Counting Down

Thanksgiving weekend, and I'm being very thankful. Work is winding down for the season, but I know they want me back next year. I've managed to keep up with everything else I wanted to do, and enjoyed almost every minute. Plus, I'm as excited as a kid at Christmas, y'all. Only 4 days or so (and 3 days of work) until I leave town and start on the road to Rhinebeck for the NY Sheep and Wool Festival! So happy I get to go this year, (and have a little more room in the budget to enjoy than previously)! All the reservations have been made, and tickets bought, shopping list and packing list made, and American money taken out at the bank to cope with the said shopping list ;)

Four of us in the car, myself, my mother, Chantal, and Francine, who's new to the whole experience, and we are gonna have a blast. I  love introducing new people to the festival - it's so much fun to watch them go into sensory overload...

Friday we've got reservations to tour the Vanderbilt Mansion in nearby Hyde Park. Mom and I went the first year we did Rhinebeck, and I'm looking forward to seeing it again. Italian formal garden, marble foyer, tapestry-hung bedrooms...not my idea of a comfortable summer home, but nice to look at! Depending on what time we hit town, we may also get a little antique shopping in, then dinner, and off to bed to be ready for the main event. 

On the subject of wool and counting down, here's something I found posted on Ravelry today. A Kickstarter project (which I gather is a little like crowd-funding, but they have to raise the whole target amount to get the money) to restore machinery in an old woolen mill in BC for local processing needs. I think it's a great idea, so I've pledged help. Only a few days left to raise the money though, so take a look and pass it on to people who you think might be interested.

Birkeland Brothers Wool Company, BC

Dye Another Day

Mid September...we've had our first mild frost, and it's officially fall. The regular garden maintenance at work is finished, and it's too early to start cutting back and garden shutdowns. The boss talked to the garden team last week and told us this, and he was really sorry, but we were going to have a few weeks where we wouldn't be working every day, starting with this week having yesterday and today off.

He really did seem a little concerned, like he hoped we would be OK and not starve because work was slow. I said I totally understood that was how the industry worked, and I was happy to have a little extra time to do my own stuff. And in my head, I'm going "Yes! Perfect timing! Thank you!"

So much going on outside of work between now and the end of October! All fun stuff, happily. It turns out I may have not one but two natural-dyeing classes to teach at the local guild, and today when I'm out doing errands, they will include picking up a parcel of yarn for the class, making an extra couple copies of class handout notes, and getting some dye supplies. Then Sunday I had a visit from someone I've done a couple commissions for, and she had a few more commissions she wants me to do, the biggest one with a deadline of beginning of November. Which coincides nicely with my prep time for the guild Ex and Sale. And of course there's Rhinebeck in mid-October. I've started a shopping list, and will be making reservations for dinners and sightseeing for our group in the next few weeks. We're planning to go to the Vanderbilt estate out there - Mom and I went the first year we did Rhinebeck, and the others haven't been at all, so it's time we revisited!

This weekend has been all about the dye pots again. There's a group my mother is part of, all multi-craftual, talented women, who are getting together and doing a series of KAL-type things, only not all knitting. Weaving, woodwork, embroidery, who knows what else. The current project coming up is knitting, though. One woman has a book with gorgeous stranded socks and slippers, so they're going to do that - only since most of them have done natural dyeing with me, and one has a dye garden, they decided to have me come and lead a workshop there, and natural-dye the yarn for their projects. And they are very enthusiastic! It was supposed to be 5 skeins each, but there was some extra, and so many possibilities with mordants and baths, that they ended up with 6 skeins each, and a bunch of things where they're going to split skeins between people because they couldn't decide between possibilities...I was there from 8am to 6pm, and we must have done a dozen colours on over 40 skeins, including woad and Japanese indigo from the garden. It was super fun, and lunch was a pot-luck, with spaghetti and salad, and fresh homemade cheese curds one of the women makes from their cows' milk! You know a good time was had by all when they're already planning next year's session...

I was supposed to do my mother's share of the skeins for the project, but saved that for the next couple days while I dyed my own stuff at home. Less crowded dye pots, and more leisure to plan. I think it turned out to be a good couple days' work:

Isn't the red something? I finally got around to using some of the pokeberries I've been freezing. Mashed a couple litres of them and soaked them in vinegar overnight, soaked an alum-mordanted skein in vinegar overnight also, mixed the two solutions and the yarn after straining the berries out, and simmered (covered, thank you!) for an hour or so. It boiled a little towards the end when I wasn't watching, but doesn't seem to have harmed the result. The other skeins going away from the red, include onion with copper mordant, dried coreopsis with alum, greenweed and onion with alum, rudbeckia with alum and iron/onion/woad, greenweed with alum overdyed with woad, rudbeckia with alum and iron, and two shades of black walnut, no mordant.

Next On The List - Roxham

September is going to be a busy month, y'all, and I may just drop out of sight again. I'm ever so thankful Labour Day weekend was at the beginning of the month, just to get caught up with friends and chores.

One of those chores was re-skeining and labelling a heap of yarn I've been dyeing. We start the month with a bang - the Roxham Woolgathering has been moved up a week this year, and is coming in only three days. This will be my third year selling there, and it's a great weekend. Think an old farmhouse and outbuildings, animals distributed everywhere, great food, including home-made cakes and cookies, and a whole range of artisans selling everything from pottery to jam to wool. Check out their Facebook page, for those of you who do Facebook : Roxham Woolgathering.

