I haz a distaff, I haz a distaff (insert Snoopy happy dance)

I've been hunting for a free-standing distaff for at least a decade. Ebay, Etsy, Google searches, word of mouth, antique shops, begging every woodworker I met--nothing. Last year my Google-fu worked and I found Bill Hardy of Turnstyles and asked him to make a distaff in walnut. My oldest brother, who I never met because he passed away the year before I was born, planted 7 walnut trees along our driveway in 1943. Six of the trees are still there, although I no longer get the walnuts from them because the squirrels always beat me to them. Walnut is my favorite nut and my absolute favorite wood.

Bill emailed me last month to say that the distaff was finished. This weekend we drove to Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival with the express purpose of picking up the finished distaff. I immediately ran over to it in the booth and hugged it and petted it, alarming Bill's son because the distaff had a 'Sold' sign and he didn't realize I was the buyer. I am so happy with this wonderful piece of equipment. The workmanship is supurb, even Bill's choice of where to place the turnings to accent the grain, the tines of the lantern top will pop out for storage (meaning they won't be prone to breaking), and Bill included two extra tines just in case there's an accident. The whole thing unscrews for storage! I am just over-the-moon happy with this and can't wait to dress it with flax for spinning.

Full height, about 5.5 ft.

Extension removed to MY height

Extension with hand-carved screw

Base--LOOK at that wonderful grain!

We settled the deal and I left the distaff to wander the festival for a bit. When we returned, I couldn't resist playing with the spindles. Now, I'm not normally a spindler because I use my yarn for knitting and I want it FAST--spindles just don't fit the bill for my purposes. However, this little spindle was just too fine to leave all alone in the booth and so it followed me home. Along with a new pen for the Husbeast, who said it called out to him for a home.

Yep, it was a good weekend!

Spring Flower Fever has struck!

I've been overjoyed at the spring flowers everywhere. Perhaps it's because the deer ate my hibiscus buds just before they bloomed, and 'trimmed' my rhododendroms severely this winter, but I NEED some color and scent this spring. My Easter azaleas (Husbeast and sons know that I love spring flowers and buy me some each Easter) are in the ground and have survived several frost warnings. A good friend brought me a bunch of blue hibiscus yesterday to cheer me after the deer damage to my own. And the one flower the deer don't seem to like for dinner are the wood violets that cover large portions of our lawn. So I went a little crazy in the studio last week and tried to reproduce some of my favorites, although I'm not quite sure how to mimic hibiscus flowers. Here's my results, available in my Etsy shop:

Wood Violets

 

Azaleas

And the thick 'n thin yarn spun from one of the batts, which will also appear in my Etsy shop as soon as I print a label with weight, suggested needle size, etc.

Azaleas yarn

And don't forget the Great Lakes Fiber Show in Wooster, OH. Tomorrow, April 30, is the last day to sign up for workshops and there are some great classes this year.

Guild exhibit at Shaler Library during the month of May; Reminder to register for classes at Waynesburg Festival

The Butler Spinners and Weavers Guild is hosting a display of textiles at the Shaler Library on Mt. Royal Blvd. My friend and I are hanging the show and did a mock-up of the display this past week. Folks, there are some lovely pieces in the show. Our guild is full of talented people. I'm entering 3 pieces but have only photographed one, the handspun handknit linen market bag. It's a small bag but I'm sure I can fill it up at the yarn store (like I need more yarn?).

With apologies to my guildmates, here's a few shots of other pieces.....

This is going to be a great show!



And I wanted to remind folks that this is the first year classes are being offered at the Waynesburg Sheep and Fiber Festival in mid-May. There are some great knitting, spinning, crochet classes being offered for first-time crafters and this is a great opportunity to learn a new skill! Yep, I'm the spinning teacher and I'm looking forward to meeting some wonderful new spinners that weekend.

Fractal spinning the easy way!

