Ice Storm! And Handwoven

Good grief. If you're not in New England, you probably don't know, but Massachusetts/Southern New Hampshire were hit with a HUGE ice storm Thursday night/yesterday. We lost power for the whole day yesterday - got it back around 9pm, I think. We spent the night in a hotel - it was supposed to get down to about 19 last night - too cold to spend the night in a house without heat! (And little man Conall is sick, too, to make things more complicated.) It looks like Worcester is a huge mess, yikes... (one of my brothers lives there - another lives a bit south of Worcester and didn't get any ice!).

On the bright side of things, the latest issue of Handwoven magazine arrived yesterday, and my ruffley scarves are in it! Hooray!

This was a fun project, I actually got a lot of input from Madelyn van der Hoogt on it. The scarves started out like this:


And, after a lot of back and forth, ended up like this:

(The photos in Handwoven are so good!!) The project scarf is actually in the berry colorway, like the little one above, but I didn't have a chance to take pictures of it, I was weaving right up to the deadline, it actually went into the mail still damp, lol! (After my dear little son got into the laundry room, pushed buttons on the washing machine and sent it - the berry one - through the wash a third time - ahhhh! LOL! It shrank a bit more than I expected, needless to say. This child, I'm tellin' ya...)

Anyway, it was such a fun project! And the Dragon Tales yarn is just so gorgeously colored, it's hard to go wrong with it...

Well, here's hoping today gets back to normal. I theoretically have Open Studios, and I also have a couple of cashmere scarves to send out to Etsy customers, goodness. Time to get going!

Open Studios Coming Up!

So, did everyone go shopping on Friday? I'm actually pretty proud of us for *not* going out shopping, lol... We did buy some outdoor Christmas lights and put them up, though, so that was fun. It even flurried here a little bit on Sunday (didn't stick though, rats).

And I sold the sister to my cashmere scarf that I posted about earlier. Barely got it listed on Etsy, and now it's off to Chicago...

Love that cashmere... I've got two with navy stripes in the works (too dreary to take good photos, waiting for some sun), and have some on my loom with yellow in the stripe that are looking pretty cool, too. I'm pleased - and they're fast to weave, since they're twill (my shadow-weave bamboo scarves take two shuttles, so they're a little slower). I'm hoping to warp and weave a couple more sets of the variegated rayon scarves as well. All this because we've got the Holiday Open Studios coming up at Western Avenue over the next two weekends - Saturday and Sunday both weekends, from noon - 5pm.

And, finally, I'll be delivering five pieces to a new shop in Chelmsford, hopefully today - one of the WAS artists is opening a shop about five minutes away from our house! How fun! (We live near the center of our town, it's nice to be able to walk to the library, the grocery store, etc.) Even better, her shop is *right* along the new bike path that is being built through Chelmsford (as part of the Rails to Trails network, very excited to have it here). So, while I wouldn't exactly recommend biking while wearing a scarf, it will be great exposure for her shop...

(Oh - and I'm about halfway through New Moon, the second book in the Twilight series... Jacob has definitely taken a turn for the grumpier, but I still like him better than Edward, lol! I thought I was going to finish the book yesterday, but I was good and went to the studio to weave, instead...)

Twilight

OK, so this is completely off-topic...

I'm finally getting around to reading the Twilight series (no, I haven't seen the movie, I probably won't.) I've finished the first book and have started the second (New Moon) - and I am enjoying it. It's schlock, but it's enjoyable schlock, if that makes sense. (I really enjoy indulging in this sort of escapism sometimes.) Very readable, generally quickly paced (dragged a little in the middle when it was just about the two of them being happy together - that's never particularly compelling reading, is it? lol!), and she makes the Olympic Peninsula sound wonderfully lush.

But, I have to say - and I can picture all the teenage girls out there wailing in disbelief - Edward (the male protagonist/vampire) annoys the HECK out of me. LOL!! Yes, yes, I get that he's stunningly beautiful in that cold, alabaster way, and noble and such, but, good lord, is he ever morose and boring. And Bella (the female protagonist, not my daughter, lol) is alarmingly calflike and moonstruck around him. Just what I always like to see - an otherwise interesting woman that becomes complete brainless mush around the guy she's in love with (that's heavy sarcasm, there).

So, at the risk of spoiling the story line a little bit - I'm really hoping that when (I'm assuming that won't be an "if" but I haven't gotten that far yet) Edward comes back that she'll keep a bit more of her backbone/wits about her. I'm also really REALLY hoping that she'll eventually chose Jacob (minor character in the first novel, may or may not be a werewolf, I haven't found out yet) over poopyhead Edward.

Of course, I may be projecting, here. One of my very loveliest friends in college was a whole heck of a lot like Jacob - 6' 4", gorgeous mahogany skin, long, dark hair (my college friend is Navajo), incredibly intelligent, just plain nice, generous and always upbeat - just the kind of guy you'd hope for your daughter to choose. C'mon, Bella Swan, smarten up!

