Max

Pardon a totally-off topic, non-fiber related post, but my thoughts and mental energy the last few days have been about my dear kitty Max, who was hit by a car last Friday.  He survived the impact, and we rushed him to the local vet, who transferred him to the veterniary teaching hospital at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.  Today he is undergoing surgery to repair fractures to his face and jaw, which were severely damaged.  He also has several broken ribs and a bruised eyeball, but those injuries are expected to heal on their own.  Max (full name Maximillian Kolbe) is the sweetest kitty you would ever want to meet.  I adopted him from the local humane society last April — or maybe I should say that he adopted me, for he made it very clear that I was ‘the one’ he wanted to go home with.  He had been at the shelter since January, living in a small cage, and I chose his name in honor of St. Maximillian Kolbe, the patron of those unjustly imprisoned.  Here are some more picture of Max from before the accident:

 

Several people have offered money to help with Max’s medical expenses, which are estimated to be several thousand dollars.  Such help would be greatly appreciated, and can be sent through paypal to materfamilia@yahoo.com (my non-business account, so paypal doesn’t take out any fees).  We (my seven children and myself) have already decided to forgo any big Christmas presents this year to help Max get the care he needs. 

Here’s my favorite Max picture:

More Festival Frenzy

First there was the Fall Fiber Festival at Montpelier. 

 Then I had a spot in the traditional handcrafts section at the ‘Festival of Leaves’ in downtown Front Royal – mostly I was there to demonstrate and only took a small part of my inventory, but I did sell some things, and got to meet a lot of local people, both other knitter/crafters, and some people who had never seen spinning before!

Next, it was to the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival in Berryville – I love this show!  Indoors, nice people, great attendance, but not too crazy.  Lots of people took the opportunity to test drive one of the Spinolution wheels. 

 The highlight for me was when Barbara D, a brand new spinner who tested a Mach II at Montpelier then ordered one  came to my booth to show off her first skeins of handspun -  and they’re gorgeous!

Barbara gives credit to the wheel, which she said is so easy to understand and spin on — but I know natural talent has something to do with it too!  Congrat, Barbara, on some lovely handpun (I’m sure there are baskets-ful sitting around your house by now!)

That’s it for 2009 as far as wool festivals are concerned, but I’m only mid-way through shows this season. 

Next up — the DC Craft Mafia ‘Holiday Heist’ at the Soundry in Arlington, VA on November 21st.  I’m really excited about this one – it’s a juried show, with an ‘urban vibe.”  I was really excited to be selected to participate –  I’ll be focusing more on handspun and finished items, though I’ll still have some spinning fiber along, for anyone who wants to stop by for a fiber fix. 

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, I’m considering hosting a Spin & Knit-In at my house.  Maybe with some warm cider, a few cookies, wheels to test and yarns/fibers to fondle as we sit around and work on Christmas knitting.  Does that sound fun?  If you’re nearby and would like an invite, please send me a note.

 Soon after than, look for me at the ‘Downtown Holiday Shop & Stroll’ in Silver Spring Maryland on December 5th, another juried show, this one outside, so I’ll need to be wearing as well as selling my woolies!

Last, but not least by any means, is the ‘Handmade Holiday Boutique’ in downtown Front Royal.  This is in my hometown, and I’m one of the organizers.  It is being held in the Blue Ridge Arts Council gallery on Main Street, and is also a juried show, for quality handcrafts of all kinds (made by the vendor – no imports, resells, etc).  Vendor applications are still being accepted through November 16th, so if you know of someone who may wish to participate, please let them know!  Contact me with an e-mail address and I’ll get an application to you right away.  Oh, and mark your calendars for these events, and come see me!  If you can’t make it, you can always shop online!  My etsy shop is stocked and ready!

Fall Fiber Festival Frenzy

After weeks of frantic preparation (many many pounds of wool dyed), the first festival of the fall season is now a pleasant memory.  This weekend Wild Hare Fiber Studio set up shop under a tent at the Fall Fiber Festival at Montpelier (http://www.fallfiberfestival.org).  Gotta share the pictures!:

Here’s the first sight people saw as they approached

Spinolution wheels to test-spin, and a baker’s rack of hand-dyed wool top and crazy blended batts.

Handspun yarns of every kind

Local Coopworth wool rovings from my friend Debbie’s ‘Forevermore Farm” — some dyed by me, others blended with silk, sparkles or other add-ins to make specialty tweeds.

