growing in their shade and twining around their stalks -instant trellis. Where the wooden pegs are in the rear of the picture is the last bed that Marc helped me dig. I have peppers, stevia, catnip and corn with a few more sunflowers in that bed.

This is my first cucumber. I have not harvested it yet, since it is so small!

I have some really great neighbors, who started their gardens while I was moving in and doing kid and lamb deliveries. They have been keeping me supplied with different types of squash, peppers, zucchini. Ruth gave me basil and tomato plants. I cut 2.6 pounds of basil off and stripped the leaves this weekend. I dried a quart and used the rest to make and freeze pesto sauce. In two weeks, I will be cutting a bunch more. Gardening is occupying almost as much time as gardening. I am almost ready for chickens. Marc mentioned them when he got back from Tucson last week. Guess he misses them also. We need to figure out where we want to put them, since we don't want to lose them to the dogs.