Lonely Scarflette

So, I had *just* enough time during Conall's morning nap to drink some coffee and then scoot out in the snow (yup, snowing again, but not too much, just a couple inches) and take pictures of this little scarflette:

I managed to list it in my Etsy shop, too - where it now sits, in solitary splendor.

It's that turned Ms and Os again, in bamboo. I like this structure. I actually wove two full-size scarves from this warp too, using different weft colors. One went to my Mum for Christmas (hi, Mum!) and the other is going to wind up in my shop once I manage to photograph it.

First Turns!

So, my sweet hubby pried me away from my various looms and projects today and sent me skiing for the afternoon. I just went up to little Pat's Peak:

Isn't it a cute little mountain? It's in Henniker, NH. Which, as any fiber addict from this area knows, is also home of The Fiber Studio. (uh-oh) But I was good, and resisted stopping in on the way home. Oh - good thing I didn't stop by, it's closed until Jan. 2! Man, though, doesn't it look tempting from its website??

The idea was to check out the mountain to see if it would be a good place to teach Bella to ski this year - I think that's a yes! Nice little beginner's area, non-crowded lodge and slopes, and it's only an hour from home, also good for the little ones. Stowe will have to wait for a longer vacation. (WAH) But this is nice for a day trip, and Carlos and I can sneak in a couple quick runs, too, just for fun.

Overall, it was just fantastic to get out on my skis again. Just my little slalom skis (good thing, it was icy and they love ice), and only 9 or so runs (out of shape), but a lot of fun.

But now I'm stressed about my Etsy store being empty. Eeks. I do have three scarves done and ready for their photo sessions, though. And a shawl that I have half the fringe twisted on... So I'll be posting things to my shop soon!

An Inkling of an Idea...

Look what Santa brought me!

It's a Schacht Inkle loom! It's a lovely little loom, very sturdy, and very easy to use so far. It seems like it would be a really nice way for somebody to figure out whether they like to weave without spending $1000+ on a floor loom...

I trekked out to Webs on Thursday to buy it, actually. (Along with more yarn, of course, good grief, my name is Kristin and I'm a fiber addict...) Webs is having its year-end sale, and they put their Tencel (which I use) on sale - hooray! I bought some knitting yarn, too, that was marked waaaaay down.

But my main reason for going out there was to buy this little inkle loom. How fun! Pretty easy to use, too, the most time-consuming part is making the string heddles (those bright blue strings you can see in the picture) and warping it. The weaving goes very quickly; since inkle looms make warp-faced fabric, that makes sense.

I'm using my Bambu 7 yarn so far and it is working very nicely. Strong, relatively inelastic, and non-sticky (good for warp faced fabrics).

My Mum took one looks at another of the ribbons I had made and said - "this would make great trim on clothes!" Which got me thinking.... Maybe some handwoven clothing is in my future!

Current Projects

Just thought I would post a couple quick pictures of my current projects...

On the little loom now:

The colors look a little bland in the photo, but they're a bit prettier in real life. Deep gold, a nice basil green, light light yellow and a khaki color, in a that turned Ms and Os structure that I keep coming back to (like the texture it creates in the fabric).

Here are some recently finished scarves that will be Christmas presents, I think:

What a difference wet finishing makes! My Mum was here yesterday (as always on Fridays, the kids love seeing Ginga every week) and was peeking at these scarves, but that was before I washed them... Fabric right off the loom can be stiff, but once it's washed up and dried in whatever way is appropriate for the fiber - hooray! Lovely, soft and drapey. At least, that's the way bamboo, tencel, wool/silk, alpaca/silk, etc. turn out - I have yet to work with linen, but I assume it keeps it stiffness to a certain extent...

Can you believe it's the 22nd of December already?? Yikes! Just about done with Christmas shopping, hooray, now I just have a bunch of presents to wrap up and a turkey to buy...

Fibery Fun

We are so far behind on Christmas this year it isn't even funny... Finally got the tree up and decorated last night (!). I still haven't finished shopping, yikes. I'm hoping to get some done this afternoon - I really *really* don't want to have to brave the toy stores over the weekend, it will be a madhouse.

In the meantime, I have some fun new fibery goodness.

