See the crosswalk?  Well that’s at the back of the queue to load the ferry boat.  See the cop?  he’s standing in the middle of the street directing traffic.  See the spectators…they’re all wondering why is this guy parked in the middle of the street.  yes you read that right.  This individual saw fit to park in the middle of the street.  When he returned he was lucky to find his truck still there, the tow truck had been called but hadn’t showed up yet.  The cop was nice and didn’t ticket the man.  But when asked by the cop why he parked in the middle of the street, his response, “Because all the lines were full and there was space”  The cop just shook his head and said under his breath, but loud enough for all to hear “and we haven’t even hit the busy season yet”

This last Saturday, I took a little trip up to North Bend (about 50 miles from where I live, on the way to Snoqualmie Pass) to take an advanced drop spindling class with Amelia AKA The Bellwether. 

Forgive the pic, it was after the class was over and we were just kind of milling around, and I thought I need to take at least 1 picture.  I would have taken some earlier but I forgot I had the camera until this point.

Look at all those spindles, yes, during class we were allowed to try any spindle we wanted and use the spindles to learn on .  3 of those spindles made it home with me, pics to follow at a later date…maybe.

So I what did I learn:

1. I learned how to use a Turkish Spindle.  I am even more comfortable using a bottom whorl spindle, which was one of my goals for the class.
2. I learned how to Navajo ply on the drop spindle, it’s tricky, but no where near as complicated as I thought it would be .
3. I learned how to Ply-On-the-Fly, this is a neat bar trick, where you spin your single then navajo ply it before you wind on to the spindle, so when you are done, what comes off your spindle is a finished 3 ply yarn.  I may write it up here once I’m more comfortable with it.

All in all I had a great time, and it was definitely worth the trip out to North Bend to take this class, and I look forward to taking more classes with Amelia, but she’s just a tad farther away, in Sequim WA .  That’s a ferry trip and a floating bridge away, so it’s not exactly easy for me to get out to her LYS to take a class, but I’m thinking I may have to find a way, she is a joy to learn from. And now my addiction to spindling has brought my drop spindle collection up to 26 drop spindles, Amelia says I’m getting to the point where I’m a collector, but I still have a ways to go to catch up to her.

Apparently, my new Rose has been off having some fun when I wasn’t looking, she had a baby!!!  now if only I could figure out who the father is?

Let me introduce Pocket, he’s a Pocket Wheel, and since i’m not very creative and the name fit him, he is hence forth dubbed Pocket.  Yes technically he would be my 6th wheel, but I sold my first wheel, that’s the Louet I sold before we moved back to Washington.  So that would make him my 5th wheel, except….I sold the Lendrum.  Let me say that one again, just a bit more slowly…

I  S O L D  T H E  L E N D R U M!

Sachi, is in the process of buying my Lendrum, well i guess it will be hers soon,  We’re doing a lay-a-way, which will give me a chance to find all those bobbins and drive bands and other pieces. Since I got the Rose, my poor Lendrum, or is that now Sachi’s Lendrum, in any case has been sitting in a corner sulking, he hasn’t had any fiber on him since well since I got the Rose, and Sachi’s been looking for a good 2nd wheel so her Kromski could get a break and not break on her, so the Lendrum is off to a good home.

I’m off to spin, more later when I get back from the Whidbey island spin in.

Here’s a close up

and another

The fiber is from a Totally Tubular Kit that I bought from The Bellwether, the color: well The Colors Purple of course.  This was a totally fun spin and I whipped through 4 oz in just a few days, in between work, knitting and playing with the new car.  I’m spinning up some merino 64′s and I think I’ll do some 2 color knitting with this, the merino is Pewter.

Last weekend my spinning group had it’s 2nd dying session, I didn’t go to the first because the response was overwhelming so a 2nd dye in was created, then it got delayed due to snow, then Madrona, but finally we met to do some dying.

I dyed a Superwash BFL and here are the results.  Unfortunately the weather and day light hours just haven’t been playing well with me, so the colors are fairly close, but not quite true.

Strangely enough I’m been stepping outsize my normal color pallet lately, this one is a bit on the yellow side for what I’d normally go for.

