Alliance Women's Fiber Fest

Well this was our first show of the season and it proved to be so in every way. I realized that the truck is more necessary in  this venture than I realized. We did get everything there and back, but it two loads there and luckily we got it all to fit in one load back.

My husband has a very artistic eye. This should really come as no surprise to. I have used his eye many times in my crochet and to put rovings together. I had him working on labels and price tags the night before the show.( I will admit I am the perpetual procrastinator. ) He did such an awesome job and even added some extras.

I need more little baskets( and big ones too). This seems to be a never ending problem. I am constantly putting things in baskets and never seem to have enough of them. I find the baskets useful. I put the roving into them loose so that people have a chance to touch and feel them.

The rack is wonderful and very useful. I was in love with the rack the minute I saw it and have fallen in love with it even more over this past weekend. I finally figured out how to get the legs off of it. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. It was one of those things were you had to be smarter than the machine. I set it up and only found one fault with it which wasn't exactly a fault. A friend had some baskets attached to her racks and now I would like some to put on.

It was a rather slow show and we ended up selling more stuff  to other vendors than to visitors. Our big sellers came from leftovers of an auction buy. We had some books that had water damage and some cable needles that I just don't need right now. We were selling them at discount prices and if it wasn't for them I would've been really worried about the booth fee. I had 3 bigger sales of the day and luckily these made our day. When I did the final tally for the day I was extremely happy to see that we had actually made more than last year.

a picture of our booth.

Updates

Ok so I've been really bad at this lately. I'll admit it. I get busy and forget to post stuff.


At home: My grandpa passed away this week so that involved a quick trip out to Iowa. Which involved a rental car and 3 days in it with my sister and 2 little girls. It was good to see family that I haven't seen in forever again. I just wish that I wasn't seeing them at a funeral and we could all get together more often. My mother's family is thrown to the end of the earth almost literally. They live all over the country. I used the occasion to get pictures of all of them together and the separate family groups. My mom also used this time to get a group picture of her 6 kids. This is the first time we have all been together in a little over 5 years. I have to get the pictures off my camera yet and see if editing is needed and then create a file and send it out to everyone. May start on that this afternoon.


On the farm:  Lambing is coming along at a slower rate than I would like. We had a nice spurt there for a little while and now we are only having 2 or 3 ewes lamb a week. The older lambs are looking good and I'm happy with the fiber coming in on the fiber lambs. We started out with a string of ewe lambs and are now running into a string of ram lambs. Mostly 3/4 BFL.

In the shop: I had ordered some top from an etsy shop. Loved spinning it. It just seemed to glide onto the wheel. I wanted to navajo ply it, because it had a wonderful colorway that I didn't want to muddy up with a 2 ply. I needed to work on my navajo ply techniques. I finally felt comfortable the other night and pulled it out and went to work on it. The ply came out better than I had ever anticipated. Watching the youtube videos really did seem to help.

We have our first show of the season coming up this week. I can't wait for it. Of course right now I'm in a little of a panic mood. Trying to think if I've got everything. Hoping for a good show with a  good turnout.

Baby lambs on the ground

We are coming into my favorite time of year. I love lambing/kidding season. It's kind of like all of the work in the fall of putting the rams with the ewes or picking just the right buck for the right doe, all come down to this. The fruits of the labor. We have started having the wool lambs.

For those of you who don't know the sheep flock is in essence split into two different categories. We have the wool ewes who produce the fiber and hopefully new fiber lambs. :-)  And then we have the meat ewes who's lambs are simply used for sale for meat purposes. While I like watching the new meat lambs being born. I love when the wool ewes start having lambs. It's like Christmas morning.

We are having a heavy ewe lamb year which makes it a little difficult because we can't keep them all. There are some very promising lambs out there already, but now comes another waiting period to see who turns out and who doesn't.

And now I leave you with lambie pictures:-)



a 3/4 bluefaced ewe lamb

 some 1/2 bluefaced leicester/ 1/2 lincoln ewe lambs

The Shawl and other notes

I got 2 skeins spun up for the triangle shawl I am knitting so decided to go ahead and start it. My hands were getting really itchy. So far the shawl is coming along great. I don't think there are to many if any mistakes in it. It is a really easy shawl pattern though. Here is the pattern. It seems to be angling quicker than what I had expected. I'm not sure if this is correct as this is my first project. I'm hoping it evens out as I keep knitting or after I block.
I still have the icelandic/alpaca blend on the wheel right now, but will be switching back to the BFL after the next skien. I am hoping to get a hat out of this icelandic/alpaca yarn as well. Then I'm going to turn my artistic husband loose with the dyes on some white yarn to get a painted look. If it comes out okay I may just break out my triangle loom and work up a shawl on it. It's only a 3ft loom so will take a couple of passes to get a shawl.
I have a couple of days off of my daytime job coming up and don't you know they are already filled with things to do. Just my luck right now real vacation. Two of those days involve wool stuff though so not to much to complain about. We need to get the ewes and lambs shorn and then we're going to start going through fleeces up in the wool room. This could be a good thing or bad thing. I will hopefully be able to get some raw fleeces up for sale after that. We were talking the other day and realized that we had only sold a handful of raw fleeces and I had not advertised them at all. We still had a really good year all told last year and hope to get to a couple more shows this year.
Here are some picture of the shawl in progress. Please excuse the quality, these were taken with my cell phone.
                                                                    the shawl in progress

the yarn in a single ply on the wheel

the yarn in 2ply on the wheel.