I was reading some Ravelry posts about spinning handpainted or dyed roving and noticed discussions about fractal spinning. This is a method of dividing the roving so that the colors and spun in differing lengths. Usually the roving is split in half and the first half is spun up. The second have is split into 2 or 4 or however many you want strips and spun up. These two differently spun singles are then plied--the lengths of color will not match each other, giving a richer color distribution throughout the plied yarn. And I realized that two of my sock batts would make fractal yarn! I came up with this concept because I was tired of the blended and/or striped sock batts I'd been making (yes, I spin up my new ideas and knit socks for myself before I put the batts up for sale). If you pull these batts into strips and spin them in order or Z-strip them for spinning, you will create the same fractal effect as handpainted roving. And my batts contain purple, which is ALWAYS a good idea!

Spectra

Zombie Party

Oh, it just hasn't been a good week to finish my vest....

Our spinning and weaving guild is celebrating our 30th anniversary this year, and the first of several displays will be mounted in May at my local library. I've been trying to knit a simple vest from the Winter 2011 Spin Off magazine with my handspun. This was my starting yarn:

Cherry Divinity yarn

I needed 2 accent colors and choose a deep red heather top and a charcoal heather top, spun the yarns and started knitting. Ran out of the charcoal. I knew I needed another entire skein as the charcoal would also be used for the neckband, and so I spun up a bobbin early in the week, plied and washed it, and started knitting again.

The vest back

I've now run out of the deep red yarn--just 3" from being finished with the 60 stitches on underarm portion of the back of the vest! Ack! Drat! Dagnabbit! sigh.....

Not nearly enough yarn there.....

So it's back to the wheel today, wash the yarn tonight and hopefully continue the knitting tomorrow. It's so frustrating when I keep running into problems on such a simple project, but I suppose it's my own fault for not guestimating my yarn requirements correctly. Live and learn.....

Article about my batts in Yarnmaker magazine!

Well, I can finally stop keeping secrets! The latest issue of Yarnmaker, a spinning magazine published in the UK, contains an article about my batts entitled "Beautiful Batts and Husky Hats". Elizabeth Lovick, who is a wonderful designer/spinner, purchased some of my Siberian Husky blend batts, spun them up and knitted a great hat. I've known for some time that the article was coming but couldn't say anything until press time. I'm just so excited about this! And now I must go card more batts......

Getting ready for classes

It's officially Spring! Nice weather means that I can dry my yarn and dyed articles outside where they dry much faster and there's little chance that the cat will 'help' by pulling wet skeins off the drying rack. I typically don't dye much because I just don't like the mess, but I also can't resist making colors. So I end up doing some dyeing once or twice each year.

Since I wanted to show my students at the Great Lakes Fiber Festival a few fun things, I'd purchased a few little bags of fibers I didn't have in stock, including tencel and cotton nepps . Monday was the perfect day for dyeing them. The tencel presented no problems as it wetted out quickly and absorbed the dye nicely. Since the cotton nepps were still floating in the soda ash soak (even with the addition of Synthrapol) I let them soak for another day. On Tuesday most of the nepps were wetted through so I decided to go ahead with dyeing even though the dry nepps wouldn't absorb any color. I let them sit in the dye until last night to make sure that the color took on the little cotton bits. The cotton is still sitting on the drying rack but the dyes are exactly the same color as the tencel so I haven't bothered with photos.

Clumps of tencel, which become individual tiny balls of tencel once they dry completely.

Since I was already making a mess of the laundry area with dyes and chemicals, I decided to dye the wool/cotton yarn I'd spun years ago. My expectation was that the cotton clumps in the yarn would take the color while the wool would remain it's natural color or become tinted with the dyes. Imagine my surprise when the wool also accepted the fiber-reactive dye! I've rinsed the yarn till the water ran clear, but the wool still retains the dye to a stronger degree than I'd expected.

Fiber, it's all a learning experience and so much fun to explore!