Stash Enhancement courtesy of GLFS

We took a trip into Wooster this afternoon to visit the Great Lakes Fiber Show. I'd never been before, due to past May trips for AAU basketball tournaments for my daughter overlapping. It was a very nice show. Lots of yarn, fiber, equipment, and animals.

I was pretty well controlled in my spending. I already have so much stuff stashed, and I wanted to not spend money on things that will sit for a long time, waiting for my attention. However, I couldn't walk away with nothing, that would make it a wasted trip, and with the price of gas..... !!!

So, my purchases include the following:

• One Lunatic Fringe Fox Fiber dish towel kit. I've always wanted to weave my own dish towels, and really thought the Fox Fiber colored cottons are fun. So, when I saw the kit to weave 6 to 8 dish towels, I couldn't pass it up. I just need to finish weaving the alpaca/silk scarf that is on my loom now, so that I can get them warped up and going. I learned from the owner of Weavers Loft ( http://www.weaversloft.com ) that the hotter you make the water the first time you wash the towels, the deeper the color. I knew that washing them made the color darker, I didn't realize that it varied according to temperature. Also, the towels will shrink more with the hotter water. So, I'm going to probably only try to weave 6 towels with the kit, make them larger, so I still have decent sized towels when I wash them, and go for the darkest colors I can get. (Going to boil them!) The kit contains four cones of 12/2 cotton (pretty fine):
  
  • 8 oz dark green (largest amount)
  
  
  • 4 oz light green
  
  
  • 4 oz light brown
  
  
  • and 2 oz. of natural.
  
  
• Two ounces of a wool pencil roving that is dyed red, orange, and yellow. (Also obtained from weaver's loft.)


• Three skeins of Classic Merino Lace yarn from Knitting Notions (http://www.knittingnotionsonline.com) for the "Hand Dyed Solutions" class I am taking at Knitter's Connection in mid-June. I needed to have one multi-colored skein, one complementary, and one contrasting. So, I bought Blueberry Jam (dark and medium blues and purples), dusk (which matches the medium blue in the jam), and Lavender (which is a very, very, light purple. Almost white.)


• Blueberry Jam


• Dusk


• Lavender


• Two (3 ounces each) hanks of 70% merino, 30% alpaca roving. One is a pale forest green type color, and the other is a pale brown/tan. These were obtained from River's Edge Weaving Studio (http://www.weavingstudio.blogspot.com)

There were five buildings with either two, or three two-sided rows of vendors, and one green area with folks with tents with sheep or alpacas selling fiber and stuff. One of the alpaca vendors merchandice bothered me a bit. He kept pointing me to bags with "fine fiber". However, when I took a look at one of the fleeces, the staple length couldn't have been more than two inches, the fleece appeared to be fairly matted together, and the tips of the locks were very sun bleached and felt brittle. I believe that if I'd separated a lock from the fleece and given it a quick, sharp tug, at least a half inch of the tip would have broken off. That doesn't leave much to spin with! He wanted $10 a pound for it! I probably should have said something to him, but I just don't like confrontation. My husband says I should have just mentioned I was a certified fleece judge and then told him. (I am certified to judge llama fleeces.)

Oh, well, all in all it was a nice day. Beautiful weather, and good company (thanks hubby for driving up with me.)

So, this is where it all starts...

Finally got things together and am now starting a blog. The following activities are in high gear around the Yew Glen farm:

• Garden - The following have been planted:
• Sugar snap peas - they are about 6 inches high and starting to crawl up the cattle panel we put by the split rail fence to give them trellis support.
• Spinach! - Wow is it doing well. Very tasty too. I may have to make some Palek Paneer to use some of it up.
• The yellow onions are off to a good start, but I think my original idea about thinning them and using the thinned ones as green onions for potato salad may not be such a good idea. The young onions appear to have a much tougher green top than the green onions you buy at the grocery. I'm going to have to do some more research on that one. They'll have to be thinned anyway, since I planted them too close to not thin.
• Leeks - I've planted about 20 leek plants. They looked like little blade of 6" grass when I planted them. I thought that they might not survive. However they seem to be doing okay so far.
• Yellow and Orange Bell peppers (6 plants total)
• Habenero peppers (2 plants)
• Jalapeno peppers (2 plants)
  
• In planters in the corner of the side yard I also have the following herbs: basil, flat leafed parslet, thyme, garlic chives, and oregano.
  
• We've got the following plants that need to put in the large garden in the back. Hoping we can get to that real soon, we had too much rain today to start: 30 tomato plants of different varieties, a couple broccoli plants, brussel sprouts, zucchini, acorn squash, and spaghetti squash.
  
• Knitting - working on the following projects:
• scarf for my husband. It is a simple decrease one stitch at the beginning of the right side row, and increase one stitch at the end. Knit the right sides and purl the wrong sides.
  
• I have a sweater I need to reattach the button band on one side, and attach the band on the other side. I didn't know what I was doing when I attached the band on the one side and didn't do a very good job. Need to redo it.
• After having completed my Hemlock Ring Blanket, I am now working on a Swirl Leaf Blanket. I've just about reached the end of the pattern, but still have a fair amount of yarn left and need to figure out a way to extend the pattern to make the blanket bigger.
• I'm also working on a Moebius Fanny Basket from Cat Bordhi's "A Second Treasury of Magical Knitting". The down side of this is that I have a front load washing machine and found that when I attempted my first moebius basket, felting by hand is not easy. I've still not got the first basket to the felted point I want it.