Isn't that felted flower pin awesome?? It's from Liz of MadeInLowell - lovely (check out her etsy shop by clicking on that link!). The scarf is one of mine, that I took out of my Etsy shop to keep, for once, since it goes so nicely with the flower. I have another flower pin, too, that's a lovely combination of green/gold/rust, and a polymer clay barrette that I got for Ms. B. Liz makes gorgeous things!

We have also had some craazzzzy weather, making shopping for Christmas that much more complicated...



Bella's slide out there is nearly buried, too funny.

Three snowstorms in the past week - last Thursday we got about 10 inches, then on Saturday night/Sunday we got more snow plus rain/sleet/general yuckiness, which made a thick crust over all of it (looked like icing, kind of pretty, but rotten for kids - no fun to play in, though Bella sure has been trying!), and then it snowed all day yesterday, too, for another couple inches. Bella is outside right now playing on the deck, making snow castles with her summer sand-digging buckets/shovels, etc.

I haven't wrapped a single present. Or bought the turkey. AHHHHH!

On the bright side, my etsy shop is practically emptied out! My pink scarf sold too - my friend Jake, from college, bought it for his lovely wife for Christmas (hi Cara!!). I'm so happy that it's going to a good home - this is the first time that a friend of mine has bought something from me, and it is hugely flattering. I hope Cara likes it!

I've been weaving a couple of Christmas presents, but have new things in planning stages for the shop...

Snow!

Big ol' snowstorm today, first of the year, really, in the Northeast U.S. Fun! I took the kids out earlier - Ms. B had a great time running around with her shovel, Mr. C mostly looked confused as he watched us. Still not too sure about this snow stuff (though he did *really* want to go out in it).

There's been a line of cars on the road in front of our house since 1pm, it's been kind of funny. A mass exodus. Carlos works in one of the few tall buildings in our area and has good views of Route 3 and Route 495 (two big commuter roads) and says it has been funny to watch the traffic - both on those roads and everybody trying to get out of his building.

Later in the winter, people probably wouldn't even really notice this much snow (it's at about 4 inches now - still falling fast, though!).

This is where I really want to be:

Doing this:


These photos as from Stowe - and, no, that's not me or Carlos skiing, but I sure with it were! We're both tele skiers (and normal skiers, and snowboarders, and cross-country skiers - you name it, we do it, more or less)...

After not skiing AT ALL last year (pregnant, what can you do, had the monster baby in January) and only getting ONE DAY in the year before (this for a person who generally skis at least 30 days a year) I am completely chomping at the bit. My poor tele skis may never forgive me.

But maybe I can get over to Great Brook Farm State Park and use my cross country skis tomorrow morning before Carlos goes to work! Fun!

12 Days of Weaving

Oh my gosh, if you weave (or live with a weaver), check out this YouTube video from Bonnie Tarsis, it's hilarious:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyaE_3k8fN8

(Let's see if that link worked...)

Lots of packages going out today! The purple scarf is done and being shipped:

As well as the black/white/fuchsia bamboo scarf along the same lines (also sold yesterday - yippee!), and the tencel lace scarf is on its way to Handwoven Magazine (gulp) (wish it luck!).

I must say, it has been a fabulous first year of selling my work... I've done far better than i ever thought I would (the validation, lol!), and it has given me the confidence to move ahead, and not worry so much about whether things will sell or not. What I've discovered is that when I really love a piece, it sells. When I'm not so sure about it, it doesn't.

All except for this scarf, that is:


I love this scarf, and, for some reason, it just hasn't sold. Maybe it's a bit too pink? Not sure, but it's lovely in person (maybe I'll just keep it for myself!).

At any rate, it's been a great year - and if any of my wonderful customers happen to read this - thank you so much!!

Crazy Weaving Weekend

I think I bit off a little more than I could chew this weekend... I finished up the shawl/yardage that was on my big loom, warped/threaded/beamed and wove a second copy of this lace scarf:

(It's a five-end huck lace and it might be published in Handwoven Magazine!! Stay tuned for details...)

And now I'm in the midst of making this scarf as a custom piece for a lovely customer who lives on Nantucket:



I also managed to give Ms. B a haircut:



Phew. This kind of crazy intense weekend calls for comfort food:


That is a picture of most of the ingredients for Dublin Coddle. Hmm, tastes better than it looks. Comfort food, Irish style. It's from The Gourmet Slow Cooker by Lynn Alley. I'm not normally much of a slow-cooker person (we're frustrated foodies - frustrated because we have no time to go out to eat or to cook how we really like to at the moment), but having two kids under four and a workaholic husband can certainly turn you into one... And this book has yet to let me down - every recipe I've tried has been fantastic.

