Where were you on Sept. 14/13

I had the pleasure of attending the Knitters' Fair with Kim, a very dear friend today. It was an absolutely perfect fall day with a bright blue sky and we had a terrific time. There were so many beautiful colours & fibres to be tempted to take home. Lots of fun we had.

I was so controlled. I came home with alpaca insoles for my hubby & myself to help keep our feet warm this winter, one skein of a beautiful hand dyed silk fibre from Sericin Silkworks, whose colour I cannot describe and a little bit of flax. Oh and one pattern for a new pair of fingerless mitts.

And all because I got a new roof on part of the house. The best birthday present I ever could have had. It's beautiful!!

Tomorrow a visit with my daughter & her partner on my birthday.
A whole day with no pictures. I forgot.

Summer Almost GGGone???

Having had a night where my sleep ended at 2:30, I gave up & decided to use the time for dyeing some wool.

I didn't grow any woad this year, but I had a 5 gallon covered pail of a woad vat I made last year & didn't use. Everytime I left the house I had to pass by the pail which I looked at from the corner of my eye. Not one to waste much, I had too much time involved in it already.

Heck, just harvesting the leaves for that strong a dye probably took me 1.5 hrs. alone. Not to mention the time involved at the stove & stirring, etc.

So last night I went over my old dye notes and looked at some articles from some books on the subject and mentally prepared myself. I had in mind the wool (an assortment of my combed top, my carded batts, and homespun skeins) last night too.

I have loosely planned 3 rugs in variegated colours of coarse fibre I have been preparing over the past 3 yrs. I figure I will need 6 lbs wool for each rug. The rugs will have a dark warp and many shades of green, both from acid dyes & nature dyes.

Anyhow here are a few pics from today.

Woad over G. Marguerite & on white wool on botton.

All 5 skeins.

Batts & top

Skeins Drying

Batts & top

The Day's Work Summed Up

Olds Master Spinner Level 4... Beginnnings

Here it is just past the middle of July and we are all baking in a heat wave combined with our usual high humidity & also high UV index of 9 or 10. We  could use a thunderstorm to lighten things up.
We have had a lot of rain, but I just came from pulling 10 minutes of weeds and the gardens are extremely dry.

It wasn't but only 3 weeks ago that I was with a few spinners in a classroom setting at Olds College in Alberta. A few days before I was due to fly, the Bow River was overflowing its banks and causing terrible loss for people out there. Rain combined with the snow melt in the mountains was just too much for the river to contain. Many people lost homes, lives or suffered property damage.

My heart goes out to all of them. It will take a great deal of time to rebuild.

In Olds, AB, they weren't affected. The college housed some evacuees for a time.

Classes went on with some people affected by the flooding not being able to attend.

I flew into Calgary Airport from London on the morning of June 23, 2013. Good flight and Jack, my shuttle driver was there as my luggage came round.The countryside I saw that day was lovely even if it was raining part of the time.

When I got onto the campus I settled into my townhouse room and went over to the vendors' marketplace just as I had planned. After seeing what I needed to complete my workbook assignments I was able to purchase a few supplies.

In the class there were the five of us from Ontario, all previously acquainted from the other levels taken in satellite classes in ON. I met 4 other spinners in our class - Maria, Susan, Lynn and (?) sorry her name escapes me at this moment.

Our teacher for Level 4 is Donna Rudd, very capable & very good at explaining & demonstrating what we must learn.

Donna in our silk reeling class

Here's the building our classes were in:

Olds College

The gardens around campus were beautiful being they have horticultural programs.

Columbine flower

These are Columbines, unlike any I have seen before. Many walks produced many pictures of the gardens. Very beautiful indeed.
Olds College is in an agricultural setting and they also have animal sciences and a full working farm on their many hundreds of acres.

Animal Science building

Level 4 deals with the luxury fibres: cashmere, camel, flax, cotton, silk, ramie and bison. How to choose fibres, how to spin, how to finish and where to use them. Level 4 also introduced acid dyeing and silk reeling from cocoons. More novelty yarns were part of the curriculum too. Flax - finally I learned how to dress a distaff.

Dyed silk worm cocoons

Reeled silk

Just wonderful things we learned. No wonder they call them luxurious. It's amazing what properties they can bring to a blend of fibres.

Now for a year's worth of homework. Where to start....let's go to the beginning and just work through it fibre by fibre.