 And in the midst of it all, a big display rack of handpainted superwash merino braids!

If you were there too, thank you so much for stopping by! If you missed this festival, never fear.  This weekend (Oct. 10th), I’ll be demonstration spinning with a limited selection of shop items at the Heritage Crafts Village in the Front Royal Festival of Leaves.  Then, on October 24th and 25th, on to another big 2-day wool festival: The Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival in Berryville, VA — a great location for folks in the DC metro area!  That web site is http://www.shenandoahvalleyfiberfest.com if you want to check it out/get directions.  I’m still working on a few new surprises for this show that weren’t at Montpelier — and if you can’t make the shows, keep an eye on my etsy shop, and I’ll be adding more new fall items all the time!

Have Wheel, Will Travel

Spinning doesn’t usually top the lists of portable activities, but that’s starting to change with the increase in the number of portable spinning wheels that have become available in recent years.  My personal choice is the Bee, by Spinolution, which was designed to fold down and fit under an airline seat!  Lightweight in size, but not features: the Bee has a full range of ratios (1:4 – 1:36), and 3+oz bobbin, rocker-treadle, and open orifice, all weighing in at 13 lbs! 

I recently returned from a wonderful mini-vacation, spinning and dyeing with Carol Lee at the Sheep Shed Studio in Wyoming (that’s Carol in the dyepot picture).  I took my Bee along, tucked inside a 20″ rolling duffle along with my clothing.  I made it through airport security without a hitch, and it fit nicely in the overhead bins as I flew from the east coast to Dallas, then in to Denver.  I did gate check it on the final leg of the journey home in order to get a stand-by seat on an earlier plane.  That went fine too, although I did have the bag packed tightly, with lots of  padding around the flyer assembly.  There is a custom-designed bag available for the Bee that will allow it to fit under an airline seat, but I wanted the wheels (and room for my other clothing), so the duffle worked for me!  If you want more info on this wheel, please send me a note (I’m a Spinolution dealer and would love to help you out!)

Here are some more pictures of all the fun Bee and I had in Wyoming:

Llovely Llocal Llamas!

Spring break this week, so I had a chance to make a quick trip down the road to show them the llamas at Shenandoah Homeplace Suri Llamas in Luray, Virginia.  For the last year, I’ve been helping the owner of this lovely and historic homestead, retired Airforce General Chet Taylor, with marketing fiber and yarn from his pedigreed animals. I enjoyed getting out to see his farm (and the cleanest, neatest most organized barn you can imagine).  The children got a chance to get up close and personal to the animals, who were very gentle and even a bit shy.  My youngest first called them camels, and he wasn’t far off, as llamas, alpacas and camels are all related (in the camelid family).  The highlight for them, though, may a have playing in the hayloft!

 

 

The first batch of llama fleece was sent off to a small mill for processing into five natural undyed shades of  lovely, dehaired luxury yarn shown in these pictures.  Some was made into roving which I have both spun by hand and sold to other spinners.   While more fiber is heading to the mill and roving is currently sold out, there are still skeins of the yarn in three of the colors available, and on sale in my shop http://www.wildhare.etsy.com.  Just look in the Shenandoah Llama section ( it may be several months before the new batch is back from the mill).  

Llama is lustrous and silky with lots of drape, which makes it great for lace knitting, scarves and shawls.  The natural colors also go well together in fair-isle designs.  And it’s so meaningful to work with fiber from small farms where you know the animals are well tended and free to enjoy green pastures like those at Shenandoah Homeplace Suri Llamas.

The lovely fiber is only a small part of it for dedicated llama breeders.  To read more about these pedigreed animals and the farm on which they live (and which is in the National Registry of Historic Places), please visit their web site: http://web.me.com/shenhomeplacellamas/Shenandoah_Homeplace_Suri_Llamas/Welcome.html

Homespun Yarn Party ‘09!

This past Sunday I was a vendor at the wonderful and aptly named Homespun Yarn Party in Savage MD!  Close to 40 independent fiber-types (dyers, spinners, shepherds, etc) together in a banquet hall with LOTS and LOTS of excited and happy customers!  There was a line of at least 200 waiting when the doors opened at noon, and it took some pretty strong hinting to get folks to leave at the end!  It was a blast – very successful, can’t wait until next year!  More details on the event at http://www.homespunyarnparty.blogspot.com.

