post Rhinebeck post

The much anticipated NYS Sheep and Wool Festival, aka Rhinebeck, has been and gone. I'm home, sorting and reorganizing my buttons, the booth components and the rest of it.

On Friday I arrived in Rhinebeck around noon, picked up a sandwich from Bread Alone and unloaded my stuff on the fairgrounds and set up my new display, which is sort of fiddly to do, but shows off my wool buttons and button-centric knit samples better than previous displays or at least I think so.




At the end of the day I had a chance to shop in The Folds booth in it's new location. I couldn't decide which Socks that Rocks yarn I wanted with only a handful of people in the booth! I need that Filene's basement frenzy to do a better job of shopping! Workshop attendees and other vendors have that Friday advantage.

Maybe the alarming weather predictions were a factor this year and maybe the upcoming Stitches East impacted the attendance, but the wonderful, avid, rabid fiber people braved the sunny, brisk Fall weather to come to the Dutchess County Fairgrounds were greatly appreciated. Saturday morning before the gate opened it looked like this, (see the happy-to-be-there attendee waving!):


I took a few minutes before it opened to attempt to shop at my short list of booths. My wonderings are restricted since I'm supposed to be there selling and not shoppin'! Beyond my booth in Building A I sought out Creatively Dyed Dianne's colorful yarns and went away with a skein of the multi-multi colored fingering.


Across the aisle was the popular Briar Rose booth which had a line in it already, so I had to abandon any notion of shopping there or even seeing the selections, unfortunately. (Look at the detail on that lady's sweater!)



Had to scurry back to find my boothmate Sarah selling buttons for me already. The rest of Saturday was made up of a flurry of sales of my leaf pins, shawl pins and assorted buttons. Jane (as in, Not Plain Jane) stopped in to compliment me on my new direction---she's been a supportive customer there each year through all my transformations. I asked about her current projects and she's very pleased to have one of her shawls in Clara Parkes' new book. Yay! Jane!

I also was fortunate to be next to the Wool Room booth where author and artist, Carol Cypher, was helping out. Two years ago I had bought her then current book, Hand Felted Jewelry and Beads, she signed the book and talked with me briefly about the book process, being an author and teacher. I intended to start felting right away! Didn't happen. But now I'm determined with her encouragement to get my dyepots going, dye my supply of roving and get started with wet felting. Hope to take a class from her next month at the Kinokuniya book shop in NYC.

The aisles bustled in Building A with great knitwear and other fiber celebrities. I wore my Swiss Cheese Scarf knit in Dicentra Designs glowing golden orange and it befriended several other Swiss Cheese Scarves throughout the day.



Half way through Saturday a woman in an eclectic array of garments dropped into the booth to admire my Einstein Vest (also in a glowing Manos yarn, glowing was the key word for my accessories) and I started to refer her to the Sally Melville books and the pattern for it. It's a very, very simple garter knit but makes a great billboard for a special set of embroidered buttons. She didn't want to knit it she wanted to buy the vest off my back! I thought she was kidding, but she wasn't. We made a deal, I clipped off the special buttons and she left me there unsweatered. That was just too funny! I asked what she wanted me to knit for her next year!

On Sunday the weather was not so great and surely many chose to avoid the damp and drippy conditions. I got to do more shopping and headed for a booth that Sarah guided me to, Julia M Hilbrandt, who makes sleek, simple bags, purses, pillows out of industrial felt with great machine stitched detailing. I was so attracted to her aesthetic I tested all the strap lengths and found the bag I couldn't live without. She also had on display an apple green, heavy felt tree skirt with curvy stitched pleats that should certainly be on someone's Christmas list. Hope to see her again next year.

A big thank you to those that stopped by my booth and bought buttons, admired buttons, touched buttons, rummaged through my sale buttons and my vintage buttons and appreciated my work.

And I'm thankful that I have friends in the area that are willing to put up with me for the weekend, feed me warm dinners, give me a comfy bed to sleep in and accommodate my whims. Thanks Sue and Jamie!

The sun's out here, the Fall color is just arriving in our neck of the woods and it's perfect light for photographing buttons to upload to the new etsy shop:

who needs sunblock?

