If you're in the Rockland County area, please check out the Music Festival at Green Meadow Waldorf School in Chestnut Ridge this Saturday, May 17th.  I am sharing a booth with Jen of Lillyzoo, and we will be selling our wares this weekend at the craft fair part of the event. 

Jen has been sewing up aprons like a woman possessed (can't wait to see them!) and will also have felted soaps, felt balls, scarves and rattles.  I've got a good stock of  spring and summery knit and felt items, and just made up some gourmet needle felting kits, among other things.   I'll also have a selection of my Dad's hand turned pens on hand, which make great Father's Day and Graduation gifts.

We  will be the women under the white tent full of fibery goodies.   Hopefully we'll have good weather and a fun and profitable day!

I just love this yarn so I had to post it.  I think I must keep it for me, because the colors are so outstanding, it's unbelievably soft and just turned out special.  Spun from unbelievable hand dyed alpaca locks from the fabulous Holly, plied with glass beads in green, blue and brown, on a Habu tsugumi silk yarn in black.  Mine, mine I tell ya!

Fabulous, isn't it? (If I do say so myself)

"...in general i do try to live my life in the light. but let's be honest. i own a timeshare on the darkside and i just have to go there sometimes. so come, don't be afraid."

Quoted direct from Lexi Boeger, aka Pluckyfluff, on her blog recently.  I love this woman...she needs to write a book I think, and not just about yarn.  Maybe yarn and horror/sci-fi combo, yes, that's it.   I think I will put her quote in my signature.  What do you think?

Long time no post, I know, I know....and this one is a quick one, just to show off something recent that I enjoyed making and really like--enough to make more (that says a lot for me, I'm usually a one-of-a-kind type of designer).  This is my "Spring Surprise" shawl.  It's  a larger shoulder wrap that I hand felted from a 70% wool--30% mohair blend of farm roving in blues and greens, purchased from SpinningMoonFarm on Etsy.  I nuno felted it onto a thin layer of silk gauze with a single stripe down the center to grab and pucker the silk.  It's warm yet light for spring and summer evenings.  I donated it to little A's school PTA Fashion show fundraiser for a raffle this week, so I hope it helps to raise money for them, and drums up a bit of local recognition and possible future business for me. 

Here it is on the line, doubled up, (idrying:

and draped on a picnic bench:

These pictures make me realize just how much I need a dress form to shoot my stuff on.  The pictures just don't do this piece justice.  I just have to break down and buy one soon, because it's just silly not to get good photos of my work.

After my negative rant of the last post, I felt the need to share something positive today.  This picture was too cute not to share, so here he is, my very own Garden Gnome in his pointy gnome hat, tromping through our raised beds, compacting the soil and causing all kinds of trouble a few days ago.

And  below I have  another pointed item to share, a finished object  (hooray for me!) destined for Winterharbor Studio.  Hand knit from recycled sari silk yarn primarily in a deep red color with splashes of bright colors throughout.  This is probably the first and last time I will work with this yarn.  I love the effect this fiber gives, but it's difficult to work with.  The yarn separated now and then so I had to weave the loose strands into each other occasionally so it would be seamless.  If you have to frog it (I did) the tangle of loose threads is a major challenge to separate and keep your sanity.  And this sari silk is so overdyed that it bleeds like no tomorrow.  I have a bag of loose fibers to blend into spinning batts and it always manages to bleed and change the color of the finished yarn after I'm done.  Sometimes I like the results, more often I don't.  But it does make for a pretty shawl if you have the patience to work with it-the "Rejuvenate Shawl":

Gosh I hate to post this in public, but I need to rant because I am absolutely furious with our bank (Insert giant-corporate banking conglomerate name here).  We do much of our banking in one locale, and when Craig quit his job to start working on Crowd Fusion last summer, we took out a home equity line of credit in case we needed to dip into it to cover us in between "official" jobs.  Shortly after we got the line, our primary mortgage also was purchased by the same bank, putting too many of our eggs in one basket, in my opinion.  But what are you going to do?

Back in January I noticed a $25 debit to our checking account and questioned it in an email to them.  Somehow I let it slip through the cracks.  We keep tabs on our accounts mostly electronically, and it takes a few months to catch up sometimes.  I really don't know how I let it slip under the radar that they have been charging us $25/month for our checking account, which used to be FREE before we gave them more of our business.  The return message I was sent (and just read, 3 months later--that part is 'my bad'), tells me that we need a combined total debt and/or savings in our accounts of $250,000 in order to avoid the $25 fee!!!!!  Where the heck did that come from? 

