Updates? Meanwhile I have been weaving.

Since most of the dyeing has ceased for a while and my hands need a rest from spinning all the kinds of silk I can find,

I have resumed weaving...trying out the commercial stash and the handspun stash in various combinations.

Pillow time

While this is NOT how I intend to show the portrait pillows, they are finished....I think. I rust dyed them last week and stuffed them. I think they will be shown on a wingbacked chair. Stay tuned.

Sue's Luxury Fiber has MOVED

Sue's Luxury Fiber has MOVED to www.suesluxuryfiber.com

Anemones in the Garden

Anemones

I have been spinning on the Country Spinner HUGE hanks of yarn that , when plopped (that's a technical term), take on the character of Anemones. This first photo is a lighting anomaly...the yarn is NOT orange. I think my hand was partially blocking the flash! But it is a cool photo.
I then arranged them across the floor. I like the difference in size of the strands...from super-bulky to Ginormous Bulky( another technical term).

Then I covered them with silk organza net. Then I placed a net of lights beneath them.
I LOVE HOW THIS LOOKS! I think I will continue working with this.

Now I wonder how they would look in the garden?

Complex Silk

Sometimes you just have to START!

I started by dying these with Eucalyptus and rust. I got the silk too wet with vinegar and water, wrapped it around Eucalyptus leaves and flowers and around rusty bits & tied it up tight. I cooked it. Got just the palest bit of a print. SO, I re-wrapped and plunged it in my rust bath (garden rust, vinegar and water) and placed it in a baggie overnight. Much rust and some Eucalyptus prints. Not much. It just looked mysteriously dirty. I learned that the Eucalyptus buds will leave intense prints and that the rust makes the prints turn black.
The scarves did look dirty, with tiny bits ofloveliness. SO I got out my new SilkDyes, instant, non-toxic dyes. Fun! Saved one of the scarves from the compost heap/scrap bin.
They both actually look good when worn. But this one, I will stitch on to try to improve the look.

Just a wisp of Mohair!

A wisp of mohair was left on the floor, like a fallen feather, when Karen and Katie left the shop today. It lay as a reminder of a significant interaction: shiny, beautiful, sky-like, as though it had taken flight and landed gracefully.

I had a visit from Karen Lohn, the author of Peace Fibres today. You can follow her blog at http://www.peacefibres.com/blog/ . She came to see Libbie Soffer's show the show in the gallery and to re-connect on the theme of peace and fiber. We had talked at Shepherd's Harvest over Mother's Day weekend. We connected deeply over the search for personal and corporate peace and the role that fiber can play in the search.

It is an odd thing, this relationship with fiber. Perhaps it reaches way back into our early hominid history...to that time of early discovery of the protection and utility of various fibers...they ways they could be employed to tie, net and wrap things...the sinews that could hold the furs to our feet, that could lace skins together, the vines that seemed to invite the invention of basketry, the long thin fibers discovered in the inner back of downed trees, the stupendous fibers of the spider and the caterpillar...

I hope to read more about the history of the development of fibers. But, what I know now is this:

When I am in contact with fibers, I feel a peaceful ease fall over me. I breathe easier. I feel in contact with some kind of deep history of women's work. When I spin it, I feel bliss.

Give yourself space to breathe & thrive: try spinning.

The wool shop reopened today. ALL of it was packed for Shepherd's Harvest and needed to stay in the garage for the duration of the Mending Circles we had with the current show. With the exception of Memorial Day, I will be open on Mondays 10-5 and by very generous appointment. Come, pet the sweet, soft fibers.