Are YOU ready?

Yes, the "Great American Eclipse" - coming up on Monday and I'm ready.  Got my official solar shades and my observing guide - ap's on my tablet and King 5 will be broadcasting all morning.  And I decided not to even try to pretend that I was working on Monday morning, I took some vacation hours so I could stay home and see the real deal. 

What are YOU going do be doing?    

New Year's Greetings!

 So, this is what we've been doing -

I've been spending a lot of time spinning.

The Shepherd wants another sweater vest from his sheep's yarn - This is "Donna" 








The roving was done for us by Evergreen Fibers in Woodinville - He did a really nice job. 

We went to brunch at our friend Nancy's farm to celebrate New Years - Lots of good music, good food and good friends.  I had finished two bobbins of "Donna" so I took my spinning wheel and started plying it.  I'll take a picture of it when I get it skeined up. 

This is some CVM/Romeldale  yarn that I spun up last month -

 and this is some "Kathy Green Roving" - She uses a high micron count fiber and through a process of combing, dying & carding comes up with a yummy, easy to spin fiber.  Some of my favorite! 

The kids have been spending a lot of time snoozing.  They are such funny & affectionate kitties.  

Sorry I haven't been blogging much lately - my "new eye" is at war with my other eye and, obviously the prescription in my glasses (which is over 2 years old) is not corrected yet.  So I end up trying to focus both eyes, generally unsuccessfully. - making it extremely difficult to see/read what is on my computer screen.  BUT, tomorrow is my one month appointment  from my surgery and my Dr. said I would get my new prescription TOMORROW - You can better bet I'll be checking out some optical shops this weekend to get new glasses - YAY!!!

Til next time - Happy New Year from everyone here on the farm! 

The Squalicum Valley Artisan Faire -

Over, but not forgotten - I can't believe that it was almost a month ago that we did the Artisan Faire -

It was organized by our friend Lydia McCauley and a few of her very talented neighbors (click on her name to see a few more of the items that were in the show and to hear her beautiful music)

Squalicum Valley Artisan Faire - With a few invited special guests - - that would be The Shepherd and me, my friend Linda, who makes these adorable cut paper collages, and a couple of other ladies (I was never quite sure who was local or not)

Here is my yarn display (which was made to fit on a card table) with baskets of fingerless gloves and friendship roses just below - It worked just like I thought it would - although because of the placement of our table, instead of having yarn on both sides, I pushed the dowels most of the way to one side - and hung two skeins on each dowel. But that was the nice thing about having the dowels moveable - and the whole thing comes apart and is stored in a cardboard box about 6" thick, 12" wide and three feet tall, that will just fit in the corner of my closet (if I can ever get the boxes of stuff out from in front of it so I can get INTO the closet - but that's a whole 'nuther topic...)


And The Shepherd had his display of roving from our sheepies -

I sold a little over half of my yarn and gloves - he only sold the two bumps of black & white roving (from Wicket) - but I think he made some very good contacts - Roving is not really something that one expects to buy at a craft fair.

I also had my spinning wheel there, which elicited quite a bit of attention (also the fact that I was just about the first person that people saw when they came in the door)

All in all I sold enough to cover the costs of the new display, the new table for the roving display, the wire cubes that The Shepherd had his roving in - all things that we can use again. So I was happy.




There were lovely jewelry items -













And some knitted and crocheted items from a small yarn shop in Skagit county.













Nancy Rumbel was there with some vintage collectables, and items of "whimsey" - she also plays the ocarina (in addition to many other insturments) and sat in with Lydia when she played her music -











If you click on any of these pictures, they will biggafy and you can see some of the exquisite work that these talented people brought to sell.










These are my friend Linda's collages and greeting cards.

Linda & I played some music together too - We'd been practicing for about 6 weeks - she on banjo and me with my 12 string guitar. She did a short set alone, we played three songs together and then I played a half dozen songs by myself - I hadn't played in public for several years (with the exception of church) and I was nervous - but it went well.




These painted silk flags were some of my favorite items - and you have to look more closely at her felted people - I think I might have gone to college with the fellow in the red jacket...










This was Lydia's display of soaps,lotions and essences that she makes - She did a wonderful job of advertising and marketing the show - we had nearly constant traffic the whole six hours - something unusual for the first year of an event. We were also lucky that the weather was exceptionally nice (almost too hot) - but it certainly brought the folks out to see what we had.

