A Numbers Game

30 working days until I pack up for Filberg

5 days until my first Whistler market

38 more kids hats to complete my inventory gaps

8 more pounds of fibre to hand paint

6 children's sweaters to seam together

3 fibre related goodies I am waiting for in the mail

10 more days until Sonia comes back and settles into the studio

14 days to my intermediate spinning class

2 spots only left in that class

17 the conceivable number of hours in the day I can knit without screaming in pain

1 great supportive partner

All the Right Ingredients

• the rain intermitent
  
• the crowds vibrant and curious
  
• the organic coffee to die for
• the customers delightful
• the vendors at the high end of their craft

Do you know when something just feels right? This venue just felt right.


oh, and a dog with fuzzy bunny slipper feet.

Pretty

I want to knit this.

Drive By about Car Free

Car Free Day on Main Street was amazing! Mariegold brought her indoor furniture so we had stuffed chairs and tv tables for the knitters. There were felting demos, looms warped up and me on the wheel. It was trippy to spin for 8 hrs straight. I think I have hurt a few things, but I have 2.2 lbs of squishy happy fibre to show for my Sunday.

Monday, the fibre goodness continued as I joined the troops in the line up at Maiwa to register for my class in the fall. The short 3.5 hour wait gave me a chance to finish up a little something....

Gotta run. There are some purple hats that need finishing.

Black Sheep Gathering

I opted out of the event I have been looking forward to for months in an effort to stay home and get my inventory under control --basically just more of it-----so I am a Black Sheep gathering of one.

Having to walk away from something that I thought I really wanted made me double my efforts to show that something better would happen if I stayed closer to home. I think it has.

All of this wool just jumped out at me while I was at the studio yesterday. Hand spun wool, hand dyed seacell and hand dyed 8 ply camel from Handmaiden. (all delicious little treat yarns). Just enough of everything to make this scarf and a not exactly matchy hat of gigantic proportion.

I've spun a lot this week. (the benefit of my spinning class on Wednesday and the carding group on Thursday) and the finished yarns have been taunting me, so much so that I think one of them is not getting tagged for the show next weekend.

Oh scrumptious knitting, I've missed you. knitting this hat is dreamy.

What happens in a week?

The first Ladner market and the two most handsome shoppers and my last shoppers of the day. I can't say enough to thank people for the warm reception at this market. The volunteers, the shoppers, the other vendors.....it was the most fun I have had at a market in ages.

Please come and visit me at the next one---June 26----I know it's going to be a great sunny day.

Oh, and things get very purple....All kinds of yarn and many versions of purple.

And friends to help you tag. I would not have gotten through the marathon tagging day without Kim's help...

There was a lot of fibre and a lot of iced coffee. Thanks Kim. Oh and the rest of the week...just some teaching, some paperwork, some strategic planning, my last GST filing and spinning some of the squishiest fibre from the best batts I've ever carded...Could it have been the silk noil, the shiny alpaca, the BFL, or all of the above.....

Derailed

I've had this yarn in my stash for over a year. It is a Fleece Artist Mystery Yarn from Birkeland that I think is a merino nylon sock yarn. The colour is exquisite and I finally had to use it. So I'm feeling leaves and find a really nice Horseshoe lace that looks very leafy to me and I'm off to the races.

I love the yarn and how it looks. It absolutely glows. But this I do not like.

And this happened at only the 3rd pattern repeat. Officially the earliest I have gone off the rails. I have some really nice dyed Shetland that I received in a swap recently. Think I'm going to spin for a while.

Decisions

Today, I could not decide which coffee mug to drink out of. Really. I stared at them for 10 minutes before I finally chose.

In the end I picked the one that would hold the most coffee. I think it was a good decision

Need more Inventory

I meant to go to the studio....I didn't make it (again). Since most of my supplies are there I got to root around for yarn to put something together. Mostly single ply handspun combined with a sweet little velvet wool.

I'm always talking about how lofty and soft the BFL is, and I'm not taking that back today. I wore this hat around the house for a while. A scarflette, something chunky??? Back to the yarn baskets to see what I can find.

Cruising

on a Friday afternoon.....Cruising....Birkeland and I once again greeted another cruise load of craftastic women. The shift was a bit different this time. As well as a carding and spinning demo, we also had a great talk on design outside the box.

Freeform crochet, or in my terms "Intuitive Design" comes from many places and inspirations. I am breaking away from "free form" as that seems to fall more into the category of piecework, intricate and detailed, scrumbled and boullioned. My work is almost entirely my own yarns (hand dyed and/or hand spun) wool to tell my textural story.

I had a half finished hat in hand yesterday, tales to tell and today I could not stop working. The fibre flew through my fingers..

I was swirling with a vintage hat design that would incorporate, my navajo plied handspun, the baby alpaca, merino sock yarn, hand dyed wool and silk. I'm so pleased with the result.

From this I jumped to my summer yellow scarf that I was working on earlier in the week and turned it upside down, sideways and anyway other than standard scarf.

Not necessarily to be worn together. Don't call the fashion police please.....But this is how I work, beat a theme or idea to death. I'm still not quite done with this, but I feel that something magical happened while I stayed home, enjoyed a nice dark chocolate mocha and watched Dr. Who.

Still some details to work out....but I think I have an idea for a new hat. I'm sure there is at least one skein of hand spun hanging around this place.

Yellow on a Gray Day

I have never really been a fan of yellow, but this combination of yellow is so lovely. A blend of dijon mustard, butter, marzipan, daffodils ---yes, primarily food references, but oh, the colour has me filled with happy.

No matter how gray the sky is today, I have this warm sunny knitting to keep me company. The yarn is a Fleece Artist sock yarn that I picked up at Beehive Yarns in Victoria. I've had it for over 2 years. It's amazing how long something can stay ignored in your stash. But eventually, like all good yarns, it will find it's project.