The Christmas tree is going to have to wait until next Sunday!

Big Box O'Yarn

(Notice that the little man is going directly for the little box of chocolates that they put in with the yarn, lol.)

It's all bamboo. Greens, blues, red, deep redy-orange, browns, some yellow and purple... Add this to what I've got in my current stash, and - wheeee! Can't wait to get designing! I'm thinking of more turned twill with bunches of colors in it (love doing that) and experimenting with making pleated fabric, too. All sorts of neat color effects in that, hopefully.

It's also the time of year to be looking forward to Webs' big year end yarn sale! That will happen right after Christmas. So far, at least, we're being good about not spending too much on Christmas, so hopefully I'll be able to buy some yarn then, too. And maybe Santa will bring me an Inkle loom if I ask really, really nicely...

Footprints

Carlos (Mr. Skiingweaver) just sent me this picture, which I had forgotten about...

Doesn't it make you want to be a little kid again? It does me. Reminds me that the straight-ahead way of moving through life isn't always the most fun... Or most interesting.

Re: Weaving - the purple scarf that had its 15 seconds of fame on the front page of Etsy is on its way to a new home today! Along with another scarf - wonderful customer. My shop is looking kind of bare, yikes.

But I did want to share some new fabric I wove last night:



They're really more like samples - just 8" wide by about 13" long, but I wanted to weave with some fabulous little 1-yard lengths of silk, and decided to give it a whirl. Warping a 1-yard long warp was kind of odd, but I figured it out. The colored bands are pure silk, the black on the outsides is Zephyr (50/50 wool/silk) and I wove it in a loose twill. Not quite sure what I'll do with them yet (little wall hangings? cuffs?), but I really enjoyed how they came out, with a nice random mix of silk fibers.

Purple Scarf Got Some Major Etsy Love!

Hey, that purple scarf I posted about a little while ago is on the front page right now! On the left in the third row... Neato!

Whoo-hooo!!

Messy Snow

So the snowstorm that has been making its way across the U.S. landed here in the Northeast last night - and was kind of a letdown... Just a couple inches of very wet snow, and now it's been misty-raining this morning. Oh-so-much-fun to shovel. Everybody helped Carlos shovel the driveway this morning:

Bella was having fun - in last year's snowsuit, no less, I couldn't believe it still fit (hooray for LL Bean!) - Conall looks like he's not so sure about this wet and cold stuff. I'm kicking myself for procrastinating yet again on cleaning out the flower beds - it will be a mess in the spring if this doesn't melt, yikes...

On weaving fronts, I got lots of fun mail today! Some *gorgeous* silk samples from Treenway Silks, and two new weaving books - Fabrics that Go Bump, edited by Madelyn van der Hoogt and Inkle Weaving by Helene Bress. Fun! I was thinking of building an inkle loom (they weave long straps of fabric - I have ideas mulling around...) but after looking at the plans in Ms. Bress' book, I think I'll be lazy and just buy one. Maybe a road trip to Webs or Halcyon Yarn is in order.

Last but not least, we got an invitation to a wedding in New Dehli (India) in the mail! Carlos' very nice friend from work, Kush, and his lovely wife, Lindi, are having a wedding in December in India. A chance of a lifetime! ARGH! (No passport for Conall - and that would be a really really long plane flight for the little guy... I've got to get on top of that passport situation pronto.)

We've made them promise that they'll take us to India when the kids are bigger and able to remember/enjoy the trip... But, man, how neat would it have been to go to a traditional Indian wedding?? On the other hand, they wouldn't have much time to spend with us, and I would really love to eventually see some of the country - with a native, no less, that would be fantastic!

Sigh. Oh well, we're hoping to make some sort of trip this coming fall, destination yet to be chosen (back to France? back to Italy? back to Spain? or something new like Ireland or Scandinavia? So many choices!).

Wonderful Etsy Resource

I just found Etsy is For Everyone, a wonderful blog written by etsy seller Strumpfkunst (who makes the cutest darn sock monkeys with attitude that I have ever seen - I may just be getting one for Bella for Christmas - Buy Handmade!).

