Art-a-Whirl will Whirl soon

Art-A-Whirl is Friday-SUnday at Gallery 406. These bags by Gwen Scharin will be there.

http://peregrineknit.blogspot.com/

from Shepherding to Whirling

Shepherd's Harvest is over and I more or less feel like I was beaten with a farm implement! The beating was a kindly one, though. Everyone was in a state of fiber bliss...including me...even as I was working hard helping people learn to let go and make wild batts.

I unpacked the truck, sorted through my tubs, moved my many new fleeces to the basement (Icelandic, Dorset, Alpaca, Wenslydale crosses). I worked the gallery today, inefficiently, but I worked.

I re-packed the truck with 1/2 the stock for Art-A-Whirl, may 15-17 at the Northrup King Building, 1500 Jackson Ave NE, Minneapolis. Friday 5-10, Sat noon-8, Sunday noon-5.
I will have roving, wool and mohair packets, books, drawing, batts.

But, for now, off to bed!

Merino, anyone?

I will have a limited amount of merino at Shepherd's Harvest this year. The braided roving is the merino. Here you see the pinks. I also have it in cooler colors as well. Come pet the roving;-)

It's almost here!

12th Annual

SHEPHERD'S HARVEST
Sheep and Wool Festival

May 9 and 10, 2009
9:00 a.m - 5:00 p.m. Saturday
10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. Sunday
Washington County Fairgrounds

Shepherd's Harvest is SATURDAY!! Yeah!!!! It is my favorite show of the year! I am surrounded by sheepy goodness...I even like the scent of it...slightly redolent of the barn and the pasture.
You must come and plunge your hands between the locks of the perfect fleeces! I get all shivery and excited when I see the crimpy locks open out like flowers!

OK, I admit I've gotten strange about wool. I find it endlessly fascinating. It takes color and form so enthusiastically, making it an ideal art material.

This year, at Shepherd's Harvest I will have a new cool activity related thing in the booth.
(Drum roll, please)
PRESENTING
(Another drum roll)
BATT YOUR OWN, from Sue's Luxury Fiber.
You, too, Can make WILD BATTS like this:

HOW? you ask.

For the price of a couple of ounces of dyed wool& dyed mohair locks :

( $4 per ounce for the wool, $1 per 1/2 ounce for the mohair)
you get to run it through the drum carder with "fun stuff" like sari silk, firestar, silk noil and angelina fiber, no extra charge, to create your very own 1 ounce batts ready for spinning, felting, admiring and, of course, petting. Tah Dah!

And, yes, I will have my roving and yarn.

So, please. come and see me.

A strange scarf I can actually wear

I just finished a weaving class at the Textile Center Weaving for Knitters. I'm not much of a knitter, but I used my hand spun and went wild...experimenting all over the place, doing floats, lace, inlays, knotted locks, an inset of tapestry on a rigid heddle loom...And, believe it or not, one could actually wear it if it weren't 80 degress today! The big poof of knotted locks is, totally by accident, at the exact midpoint of the scarf, so it sits at the back of the neck as though intended.

The warp is a Harrisville wool. The weft is various handspuns, dominantly a beautiful black alpaca with bits of firestar and mohair, an alpaca with random mohair locks, and 2 wild batt handpuns of medium wool with sari silk, silk noil, firestar and stuff. I also knotted in some Wensleydale locks.

This week, the blues

Dying continues....this week, the blues, the periwinkles.
After a frenetic couple of weeks with the opening of COMMUNION in the Susan Hensel Gallery, time to refocus on fiber. Shepherd's Harvest looms on Mother's Day, followed very quickly by Art A Whirl and St. Anthony Park Art Fair.

I made a major delivery of roving and mohair to the Textile Center yesterday. The little packets of wooly goodness keep flying out of there. Yeah!

5 1/2 yard warping board

I made a 5 1/2 yard warping board last night...plenty of length for my rigid heddle loom. It is based on a picture of a Schacht warping board that was 20" x20". So, I cut the available clear pine into 20 " lengths; overlapped them and inserted wing nuts and lag bolts; inserted a removeable nail at each of the top corners to reduce side to side motion. Cut 1 " dowels to 6 " and 6 3/4?"...can't quite remember. The four dowels across the top are longer to accomodate the fact that they are on a board laid behind the other boards. I used a 1 inch spade bit in a drill press to drill the holes. Put in LOTS of wood glue, inserted the dowels and waited overnight. Ta da! No it is not hardwood, yes there are some extra holes here and there since I did one of the corners wrong. No it is not varnished. But, who cares? It works! AND it comes apart for storage. If I had wanted to be more elegant (and more able with wood working tools) I would have made a lap joint at the corners...is that what it is called? It's a joint where part of the wood is taken away so that the pieces key into one another. I would not have needed the stabilizing nail if I knew how to make that other kind of joint. Oh well...as I said before...who cares? It works!