Wool Gathering 2012

Every year there is this festival called the Wool Gathering in Yellow Springs at Young's Dairy Farm. It's a cute event where fiber enthusiasts can get their geek on about Llamas, Alpaca, different Sheep varieties and my all time favorite of the Angora rabbits. Aside from there different weaving guilds are there to represent as well as 3 tents of dealers selling everything from raw fibers to spin and kettle dyed yarns.

 I was sucked into the beautiful assortments of roving and  picked up a few balls which I now need to spin..... just another craft task I didn't really need to get back into.

 Alpacas being friendly and nonchalant as people tried to chirp to get their attentions. These fellas stayed put right in the middle just out of arms reach.

 The terrible lighting inside of the tents due to the red stripes. I'm sure it looks festive from the outside but the interior is a little abysmal with the red glow.

Still gorgeous wares from a myriad of vendors such as Creatively Dyed Yarn, whom I am always a sucker for. 

Various Rigid Heddle looms and spinning wheels. All of which I have no place for in my home so I was able to safely navigate away from them. I've decided spinning is one of the crafts I can do but I don't want to spend more of my time on when I could be tatting or knitting. You gotta pick and choose your fiber art battles and crafts.

Of course there were angora bunnies! I was said I didn't see as many of them as I had in years past. I think there were only 2 vendors that had bunnies and none of them seemed to have more then 2 or 3 out. There was a display of Angora rabbits in the Alpaca and sheep shearing tent but I felt bad since they were all crammed in together in these small cages.

 The ranges of raw fibers at this event are always astonishing. There is a vendor from Granville, Ohio called Lucky Cat Craft who had some angora's and silk that felt like you were touching a cloud.

 Being the enabler friend that I am, I was getting my friend Laura of Ajumama Food Truck to try her hand at weaving. I'm hoping she'll join me in the weaving studio at the Columbus Cultural Arts Center with Pat Bullen as the teacher.

It was great to see some bobbin lace up close and personal and as in a way where I could touch it. If I hadn't started down the shuttle tatting route I would of tried my hand at bobbin lace. I'm a bit glad I didn't because at least shuttle tatting is portable where as I don't see this pillow, pins and bobbins fitting inside my tote bag very easily.

To end it all we had to chow down on the squeaky cheese curds, especially since this entire event went down on a dairy farm.

I know my blogging has been spotty to put it nicely but I am working on getting back to it. My studio is mostly settled into now and so are some of my plans for the yarn pop-up shop. Now I just need to work on making it through this holiday and hopefully putting in my first order for Yarn It & Haberdashery!

Just for Ewe - and eventually me!

It's been a while since I have had the time to make a post. I've simply been very busy between Independent's day Organization, moving into the new studio space and the Columbus Food Truck Fest. Now that two of those 3 things are pretty much done with I find myself picking up other things. These are important things that I hope will be the foundation for my life in the upcoming years. Re-applying for Grad school and working on a business plan for my own yarn store. If you remember in my "Craft Wars" episode I talked about wanting to open a yarn store. It was not a lie to sound meaningful on TV. It is something that I do really plan on doing.

There is this sweet little Yarn Shop up around the lake house called "Just for Ewe". It is a very inspiring place where the yarn is like waterfalls of color through out the store. Not that I want mine to look like that but it's fun to go in there.

They also have Sheep!

And an Alpaca!

The quaint little storefront is set back away from the road in the back lot next to the sheep and alpaca stable. In the front lot is a small craft gift and candy store.

The entire place is just dripping in colors and fibers

There was even a place for the boys to sit down and relax amidst it all.

I've been reading a ton of small business books and contacting potential vendors about price lists and working out the details in my head of going from pop-up to brick in mortar in two years time frame. I feel good that I am well prepared when people ask me the serious business questions that I can give them complete answers without hesitation. A few other business owners have told me I've been doing my research and off to a really good start. The problem is just making that final leap to start this. I have a handful of forms and documents that I need to send out with checks to get this party started.

Wounded Work

 I'm not sure if you recognize these from a month or two ago. I started to work on these embroideries of bruises and scabs. Things I would say were just flesh wounds, nothing serious but still take time to heal, like feelings (oh, if my hubby saw me say that he would laugh so hard!). My hubby always tells me and my "artsy" friends things like, "why don't you go draw/knit/paint your feelings"
Anyways I digress. This was the project I started in response to my rejection from Graduate school, and I like it to much I am going to continue it. I found my inspiration from my local bestie Claire when she hit her arm really hard in weaving class and got this stellar bruise.
It made me think about the colors that erupt from that kind of injury and I continued to play on it and different formations. I'll tell you it is not a fun thing to research on google, bruises, scabs, scars, some nasty photos come up. I've been trying to take pictures of friend's injuries I most likely won't post them here because it's still gross, but not for me since it's personal.

Anyways I've mounted the few works I did on canvas and took some nice pictures of them for you all to gander at.

Bruised #2

Bruised #1

Bruise #2 Detail

Bruises are a funny things because if you pay attention closely there are all sorts of colors in there that you wouldn't except. Pops of red and purple for broken blood vessels, that greenish yellow tint around the edges and sometimes a serious black color depending how bad it was. I don't feel like I've got it down quite yet but I will keep working at it.