Check it out, great info/resource if you are a seller! She talks about using Stumble Upon today - I've had Stumble Upon sitting in the toolbar of my Firefox Window for ages and have never thought to use it to promote my shop. Duh. :)

Purple Scarf Needs Some Love - and Cordoba, Spain, for Something Completely Different

Well, phooey, my blogging roll ended with a resounding thud. So did Cyber Monday thus far. (Though last week went very well for my little Etsy shop!)

But, I did manage to take some better photographs of this poor purple scarf:

The poor thing was posted in my Etsy shop pretty early on - before I sort-of got the knack for taking ok pictures of textiles. So, it wasn't getting many views. Or maybe it's just a really homely scarf, lol! Poor purple scarf needs some love.

Natural daylight really does seem to work the best for me...

I have kind of an old digital camera - an Olympus C-3030. We bought it in September-ish 2000 to take on our honeymoon with us, and digital cameras were still pretty new then - and it was state of the art (and wicked expensive, no way would anyone pay $1000 for 3.3 Megapixels now, lol!!). Amazing how fast technology changes, isn't it?

At any rate, I remember we were in the Mosque in Cordoba (Spain), and this (American) guy walked up to me while I was trying to take pictures of the arches (beautiful) and was amazed at how you could see the photos *on the camera*! LOL And our kids will all grow up saying - you mean you had to wait to get the photos developed?? And what exactly *is* an "album"?



There are those beautiful arches. Also took this photo from the window of our hotel room in Cordoba:


Yup. travel bug is biting. Niece Timothea was in Paris this past week for her 30th birthday (she's living in the UK at the moment, lucky kid), took some *fantastic* pictures and has me all jealous.... Maybe by next fall Mr. Conall will be big enough to travel. Can't wait!

Color!

So, one of my eternal struggles is trying to push myself on the color front with weaving. Structure is pretty easy for me, but I tend to fall into ruts/easy color combinations when I let myself. For example, I'm working on a dove grey/teal scarf in a Wall of Troy twill pattern on my little loom right now. Very nice (and I like the twill very much), but not particularly adventurous of me! (Weaving it mainly because I feel like I need some more "masculine" type scarves in my shop, and also because this yarn has been sitting around looking forlorn about not being used for quite a while now).

Anyway, we took a family walk over to the local library for storytime this morning, and I sneaked down to the art section while Carlos read to Bella and watched Conall play with toys in the children's room. Love the art section.

And I found a fabulous little book! The Color Scheme Bible by Anna Starmer. It's meant for interior decorating (helping you choose color palettes for your house), but it's great on the inspiration front! I've been sitting in the dining room pouring over it, color cards in hand, figuring out possible new designs and combinations.

I feel a yarn order coming on. Uh-oh. There goes the budget...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Dead end!

OK, this picture requires a couple explanations. That's Conall, the ten-month-old, and he's "walking" around the kitchen, pushing this stool in front of him, sticking his tongue out to crack me up at the same time. Funny little man. Sister Bella didn't walk until 15 months, so this is really a surprise! We're thinking he might be walking by Christmas (he'll be almost 1 at Christmas). That would certainly make ski season a lot easier for us...

The other part of the explanation is about the stool itself, which has a neat little backstory. My big brother Tim is the head librarian at theTown of Oxford Free Public Library, in Massachusetts. What a great job, huh? He also really loves woodworking, and has made all sorts of fantastic furniture for my Mum. (Trying to talk him into looking into Etsy, but I don't think it's going to happen.)

A couple years ago, the town of Oxford voted to expand his library dramatically, and in the process they replaced a lot of the old shelves (the original library building is reasonably old by U.S. standards, from the early 1900s, IIRC, and they found all sorts of neat historical documents - including a time capsule - during the renovation).

At any rate, Tim salvaged the shelves and made everyone these fantastic little footstools out of them! I actually have two. :) One is down behind my big loom - I sit on it while threading heddles.

This one has gotten kind of beat up over the years... Stickers put on it by Bella, paint dripped on it by me, cat prints tracked across it by Madeline. But we use it every day! Bella uses it to reach the computer, I use it to reach things stored way up high in the kitchen, Conall loves to push it around. Great present. Hooray for big brother Tim. :)

Thanksgiving is about family, after all, right?

Hooray!!! A Very Happy Tuesday!

It's official - the Red Sox have signed Mike Lowell (3rd Base) for three more years!! (In case you missed it, he's my absolute favorite baseball player - and he won the World Series MVP this year! Whoo-hoo!)

