Acorn War 2012

We've gone for the last three years. First year, Jose was the autocrat and I worked gate and it was up on Chehalem Mountain. Last year, I was asked to teach drop spindling and knitting. It was 90+ degrees and out in a field with no wind. I had no one take my class. This year it was back up on Chehalem Mountain and while 85+ degrees, there was a very steady wind.

J'nati took my drop spindling class and it was interesting getting her going with all that wind. I had the wind blow my fiber at one point into her spindle. It made it a bit of a challenge, but we were able to get fiber spun and then I taught her how to ply it. So she ended up with a finished yarn to take home as well as fiber left still to play with.

There was battles going on while we were spindling, but didn't get to watch much of it until later:

Lady Havoise was teaching a beginning embroidery class after mine. I ended up taking it too. After all it was only $1 and I walked away with a nice practice cloth, DMC floss, the hoop, and instruction pamphlet:

She had it nicely finished to keep from unraveling while we worked with it

She had gotten the hoops for free, so she passed it along to us. Plus she has tons of floss, and happened to have a pretty purple. ;-)

The top is a running stitch with a running back stitch, the middle is a back stitch and the bottom a stem stitch

The stem stitch, you can see that keeping the tension even on the floss is important, the middle is satin stitch and I was playing with turning it so it was mitered and then just did kind of a daisy. The bottom is a herringbone stitch. We have it on the sewing machine, but now I can do it on my own!

The blue arch is so we can practice our satin stitch. The leaf was the  split stitch. I did the outline and then , bisected it, then again. I want to play with this one more. It's often used to fill in areas where you aren't using satin stitch.

Well worth my $1!! J'nati was talking about having a second embroidery class at Boar's Head Hunt and Feast in September, so I'll have to do that one too. 

I stayed under day shades for most of the day and was out without shade for a very short time, but apparently, long enough that I came home and after an hour or so, found that I had a very red chest. After the embroidery class I sat and knit on Brandon's Boneto hat and socialized. 

The wind really kept the day bearable and it was lovely day. We're going to try to take a day and go to the beach this next weekend with the dogs. Then later in the month we'll have a day of classes at an Ithra. I'm going to take the fingerbraiding and cooking classes. I'll actually have a full day of classes too! The classes will be held at WOU, so a drive down to Monmouth.