I have a couple of accounts elsewhere that will charge me $5 if I go below a $500 balance.  That seems reasonable to me.  These guys have a half dozen assorted accounts with us, and a very long relationship with us.  My first credit card I got when I turned 18 is still with them--20 years, folks!!  Now they have decided they need to nickel and dime us to death.   Leave it to corporate America to screw you for giving them a bigger piece of the pie. 

It's UFO time, and  I'm not talking generally about my Unbelievable Fiber Obsession, but  am trying to attack a specific problem within my stash; a massive pile of Un-Finished Objects or as we fiber obsessed people (and crafters everywhere) call them, UFO's.

Anyone who knows me well (and some who don't) know that I have a case of "start-itis", a term I lovingly stole from another fiber artist on one of the many lists I subscribe to.  I come up with new ideas, sometimes write them down, and start them.  Finishing isn't my strength <----understatement of the year.  So the stack of UFO's in my stash is quite impressive, maybe 20+ ok, more like 30.  OK, lets be honest I just have no idea how many items are out there floating around, waiting for some attention. And if you counted all of the supplies I purchased with a specific project in mind and haven't started...well, let's just not go there now as I'm feeling good about progress made recently, and don't want to rain on my own parade.

In the past I've tried new project  "diets" that  required me to finish one UFO in between each new item started.  It worked for a while, but then I'd find that I needed something small and brainless to work on while at the PTA meeting, sitting on line, waiting during ballet class...so I'd grab some yarn and two to five pointy sticks and whammo...great plans out the window (but nifty new hat started, cool :)

So on the verge of the Spring craft shows, and updating Amy's gallery with seasonal items,  I am grabbing some of these bad boys and plodding through the pile, putting the proper Spring UFO's at the top of the heap. This past weekend I finished a beautiful sari silk triangle shawl that I started over a year ago.  Yesterday I finished a yarn necklace that's been sitting in my bead box for a few months, and I worked for a few hours on the hairpin lace scarf shown in the photo, started last summer?   I plan to finish that today.   As I finish each, I find new things hiding  and add them to my queue.  Some of them  only need a half hour of my time to finish up, and it feels really good to have completed things to photograph, sell, gift, and show off.  After a bit of progress I feel confident that my persistence will pay off.

Ooh...gotta run, I just got an idea for a new spinning technique and need to go try it out...

Hiatus?  Really?  No, not really, just no time to take pics or post new projects lately.  I've been working on an original technique that I'm not ready to share yet, trying to perfect it so I can make a kit to sell.  Craig is a big believer in "make it once, sell it over and over", and he's right, sort of.  My kit will include both a bit of handmade (by me) parts, commercial parts, and a pattern to put it all together.  So it'll still be unique to TemptressYarn of course.  Details coming in a few weeks, I hope--I'm not much of a graphic designer and not sure how to put an instruction booklet together for printing.  That part will be hard.  I may try to find someone to help with that part...will see.

I've also been working like crazy to get some Springy things made to take to my Sister Amy's gallery in Greenport, NY:  Winterharborstudio is on Main Street, open weekends and a few other days and for Greenport's monthly gallery walks. (And I need to update her web site to reflect all that and more!)   I've been doing some lightweight felting, knit and crochet handbags and I hope to finish a few spring shawls and scarf ufo's that have been kicking around here.  Will go pull the wintry things next weekend and swap them out, or at least that's the plan. My friend Jen has been making some new felt soaps to stock up there as well--so to add color to the site, here's a pic I swiped from her web site, LillyZoo.com   She is also on Etsy as Lillyzoo :

She has some easier technique that works in her washing machine for felting soaps so I envy her that.  Soap felting is work....well, maybe not hard work but lots of time for little profit, so anything that makes it faster/easier is the way to go.  Customers literally eat them up, so it's great to have a stock (well, maybe not literally eating them, but you know what I mean).  Anyhow,  my washing machine ate the soaps when I tried to make them in there...can you say "shrinkage?"  So I have to do them by hand, which means I rarely get around to it.

Off to finish our TAXES, eeeeeew.  And then housework and fiber fun (that should be sometime around Thursday, I think).  With luck I'll get some fun things to look at here in the next few days...

Last year I purchased two lovely, small Navajo Churro fleece from Barbara at Flint Run Farm.  I was attracted by the "rare breed" idea as well as the fact that she had a few smaller fleeces for sale compared to others I had seen available.  The thought of smaller amounts of wool to process really enticed me as someone relatively new to raw fleece (not wanting to get in over my head and all--I would never do that, grin).  This year, with my renewed interest in  fleece prep that came from a successful attempt in the washing machine, I decided to purchase a few more fleeces from Barbara,  despite the fact that I still have a fair amount of last years' left.  I inquired and ended up purchasing three small fleeces that arrived today. 