Monday was one of those few sunny day we've experienced this summer (and spring) and I spent the day happily shuttling back and forth to my dyeing area in the garage minding my crockpot full of yarn, hand-painting hanks of yarn, rinsing and hanging them out to dry in my breezeway. The light was so ...light!

Yesterday we stoked up the BBQ so we wouldn't forget what a grilled burger tastes like, we did errands with car roof open, we wore sunglasses, we took the dogs to get ice cream...

The sun didn't last long. This morning it's back to being overcast and threatening rain, not good for dyeing, barbequeing, photography or painting the house.

I was trying to shoot a picture of the results of Monday's dyeing to email a friend this morning---the light from my back window did little to enhance the fiery results.




I pivoted to see if the schizophrenic's worktable had better light for photography---

Not really! So from the worktable cam this morning---socks in progress (SIP), over-dyed Tweed (removed that pesky tweed detail!), punchneedle embroidery in progress (PEIP)and threads, threads sorted to be dyed, knitted edging in progress (KEIP), bulky knit hat waiting for button, finished embroidery waiting to become buttons and pins, the always open Barbara G Walker pattern book, hanks waiting to be wound...and all of this with the Ott light switched on because it's too dark at 9 am not to have lights on!

No need for sunblock again today!

naturally...mostly

Was going to keep my blog updated as I traveled from the West Coast through the Southwest (on Southwest) but it was less and less about making things than it was about family and not making things.

I did make progress on these socks while in Sacramento:

When I was in Albuquerque I did get a quick visit to Village Wools before going to the airport which delighted my Mom and my sister-in-law. It's a great store, lucky Albuquerque! Found some BrownSheep yarn that isn't carried on the East Coast or at least I hadn't run across it--NatureSpun in fingering weight and Jarbo Garn in a single fingering weight---in a natural colors which I intend to dye and maybe felt.

In Phoenix I misplaced my list of knitting stores but ran across Tempe Yarn and Fiber---they were a fun group. I mentioned Ravelry and they suggested I take a look at their Fred Made me do it group. There I added to my natural color collection to dye---with a few skeins of BrownSheep's Top of the Lamb single in sportweight. I'm smitten by singles in any weight.


What this all boils down to is this---when I returned home to Long Island Spring had sprung more fully and there were new cygnets in the Lake. I caught the mother swan paddling away from our bulkhead and only snagged a few unsteady shots.

Their taupe color reminded me of my natural yarn collection. Of course the natural yarn will eventually be dyed unlike the cygnets. Which reminds me of one more thing: I was shown a book on my trip called Why Paint Cats. I was amazed at the images inside. Amazed and creeped out! It's full of images of "painted" cats. People spent inordinate amount of time air-brushing and painting cats like this one, that I just swiped from website engaged in discussion about painting cats. :
I'm thinkin' how I would even go about painting my black dogs...they barely get baths, so I don't think this is gonna happen and oh, the ethics seem to be a question too!

can't seem to put my knitting down

I have friends who are prolific knitters, who crank out shawls, socks and sweaters (that actually fit someone) every week or so it seems. For me, it's the knitting process.

Last week I felted hats that I knit from different base yarns, a snake-y scarf in Noro's Kureyon (from Knitting New Scarves by Lynne Barr) and swatches.



The hats didn't look good on me, and even though the striped, pointy one with the ear flaps did look good on my husband, he would never wear it in public---so it was easy to justify felting them.

I'm incorporating the hat shaping, the toe up socks I've been working on recently and the holes from the Swiss Cheese scarf that I blocked last week, in my next knitting for felting experiments. I've made pattern notes and I'm preparing several hanks of 100% wool worsted for dyeing, because the readily available Paton's Classic Merino was not inspiring colorwise, though the sale price was. Knitting for felting takes lots o yarn and it's gotta be the color I want to work with!

Got the dyeing counter in my garage prepped now that it's warming up. I just have to make it happen.

one summer project

I was introduced to the punchneedle process last spring, by my friend Sarah, an accomplished rug-hooker. She got me started with the tools and a fistful of wool thread. Until then I was not a wool lover in any big way, knitting with wool only occasionally. Though I was curious about Punchneedle process it was not love at first sight, that is, until I threw my punchneedle supplies into my suitcase and took it with me on a trip West last summer.

