Life is Good

I complain a lot. I whine, I rant, I look like a little lost lamb. I'm annoying, I know. Please accept my apologies.

And the next time I whine here (which will be tomorrow), remind me of this post, OK?

I just spent two days at the Massachusetts Sheep and Woolcraft Fair in Cummington. I was so sad to see it end, you'd have thought I'd been on a month-long vacation in Tahiti. For once, I took lots of photos and I'm just going to put them up here for you all to love.

Cummington is about the sheep.

Sometimes the sheep love a good back massage (my friend Pat giving her Shetland ram Wilber the works. He twirls his tail like a lamb when she hits the right spot.)

Don't you want to spin that fleece? You can't; it's a Dorper, it doesn't produce ANY fleece worth mentioning.

How can you not love Jacob sheep?

It takes a lot of work to prep a sheep for a sheep show. These are two Shetland ewes and a Romney getting cleaned up, whether they like it or not.

A young boy with an Icelandic ewe. Apparently, he's been showing sheep for several years now.

Olivia and her Shetland ewe, the one you saw getting cleaned up. Olivia made her dress (which has lovely silk needle-felting on the front), her purse, her scarf, her headband, and the sheep's necklace. Olivia will be twelve tomorrow. (I feel inadequate all of a sudden.)

Olivia also made this bag.

And her older sister Isabelle - the one who turned 16 Sunday, the one whose photo turned out all blurry, that Isabelle? She made this bowl. Note the Best of Show plate. Isabelle won that. Did I mention she just turned 16?

And there were lots of my other friends there, too.

The Adorable Georg, being adorable.

Jesh and Lisa (and Dan in the background).

The incomparable Sandi (and Dan in the background; I swear I thought I was aimed at Sandi).

I realized I was taking too many photos of Dan's butt, so I made him face me (that's Cris in the background).

Spinners doing what spinners do (drink, not spin, that is).

Cris and Sandi. Charmers, both of them.

Lisa GAVE me this yarn. Nice yarn, you say? She spun it. Three ply, BFL, 600+ yards. It is wonderful yarn.

I like these people.

Even if Jesh does snarl at me all the time! Of course, I did WHUP HER ASS BY 21 METERS at short-draw spinning on our antique wheels - but, hey, she challenged me, what was I supposed to do? (It'll be long draw next year; I have to practice.)

Speaking of favorite people, none of whom stand still long enough to take many photos of, here are the legendary Manise, Laurie, and Judy.

Laurie may or may not have cleaned out Judy's stock.

Manise has the most interesting wedding ring(s).

Marcy's nieces were there. The gene runs strong in that family - here's Lydia spinning cotton on a giant African porcupine quill.

Just fiber people doing what fiber people do best.

And yes, I bought a fleece. Half a fleece, actually; I split with Fran the gorgeous, gorgeous white Romney Grand Champion fleece, raised by Mary Pratt at Elihu Farm.

And then I went home - along the beautiful Westfield River, over the hills to the Deerfield River valley and down to the Connecticut, across the French King Bridge, and up along the Millers River to home. Life is so good.

No, Not Really

It's been more than a month since I posted last. I'm sure you're thinking that I've been working in the garden (well, yes, a little) or out chasing dragonflies (well, yes, a little) or eating ice cream (well, yes, a little) or any of those other non-fiber things one does when suddenly it's spring.

What I've really been doing is knitting like a madwoman (well, yes, I am, a little - so?). As I said in my last post, I finished Citron - it's still too small for me. And against my better judgment, but since Sara encouraged me, I finished Gail - and I love it! I wore it to the Connecticut Sheep and Wool Festival last weekend and got plenty of compliments on it.

I also started and finished Traveling Woman, in Ella Rae Merino Lace. I had my doubts as I was finishing it up - was it too small? Were my additional zigzag rows too much? Was the yarn really OK? (It seemed a little too plastic-y in the hand, not like wool at all. Plus, the yarn is a 3-ply and very round.) But yay! It's not too small, the extra rows look fine, and the yarn feels like real yarn now that it's washed and blocked.

So, I kept going. I was pretty sick of blues by then, even sick of rosy purples and dusky reds - here's a shot of my shawl rack to give you an idea of my usual choice in colors (these aren't all from my hand; that felted scarf in the middle with the white locks? that's my Christmas present from Pat) -

So, I found this in my stash and cast on for Multnomah:

This is Valley Yarns Franklin sock yarn, in the Frog in a Party Dress colorway hand-dyed by the Kangaroo Dyer. I love this colorway, completely unexpectedly, but I'm not so sure about how this shawl is working up. I've just finished the garter stitch portion and started on the feather and fan/old shale lace stitch part, and I'm having doubts. For one thing, I think I need to knit more garter stitch before starting the lace border, and for another - well, it's very bright pink and green. What do you all think?

In the meantime, more traditional yarns have been cast on for yet more shawls. Here's J. Knits alpaca in the Massachusetts colorway, just barely cast on for Anne Hanson's Nightingale Wing stole.

And some lovely, lovely lambswool with a smidge of nylon - a mill end from Pasa Yarns - dyed with many, many packets of Kool-Aid in some forgotten flavor (Blue Ice, maybe?) to a beautiful shade of jade, cast on for Cat Bordhi's Streaming Leaves shawl. The yarn feels wonderful and it even has a wonderful smell - something like the smell of cherry blossoms. I'm not doing the fancy two-circs-provisional-cast-on hem that Cat specifies, because I'm lazy and didn't feel like wrestling with three circulars in this heat.

So, I should be feeling productive, yes? I am casting on, plugging along, and by God actually finishing projects. Rather unusual for me, I must say.

Well, here's my secret: I'm procrastinating on my Pics to Picks weaving. It's not that I was uninspired by what Bety sent me - not at all! It's more just, well, um, I don't know - more just a feeling of yikes, what have I gotten myself into?

This weekend, I girded my shuttles and beaters, and waded into the weaving stash in search of the colors in my head. I have in mind to use the Floridian blues and greens Bety sent me to weave myself a striped cotton tablecloth using the dimity weave structure Sally Orgren used for her richly colored Tencel scarves in the November/December 2008 issue of Handwoven. Here are my first choices for the warp stripes...

Those reds peeking out are the warp for another rag rug; I'd say ignore them, except they echo the red flowers in Bety's images.

These are all 16/2 cotton, so I went poking about looking for a thinner cotton to use for the weft. Hmm ... I don't have one, unfortunately. I've got a nice pale green 20/2 cotton, but I'm not sure that would be fine enough. According to the Handwoven article, the weft should be half the weight of the warp yarn. So, I scaled up the warp yarns - here are some 8/2 cottons in the right colors:

And obviously, I have plenty of choices in 16/2 cotton for the weft. I decided I'd weave myself a generous sample, since I've never tried a dimity weave before, and sew it into a humdrum lunch bag for myself, since the bag I use now is literally in shreds.

I'm playing with stripe proportions and color choices now; if I can just resist the lure of the lace shawls, I may even have a dimity sample to show you the next time I post!