I heard the postal van transmission whining down my street, and then heard the telltale "thump" that means a package has arrived.  I looked out the door to see a giant plastic canvas bag like you might imagine Santa Claus carrying over his shoulder.  Strange, I thought....then realized there was cardboard inside the bag....even stranger yet.  Why would Barbara ship fleece inside a box, inside a bag?  After a bit more inspection of the package, I realized that her box was inside an "official USPS" bag because of some kind of  postal accident (the kind you can only imagine):

So there it was, in all it's glory.  Three fleeces in bags, each bag ripped somewhat with fleece peeking out.  And then there's this:

Thoughts on this accident ran through my mind, not necessarily in this order:

"How, where, and why did this happen?"  and   "Thank goodness I don't buy antique Tiffany lamps"  and of course the best of all "I wonder what the people at the post office think I do with bags full of greasy sheep fleeces.  I can just imagine the looks on their (very, very, suburbanite) faces"   That third thought made me smile...a LOT...in fact, I'm still smiling about it.

In all, no harm was done.  The fleeces (Faith, Nancy, and Grace) were intact and in great shape, well skirted without too much dirt or vm.  Even the invoice and photos of my new sheepy friends survived without a crease, despite being found in the bottom of that box!  And I immediately opened one of the fleeces up and here it is--from Nancy.  I put half in the washer and it's already halfway finished, turning from this to a nice creamy white as I write this:

I'm sure more Navajo Churro posts will pop up, since I now have so much to work with.  I do hope this  post is the last I need to make about postal mishaps.  Happy spinning and good night.

Just a vent tonight about a hat I've been knitting from my Winter Wonderland yarn.  I have frogged this freaking (frogging) hat so many times that I've lost count.  Tried to make a roll brim with seed stitch and it turned out to be big enough for a giant, plus the brim didn't roll much due to all the beads and sequins in the yarn, and my seed stitch sucked...pearls where there should have been knits, knits where there should have been pearls, aargh.  (Note to self--and others if you're listening--do not take seed stitch projects out and about to work on where you can't concentrate.  It wil not work out right and you'll be sorry.)  Next I settled on k3p3 rib changing over to stockinette, which went along fine.  I wanted to do some fancy openwork as a kind of top beyond the peak--a little detail to match the neck warmer I made with the other skein, and it's failed twice so far.  The latest version looks like a blender got hold of it.  Whose dumb idea was it to make those twisty dreads at the top edge anyhow?  Oh yeah.  My brain said "don't do it" but my hands did it anyhow.  I saw this technique on TV once and had to try it for myself.  Bad idea, I tell ya.  Like Dr. Seuss on steroids...which gives me an idea:  maybe congress can investigate my hat  and stop wasting time (and our tax dollars) on Roger.

Alright, enough baseball talk.  It will be summer before I get this thing finished, but I am so determined NOT to let another thing go into the UFO heap.  I love making things up as I go along, but this goes to show that sometimes a pattern is worth a couple of bucks, no?

Off to frog and give it one more try before I cash in the chips and make it a plain old beanie.  One good thing comes from all the cussing and griping I've put myself through for this hat:  I learned that my handspun can take the ripping, hold up and still look great.  That's a plus that I had counted on, but it's nice to be sure.

Just a quick post with pictures of a few of the items I've listed recently at Handmade and on my new etsy shop, TemptressYarn.etsy.com.  The batts are only available on etsy so far and the yarn is in both places.

Top left, tread softly batts (on etsy).  Top right "I dream in Color" yarn.

Bottom left, "Irish" yarn.  Bottom right--Border Leicester locks for sale on etsy.

It was almost too easy to wash this chunk of wool fleece in my top loading washer this week.  I'm not going to re-write history since I just spent an hour uploading and making notes on this whole process over in my flickr account, but I am putting this lovely tiled collage up here for a quick overview of the process, and a quick numbered list with info about each thumbnail below the photo.  For more details, please go through my flickr set titled Machine Wash Wool Fleece, and feel free to comment here or there and ask questions. 

For a first try at this method, I am very happy with the results I got.  The locks came out cleaner than many I have purchased with the word "washed" in the description, and were much easier to handle than the dishpan-by-hand method I've used in the past, so that makes it worth repeating soon.  This was from a 3lb, 11oz Border Leicester fleece that I bought at NYSWF at Rhinebeck, October, 2007.  I washed about half the fleece in one batch and am very happy with the ease and speed of the process and the great results I got.   Just a reminder that you can only do this in a top loading washer that has a way to run a "spin only" cycle without agitating.  Otherwise, don't try this at home.