the yarn 2 plied and skeined on the niddy noddy.waiting for a wash. 

Breastfeeding in Public

(Only picture of me breastfeeding that can be found. This was as our local county fair.)

With recent Target breastfeeding debate, I feel I have to get out and say something. I am not breastfeeding currently so did not join them, but gave them my support for their blight.


If any of you has ever been a breastfeeding mom I'm sure you have encountered discrimination somewhere. Maybe not publicly or to the point that it was embarrassing as this mother did. Sometimes I think it is all a matter of how we handle the situation at the time.


As a mother of 2 both of whom were breastfeed, I found the occasion more than once to do so in public. By the time I had DS I had learned to be very discreet about it, even in very public  places. I had more than one person just think he was sleeping. While I did occasionally use a cover my son never liked it and I only used one to cover up the belly fat. ( I hate for my belly jiggle to be showing.) One of my favorite stories is of a Ukrainian or Romanian lady lifting the cover to see my son nursing. She simply looked at me and said "In my country we no cover. When baby hungry we just feed" ( insert large hand movement for emphasis). She got me thinking as to why is our country this way. Why do I have to be worried about what someone else thinks of me feeding my baby. Mothers who feed with bottles don't have to worry they just simply feed their babies. I'm not condoning showing everyone your boobs, but just be comfortable nursing your baby.


I have read some comment about the Target incident and more than one person had the gall to post that a breastfeeding mother should express her milk and carry a bottle of expressed milk around for when she was out of the house. Now really how neanderthal can  you be. Her reasoning I guess was what if a young boy were to see that woman nursing. Don't you think it's time that we explain these things to our young men. They are one day going to be the husband who should be supporting their wives in their own breastfeeding journey. I would really hate for them to remember that one time their own mother made a big stink about the woman that was breastfeeding in Target.


And for all of you who believe it not possible,both of my children even in their young age understand that babies are fed from mommy's boobs the same way that the kittens, puppies and every other mammal on earth is fed. My daughter even question the one time why one baby was being fed from a bottle and not from the breast. Now that's a hard conversation to have with a child that has grown up in a farming world.

Goings on

With Christmas around the corner I'm sure you can imagine I've been really busy. I have finally finished all of my pre-ordered hats and have gotten my daughter's hat done for Christmas. Something tells me I'm going to be up late on Christmas eve to finish my DS's hat. I finally have gotten a little time to get some spinning done and came across another guild member working on what seemed like a simple elegant and functional knit shawl. So my mind starts to wander the stash of roving and I think of the perfect fleece to make this  out of. I have now hauled it out and am working out it. It is a lovely chocolate colored alpace/icelandic blend fleece. I'm thinking it may just make the perfect gift next year which is  a good thing because I have to spin probably close to a pound of this roving and then this will only be my second knitting project so it could take a little while. I will hopefully keep you all updated with the progress.

Shell hat pattern crochet

This is the first time I've written a pattern. Please excuse any confusion and feel free to ask questions if you need something clarified. This pattern may be used and distributed. Please do not copy this pattern and sell it as your own. You may sell finished products with credit to this blog.

Hook size: I/9-5.5mm
Yarn weight: I used a handspun yarn that was approximately a sock weight. You can use a thicker yarn just adjust hook size accordingly.
No gauge.
Special stitches: Shell (4dc in same stitch sk 3 st 4 dc in same stitch)

Start with a magic loop.

R1-8 dc in magic loop. slip stitch to join round. (You will slip stitch at the end of every round.) ch 2
R2-2 dc in each st. join. ch 2
R3- 2 dc in each st. join ch 2
R4- 2dc in first st. 1dc in next st repeat around. join ch2(if you're making a toddler hat skip R5 and go to shell stitch ch3 instead of 2)
R5- 2dc in first st. 1dc in next 2st. repeat around join. ch3
R6- 3dc in same stitch as sl st.* sk 3 sts 4dc in same st.* repeat from * ch3
R7-13- repeat row 6 (for toddler pattern reduce rows by 2) at this point you can add or subtract rows for customization.

Edging- ch1 sc in back loop of st. repeat around. sl st into beginning ch1 and repeat.
Weave in ends

Enjoy!