MDS&W 2013

When it's the first full weekend in May, every fiber fanatic knows what that means: it's time for the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival!

Everything at the Golding booth is a piece of art -- a feast for the eyes and nourishment for the soul.

The craftsmanship that goes into each piece is just breathtaking.

I didn't set out with any "must buy" preconceptions this year. However, when I got to the Bosworth booth, all of these spindles just started singing my name.

Those creamy white spindles are made with moose antler. They're a bit out of my price range, but that doesn't stop one from dreaming, right?

I was happy to see that the folks at Bosworth are customers of Moo! Where else can you buy business cards with a different image on each card? I'm in love with Moo.

Before I left the Bosworth booth, I took a long, hard look at this specimen of engineering genius. Love it!

And there's The Lovely Stacey (back to camera), who thought long and hard about what spindle she was going to add to her collection. She made a great selection ... of course.

This booth was full of Shaker artistry, as well as the luscious scent of wood polish. It took me back to my father's basement workshop. He was always crafting something wonderful with wood, and that scent of polish can trigger a flashback like no one's business.

This is about half of the fleece sale area. One year I might just have to buy a fleece, no matter how hard I'm sure it is to choose (just one!).

The festival has all sorts of things that I just can't live without. I vow that I will make myself a rolled brim hat of my own one of these days.

This was a very popular spot. I really want to add a "I knit so no one has to die" sticker to my car.

No, wonderful vendor. Thank you!

One of my favorite parts of festival was visiting all the livestock, like this wonderful guy. His name is Moe -- seriously.

Oh, and the lambs! I just wanted to climb right into the pens and cuddle each one.

Oh, you lovely sheep! I gave this guy or gal lots of skritches and ear rubbing. It was very hard to walk away from all the love.

Note to self: Find this book.

I've seen pics like this on the interwebz, but I thought they were Photoshopped. Sadly, this is what some shepherds have to do to convince thieves to keep their mitts off sheep that don't belong to them.

I desperately need a haircut. This gal was quite skilled with the clippers. Hmm ... naaah!

Hello, Deb Robson! She's the coauthor of The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook.

This kind of mind-blowing array of color and texture is everywhere at the festival. It can easily become overwhelming.

Say hello to my little friend. I do believe that this wheel will be part of my future.

Glad to see that I'm not the only one who doesn't always look my best in pics. Derp!

See that guy in the kilt? Well, that's none other than the handsome, talented, and crazy-smart Brewergnome! I stepped outside my comfort zone and actually introduced myself to him. (He's kind of like a fiber rock star in the LSG group on Ravelry.)

The Lovely Stacey was one happy camper with her new spindle and color-coordinated fiber.

By the time you've finished tramping all over the fairgrounds and are ready to find your car, this guy and his trailer comes along to make the trek just a little easier.

The weather was sunny and cool. The companionship was wonderful. The festival-goers were friendly and numerous. The food was messy and delicious. The day? The day was perfect.

My own yarn cabinet ... inspired by KnitsforLife

Early this month an image showed up on Pinterest from this wonderful blog.

The lovely Lorna had a fabulous idea for yarn storage and shared it with the world. I quickly pinned one of her images to my Fiberliciousness board and dreamed of a fantasy house in which I'd have just the right wall to have my own fiber display ... uh ... storage.

Really, if you look at Lorna's wall, it's more than mere storage. It's an ever-evolving work of art comprising different colors and textures. Form and function -- genius!

One morning I overslept and had to drive da boyz to school. Before we'd even left the neighborhood, I saw that someone had put a gun cabinet out for the garbage guys -- or someone like me -- to pick up.

"If that thing's still there when I get back, it's coming home with me," I thought.

It was there, and when I brushed away the thin coating of snow, I was delighted to see that the door was glass (unbroken, thank goodness).

I tried shoving it into the back seat of the car, but it was about 6 inches too long. So I slid it into the trunk and put my mittens in between the trunk latch and the glass.

Traveling at about 1 mile/hour, I made it home in about a week, terrified that the cabinet was going to leap out of the trunk or that I'd hear the sound of breaking glass.

Here it is, and I've already pulled out the pieces of wood on the bottom and along the back that were there to support guns.

I knew that for the pegboard to work, it would need to have a gap behind it so that the metal pegs could seat properly.

I found some scrap wood and glued them into place. It didn't take me long to realize that glue wasn't going to keep my spacers where I needed them.

Because the back of the cabinet is absolutely flat, I ran the screws in from the back. Once I'd done all six, I installed the pegboard. Then I had to redrill about three of the holes because the were off-center from the holes in the board. *sigh*

After that, I painted. And painted. And painted some more. It took about four coats of the off-white paint to really cover the darkness of the wood. My husbeast wondered why I was painting it at all. It was just too dark, too dated-looking. Besides, I wanted a light, neutral color to go with the white pegboard so that all the color would come from the yarn.

Inside, I just painted about half of the sides, top, and bottom. My yarn is going to have the royal treatment: cedar. I bought cedar tongue-and-groove boards and found it to be fairly easy to saw. I used wood glue to install the boards, then used whatever I could find to hold the pieces in place while the glue dried (i.e., three long tool handles and a rolled up yoga mat).

I still have three whole boards left over and will use them in my dresser or maybe in storage boxes or bags. I used the scraps to sort of line the drawer.

