La Femme Fantastique- Exploring HerStory

It's time again for the annual BFLA -Belly Fusion Los Angeles show!  The theme this year is La Femme Fantastique and my dance troupe She'enedra is going to do a piece about Rosie the Riveters.  I assume most people are familiar with who Rosie was but maybe not.  During World War II when all the men were sent off to war the women were encouraged to go out and work in factories and many take traditionally male jobs to keep the country running.
Here is the famous icon of Rosie and a link to a wikipedia article about her which is very interesting...
Rosie the Riveter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For this piece I've gathered a few extra dancers to fill the stage out so we will have 7 dancers and a couple of handsome soldier boys too!  

Here is the Facebook invitation to the show: https://www.facebook.com/events/1477113725882309/

And here is a link to buy your tickets!!  http://www.eventbrite.com/e/bfla-presents-la-femme-fantastique-tickets-12924340049

February 1

Time to rededicate myself to blogging every Wednesday again. I have been so over scheduled for the last 3 months that I have not had much time to do some of the fun things I want to do. Or maybe the fun things I do have really taken over my life? Not sure.

In the dance teacher part of my life I've started class sessions again and I'm preparing my student troupe Tandava to dance in Bohemian Roadhouse in a few weeks. We are all really excited, it's a Mardi Gras themed show and we'll have Sherri Wheatley & Sooz teaching workshops as well as being featured in our show. My class is wearing these wrap around skirts that are short in front & long in back, black & green bras, masks, feathers, fish net stockings and they are going to look fabulous. I'm not sure why but this round not many of my students are sew-ers so I have to do a lot of the skirts myself. Oh what I go through to make everyone pretty.

Tandava after our Circus piece at TFF '10

The exciting weaving news is that Jason Collingwood is coming to California and Ventura Guild is hosting him for part of his tour. I'm excited and have to warp the loom I've borrowed from the guild to be ready for the class. I can't wait to try my hand at rug weaving!

As a spinner, I've been doing much of what I always do...spinning yards and yards of yarn and I got Jacey Bogg's new book Spin Art. I am involved with her Insubordiknit group on Ravelry and we are working on all the techniques in the book. Even though I've done most of them before it's really good to make a study of each one to solidify my understanding of each yarn.

The first yarn in the book included a racing stripe. I did it a few times and wasn't happy at first. I spun a thin single out of a Mohair blend -that was very hard to draft- with S twist. Then I attached that single to a leader & spun a thick merino single and allowed the mohair to spin around it simultaneously. After a few miserable attempts I realized that in order to make the thicker yarn AND control the thin racing stripe at the same time I really had to get a larger whorl for my wheel. This made a world of difference...now I may actually do the yarn again. Since I have also spun some other thick singles just for the fun of it.

Multi Mohair Racing stripes with White merino/Teal merino/Black merino

My dance troupe She'enedra performed in a show called Bands and Bellies in Hollywood on January 22. It was fabulous fun! Princess Farhana was there as well as Monica Fernandez and many other beautiful performers.

Heidi, me, Tonantzin, Karma (yes those are their real names)

I also had a lot of fun with my friend Carolena, she came over to hang out and spin with me and stayed the night at the beginning of the month and then came out AGAIN last week and we had an indigo dye day with the craft grou. It was a very windy day and we had to work in the garage. If you've ever dyed with indigo you know how smelly it is. I'm waiting for some people to contribute pictures of the day so I can post them.

me & Carolena

I'm making these spindles for my Etsy shop and will be posting them soon.

That's the report on January! I'll be more consistent from now on so I don't have to put a whole month of news in one post!