1. Raw Fleece    

2. Judging Card from the NYSWF fleece sale

3. Fleece info card, weight, name, cost

4. Put the fleece into lingerie bags in a  loose, single layer.

5. Add very hot water to an empty washing machine (turned my hot water heater up one click).

6. Add soap after the water is finished filling to avoid massive bubbles.

7. Agitate for 3 seconds to distribute soap (wool is NOT in the water yet)

8. Set washer to "spin only" before you forget!  DO NOT AGITATE WOOL lest you get a giant felt glob!

9. Drop bags of wool into soapy water and gently push down.

10. First soak, 15-20 minutes, (again a reminder: do not agitate!)

11.Spin washer out--showing a sample of the locks after first soak and spin

12-13.  Set bags aside and repeat steps 5-11.  Use less soap this time.

14. Sample of locks after second soak/spin cycle.

15. Refill washer with hot water and vinegar to rinse soap residue and soften.  Repeat rinse soak until the water runs clear.  Keep using hot water, since some wool will felt with big temperature changes.

16. Baby gates used as drying racks---knew I bought those for some reason!!

17.  Wool spread out to dry, fluffed and flipped over once.

18.  Washed Border Leicester Locks, ready to dye now, hooray!!

Tonight is fleece a-washin' evenin' in the old clothes washer.

I'm just doing a final rinse now on about half an off-white Border Leicester fleece that I bought at the NYSWF in Rhinebeck in the fall (2007) that I've been dying to work with.  This is the first time I've used my washing machine for this process, but it seems to be working beautifully in the "soak and spin" method.  Will post details and a few pics tomorrow.  I hope to make a fleece washing tutorial out of this so I took pictures through the whole process.

My spin cycle just finished, so I'm back to spread the locks out to dry, then off to my wheel for some plying and then spinning some of these batts I've been making lately!  Craig is watching old Dr. Who episodes on the TIVO without me, so I've got to run before he starts another, aargh!

The fiber arts world is a wonderful example of "what comes around goes around", but in a nice way that I'm going to call the "The Rainbow Connection".   (OK, I admit that I have a bit of obsession with muppets but we won't go there now).  So, the reality of the modern fiber arts world is that we are all connected to each other somehow--from small farmers to big mills, spinners to needle artists of all kinds, tiny indie designers to "fashion week" moguls to some guy wearing his favorite T-shirt, modern artists to our ancestors who worked with fiber for warmth and necessity more than luxury.  Fiber connects us all.  It is  necessity, hobby, art, entertainment and much, much more.  I could go on forever, but will save it for a book I hope to write someday.

The point of this is that today I made a little connection in this fiber arts world that made me smile, and just wanted to show how a bit of fluff begins the process of making the rounds.  I purchased this set of batts (coincidentally, a rainbow of little batts in different colors, imagine that?) from Loop on Etsy back in August of 2007.  Aren't they gorgeous?

At the time I couldn't wait to get my hands on them, and spun them into this fun striped yarn I call Kindergarten, plied with black thread and coils surrounding glass beads:

The yarn was then purchased from my Etsy store by Char of CharteChic.  She crocheted it into this gorgeous shawl, which was recently sold to a woman who has plans to take it with her on a trip to Peru:

It wouldn't surprise me at all to find out that some of the Alpaca or other fibers in the batts I originally purchased came from Peru.  What comes around truly does go around in this world, doesn't it?

On the heels of my last post, more about prepping fibers using the drum carder.  I bought some gorgeous, unbelievable cloud-like dyed alpaca fiber from North Star Alpacas.  Here it is (well, what's left of it).  I plan to spin this bit from the locks into a puffy cloud yarn of some sort:

Here's what happened when I separated the colors and added it to some gorgeous Coopworth roving I bought from Hatchtown Farm at Rhinebeck last fall.  I layered it on the drum carder, then split each batt into 4 pieces, fluffed them out and ran them through a second time. The blend is about 1/3 Coopworth and 2/3 Alpaca, soft and light as air.

And then I made some more, smaller batts from the same fibers, though I was not as precise on the percentage of wool and alpaca in these since I was running out of the Coopworth.  I turned these batts into roving with a method I saw on a great YouTube video that I can't find now, aargh.  I made my own diz using a chinese soup container lid and my hole puncher (how thrifty!).  I loosened about an inch width of the batt at one one edge and pulled the fibers off the large drum an inch or so at a time, through the diz.  These should spin up with no pre-drafting or other prep, which is a huge plus in my book.  Who knew you could make your own roving this easily:

I can't wait to see the different yarns I get from these three preparations.  I will add photos of the yarns to this post when I've spun each one up.