Apart from his excellent playing, he just seems like such a class act, a real team guy. Doesn't crave the spotlight, quietly gets his job done, works hard, and is a wonderful liaison for the Spanish-speaking baseball players (he's Puerto Rican, just like my hubby and kidlets).

And, here's another reason to be happy:

Snow! And Stowe is open for skiing! (Man, I hope we can manage to move to Vermont sooner or later... Or at least build a little ski house/yurt up there.)

Oh, and I sold a scarf yesterday. :)

Knitting

I seem to go on knitting jags. I just started a scarf with some gorgeous silk/wool Manos del Uruguay yarn.


I bought the pattern from Sand & Sky Creations, a fellow member of EtsyFAST (street team). She did the scarf in a lovely soft grey yarn - I'm thinking her looks better! :) You can see the cabling better with the plainer yarn; having cables and all this color may be overdoing it a bit. But I still like it (more interesting to knit cables than just a plain old moss stitch or rib or something).

At any rate, check out her Etsy shop! She makes really lovely knitted items and sells patterns, too...

On a Posting Role...

I seem to be on a role with the posting thing lately, so I thought I'd keep it up.

Here's a picture to keep you a little interested, lol:

Somebody thinks his big sister is the best thing EVER.

Goofball.

On weaving fronts - Carlos was at work today (sigh) so I got zip accomplished. Managed to sew up another pillow during the goofball's (very short) naptime, though, using interfacing this time and it is much much better. It will be in my shop as soon as I can manage photos of it...

Front Page *AGAIN*!!

Good grief! This is the third time - wowzers!! This Treasury was picked by the Etsy folks because the Fiber Arts Street Team's trunk show is tonight - so it's all fibery goodness!

Itsy bitsy again, sorry, but that's my scarf in the middle of the top row. :) Most pleased!

EtsyFAST Trunk Show

The Etsy Fiber Arts Street Team is having a trunk show at the Etsy labs in Brooklyn tomorrow! The labs are located at 325 Gold Street, 6th Floor, in Brooklyn.

The actual trunk show is from 6 - 8 p.m., and it's a great chance to stock up on finished products (knitted, crocheted, woven, etc.), hand-spun and/or hand-dyed yarn, etc.

Also - lots of the team members that can't attend in person are also having a sale in their online shops (including me!) - just do a search for "etsyFAST" and you'll find them...

We are also running a treasure hunt (and, again, I'm participating - hint, hint, lol) - several shops from the team have posted a picture of the EtsyFAST trunk show flier (that's it, above) in one of their listings. If you can find the people with the flier in their shops, you can win a prize!

Here's the Storque article with all the details of the contest.

Have fun searching, and if you're in Brooklyn (hi, Lexi and Ernesto!) and have the time, stop by the trunk sale!

PlayDoh and a Pillow

I managed to make this pillow last night from some bamboo fabric I made a while ago... It's cute but the corners are really wonky. :) Bamboo fabric is stretchy! And I'm not the best seamstress in the world, so the corners came out goofy.


It's my own fault. I got lazy and didn't put interfacing on the fabric before sewing it up. I learned that lesson! Still, though, I like it, and it was fun to make. Lots of fabric left, I'll give it another whirl - with interfacing this time - maybe tonight.

In the meantime, Conall is down for a nap (hooray!), and Bella and I made her some playdoh. Can't remember where I found the recipe, but it takes about three minutes to make and it actually lasts longer (and has a nicer texture, I think) than the commercial stuff. I cut the original recipe in half, which still makes a nice sized ball. So here's how we make it:

Combine in a small saucepan:

1/4 c. salt
1/2 c. flour
1 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 c. water
1/2 Tb cooking oil
a couple drops of food coloring

Stir over medium heat until the dough comes together into a ball. Turn it out onto a cutting board and knead a couple of times. Let it cool, and, ta-da! Long-lasting playdoh. We wrap it up in freezer paper and it keeps for quite a long time. She has a great time helping me measure out the ingredients.

Midnight Air

Whoof, what a morning. But I did manage to get outside to take photos of three scarves while Bella was at preschool. Conall had a great time crawling in all the leaves and grass and getting muddy...