Even thought we were both totally exhausted. I unfortunately decided the night before the show that I needed to re-measure/re-price all my yarn & was up until about 3:00 a.m. - and we had to be up at 6:00 a.m. to be out at the grange by 8:00 to set up - so I essentially got a three hour "nap" - but, I would absolutely do this again. I know my "pitfalls" and how I would change things for the future - in fact I even got an email from someone who was in the process of planning a small arts & crafts fair in one of the assisted living facilities in town. If I had more yarn spun up, I might have considered it, but I have a 4 oz. skein of yarn and 7 pairs of fingerless mitts to make and I still have to spin the yarn for several of them - so, I think I have my work cut out for myself without adding in another venue, don't you?

Loking Back Sunday - Happy May Day

Every year on the Sunday closest to May 1st our Sunday School teacher at church organizes a May Pole "event".

Everyone wears crowns of ivy,






There is a small park adjacent to our church where one of the members puts up our May Pole that Margot has festooned with ribbon.

Although these pictures are from 2009, today's "dance" was much like this one - the sun was out (for once) and the group was in good spirits.



Everyone is given their ribbon and assigned either to "sky" or "grass" - ie - you go over first or under first - the finished pole is colorful and festive.

One year she took all the ribbon off the pole afterward and made it into a beautiful woven wall hanging.






Not much is made of "May Day" any more - When I was a little girl my sister and I would make paper baskets and fill them with flowers from my mom and grandma's gardens - for who else? My mom and grandma -





This year everyone came back to the church to share a yummy Transylvanian lunch that our minister had made to benefit our partner church in, where else, Transylvania.

On the home front, The Shepherd is still sick with the flu - I say still - he's been sick since Friday the 22nd.

I'm more than ready for him to get well.

So, Happy SUNday (which we've had might little of here in the Pacific NW - April was the coldest and wettest in HISTORY) and Happy May Day!

Mission Complete

This was the scene at the Sunset Fibers booth at my spinner guild's March 2010 Spin-In.

Faced with so much yummy lushness, my eyes always glaze over and my hand immediately reaches for my check book.

"My Pretty - My pretty" - I sound like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings!

I decided that I absolutely needed to purchase enough wool to make sweaters for my bosses impending twins.



I chose a colorful rainbow mix for one.

It ended up that I didn't get as much as I should have (12 ounces instead of 16 that I really needed), so I blended some of the rainbow with a white Shetland wool single (and some of the lavender pastel with grey Shetland single - )







And a lavender pastel mix for the other -

Little did I know that they planned to name one of the girls "Violet"

If you have been following my blog for a while, you'll remember that I told you about my first BIG mistake HERE (ahh - the first round through - they were too small)



Could I have "revised" the sweaters so they would have fit? Maybe. But I wanted them to be better than that.

So, after all the frogging (rippit, rippit, rippit) I finally got them re-crocheted and finished - washed, blocked and buttons sewed on -









Can you see this adorable lavender rose button?
(click on the picture to biggify it)









Here is Annie's "coat of many colors" - on the "re-do" I was actually able to make the pattern of the colors from the sleeves match the pattern of the colors on the hood. I thought I was very clever for that...










And I found these sweet little heart shaped buttons for her coat.











And here are none other than the recipients themselves.

Probably the cutest babies I've ever seen.






And the sweaters fit! Their grandma Mel said that she thought they'd be able to wear them for a while.

Spring and summer in the Pacific NW is often chilly, so I'm hoping that they will get a lot of use out of them before they outgrow them. The hazards of making a sweater for a baby...




But it was a fun project and I actually enjoyed myself.

Thank you to Mommy Rachel for the lovely pictures of the girls.

The end...

Wonderful Woolies Fleece & Fiber Sale

Last weekend our friends Yvonne & Doug of Spinner's Eden Farm had a fleece & fiber sale at their farm here in the county.

We had about ten farms participating providing everything from CVM, mohair, Shetland (ours and our friend Nancy's), Alpaca, Llama, Corriedale, and a huge luscious colorful mountain of combed top and potluck roving from Kathy Green's Ferndale Fiber (that's Kathy on the left).





We had many discerning customers who were willing to brave the windy COLD (in the low 40's) day to come out, feed their fleece habit and get bargains right off the farm.


















A happy customer with two bumps of Ferndale Fiber and a beautiful big bump of Yvonne's CVM.







And YES, did I mention it was cold?