This one, affectionately named Clown Barf by a fellow spinner, is my favorite.  Towards the end of the day, I had one more hang of roving left to dye, and there were lots of left over dyes on the table that were already mixed by everyone.  So I grabbed a cup and a ginormous syringe and started squirting dye zig zag across my roving.  repeated this process through a total of 6 cups of dye.  the first few layers looked a lot like a clown’s wig, hence the name clown barf.  I really love the way it turned out.

Purple Madness, I know the colors don’t quite look purple here but it’s definitely purple.  this one is my 2nd favorite, and like the Clown Barf I can hardly wait to spin it up.

and some purple greens and blues

Sorry for not braiding this one up nice a neatly, but it wasn’t quite dry yet when I took this picture, it’s blacks and magenta and it’s beautiful, but it’s probally less than an ounce of roving, I haven’t weight any of this yet.  It was just a bit of roving that was free floating in my bag of roving.

I started out with 1 lb (16 oz) and just guessed at lengths, I think the first 4 are about 3 – 3.5 oz, again i haven’t weight any of it.

All in all it was a great day and definitely worth the trip out there (100 miles round trip).  Will I do some more dying?  Damn straight, I even have dye powders to dye with.  This is a far cry from dying with Koolaid, i love the depth of the colors so much, I had the whole lot spread across my desk at work for a day. I can’t wait to start spinning some of these, but they’ve got to wait their turn in line, yes, even with 4 wheels, I can’t seem to find a free wheel.  Of course I’ve got a few drop spindles that are bare, but for the larger hanks, that’s a lot of drop spindling, I think i’ll wait for a free wheel.  No I’m not going to buy another one….I think, for a while.

I swear I was just going to talk price with them, had no plans on driving it off the lot.  Well…. I took this home last night

Toyota Highlander Hybrid, it has 3rd row seating in it!  and the 3rd row is big enough that it will sit 2 adults way more comfortably than the Civic did in the back seat.  3 zone climate control, that’s right the passenger and driver zones and a separate control for everthing behind the the front seats.  Built in back up camera and a few other bells and whistles, leather seats yada yada yada.  the only thing it doesn’t have in it is NAV, a rear audio system and a kitchen sink, oh yeah no table like the CR-V’s had.

Well DH and I took it for a little spin up to Bellingham today, and I am more in love with it than I was yesterday when I drove it off the lot.

This last weekend Blue Moon Fiber Arts had a destashing sale at Scappoose Creek Inn and well Libby and I decided to take a road trip. So we packed MHP into the car and hit the road bright and early Saturday morning, ok, so it was 8ish by the time we left her place, and headed down the I5 towards Oregon.  Shidiot gave us directions that took us off the beaten path, and we found ourselves driving down the Lewis and Clark Trail, a beautiful drive if you’re ever in the area and have some time to kill, definately take it, but it takes you into the back country.

We got to the barn where the sale was being hosted around 11 and the place had pretty much been cleaned out, but never fear, I did manage to buy some fiber, not much, but yarn none-the-less.  We wandered out to the pasture to try and feed the llama’s they had there but the llama’s were having nothing to do with us.  Yes I have pics, again they are on the camera and can’t find their way off yet, I’ll work on it tonight.

Since we were in the neighborhood, we decided to head on down to Woodland Woolworks, well it was an hour drive further south from where we were at, but it was beautiful and IMHO well worth the trip.  The show room was, well wow, a bit overwhelming.  You walk in the front door and off to the right there is a “Garage Sale” Room, where they have mostly yarn that is on sale.  To the left and up the stairs, you walk into a room full of spinning wheels, off of that is a room with weaving looms and cones of yarn.  Straight in from the front door, it’s a bit deceiving because that is the “office” and also the place where they take your money.  Off of that is a room full of yarn and fiber.  The yarn is set out in such a way to look like a normal yarn store.  This is where the difference is, with the yarn, it’s pretty much one or 2 of everything they have in the colors they have, the rest, well you bring it to the fron desk and they will get the quantities you want from the warehouse.  For those in Seattle, the yarn section there is about the size of the yarn area of Weaving Works, in So. Cal it’s about the size of Unravelled Yarns.  Then add the fiber section, about the size the back end of Weaving Works, where all the fiber and cones are, and about the size of the classroom and sitting area of Unraveled.  It’s big.

