WWSiP 2010 Bag Assembly

Wednesday night at Whole Foods I had more bags come in, and I'd also picked up ten bags earlier in the day. There was fiber, labels, soap and coupons dropped off too. Then there was dividing up fiber into sample bags, photos to take, then the stuffing began....

From Robyn

From Chandra

From Kathleen (her DH works with Rachel's DH)

From Chris and her Upstream Alpacas

Cindy brought cards, coupons and Dicentra fiber samples for Urban Fiber Arts (Opening September 27th!)

Rosemary Spearmint Soap from Peace of Soap

Rachel's i-cord distaff's

Carissa Marie's alpaca came in today, but since I was showing tidbits in the bags.....

My awesome assembly crew Angela, Rachel and Duffy with the stuffed bags.

Bag and contents (minus the alpaca from CM)

Duffy also brought some 'fiber buns' that she had fun creating on her drum carder. I've put a couple each into the bags that Chandra made, we also had three bars of soap extra, that also went into bags. These and a pretty braid from Lorajean, some Icelandic fleece I've received, a lovely chocolate alpaca fleece are some of the door prizes we'll have for people too. Sheila has also promised some goodies from her fiber room for the door prizes.

Now, hopefully the rain we have been getting will hold off until after our event. While canopies are provided, I really don't want to haul all of this and the sign in the rain. Selfish of me I know!

Would love to hear about others WWSiP events they attend, or if you just stay home and spin what you spin. ;-)

A little temptation....

I've been receiving fiber from local dye artists for the upcoming World Wide Spin in Public day event on September 18th. This is our second one and we'll be at the Hillsboro Farmer's Market again. They provided us with two canopies last year, which was really nice since we had rain last year. We have our fingers crossed for sun this year, or a nice cloud cover without rain. ;-)

So to tempt you with some of the fibers coming in thus far....

Stitchjones merino in Baby Chartreuse

Knitted Wit BFL in Purple Crayon

Knitted Wit BFL in Birds of a Feather

coupons and pencils from Knitted Wit

Pico-Accuardi Dyeworks SW Merino in Indigo or Corriedale in "OFFF" along with their buttons and a coupon to use at Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival

Rogue Advetures BFL in Pheasant

Fiberqat has sewn up ten goodie bags that are big enough to carry a drop spindle in that we'll be handing out.  Aren't they pretty? (Check out her Sept 12 blog post for pic)

Carissa Marie has some alpaca samples that she'll be sharing and possibly a fleece for a door prize.  Other door prizes are being arranged. There's more fiber samples coming in too! There's also the i-cord distaff's made by Trtlgrl and I plan to make some diz's to add to the bags. Duffy will have her drum carder there and some batts made out of the exploded clown fluff that Tiggywinkleknits received last year. She says she's calmed down some of the outrageousness of the colors. ;-) Tiggywinkleknits will have some of the clown fluff and some CD drop spindles for people to try their hand at spinning. Trtlgrl also talked to a soap vendor and they are supposed to be providing some soap samples. 

If you're local to the area and a spinner, I hope we see you 9am-1pm at the Farmer's Market. (We'll only have on a first come first get 20 goodie bags available.) If you're not local and a spinner, I hope you have a great event to attend!

State Fair Results

I picked up my five entries from the Oregon State Fair this afternoon. I had entered in my Lilia Hyrna Shawl from handspun yarn, the Burnside Winter Twilight Mitts, the Bobbie Blue Falling Water Scarf and the Sunflower Tam. Those were all my knit items. I also had the Recycle Bunny.

They all won a ribbon! The Fair doesn't give 'premiums' for the Textiles category, so no money, but that's okay.

First Place - Lilia Hyrna Shawl and the Burnside Winter Twilight Mitts

Second Place - Bobbie Blue Falling Water Scarf and Recycled Bunny

Third Place - Sunflower Tam

Definitely going to enter things again next year!

Getting ready for Acorn War

Acorn War is this next weekend and up on Chehalem Mountain - elevation around 1600 feet, so while it may be partially cloud and a high of 71 for this next weekend and a projected low of 54 degrees. The higher elevation can and most likely will be ten degrees cooler overnight.

With this in mind I pulled out some scraps of stash and started on another hoody for Leeloo. This one from Bernat Design Studio. They thought flat and seaming. I started out with it flat and ended up joining. I'm going to probably do this one again, and the next version will definitely start out all in the round. ;-) Since I was constrained by the amount of yarn that I had left, I threw in a stripe here and not as long there and there. Which translates into - the back isn't as long as suggested and the hoody it more decoration than functional. I *can* tuck her head into the hood, but she wouldn't be a happy puppy. Since it was dark when I finished and I didn't want to wait until tomorrow to post......