Scabs #1 and #2

Scab #1

Scab #2
 

I think that I have done a much better job with the Scabs. The irritating looking skin outline and pinkish scabbing texture worked well. I especially liked doing the crack in #1. I think they still give the sense of irritation and itchy that I wanted to convey. I had a really good scar but it was tiny and I think it was lost when I framing the other ones out.

I just got some excellent photos of some biking injuries a friend Jen had so I look forward to mapping those out on some muslin and getting started next week.

Tatting

I know I made a promise of Tatting post that I missed my deadline for but this has been a crazy week.  I might of made some bad choices in how I spent my evenings adding to my already exhausting schedule.  This caused me to have delirious dreams like being married to Thor (the hot recent movie version Thor) but lost in a strange mad Carnival just like the series Carnivale.

Anyways.... The point is I was sick with exhaustion Wednesday and called in sick at work.  Then I had to muster the strength to be able to teach double classes in the afternoon and evening.
Enough excuses and eye candy we move onto my experience teaching myself tatting with a Book and some bad you tube tutorials.

This is the book I used.  I got it from my Library.  It had very high rating on Amazon so I thought it must be worth it.  I opened it up to see the drawings below and the words WTF immediately slipped through my lips.  I knew it would be a bit painful and certainly repetitive and cramped fingers with many curse words and hours.

I was able to decipher being able to do the first know and what I thought was the second knot.  Oh how I was wrong.  I attempted to watch some you tube videos showing it but I was left with more WTF's wondering who these people were and how unexciting they were, lot's of heavy breathing and strange background noises as well. 

This was my first bloody attempt and you can see the shuttle I am using.  Below is how twisted and mangled it was because I thought I was doing it right but really I wasn't.

It took me something like 3 hours to do this tiny piece.

This one below is when I had my AH HA moment and got it right.  Then of course I jumped right into a much bigger and more complicated pattern.

Ta Dah!  I got this in the bag!  My nearly finished larger flower tatting.  That only took me perhaps an hour to do the entire piece.  I am getting better and faster.

When done right it looks beautiful.  I can easily see how this could occupy a lot of your time back in the Victorian days before TV and lot's of parlor sitting.  How it shows a lady's grace is beyond me.  I am very happy to add this new talent to the things I can do however I am not sure I can use it as I had originally intended for pieces in my design work.  We shall see.

Tatting like a lot of fiber arts is a series of knots or loops arranged into a pattern.  I feel that bobbin lace and tatting are like cousins to each other where tatting is the more simple process.  These are words that should of probably been at the top of the blog instead of my eye candy Thor, but isn't eye candy Thor better?

TiLT

Another week another Thursday and yet another episode of Things I Love.  I am very happy to be a part of this collection of bloggers who participates in it.  It makes me be thoughtful and thankful for the things around me and that I get to witness.  Can you imagine being completely disconnected from the other people world wide if the internet were cut out?  I feel old but I remember when Snail mail was the main course for long distance communication before Chat, AIM, Facebook, Twitter, etc. People may think we haven't made huge leaps into flying cars, hoverboards or time machines but I beg to differ.  As a cultural society we have made leaps and bounds in communication, cultural exploration, revival of past trends and taking care of our health for that matter!

Now onto the TiLT!

1. First up we have Ugly Betty.  I just started to watch this series perhaps in the last week or two.  I'm not sure why I avoided it besides my resistance to watching popular things when they are popular.  I mean for crissake's I didn't watch any Buffy the Vampire Slayer till last year.  Anyways I am such a sucker for anything related around a fashion house or magazine.  This includes Sweet Home Alabama, Devil Wears Prada, The Last Emperor Valentino, Confessions of a Shopaholic, etc etc. Betty just hits the spot for me comically as well as visually.  She keeps me company as I work on hand embroidery and sketching.

2. Helena Bonham Carter.  She is one of my dream to dress Celebrities.  I just love her and the passion she has for her craft makes her that much better.  She is completely fearless to be herself no matter how quirky or strange the public eye views her. 

3. Fostering a kitty. It's been a wonderful experience and it's not much fostering when you decide you are just going to adopt the darn fluff ball.  Fostering is a great opportunity for both you and the shelter.  It gives an animal a temporary sanctuary to heal and recover from surgery, shyness, abuse and perhaps a cold going around the shelter.  For us it was also a good way to temporarily test if our other kitties would get along with having a new comer without any hurt feelings between us and the shelter.  We got our Darling Miss Rambo Fluffington the 1st from Cat Welfare.

4. French Knots. They are just an excellent and satisfying hand embroidery technique that I have been practicing all week. I think they make the perfect little clouds to my rainbows.  You can see a great tutorial here that I learned from Jenny Hart at Sublime Stitching.

5. Jenine Bressner. She is an excellent fiber and Glass Artist I have been crushing on.  Her installations are the things I dreamed about doing when I was in College and sculpture. Check out her Flickr and her Blog.