The room with the spinning wheels was my down fall.  All those lovely wheels and even sample fibers to spin.  Well I’ve been thinking about picking up a Louet Victoria for a while now, I was going to wait until next year, please note the WAS.  I made the mistake of sitting down and spinning on one, and well now I’m the proud owner of an oak Louet Victoria, DH has pics of that on his camera, I just need to get him to post it so I can cross post it here.  Yes it followed me home.  The cost, well I had to pretty much sacrifice my desire to go to Madrona this year, but I didn’t even do that much, I did register for one class at Madrona this year, and will not be staying down there, but instead commuting just for the 1 day, we’ll see about wether or not I visit the market there or not.

So my to do list is to find the cord for my camera, so I can move the pictures from the camera to here, mind you Libby had control of the camera so I’m not exactly sure what all is on there, but there were some beautiful sites, so I’m sure there are some beautiful pictures .

I’ve really been more into my spinning lately, just took a 3 week spinning class on fiber prep, and am playing with samples of raw wool from that.  I’ve spun at least 3 skeins in the last month, if not more, I’ll have to do a photo shoot with those.  Lately, it’s been work and pretty much avoiding the internet when I get home.  Not much knitting going on around here, well other than holiday knitting, but I won’t post those pics until after the recepients receive those. I do have an FO or 2 that have yet to be posted here as well, but like I said, I’ve been avoiding the internet at home.

A short ride later, accross the Hood Canal Bridge, we found Port Ludlow, not hard to do when you’re following a GPS.  The harder part, was finding this little fiber shindig.  So the GPS tells us we’re arriving at our destination, so what do I do, find the nearest sign that says farm, not much else out there, and in my defense, we were looking for a farm and the GPS said we were there.  A quick turn left, and up the road, the road turned to dirt rocks and pot holes, shortly after that a sign saying that the road was no longer maintained by the county.   Next up are the sheep, so we must be in the right place, but no all they had were eggs.  Sachi whipped out the ad she had seen in a local paper advertising this event and gives them a call.  She tells us we’re about a block off.  So back in the car, and drive a block, ok, so we’re following Sachi and thinking this ain’t no city block, a mile later, this isn’t even really a block, about a mile after than there’s a sign that we drive by….guess what we just passed where we were going, so a mile or so later we finally find a road to turn around on. and away we go.

Oh and the fleece we see, some raw fleece, some processed, felted goods, spinners, sheep and a very alert and attentive sheep dog, well I don’t know if it was a sheep dog, but it’s job was to tend the sheep (again sorry no pics, but he was adorable)

Lots of Romney.  Oh look a bag of 3lb processed romney followed me home after being properly fondled and hugged.

Libby just had to find out how soft this romney was.

Meet Squeaky, AKA Gray Lady, a barn cat.

The late lamb from the last post just before I started shooting the video. This was his first shearing.  What beautiful fiber he had.

and the end result, he’s very soft to the touch after his locks were shorn.

We wandered on over to Sequim to a fiber festival and look who was learning to spin on a drop spindle.  Libby picked up a drop spindle up for MHP on our last foray to OFFF, he’s been wanting to learn ever since.  He got his chance.

All in all a very fun day.

The video is somewhere between 5 and 6 min long, it’s how long it took to shear the sheep.

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Left my house by 7 am Saturday morning, gassed up the car, grabbed some coffee and some money and went and picked up Libby and MHP.  We hit the road by 8 am from her house, with Libby knitting furiously away at the sleeves for her Rogue, the sleeves didn’t get finished, but like a trooper and as she stated she would, she wore Rogue sans sleeves.  I have a pic of that from the night before, it’ll get posted at some point this week, when I have time to pull it off my camera. 

We got to OFFF about 11:45, ran MHP to a bathroom, by this point he really needed it, then went off to miss the hand off for Mr Pink, no worries, we found the Portland Bloggers (they had posted a sign) and Mr Pink was handed off to the next kidnapper, I still have to find out just who we handed him off to, I’m really not good at keeping track of these things. 

Then it was fiber time.  The first booth we found was Blue Moon Fiber Arts, it wasn’t hard to do, it was right there 2nd booth from the particular entrance we went it.  This is where my fall began.  I swear I was good there, I only bought another Sheep to Shoe kit, not like I’ve spun the other one, or knitted the first one or anything, I simply couldn’t resist.  See I have very little will power around wool.  But I was good and I resisted temptation, if only that were the theme for the rest of the day.  Alas, I fell at the next booth, they had a charka, which I have been entertaining the thought of buying.  Is it my fault it followed me home.  I did resolve from that point to be good, that lasted right up until I simply had to buy some Cotton Puni’s, and while I was at it I decided to buy some much coveted wool combs as well.