I also made another arming cap. This one in Rowan Wool Cotton and a much happier knit. Well I did have to partially frog it. Thankfully I had decided to try it on before making the cast off commitment and found it a bit short. So frogged back to before starting the decreases and gave it an additional half an inch. I think it works. It feels so silky soft that I can imagine it keeping a head warm, yet cool and wicking away sweat. I had to wait a day to get William to model for me, Brandon's head is just too big to do it correctly. 

He looks ready to don gear and fight.....

I had bought some black macrame cord to help strap me into a wool bodice and the Irish Dress. I'm in need of a belt and didn't have the money to buy one of the nice leather ones right now, so I asked Brandon if he could use his lucet to braid me one. Within a short time, I think less than an hour he had it all braided.  Then he went outside and cut out a ring and sanded it. I need to find some nice pony size beads to string at the end. I think it came out great!

The ring is out of burl Maple so has cool figuring.

I'm going to try to make a wimple to take with me but I'm not going to stress it. I've figured out that 15th Century Bavarian garb as my target. So I need to retrofit some eyelets in a few dresses. I have also figured out that some of my dresses collecting dust in the closet could also be retrofitted with eyelets and a little extra length on one dresses and I can have some nice new garb.

Debby went to the State Fair and kept an eye out for my stuff I had turned in. She was only able to find two, but they both had ribbons on them.  I won't find out the results on the rest of them until Thursday.  She was kind enough to take pictures for me:

2nd place

3rd place

Thanks Debby!

We helped Judy move outdoor plants over to her new place. It's looking more settled in with furniture from my last visit. A few hostas came home with us too. We also brought home the futon mattress that we'll use camping. I had high hopes of being able to also use the frame, but the frame doesn't fold in half so that it could easily go in the trailer. It only folds into a couch position.  

How was your holiday weekend?

Things done.....

I finally got the snood done, but not in time for DMDT. Darn it. It was too hard to try to knit there with Leeloo usually attached to me or busy doing something that kept my hands busy.

It's a little short, but I was running out of yarn and currently don't have a lot of hair to stuff up into it. I have another pattern planned to try out in a black.

I bought a cool little basket that I can use to 'shop' with while at events, or a single project basket. I've lined it with the goody bag from the WWKiP 2009 event:

I was able to be a test knitter for an 'arming cap'. What you would wear under a helm, to kind of soak up sweat and maybe offer a little cushioning?  Here's Brandon modeling it, but his head really is too big for it:

Speaking of my DH, he's made a few lucet's and had fun playing with it while we were camping. I had him use one of my first spindle spun yarns:

Does anyone know what kind of bird goes with this feather? It's clearly not a blue or stellar jay that are often in the backyard:

I finally finished the pouch woven in the round that I started at An Tir - West War. I have the button on and I even used the board to make some panels to sew on the back so I can slide it on a belt:

It's the perfect size to carry my wallet and cell phone while at events. I have more plans for weaving projects using the board. Just need to get the board and then have Brandon cut them out for me. I have other wood worked projects in my head and hope to get some of them out and sampled this weekend. 

We plan to stay home Labor Day weekend and get some projects done around the house. What are your holiday weekend plans? Getting kids ready to start school, if they haven't already?

Today was a day of lots of ideas coming into thought, trying to corral them, and act on those that I could and make sure I made note of those for future plans. So while a lot got done in one way, I don't have a lot of physical things to show for it. Have days like that? You know you did a lot, but if you had to quantify it for someone else, they'd still think you were just sitting on your butt all day in front of the computer. Hey! Don't they call those people writers? ;-)

DMDT 2010 - pics and video

I've been trying to get posts done, thinking about them a lot count?

DMDT - Shire of Dragon's Mist Defender's Tourney, where there's rapier fighting to determine who will be the next defender of the Shire. Our new Defender is Octavian Silvermoon, in case you were wondering. ;-)

Brandon got a picture of me in the green velvet like (possibly a light velour?) surcote that he cut out of his head from the $3.99 Goodwill fabric:

I think I need a different belt for it....

