BLACK SHEEP GATHERING -- JUNE 19TH - 21ST

In between all of the things taking up my life right now, I have been working diligently every day to dye up beautiful fibers for the booth at Black Sheep Gathering.  (Booths 49 and 50) BSG will be held at the Lane County Fairgrounds in Eugene, OR, from June 19th through 21st. Lots of classes and tons of vendors.  This is a wonderful show with many indy dyers, lovely spindles and wheels available.  And some of the best fleeces from the area will be for sale at the wool show.  Here's a rack of blueface leicester wool drying out in my backyard, and I will have loads of other fibers, too, as well as my handpainted sock yarn.

I will be sharing my booth this year with my friend, Miryha, who has a hand-dyed fiber business called Blarney Yarns.  [Blarneyyarn.com and BlarneyYarn.Etsy.com]  Miryha's hand-dyed organic cotton/bamboo was recently highlighted in the Knit 1 Magazine and she'll be bringing this yarn to BSG.

This is lovely Miryha modeling one of my new hat patterns, "Margie's Braided Cable Tam", which will be available in our booth. This was knit up in my superwash merino sock yarn, but I've also used my handspun yarn to knit this hat. Miryha also promises a cute baby bootie pattern.  We are hoping to put together some baby bootie kits with the pattern and our handspun yarn for anyone who wants to try knitting with handspun. 

Here are bobbins of two of my colorways that will be available in our booth, "Chili Peppers" and "Crayola".  

I love the result of plying two different colorways together.  Here's the two-ply yarn on the bobbin.

I used this skein to crochet the last five to six rounds of a baby afghan.  I began the center of this little blanket with "Crayola" plied on itself.

And I used five other balls of miscellaneous handspun from my stash as the blanket grew.

The skein below was spun using my colorways "Brandywine" and "Sangria" plied.  This is superfine merino wool and these colorways will also be available in our BSG booth.  

With our ususal "June gloom" in full swing, my house is full of racks of drying fiber since it is wet and misty outside -- not the hot dry Southern California we're known for.  But things are getting done and soon I'll be ready to pack up the van and head up to Oregon with Miryha riding shotgun.  For those who can't make it to BSG, I will be restocking my Etsy shop with lots of good spinning fibers when I return on June 24th.  CapistranoFiberArts.Etsy.com

Just a mention of a few other fibery things.  The Irvine Art Center will be holding its annual studio art show at Heritage Park (the site of the art center) on Saturday, June 6th.  The guild to which I belong, South Coast Weavers and Spinners, will have a booth there and we will be selling members' creations and will have demos on spinning and weaving.

Also, I must mention the Golden Gate Fiber Institute that I will be attending in the Bay Area at the end of July for week-long intensive workshops.  This is the brainchild of Morgaine Wilder of Carolina Homespun and Judith MacKenzie.  I attended last summer and had the best time ever -- natural dyeing with Darlene Hayes and spinning with Judith M.  The gourmet food was to "dye" for. This summer I'm taking spinning again as well as felting with Loice Ericson.  If you want to have a week of unfettered creativity, fabulous food, walks on the Point Bonita headlands, and best of all, hanging out with a wonderful group of fibery people, GGFI is worth checking out.