HAPPY HALLOWEEN !!!

This was just too good to not pass on, especially for October 31st. Here is a piece of art from Ben Cuevas, who is apparently more than an amazing knitter. (In the lotus position, no less.)

For more pictures of this amazing piece of artwork, go to: http://bencuevas.wordpress.com to see his project "Transcending the material". This gives me goose bumplies.

SUMMER 2011 IS SHAPING UP

Well, it's never too early to start planning your next summer. I was absolutely delighted to learn that the 2011 Black Sheep Gathering will be a little later in June. What this means is that I can once again attend one of the Shakerag workshops in Sewanee,Tennessee. I literally signed up the moment registration opened and am all set to take a felting workshop from Jeanette Sendler, a felt artist from Scotland, from June 12th-18th. Here's a picture of some of Jeanette's work from the Shakerag website.

The title of the workshop is "Hills, Heather, Lochs and Bogs". I checked out Jeanette Sendler's website: www.sendler.co.uk and went to the "Felt Interiors" page. There I found some pretty amazing pieces. I am hoping to gain some new knowledge on felt and texture and I'm looking forward to creating hills and bogs. Can hardly wait. I've attended Shakerag twice before and had such a good time and learned so much. Because of the conflict with Blacksheep Gathering, I was sad that I was not able to attend India Flint's workshop this past summer where I would have "dyed" and gone to heaven.

Other things to look forward to in summer 2011: I'll be a vendor at Black Sheep Gathering from June 24th - 26th in Eugene, OR, and have already made my reservations for Taos to attend the Wool Festival in early October. And, of course, I'm waiting to sign up for Golden Gate Fiber Institute's summer intensives. And then I see that India Flint is going to be at Haystack in Maine at the end of August. Whatever am I going to do!

Been working on felted pieces -- scarves and shawls -- for the upcoming Artistic License Faire (Oct. 29th and 30th). The piece below has already sold but I'll have many others.

Lots of stitching with my hand-dyed handspun yarn -- many skeins of which I will have in my booth.

Information on Artistic License can be found at www.ArtisticLicenseFair.com

And be sure to mark your calendars for the Southern California Handweavers' Assn. annual Weaving and Fiber Festival at the Torrance Cultural Center on Sunday, November 7th. This is a great one-day show at which I will have a booth with Margie "Ma Belle" Bell. We'll have handpainted spinning fibers and yarns, handspun yarns and bags of natural colored washed fleece. This show features many vendors with weaving, spinning and knitting products. For more information on this festival, go to: www.schg.org

FALL ECO PRINTS

I continue to gather plants from the areas surrounding where I live and from my garden/yard. I have been using these gathered plant materials to do eco printing as talked about by India Flint in her book Eco Colour. I am fascinated by the beautiful colors that come from these plants. Here is a wool sweater.

A sleeve

The back.

Close up of front.

I have since done some hand stitching around the collar and down the button band with my hand-dyed handspun yarn.

I finally finished piecing together the eco print shawl I worked on during my trip to the Taos Wool Festival.

I constructed this shawl using many different sized pieces of silk charmeuse and wool crepe that I had eco printed. Although the silk charmeuse was recently purchased, the wool crepe was formerly a skirt (from my days as a lawyer) that has been redeployed into this shawl so there's a part of my past in this project.

This shawl was all put together by hand stitching. Then, I took strips of silk charmeuse and used them as an edging, sewing them by hand all around the edge of the shawl.

This is still a work in progress as I plan to do more top stitching on it. I may try some embroidery.

We have had wild thunderstorms starting about 4:30 a.m. this morning when the power went out for the first of five times today. Much lightning and thundering -- something we don't often see here in Southern California. And hoards of rain, hail too. We definitely welcome this precipitation. And, now, I am hunkered down for the evening, with a glass of merlot and my stitching to keep me warm and content. (My husband is at a conference in Dallas, Texas, where it is 85 degrees.)

TRIP TO TAOS WOOL FESTIVAL

My friend, Michelle Hoffee, and I attended the Taos Wool Festival this year (Oct. 2nd and 3rd). I have been twice before and love this event. The vendors must be from New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Texas so there are booths here that I don't see at other shows. And there are many small cottage industry vendors who are raising their own animals, making things with their hands, etc. I love to patronize people who are raising their own flocks and working so hard to bring beautiful fibers to the handspinning world.