I worked the front gate from 4-8pm. (Eulalia brought some Hais that was really yummy and I need to try to make myself.) Kind of slow, and the chair totally killed my back. It did let me run into someone that I knew from Boy Scouts, and also William's Scout Master's son, Brian Huffman. He told me he was part of Fire and Steel, but that really didn't mean anything to me until later that night. Oh my!  Here's Brian:

Saturday afternoon there was something called "MOOT", I'm sure someone will eventually let me in on what it stands for....I had Leeloo with us, of course, but Eulalia sat down in front of us and she had, of course, brought her Cardigan Welsh Corgi, Merlin. Merlin is less than two years old and still puppy and was just a little too rambunctious for Leeloo, so she had to keep growling at him to tell him to stay back. I thought it was a little distracting for others around us, so stepped out. Which meant that I missed Brandon receiving a Dragon Scale for his volunteer work in the Shire. He had a lot of people step up and say why they had recommended him. Since I was out, no pictures from me and I haven't seen others post them.

Some Fire & Steel videos are here.  Brian above - here's one of him sword fire dancing:

Our campsite Saturday night before we went off to the Fire & Steel show. Leeloo is bundled up in the black shawl in my lap. I'm enjoying the fire after dinner:

It was a great weekend and we're looking forward to Acorn War in a little over a week.  We'll be camping with a different group than we have in the past.

Bonus - we met up with 'Jose' and he was able to get us our shoe order. The shoes are from Westland Crafts. I have some pretty Tudor shoes and some 14th century Turn shoes that are supposed to look this, but came with buckles as you can see:

Mishmash

What's been going on.....
We had another Gem Faire the weekend after the County Fair. I knew I wanted to find some silver crimp beads and found those. I also thought about adding some beads the Ishbel that is languishing in my project basket and found some pretty red ones that may still be used with it. Rachel met me there and I showed her where I found my red 6/0 beads and then she tempted me with the $1 strands of swaroski beads. I restrained myself and only bought a couple strands. Lots of lovely things to tempt, but unless I had a specific project in mind, I didn't want to spend the money. I wished afterward that I had picked up more than two of the little glass hearts, they were .25 each.  He's local so I'm sure he'll be at the next one. There's another Gem Faire in November and I may definitely have more ideas then.

There was a Spinning Bee at The Knitting Bee where an idea was hatched out further with help from friends. I'm going to tease you with that and there may be an explanation later. ;-)  After the Spinning Bee a group of us went to Goodwill to try to find sweaters to re-purpose. There was some success, but I didn't come home with a sweater. Instead I came home with some cream brocade, a wood tray and a salad bowl set - all that I can use with our SCA adventures. There's enough fabric for a dress and only $4.99, the tray was $3.99 and the set was also $3.99 (large bowl, three smaller ones and the fork/spoon). The fabric will be dyed, I'm thinking of a nice burgundy color.

Items taken to the Washington Country Fair were also entered in the Oregon State Fair, except the yarns. They have different handspun yarn rules, that I might try to compete in for next year, but not this year. Not sure if we'll actually get down for the Fair. I might have to wait until September 9th when I pick up my items to find out how they did.

I finally finished the Pre-Literate Socks that I was making for Brandon. This weekend is Shire's Defender's Tourney.  We're going down for the weekend since its at Willamette Mission State Park.  He'll try out the socks with his boots at the event. I have a snood (thumbnail in the sidebar) started that I'm going to bust a stitch to get done so I can use for the weekend.  Here's the socks:

Leeloo turned six months old and a couple days later had her spay surgery. I've spent this week trying to keep her from running around and overexerting herself per the vet's orders. She was on board for this idea the first couple of days but the last few she thinks I'm a terrible person for not letting her run and play the way she wants to. Her spay was done a few weeks earlier than I had planned because she had three baby canine teeth that hadn't fallen out and weren't acting loose. One was coming inside towards the palate and would affect her bite so why there was a push to get it out before it started to fully touch the top. The night before her surgery she was really mouthy and must have been when she lost one of her baby canines because when I picked her up they had only removed two. She now weighs six pounds. 

At spinning I took advantage of the Grange's long table to cut out another surcote from the the one that Brandon had cut out for me out of muslin. The cream muslin will need to be dyed tonight, but I have it sewn except for the hem. I'll sew up the second surcote tonight after deciding if I do the center gores. I have chocolate zucchini bread made up from garden zucchini that we'll take along. Brandon will be making up some of the family recipe of beans for the Friday night potluck. I'm trying to figure out a way to reheat stuffed pasta shells or if its too much of a hassle. My fall back idea is to take chicken curry. I get lunch with the family on Saturday. My stepmother turns 70 and my brother-in-law turns 40 this month so there's a family get together in Salem. I'll just leave the event for a couple of hours to participate. We'll do oatmeal for one breakfast and I think I'll try to get some blueberry (fresh from our garden) scones to take too.

ETA: If you like babies, check out this blog where the mom has been posing her baby while she naps.