Here's one of them:


It's rayon chenille - I don't weave with it very much anymore, but the yarn always works up so soft and cuddly, I probably should use it more often. I found the hand-dyed novelty rayon yarn (it's kind of boucle-ish, with little twisties in it, very pretty) at last year's New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival and it's been hanging around since then, waiting for inspiration to strike. I used it both as normal weft (the stripes) and as a supplementary weft (the middle designs).

Here's another picture:

It really was fun to weave. Maybe I *should* do more rayon chenille!

Current projects on my looms:

- on my little loom: overshot fabric (with bamboo warp, organic cotton tabby weft, zephyr for the pattern weft), probably for pillow, but I'm not sure yet

- on my big loom: just starting to wind warp/thread a bamboo/zephyr combination in warm browns/rust/copper/curry colors in shadow weave, also probably for pillows.

I'm on a pillow kick, I guess. Nice to be doing something a little different!

Weavers Guild Sale - Pictures

Finally a few pictures from the Guild Sale:




Hey, there's one of my scarves, lol! (The rolled up green one on the left side of the photo - I re-rolled it with the other side out, and somebody bought it!)

Here's a gorgeous wall-hanging (huge amount of work, the picture kind of sucks, but there are all these fabulous woven pleats in it):



Three-dimensional weave structures (either by weaving in pleats, working with high-twist yarns, or playing with differential shrinkage, not sure yet...) are next on my list of things to try, once I have a little time to play around. I missed Anne Field's free lecture, but I'm looking forward to buying her book on collapse weave.

And, finally, here's why I don't have a ton of pictures from the show:

Good thing she's cute. :)

Raining Leaves!

The Weavers' Guild of Boston sale went really well (I sold more than I expected to!), and I will post photos, but, for now, I had to post about the crazy leaf rain out back today...


The leaves are a bit later this year than normal, and we have a Norway maple in our back yard (they have been classified as a weed species, eeks - a normal looking maple, shorter and more full than sugar maples, terrible root system - can't plant anything anywhere near them - and the leaves do change, but not as brilliantly as sugar maples).

ANYWAY. The Norway maple out back has been really slow to change this year, but it finally has, and this morning, after a couple cold nights, as soon as the sun hit the leaves they started just *pouring* off the tree! It was hilarious! About 1/3 of the leaves fell in the space of about a half hour!

So, I plopped Conall into them - we have a set of photos of Bella from right around the same age, also sitting in the leaves, but, here's a couple of Mr. Conall (ten months old today!):



OK, let's see if I can find one from Bella... This is from October, 2004, and she is eight months old, just about on the nose:



That was fun. :) The light was better in the pictures of her. And I probably should have cropped a couple of the ones of him (lazy)... But I do think they look alike, though she had more hair than him! :) (And it was red then, too, obviously, his is light brown, but I think it will wind up darker, more like mine.)

Jurying the Weavers' Guild of Boston Show

So, yesterday's jurying experience was fantastic!

The amount of handwoven items was unbelievable - when I first saw the sign-up sheet for the jury, I was surprised at how many people were acting as jurors. Now I see why! The only way to get through everything in a three or four hour time frame was to have about 10 teams of jurors going over items...

My partner and I only got through three people's work - we did get one of the *very* prolific weavers, though, who does really beautiful work. (And I can't remember her name, argh, I can't believe it! I'll find it and post it here - with some photos of her work, too.) She works mostly with rayon chenille, done in plain weave, with supplemental warps of novelty fibers (ribbons, boucle, etc.).

It's her color sense that makes her work special - just out of this world beautiful combinations of color in her warps, where practically every thread in a scarf, e.g., is different from the one next to it. And to top it all off, she dyes most of her own yarn. Wow!

Her art-to-wear coats were fabulous - I tried a couple on, how fun! My jurying partner was like - "you *have* to have that coat, it's fantastic on you" - tunic length, with wide sleeves, fantastic antique/ethnic buttons, etc., I can't really describe it. $1200. Eeks. Definitely a fair price for the amount of work that went into the item - but at this point in my life, $1200 would buy a whole heck of a lot of yarn! LOL. Maybe someday... I would absolutely *love* to have lots and lots of extra money to spend on things like that, and to support artists. (Buy Handmade!)

** Edited to add - hooray for people with better memories for names than me! :) Maureen identified my mystery weaver for me - Barbara Willis. I do believe she also shows her work at the Cambridge Artists Cooperative gallery in Harvard Square, as well. (59A Church Street, Cambridge, MA). Thank you! **

I completely forgot to bring my camera. Duh. I am hoping to scoot down for part of the sale tomorrow before it's over, though, so I'll bring my camera then and take some pictures and get them on line.