Here are some pictures of my booth, which was manned with the help of Debbie White of Forevermore Farm, whose sheep provide a lot of the rovings that I dye:

 I’m now busy updating my etsy shop (http://www.wildhare.etsy.com) and getting caught up on life in general.  Tomorrow I’m out to Debbie’s farm to help with shearing… more wool to dye!  The next festival on my calendar is the Sedalia Fiber Festival on May 16th.

Yours, Mine – Ours!

Just a catchy title – this isn’t about blended families, but about the beautiful creations that result through teamwork.  First example: My friend Beth at Blue Mountain Handcrafts www.beth1818.etsy.com  transformed this 2 oz. drumcarded batt of mine:

Into a lovely beaded-fringe scarf:

 

 She spun a single on her Ashford Traditional and plied it with a commerical yarn with more sparkles and a hint of eyelash, then knit a simple stockinette scarf, adding vintage beads on the ends.  Since I blogged about the creation of this batt in an earlier post (simply batty!), you can get a look of the project from start to finish!

 

Next, I wanted to show you what I’ve spun up from two of the samples I received in my phatfiber sample box (www.phatfiber.blogspot.com):

The top sample, from www.welovethor.etsy.com, came to me as a puff of hand-dyed 100% corriedale wool.  I corespun it to preserve the color transitions, and to maximize and show off the fiber.  My little skein is just over 7 yards long, with seven wraps per inch (making this heavy worsted).  Here’s a close-up:

The next sample is from www.spinningsisters.etsy.com and arrived as a little twist of hand-dyed merino wool roving.  I spun this as fine as I could, then navaho-plied it, creating a three-ply yarn that preserves the color changes.  This little skein is 38 yards long, with 22 wraps to the inch (between a fine fingering and lace weight).  Here’s a close-up:

Now here’s a challenge:  I’ve never been very good at coming up with projects for small amounts of yarn.  If you know of a pattern that would be perfect for one of these yarns, post a comment below, including the link and which yarn you think it would be appropriate for.  The yarn can be used as an accent in conjunction with another yarn, but patterns using just this yarn would be especially appreciated.  On March 12th,  I’ll draw two names, one for each yarn, from among those who submitted a pattern for that yarn, and I’ll SEND THAT YARN to the winners!  You can submit as many patterns as you want – each submission is an entry in your name.  So submit away!

This and That -

This past week has been a blur of snow days, meetings, school delays and working on taxes, and YIKES,  I haven’t updated this blog with the winner of my drawing from my last post.  The results are in, and the winner is Andrea , who is knitsandknots on etsy.com, where she sells some really cute knitting patterns for baby items, and who blogs here: http://knitsandknotsweb.blogspot.com/.  Congratulations, Andrea !  I’ll be sending you an e-mail so I can find out if you prefer the yarn or spinning batt, and get your address.  (The picture is  of the yarn: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=17982819)

Now, for some other news.  It’s less than a month until the Homespun Yarn Party, an event featuring  30 indie fiber folks, getting together to show and sell our products and have fun.  I’ll be there as a vendor – would love to see you!  Here are the details:

Second Annual Homespun Yarn Party! March 15, 2009

Who: All your favorite local yarn dyers and spinners, plus some extra crafty goodness! And all our knitting/crocheting/spinning friends (you!) of course!!

Where: Historic Savage Mill 8600 Foundry Street, Savage, MD 20763  Just off I-95, plenty of parking!

When: Sunday, March 15, 2009 – 12 PM to 4 PM

Why: Who needs an excuse to get together and craft?! We wanted to get together and spread some fiber love!

In addition to some great crafty vendors, we’ll also have:
free lessons on knitting, crochet, spinning, fabulous door prizes to be given away throughout the event,crafty goody bags for participants (while supplies last) and weather-permitting, a sit and spin/crochet/knit area out on the deck.

A complete list of vendors and more details on this event are available here: http://www.homespunyarnparty.blogspot.com/

And if you like supporting and learning about indie fiber artists, you may be interested in the Phatfiber Sampler Box.  The Phat Fiber Sampler box is a way for independent fiber, yarn and related needlecraft companies and artisans to promote their products through a tactile goodie box that goes on sale once monthly. Contributors get exposure while the consumers get to handle and experiment with products before making larger purchases.   Here’s a peek at the February box I received:

It included several mini skeins of yarn, roving, several different kinds of handmade stitch markers, knitting patterns for socks, fingerless gloves and a lace scarf, hand lotion, a kit for making felted beads, and even a knitting comic book!  I’m a member of this group, and just sent out my first batch of samples in the now-sold out February box.  If you want to know more about this, and get on the list for notification about when the March box goes on sale, go to http://phatfiber.com.  Support your local independent fiber artist!

