Mini Fiber Fun

Pearl Fiber Arts celebrated their third Anniversary the weekend of October 19th & 20th. It was also the same weekend as Norm Thompson Outfitter's Sample Sale. Brandon had volunteered to work it so got $100 in apparel to spend. I'm a very lucky girl. ;-) I have new dresses and pants and a couple pairs of shoes from it. That was before the public got to go in on Saturday. I invited Dawn-Marie and Brent to come and they had fun shopping too. I found a folding foam mattress and an owl yard decoration.  Here's the foam mattress:

I wish that I could have gotten two, but there was only one. So will be on the look out for another! We can use it for camping.

I took my Halloween Witches Cat hat with me to the shop:

Amazon Local had a coupon for Supa and so I got two of their Deluxes. One with tomato soup and the Country sandwich and the other with the peanut soup and the Radix sandwich. I didn't sample the tomato soup and should have. It had red peppers in it. Even William didn't enjoy it. The mushroom soup was a tiny bit spicier than I would have liked, or I would have gotten it. Need to go back to taste the clam chowder.

I used my Stash Sale money and a little bit to pick up some fiber from Alexandra's Crafts trunk show:

 BFL in Black Rose colorway

Merino-Silk in Wine

Sale yarns. I had thought about using them to make a Despicable Me hat, but the blue isn't blue enough. I did buy some cake dyes, so could possibly overdye it and try for something darker. 

I also got the second edition of Ply the magazine. It has a nice heavy paper and lovely paper. I might try one of the plying suggestions. Not sure that it was worth the $11 for it though for me. Wish I had been able to get down to the other magazine that there was a trunk show for. 

Finished the hat:

Yarns are all Knit Picks. The red and dark orange are leftover from the Jayne hat. The lighter orange was actually a DK. I have leftovers still of the non-black colors and just a couple yards of the black. 

I also bought some fiber from Paradise Fibers:

 Merino top - 8 ounces

Fake cashmere - 8 ounces

I mentioned the cake dyes I bought. I also have some natural dyes. I want to pull those and my undyed fibers in my stash and play with dyeing. 

Right now, I'm spinning up some superwash Corriedale called Summer Fun by Knitted Wit:

Spring Snow and Spinning

We have had snow in the area lately, but I've been fighting a cold this week and so missed any left on the ground early in the morning. The first day of spring was Tuesday, and this started Wednesday night and lasted into late morning on Thursday:

My Dogwood Wednesday night

Lovely bench to sit under the maple tree and enjoy the dogs and yard

Leeloo checking out the white stuff on the patio

Norbert all scruffy and looking red

Brandon's wind sculpture

Asian Pear with its leaf buds covered in snow

Pacific Maple leaf buds looking almost like pussy willows with the snow

I just liked the looks of the gray and snow and the branches 

I got a text from my sister, Tanya, then a phone call later that day on Monday that my Grandma Eileen had died in her sleep. She was 89 and had late diagnosed ALS and her lungs just gave out. I'm grateful that we got to spend time with her this last Christmas. She enjoyed talking with me about my spinning and knitting. She had made all the ladies a pair of shortie fingered gloves with the mitten flap, without a pattern a couple years ago for Christmas. I also have a little boy and girl that she did in pettit point along with a pin and a couple of quilts that she made. She was a lovely lady and will be missed by her friends and family.

Tuesday I started spinning the rest of the Opulent Fibers samples from the World Wide Spin in Public last year. I was spinning them on the Ashford Traditional. The Light brown on the right I did all but a smidge during the demo last month at the middle school. So I flowed right into the medium brown and then the dark brown.  

The pygora, far left below, I had been working on in January and February and into March on the Lendrum. I had also been fighting it the whole time. While nice and soft, it still had guard hair and a surprisingly large amount of vegetable matter for it to have been cleaned and carded. I decided that I just couldn't keep going on, so finished what I had cleaned and then put the rest up for trade or sale on Ravelry. The bag weighed in at 2.3 ounces on my scale. 

I got them all plied up and then washed them this morning and let them dry in the sun this afternoon:

Left to Right:
Pygora: 1.2 ounces, 188.5 yards, lace weight
Dark Brown Merino: .52 ounces, 95.33 yards, lace weight
Medium Brown Merino: .46 ounces, 104 yards, lace weight
Light Brown Merino: .38 ounces, 73.66 yards, lace weight

I'm also navajo plying some black pygora that Gail spun up. She asked if I would do it, since she says I'm better than she is at doing the process. Not sure about that, but she asked and I couldn't say no. ;-) So after all these dark colors, I'm definitely going to have to spin some brighter colors!

I also have a plan for my knitting and all those 12 groups. Not going to share what it is here for fear of jinxing the start. I have a bit more spinning before I jump into the plan. It might become obvious though in the near future. Let me know if you figure it out. ;-)