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!

County Fair 2011

Every year my guild the Ventura County Handweavers & Spinners Guild gets very involved in the county fair...

The general public is very interested in what we do and lots of people stop to watch & ask questions. Riley came along with her spinning wheel this year and enjoyed telling people all about the process of spinning.

On the first Friday of the fair we get together and make a shawl from start to finish. Maybe it's a little bit of cheating because the weaver had already warped her loom with handspun, and the fiber was all dyed up for us.

So 12 carders, spinners, & pliers prepared the yarn for one weaver.

But still it's a pretty amazing feat to get all the carding, spinning & weaving done in one work day. Here is the finished shawl it was auctioned off at the Cattlemen's dinner for $320 the money goes to charity.

We took a little break so Riley could ride a pony. She is almost too big for this : (

Wool Delivery!

Although there are many many lovely pre-dyed & prepared fleeces available nowadays I have always preferred spinning from raw fleeces. Not completely in the grease (raw-no washing) mind you but hand washed & carded (by hand or drum carder) or combed by me. I love it because I'm practical. I like to make things with my fiber and in order to make really useful things like sweaters & blankets you need a LOT of wool! So this is the most practical way for me to get the yarns I want. I also enjoy the way a less processed fiber feels in my hands when I spin it. Not slippery like much of that fancy combed top you see everywhere but something with texture in it.
So I sent out 10 lbs of raw wool to Aunt Janet's fiber mill in Northern California on the recommendation of my friend Susie.

Last year at the Ventura County Fair I bought a corriedale fleece from a shepherd at a sale price because it was already a year old. I was so frustrated trying to clean and prepare this fleece and it made the lumpiest ugliest yarn there ever was. So I decided to try to save it by sending it out and see if a professional could improve it. It was either that or become doll stuffing.

Professional processing definitely did the trick. I even used the drop spindle and made a little sample 3 ply to see how it looks. Me thinks this will make some very nice socks. Maybe I'll dye it and sell the extra.
Above you see some stunning Romney that I bought from Skylines farms. They have organically fed happy sheep that produce the most lustrous fiber you can imagine. I love her fleeces even when I clean them myself, I like them better cleaned by someone else. This will go into that blanket that I'm dyeing with Indigo.

And here you see some other random fiber that was in my fiber collection waiting for attention...

Alpaca fleeces

So here is a picture of the Alpaca fleece that was given to me...it's so beautiful I wanted to show it to everyone!

This is the fleece that I'm keeping for myself, it's from an Alpaca named Ginger Spice!

Below you'll see the one I'm spinning for the lady who donated her fleeces to our guild. That alpaca was named Beauty. Appropriate name for her!

This is the fleece raw.

Here it has just been flicked with a dog brush and set in a box ready to be spun.

These are the singles so far. I'm enjoying making this yarn.