Any other opinions out there? Am I in the complete minority by liking Jacob better than Edward? Or does that just mean I'm old? It will be interesting to see how the characters develop, at any rate!

Cashmere....

Oh my. I splurged and got a bunch of skeins of cashmere yarn...

I used it as the weft in a couple of twill scarves - that's bamboo in the warp - and, oh my, they turned out so soft and snuggly, I love them! I actually wound all of my bobbins by hand as I was weaving, if you can believe it, lol, just because the cashmere yarn feels soooooo good. I could spend the day petting the stuff!

Not much else going on. My berry pie scarf is in a very nice berry-themed treasury on Etsy, that's always nice! (Click on that link to see it.) Thanks to Karen Garner (the curator) for including me in it!

It's raining cats and dogs here today, but Stowe (Vermont), at least, seems to be getting snow, hooray! Can't wait to hit the slopes! Soon. Still have to get Bella fitted for seasonal rental equipment, but I'm looking forward to it - it will be so much easier this year now that Conall is walking! (Kept worrying about him wanting to crawl around the ski lodges last year, not a good place for a little guy, but he'll be fine this year.)

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

A Colorful Weekend...

Our family bid farewell to a very beloved friend this weekend...

Mr. SkiingWeaver's purple car has gone to a new home! (That's little man Conall on his "bike" next to it...) The poor thing has been sitting in our garage for about three years, not working, until my brother Andy decided to adopt it and do the little fix-ups it needed to get back on the road.

I suppose it's a little silly to be sentimental about a car, but it was Carlos' first-ever car (bought when he graduated from college) and we drove it all over the Southwest when we lived in Austin. Many fond memories of road-tripping in the purple car to Taos to ski, or off to explore Mesa Verde and Telluride... But, it's good to see it out and about again instead of gathering dust (literally) in our garage.

I was obviously having a hard time concentrating on actually *weaving* at the studio this weekend....

But at least I finally painted my studio door! This is the inside view, looking out to the corridor - the door frame is a dark chocolate brown, the door itself is teal, and on the outside there's a border on the wall of the same purple as the pillar in the studio.

So, not particularly productive on the weaving front, but I still feel like I got something accomplished. We're having Open Studios the first two weekends of December (Saturday and Sunday both weekends), and I was really wanting to paint over the boring grey on my door, and get some color out in the hall, too... I have very little inventory for those Open Studios - eeks! - but I'm working on kind of letting go of the stress and just going with what I'll be able to get done before then... I've sold a whole heck of a lot of work already this fall, so it's ok if I don't sell much more... Or so I keep telling myself!

Spinning again - and a Drumlin

So, I spun a bit again on Sunday, how fun. Here's the results of my second ever attempt:


Ha! How fun! I'm really enjoying it, and it was a nice little reward/break after threading a new warp on my loom at my studio...

Sold yet another piece today:

It's tencel and variegated rayon from Dragon Tale yarns - I used this same colorway for my project that is going to be published in the upcoming January/February issue of Handwoven. (The directions will be for a different colorway, though...)

And, finally, while downloading photos from my camera today, I found this one that I took about ten days ago - we were on a little trip down to Lancaster to buy some apples and stopped by the drumlin there (it's preservation land now, and it's lovely). Aren't drumlins neat? (Click here to read about them on Wiki if you don't know what I'm talking about!) (Yes, I admit it, I'm a bit of a geology nerd.)

Hard to capture the shape of it, this one might do a little better...

Spinning! And Weavers' Guild of Boston Sale

Can you believe how completely lame I am about blogging lately? I guess when things get hectic, this is one of the low-priority items for me, sad to say...

At any rate, in fiber news, two exciting things happened today. First, I learned how to spin! Really, really badly! But I think I may be hooked. I took a beginning spinning class at the Fiber Loft in Harvard, Mass., got my knuckles good and bloody learning how to card fleece and spun some really lumpy yarn on a Louet S10. Which came home with me after the class. (No, I didn't buy it, I'm just renting it for the month to try to get the hang of this a little better. I'll definitely look for one with two treadles when I buy a wheel...) The teacher said I took to it like a duck takes to water, but I think I'm going to need a lot of practice before I get usable yarn (I'm picky).

So much fun, and my respect for the fantastic handspinners on Etsy has gone through the roof. Like lovely Ms. Maple of North Star Alpacas - wow, how on earth does she get her handspun so beautifully even??


I mean, look at that! Wow. (And click on it to buy it!) I bow to a master...

The other bit of fun fiber news was that the Weavers' Guild of Boston annual sale was this week, Thursday evening through this afternoon. I just popped down to Weston to pick up my unsold items - and found out I sold 12 pieces! (Half of the items I brought to them.) I'm most pleased! My etsy shop and studio are going to be pretty darn bare again, and the holiday open studios at Western Avenue Studios are still coming up, gulp!

No wonder I haven't been blogging much lately... I'm off to make the rounds and read some of my favorite blogs, I feel like I haven't visited anyone in ages! I'm sorry!