And finally, one last note – the new knitting group in Front Royal is going well — if you live near enough, please come join us!  Our next meeting is tomorrow (Sat. Feb. 21st) at the Daily Grind on Main Street, Front Royal VA  from 10 a.m. until noon, in the back room.  I’ll be there with some new batts and rovings for show and tell. 

Me too! Me too!

By now we’ve all gotten our mailboxes filled and our newspapers stuffed with sales circulars… everyone is doing it, so I though I’d get in on the action in my etsy shop as well.  From NOW through Monday December 1st, I’m cutting the price of all my handspun yarns (some of which I’ve blogged about there) and all the finished items (shawls, scarves, etc) in my shop by 20% (prices are adjusted in the listing).  Additionally, I’m offering free shipping on any order over $50 from now through December 10th.  If you’ve got your eye on something in my shop, nows the time to act before it gets gone!

Check out my sale here:

www.wildhare.etsy.com

Mention this blog in the comments with your order and I’ll include a free fiber-themes badge of your choice! Just let me know which one you want (http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=17582914)

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Do you know this Woman?

If you recognize her immediately, good for you!  If not, and you have any interest whatsoever in knitting, then please let me introduce you right away!  Although she now is with us only through her books, videos, patterns and “children,” she still has so much to teach!  I’m talking about Elizabeth Zimmermann, knitting heroine.  She guided knitters gently into a new, free, creative way to approach our knitting, and I personally believe she planted the seeds that have lead to the current flowering of creativity and innovation in patterns and knitting techniques.  Without Elizabeth’s guiding light, today’s growing ranks of avid, excited knitters would be doing something else.  Perhaps getting into all kinds of unsavory mischeif.  Anyway…

I was fortunate to encounter Elizabeth’s writings when I was still a young and impressionable knitter who just couldn’t stop changing things in the patterns I was trying to follow.  She gave me the license to change away, and more.  And now, 20 or so years later, I still find her writings and patterns to be fresh and knitable.

One Elizabeth Zimmermann classic is the Baby Surprise Jacket.  It is knit all in one piece, in garter stitch, and is a puzzle of sorts in that as you are knitting it looks rather like a misshapen blob.  But trust Elizabeth, and in the end, a few folds and two simple seams, and you have a lovely little jacket:

This one (which I did years ago) is made of handspun merino and angora, and I keep it with my spinning samples for demonstrations just to show people how soft handspun can be.  I’ve made others… none handy to photograph.  This little jacket was (and has been) so popular, that Elizabeth eventually gave into demand and created an adult-sized version, known as the Adult Surprise Jacket. (ASJ)

The  ASJ has long been on my “to do” list, and this summer I went so far as to go though my stash and pick out some yarns that I thought would work.  This is a wonderful project for using up left-overs, odd-balls, yarns that just never got used.  Elizabeth once suggested to pick one yarn to match every blouse you owned so that the sweater would match everthing in your wardrobe.  I think it would also be a great pattern for using your handspun (or combining handspun with commercial yarns).  Her instructions guide you in how to make the sweater to the correct size regardless of what gauge you are knitting at — so any yarn you like can be used for this pattern.

So, anyway, I was already planning to make an ASJ this fall, and then today on ravelry (if you haven’t heard of it, go to ravelry.com and request to join –another knitter thing!) I discovered a group of fellow Elizabeth Zimmermann “children” who were getting ready to do a knit-a-long of the ASJ… starting TODAY!  I took it as a sign… time to get out those needles and yarn and get started!  Anyone want to join in?

Here are the yarns I’m thinking of using (unless I decide to switch to handspun).  I’m working from a version of the pattern that appeared in Knitter’s Magazine issue 60 (Fall 2000), which is already drafted for a gauge of 4 st./inch.  The instructions are also in her books ”Knitting Workshop” and ”The Opinionated Knitter”, as well as being available individually from Schoolhouse Press (www.schoolhousepress.com), the publishing company that she founded with her daughter Meg Swanson (another knitter/designer extraordinaire!)  Time to go get needles and get started!