Tempus Fugit

So...how did it get to be 3+ weeks into August already? I've been hearing geese and seeing red leaves - summer's almost over! And it's so dark in the morning now (and cool!) - the birds are only starting to wake up when I leave for work, instead of being up before me. The rabbits are up early, though - Julia's been chasing (but not catching) them in the mornings while I eat breakfast. The weeds in most gardens at work are starting to slow down, but now all the deadheading and cutting back starts. I got into my garden today for the first time in a month, and did the weeding and deadheading; came out with armloads of stuff to compost.

All my other late summer - early fall stuff is going on now too - that's my excuse for disappearing from the blog.

Dye plants are ready, and I've been doing a pile of my own dyeing for the fall shows (pretty, ain't it?), teaching a class in dyeing and one in spinning, and have two, maybe three more dye classes to teach next month. It's exciting that people seem to be really enjoying the natural dyeing. One of the classes, in fact, is a group where they want to dye their own yarn for a KAL of stranded socks and slippers. One of the members I know has done a bit of dyeing and is growing dye plants, and I'll be there to organize and answer questions, and make sure they get a nice variety of colours to play with.

One craft show down, next one in 2 weeks (the Roxham Woolgathering, which has been moved a week earlier this year). One agricultural fair down, one coming in 3 weeks. We exhibit a lot - and doesn't that occasion a pile of running around cutting flowers and scrubbing veg and labelling jam  jars! And thinking of jam jars...one batch of beet pickles and two of jam done, probably another round of the pickles to go.

And then there's the knitting - a few commissions, including socks for my aunt's birthday out of some of my natural-dyed yarn, and trying to accumulate stock for the shows coming up. Thank goodness for long bus rides, because otherwise I would get about 10 minutes of knitting a day after supper before I start nodding off!

Startitis

The prodigal cat is home :) The rain today drove her indoors, and she got caught and shipped back. She's happy to be back though- couldn't decide what she wanted to do or check out first, so she shuttled between rooms and food and water and milk and treats for a while, snuggled on the couch with me for purrs and belly rubs, and is now sleeping and content on her favorite chair.

And I've got startitis. Got two stripes done on the green and gold shawl, thought maybe a pair of mittens would be better to get done this week for the sale, swatched and started a pair in DK wool, then changed my mind again and decided that a pair of mittens in handspun might be nicer, so dug out some white and indigo-dyed alpaca handspun and started those. Motifs semi-inspired from some Sami ones I've seen.

I've been weighing the yarn as I go, though, and I think I'll have just enough...fingers crossed...if the first mitten shows I'm screwed, then at least I can always fall back on one of my other startitis projects!

Comfort Fibre

It is Saturday, and I'm so glad. It hasn't been one of my best weeks at work, and finished with a major screw-up Friday afternoon, and a migraine triggered by sun and stress. Suffice it to say I went to get changed out of my work gear when I came home, and unconsciously started getting PJs out rather than pants - apparently my brain just wanted the day to be over already.

So I snuggled on the couch with a movie, had chips and only chips for supper, wound wool, and started a shawl. Serious fibre therapy needed this weekend, especially since the cat is still at the parents' - she was potentially supposed to get returned today, but looks like she's been avoiding capture again. So I figure I will see her next weekend - going down to the parents' and bringing stuff to sell at the local Corn Festival's craft sale.

The socks I was working on are done and blocking, so the shawl is my new knitting project. Onion and indigo-dyed lace weight wool, planning a triangle with gold accent stripes on a green body, and a lace edge.

I have the grey Jacob skeins finished from my Tour de Fleece spinning, and washed them along with 10 other skeins of handspun, last night.

During the week, though, I only got a little tiny bit more spinning done, of the Rideau Arcott from my cousins.

And I should be working on that, but I really want a wee break from the undyed stuff. So I broke out a braid of cochineal and onion merino roving dyed a while back -

And got about a quarter of it spun and navaho-plied this morning. Man, the spinning goes so much faster when you don't have to stop and pick out bits of hay and nupps all the time!

While The Cat's Away...

Last Sunday, about to leave the parents', and we found the cat had disappeared while we were having supper. Didn't come when called, couldn't be found in any of the places we could search in a reasonable amount of time. (There's 60 acres of space for her to hunt in, and most of it's bush filled with mosquitos. Not practical to turn every stone searching.) And I had to go, in order to get a reasonable amount of sleep before work the next day. So Julia is having her summer vacation, and apparently enjoying herself - report says she comes in for two bites of food a couple times a day, and spends the rest of the time outside.

Until she comes back here, I get a bit of a vacation too. It's awfully quiet, but on the other hand, I have a little extra free time. And the Tour de France/Tour de Fleece starts today.

I'm not playing officially this year, really. I know I won't have time to spin every day, and I didn't sign up for any teams. But I've got some stuff I want to finish, and this is a good excuse. So I took a picture of my start stash, like everyone does.

The dark grey and grey-black are Jacob fleece, which I'm spinning on my old wheel. The light grey and white of the same fleece are done (see the skeins in the picture), so I'm looking forward to having it all spun. Not a huge quantity, 30 or 40 grams of each, or about a skein, but a nice soft texture. The bag of carded fleece is a bunch of my cousins' fine stuff, probably a Rideau Arcott or cross, about 4 skeins' worth, that I picked and carded last weekend. Because summer and dyeing season are upon us, and I want some stuff ready to dye soon!

The only other thing I've got on the go right now is the second pair of scrap socks for Caroline. First one is done, and the second one started - knitting during travel time really adds up! I like the way they're coming out - may use the same notion of shaded triangles again with some of the scraps I have from Johanne's stuff.