You can find the pegboard, wood glue, cedar boards, and screws at Home Depot or Lowe's. I forgot about the actual pegs while I was shopping but found them at KMart (~$2 for four pegs). I replaced the drawer pulls with plain wood ones and covered up the hole in the door where the locking mechanism had been removed with a wood knob. The knob is held on with a screw and a big washer, which let me tighten the screw and keeps the knob in place so that the hole is covered.

And here it is:

The cedar doesn't line up exactly, but that's OK. Every time I open the door that delicious scent wafts out -- mmm!

I bought a "peg" that's designed to hold screwdrivers but will end up holding my spindles.

And just because there was some yarn in a bag right where I was working, I stuck them on the pegs. Yeah, they're gray, but they'll soon be joined by a host of colors.

Now all I need to do is figure out where to put this beauty!

Dyeing at Hagley's Craft Fair

Yesterday Linda Shinn, Carol Ireland, Gerry Scarfe, Sjon Gravenhorst, and I put on a natural dyeing demonstration at the Hagley Craft Fair.

It was a beautiful fall day, and we spread out and took up quite a chunk of real estate just outside the library.

I believe these are calendula blossom petals. They didn't really give good color of any sort, but that's part of the fun of dyeing with natural materials: you never know quite what you'll get.

Even though my point-and-shoot camera doesn't do a very good job at accurately capturing true colors, I think you'll get an idea of the range of final colors we got from indigo, walnut hulls, cochineal, chrysanthemum petals, onion skins, madder, and goldenrod blossoms on wool, cotton, silk, and angora.

Linda brings along a small basket filled with naturally dyed mini-skeins. See that orange tie at around the 9:00 position? That's connecting the three yellowish skeins. All were dyed with -- gaa! drawing a blank. However, they're different because they were mordanted with different products. Interesting, no?

As I type this, these four 4-oz. lengths of roving are drying (still!) out on my deck. Left to right, they are walnut hulls (late in the dyeing session), walnut hulls (early in the dyeing session), madder (nearly exhausted dyepot), and dried yellow chrysanthemum blossoms. The walnut requires no mordant, but the madder and chrysanthemum both had alum and, I think, cream of tartar, in the dyebath. All four colors will be rolled into bumps and put into the Greenbank Mill gift shop since the roving is from the Greenbank Leicester longwool sheep.

Now is the time to begin plotting and planning on what natural dyeing you can do now and in the coming year. Have fun!

Dyeing to dye with walnut hulls

It's that time of year again when walnuts are falling off the tree and into my greedy little hands. I love dyeing with walnut hulls because I don't have to mordant my fiber. Believe me, that dye will work on just about anything, unlike many (most?) natural dyes.

This was all I could find at Greenbank Mill on Monday. They're kind of battered, but that's OK for my purposes.

I pulled out my trusty soup pot, which is used only for dyeing. It used to be nonstick -- not so much anymore.

Next, I located my technologically superior bashing tool. Sure, I could use a hammer, but then I'd have to clean it up. Besides, with the larger surface area, it's impossible to miss whatever it is that I want to hit.

I have no idea how I managed to take this (i.e., it's sideways). It's also out of focus, which is probably a good thing. This particular nut has already begun decomposing. See those white lines just above my middle finger? Yeah, um, those are larvae of some sort. Alive. For now.

This shot is marginally better. No critters but still out of focus. My bashing tool deposited some of itself, but that won't affect the outcome at all. This nut is in really good shape. I prefer to use the nuts while they're still bright green and with minimal to no black spots.

Be sure to put the nuts out for the squirrels or chipmunks. Important safety note: put those nuts somewhere where the lawnmower won't turn them into lethal projectiles.

I should mention that it's really important to wear gloves while you're handling these nuts. Of course, if you don't mind black stains on your skin and under your nails, then go for it. Walnut hulls stain like crazy, which is one reason why I'm smushing them on the driveway. Another reason is that I'm too lazy to find something else to do it on (e.g., newspaper, an old shower curtain, etc.).

Here are all the hulls in the pot. Ideally, you should probably break them into smaller pieces, although, now that I think about it, I don't know if it matters, especially if you have a ready supply of walnuts. Don't worry if leaves, "helicopters," or some dirt winds up in the pot.

I'm good to go!

I took a stroll over to the wading pool (aka our dog's pool) and put some rainwater in the pot. You can see that already the dye is starting to leach out into the water. Excellent!

It's now the next day. Just so you can see the kind of color you might expect, I grabbed a small handful of grayish white Wensleydale and put half of the fiber into the pot.

Just look at all that dye!

Right out of the pot after about 10 hours of just sitting and soaking.

And this is how it looks after a quick rinse under running water. Mmm! A lovely orange-brown, which is exactly what I was going for. I've seen a lot of muddy (to me) browns from walnut hulls, but I got this surprising color last fall, so I knew the key: use those green hulls. Caveat: your mileage may vary. In other words, I'm sure it all depends on what kind of walnut hull you use, the condition it's in, and whether you heat the dyebath.

I'm an imprecise dyer. I prefer to just throw things around (safely, of course) and be surprised by what I get. I suppose it's a good thing I didn't go into a profession where precise protocols are required. Hmm ... although as a writer and editor, I do try to be precise. The difference must be that I don't have to measure and record data.

There you have it. Embrace dyeing with walnut hulls. Just remember to wear something you won't mind being stained!