Ok, so again I resolved not to buy anything else, well ok, so I bought a little something for someone who couldn’t make it, but I shant reveal that here, she’s a frequent reader.  Was it my fault that MHP wants to learn to spin, was it my fault that Libby bought him his first drop spindle.  Well ok, it was my fault I couldn’t resist buying him his first fiber, what those 2 balls those are cute, ok, I need those to, what you like that ball Libby, well toss it in the mix.  Clearly this lady knew what she was doing she had some wonderful alpaca/merino/ silk bats right next to the check out, toss a few of those in the mix too. 

The next purchase, I actually did resist, but unfortunately we went back, and I simply had to get it, I picked up a pound of undyed Optim and a little over half price.  One of these days I really do need to buy some dyes, I seem to acquire undyed fiber at an alarming rate. Ok, so those 2 Cookie A patterns and a couple of skeins of sock yarn jumped in the bag too *sigh*.  Next booth over there was some wonderful Carbonized Bamboo, they had 4 oz left, and then they had none, that last 4 oz jumped into my bag too.

So back into my delirious state of denial, Libby wanted to go back to BMFA’s booth for just one skein, she ended up with 2 I think.  Me on the other hand ended up with 4 skeins (2 STR light weight and 2 STR medium weight mill ends) some Merino/Bamboo roving, and not one but 2 Baby Surprise Jacket kits.  What’s a girl to do, it all jumped into my bag, granted at that point I had to get another bag, but the bags are so cute, they got new bags . 

No worries, thought, all our purchases did fit into the trunk of my car and there was no sqeezing involved, MHP didn’t have to share the back seat with fiber.

Oh we did make it to Yarn Garden in Portland on the way home.  I’ve finally figure out how to not buy yarn when visiting an LYS, go after a fiber festival.  Yes, you all heard that right, I walked out of that store without leaving any of my money, well ok, the money I gave Libby for coffee doesn’t count.  That store is incredible, it’s like a series of little stores interconnected. Walk in the front door to a coffee shop, the next little store down, and I say little store, because you walk through a big opening in the wall, not exactly like a door, and there you find mostly baby yarns.  In the next little “store” you find sock yarns galore, they have a wall of Koigu, well ok, so it’s half a wall, but still it’s a lot of Gu in one place, and I resisted. Next store down, bulkier weight yarns, and Noro like I’ve never seen before, not to mention some that I haven’t seen before.  One more little store, all patterns, needles and a various other knitting tools.  For those of you that have seen Yarn Lady, well Yarn Garden definately gives them a run for their money.

Sunday morning started out with my DH telling me his brothers are celebrating my MIL’s Bday, so much for my relaxing day of knitting lace, it was back into the car again to trek off to my MIL’s to spend the day with my MIL and 4 BIL’s.  My MIL lives about an hour and a half drive away, so I got to spend well over half my weekend in the car. You know I wish my DH would actually give me some warning, so I can at least prepare mentally for spending over half the day with my MIL.  We had pizza for dinner and sat around watching TV, so not much exiting happening there.  I did manage to knit through about 4 inches of Cherie Amour, which I had ripped out Friday night due to extreme frustration. It’s now heading in the right direction, so I guess I did get to knit lace on Sunday, just not on the project I wanted to work on.

Anyway, here’s the pictorial of the evening.

 Ok, so the lighting wasn’t the best on stage, but here’s Stephanie taking a picture of THE sock while showing it the knitters who are there to see THE sock.

Some new found friends. Sparkles is with Stephanie and her parnter (a non knitter, but definately way more than tolerant of knitters than an ordinary muggle, so I’ll make her an honary knitter, if it’s ok with her).  See I took a picture before they were ready and Sparkles partner is pointing at me accusingling of being the culprit, which I don’t deny.

Here’s MHP playing camera tag with Stephanie, yes he really does like to take pictures.

Stephanie playing I’ll show you mine, you show me yours and we’ll be done with MHP (get your mind out of the gutter. MHP didn’t quite grasp the concept and played for a few more minutes until we were done.

Libby and Stephanie

Oh yes, Mr Pink did come out to meet Stephanie, even posed for a pic with her.

Christina was there too, she tatted this adorable bookmark for Stephanie.