The variety of the work was astounding - and very inspirational! You'd think that after my mad rush of weaving/finishing/getting ready for this sale, I'd take a night off... But, nope, I spent the evening warping some merino yarn I dyed a while ago to give a Wall of Troy twill scarf a whirl, just to see how it comes out.

MVP!

Ah, finally, a chance to post. The resident Woodland Fairy has been hogging the computer today.


(She has wings, too, but we decided they were a little big to wear to preschool.)

Things are insane around here. Conall is croupy and teething, I'm sick and stressing out about the Guild sale, and Carlos is working (literally) around the clock (he's gotten about two hours of sleep since Saturday - seriously, two hours). Huge design review for him at work, yesterday (from 9am - 8pm) and today. Tape-out (when the chip schematics go to the fab to get built) is next Friday. Here's hoping he'll actually sleep tonight - I'll be the one pulling the all-nighter tonight!

The baby blanket is off the loom, I have a huge array of scarves, and I'm working on a quick bamboo shawl, which needs to be finished tonight. Then tomorrow night will be dedicated to tagging everything with care instructions, etc.

Oh - and the Red Sox won the World Series! :) And Mike Lowell, my favorite player, got the MVP award for the Series! Red Sox management, please, please, please sign him and stay miles and miles away from stupid-head A-Rod!

Front Page *Again*!

Eeks - oh my goodness, I'm on the Etsy front page *again*!

Thank goodness for Maple (North Star Alpacas), I'm terrible about checking to see if I'm in treasuries, so I probably wouldn't have even noticed that I'm there if she hadn't pointed it out...

Let's see if my screenshot worked:

OK, so that's kind of tiny, but there's my Earthy scarf that I wove for the EtsyFast October challenge!

Baseball, Pillows and More

Now *that* is what I call a baseball game! Heck of a game last night at Fenway - of course I'm happy the Sox smucked the Rockies in Game 1, but last night's game was a real classic pitching duel... Both starters were excellent and the final score was 2-1. That's the kind of game that is fun to watch!

OK, on to weaving matters... I managed to put together my inventory for the Weavers' Guild Sale. Phew. One task done. Now I just have to finish up the last few items that are on the list but are still on my looms, eeks!

I did finish what I thought would be a turned Ms and Os shawl last night... Twisted the fringe in front of the game and got it washed, etc. But, as I suspected while I was weaving it, I'm not wild about the stripe pattern that I put into the weft. Looks kind of table-clothy for a shawl, at least to my eye. So, I'm thinking of cutting it up and making bolster-shaped pillows from it, which should suit the pattern perfectly. And it's made from bamboo, so it should stand up to use as pillow fabric (though that will be interested to discover). I've never made a pillow from my handwoven fabric before - fun!

I would post a picture, but half the batteries are missing from my camera. Taken to put into some toy or another (a little flashlight, actually, I think, for Bella, who loves that sort of thing).

There are never enough rechargeable batteries in this house! :) And we don't even buy the munchkins very many electronic toys...

So, here's a picture of some bamboo from Wikipedia article about bamboo:




And I really wish I had batteries in my camera because the leaves are soooo much prettier than last week! The colors are really spectacular this fall... We had a pretty terrible drought in August and September, I wonder if that contributed to the colors (eeks!)?

Buy Handmade

I just signed a pledge to Buy Handmade for the holidays this year. A nice idea - etsy and various other groups of artists/artisans have gotten together to promote buying handmade items, and signing the pledge is a small part of that push.

Want to sign up? Go here. Fun! :)

I've already bought some really neato little presents from etsy seller Littleputbooks for my 10,000 female nieces, lol, and one for my daughter's preschool teacher, too. (Now, if you're one of those nieces, don't go peeking!)

Hooray for Etsy and unique gifts!

Earth Challenge

So, etsyFAST (Fiber Arts Street Team) has a challenge theme each month - and this month's theme is the element Earth. So, I wove this scarf (bamboo again):

And finally listed it yesterday. :) Brown tones, and for some reason the pattern reminds me of crops/fields. Here's a closeup:

The squares appeal to my structured side. I think I'm going to have to play with this structure and more colors at some point. Probably *after* the Weavers Guild Sale!!