It started to gel for me then. I found myself making lots of circular swatches to find a comfort level with the subdued colors of the wool DMC Medici thread. A growing mountain of puffy, wooly circles ended up becoming buttons. More on buttons later...

I've come to love and appreciate wool through the dyeing process. I love the way wool takes up the dyes and the depths you can get (or some people can get with the dyeing process). I spent some time this weekend transforming a pile of pale pastel skeins of DMC wool into a pile of intense vibrant skeins. I'm not methodical about this dyeing process yet, but I have a good time in a mad scientist kinda way creating colors and dipping skeins in one jar and another. I'm sure there'll come a time when I want to duplicate and control the process better.






I did have a plan though for the specific colors I needed to round out my palette and I'm happy with the weekend results. A new collection of buttons for the Fall are in the making!

dyeing to be or not to be...

This April I took a wool dyeing class at Webs in Northampton, MA. It was great fun, I posted pictures of the class activity then and an array of colorful skeinlets that were a result of the class exercise. What I didn't post were pictures of the sock yarn I dyed at the end of the day with the leftover dye solutions. A little canary, a touch of peacock and some cherry, that was all I had left.




I wanted to continue dyeing at home, but lacked an area to do it in. Over the course of the next few weeks I gathered supplies and more dyes and cleared a counter in my garage for mixing dye stocks and painting. Finally, Thursday I mixed the dye stocks and on Friday I was able to do my first dyeing project, finishing the sock yarn from class! I re-skeined it into a larger hank and did some over-dyeing inspired by the new leaf growth colors in the backyard!




Ready to knit into a pair of leafy Spring socks--- should I call it garden camouflage?

Dyeing day

I love hand-painted-, kettle-dyed-, hand spun-, multi-colored yarns, however it happens. Inspired by these yarns I wanted to dye my own palette of ribbons and yarns, so I've looked for a workshop in the Northeast. And...

I drove from Long Island to Massachusetts early Sunday morning to take a class in dyeing yarn with acid dyes at Webs in Northampton. Gail Callahan aka Kangaroo Dyer, Webs resident dyer, was our instructor. Gail shared her dyeing history with us and we made our introductions/confessions. She gave us a lesson in the use of the niddy noddy and we started skeining our base yarnlets.



Everyone seemed to master that process, yarnlets were then dunked into our buckets of water and vinegar solution and we ventured out into the retail sales area of Webs to clip samples of various fibers from cones to test along with our yarnlets.



As if that wasn’t enough, to be in the store unfettered by April sale shoppers, we moved into the warehouse to clip more yarns and gather stray skeins! My head was swimming with too many fiber options or lack of latte, I don’t know which.



Fibers gathered… we measured 3 “primary” Cushing dyes into our quart containers, made pastes with tepid water and added boiling water to create our 3 primary dyestocks.


From the dyestock bases we then measured “transitioning” combinations into 12 smaller containers.

The alchemy began when our yarnlets were submerged into the multitude of cups that obscured the tables. One by one, the yarnlets were removed from the cups, wrapped in plastic wrap and popped in the microwave. They emerged as shrink-wrapped spring rolls and rinsed in the sink to ohs! and ahs! We had 3 different base Shetland yarns to choose from for our test mini-skeins and the differing results were evident as we spread them out to compare.





Everyone had chosen full skeins and hanks of additional yarns to experiment with until the class was over. What a variety! I was so busy with my own that I didn’t get a chance to shoot anybody’s creations. Mine are hanging in the motel bathroom until tomorrow’s return home.

Gail wrangled the group through the different steps of the process throughout the day and removed the intimidation that some of us/me felt about the chemistry of the procedures and empowered a roomful of novices and inspired the more experienced dyers. I would recommend a trip to Webs, of course to see and buy yarns (Kangaroo dyer’s creations among ‘em) and most certainly to take a dyeing class from patient Gail.

Tomorrow, with the class out of the way, I will be more able to focus on shopping at Webs!