Here I am in my "little nest" - I had two shirts, a fleece vest, a winter coat (fleece lined and a wind breaker outer skin) - I was sitting on a fleece blanket that had been doubled up AND I had a down coverlet over my lap. Oh, and my new cowl/hood that I made from a blend of merino, alpaca and mohair.

I forgot to bring my fingerless mittens home from work, so I tried to wear my gloves, but I was cashiering and it was difficult to write with gloves on - I was also working on a crochet project in the down time (which there wasn't much of, it was really pretty busy!) and that really didn't work with gloves on.



OK, I know that I don't need any more fiber, but I just couldn't help getting these three bumps of Kathy's combed top. The colors will work really well for a crochet project I'm working on for a arts & crafts sale I've been invited to be in this fall.







Tables and tables of fiber - I'm sorry that I only took pictures of what I could see from the cashier table - It was a really fun day.









We got to know some very nice new "fiber farmers" and my ulterior motive for being cashier was that I got to meet and greet every single person who came to the sale. Many were folks on my spinner guild email newsletter list who don't come to meetings so I got to meet all those people too.


Yup, it was a really fun day!

Looking Back Sunday - Tao Drummers

I never got around to telling you about one of the shows that we saw at the Mt. Baker Theater last year.








TAO: The Martial Art of Drumming









This is inside the theater - It was first opened in 1927 and refurbished in 1996. For many years it was a movie theater but for the past 20 years they have brought in shows ranging from Chinese acrobats to internationally know performers such as Joan Baez. Ladysmith Black Mambaza, Arlo Gutherie, Natalie McMasters, to Broadway Shows. It is also the home of the Whatcom Symphony Orchestra.

It is a jewel to have in our community.









This is the second time we have seen Japanese drummers there.

The drumming on the BIG drums takes your breath away!






Over the past 20 years we've gone to see between 6-10 performers every year.

The shows from this year didn't pique our interest very much (besides not fitting into the budget very well) - hopefully the line-up next year will be better.

One of the things I've been working on -

I do love making yarn and I enjoy crocheting things for people. But when it comes to making items for new babies, wool or other exotic fiber just isn't the most practical thing you can use.

A couple of weeks ago I was stash busting, (actually I was hunting for places to put more stash) - and came upon three skeins of this Red Heart Acrylic yarn - it is such a pretty color way - and I remembered that The Shepherd's old boss's daughter had recently had a baby. Ta da - I'll make the Merry-Go-Round blanket for her - Didn't it turn out pretty? It is about 4 feet across and I used up all three skeins of yarn (yippee!) And she can just throw it in the washer & dryer - worry free!

A busy Saturday

This past Saturday we went to Monroe to participate in our friend Gretchen's Fiber Frolic. We had hoped to sell some nice Shetland fleece or roving, but alas, everyone was keeping a tight reign on their purse strings. We did make a lot of contacts and got a lot of "hands on" the fiber - so maybe next time...

When it was over at 4:00 we had to scurry home to get ready to go to our friends Lydia & Kurt's for a Concert at Meadow House -



This special concert, a coming together of three very talented women, was one of the nicest events that I've attended in a long time -

Lydia McCauley is an artist that The Shepherd and I have followed for the past 18 years - To our delight, over the years, we have gotten to know Lydia and her wonderful partner and husband Kurt, and try to not miss any of her concerts.





This evening Lydia joined with Nancy Rumbel and Jami Sieber (both internationally known artists who are from the Seattle area) for a very special concert called "River"














Jami Sieber plays electric & acoustic cello. Amazingly -

We first met her a year ago when she opened for Lydia's last concert. She is an amazing musician and vocalist - It is hard sometimes to distinguish the difference between her voice and the voice of her cello - they are that close.

One of her life's projects is protection of the endangered Asian elephants, which she came to know about after a trip to Thailand in 2001 - You can read more about her work with these beautiful creatures here.






Nancy Rumbel has performed with The Paul Winter Consort and for over 25 years with Eric Tingstad as Tingstad & Rumbel.

To quote the bio on her website: "NANCY RUMBEL is a professional composer, recording artist,performer and teacher. Her primary instruments are oboe, English horn, double wooden ocarinas, clay ocarinas and keyboards."

She even has a CD out of her ocarina music - fancy that!



And speaking of CDs - Look what I won -

My very own copy of Jami's CD "Hidden Sky".


What a great evening it was.