We started our trip in Chimayo, a small weaving community about halfway between Santa Fe and Taos, and spent the night in a wonderful B&B called Casa Escondidas. This is alovely little inn about a mile on a dirt road off the main highway.

Next to Casa Escondidas is a winery. This beautiful yellow plant, Chamisa, proved to be the bane of the trip. A good dye plant, thousands of them blooming along the road and in the hills, but a cause of much sinus distress to my travelmate.

On the way out of Chimayo, we stopped in to Centinela Weavers, the business of of Irvin and Lisa Trujillo, famous local weavers who have won many, many awards for their weaving. Their work is amazingly beautiful. To my delight, we were able to see Lisa weaving a beautiful blanket and had a great talk with her.

Next stop on the way to Taos was a visit to the Espanola Valley Arts Center, just down the road and over the Rio Grande River from Chimayo. We bought an assortment of dye stuffs and I bought a book on the Colcha embroidery.

On the road to Taos, we made two stops for New Mexico red chili powder and some Hatch chilis and chili powder. Many people had their chili roasters going. Guess this was the season. I went for medium hot and Michelle got extra hot. Oh, boy! Here's a shot of the Taos Guesthouse with the afternoon thunderheads looming in the distance. Although it threatened rain every afternoon, we only had a few drops one day.

Here we are on our way to the wool festival, walking up the quaint New Mexican streets of Taos. Our B&B was up this road, Kit Carson Road, about a mile.

This was the front of a small museum.

The road to the middle of town -- looking the other way up Kit Carson Road.

Here we are at the festival, which is held outside in Kit Carson Park.

One of the many fiber booths.

Another booth with lots of fleeces and fibers.

The first morning was our time for "serious" shopping as we sought out our three favorite vendors: Kai Mohair, Anniroonz, and Rocky Mountain Colored Sheep Breeders co-op booth.

On the right at the Anniroonz booth is Myrtle Dow -- Mama Sheep (Black Pines Sheep) -- who has been instrumental in breeding some of the most lovely award-winning fleeces. To the left is Nancy Irlbeck from Anniroonz Ranch and Ann Morrison from Wind Dance Ranch. Michelle bought a few fleeces: a jet black Wensleydale, a white Teeswater and a white Wensleydale, a very curly white Wensleydale lamb, and we split a beautiful white Wensleydale with a staple length of about 5-6 inches. At the Colored Sheep Breeders booth, we split a cocoa brown fleece of CVM, Cotswold and Corriedale.

Our first stop, though, was Kai Mohair, owned by Lisa Shell from Texas. She has the most gorgeous mohair. Both Michelle and I bought tons of Lisa's solar-dyed kid mohair rovings and mohair curls. All of her fibers are very soft and beautiful and we'll use them for spinning and other fiber arts projects.

Here is Michelle showing Lisa a skein of art yarn she spun using some Kai kid mohair and curls.

Some of my stash from the Kai Mohair booth. Luscious colors.

Here are some sheep that are waiting to be sheared and some that have already lost their fleeces. There's always a sheep shearing demo.

After attending the wool festival, we meandered around some of the shops in Taos. LaLana Wools (owned by Luisa Gelenter) is a must -- beautiful naturally-dyed yarns, handspun yarns and sample garments of the many patterns they offer. I love this very artsy shop. We also stopped in at Weaving Southwest, now in a new larger space.

Weaving Southwest has stunning weavings, art to wear, hand-dyed yarns and weaving and spinning supplies. Another must on a trip to Taos.

And we happened upon an absolutely fabulous fabric store -- Common Threads -- where we bought buttons, ribbons, fabric and silk scarves. If we only had such a treasure in our area.

Had to have our picture taken in the fabric store. We had many nice comments on our felted pieces that we were wearing.

Last stop on our trip to Taos was a drive out over the Rio Grande River Gorge and a visit to the famous Earthships. These are ecologically friendly houses that are built into the ground using all manner of recycled materials. A little eerie out there, but very interesting.

Michelle at the entrance to the visitors' center.

A close up of the spire with recycled bottles.

A new structure that is being built -- using old tires and cans.

A beautiful wall using recycled cans and colorful bottles -- the afternoon sun shining through.

Well, it was a more than wonderful trip and I've reserved my room for next year. Lots of trips and adventures to look forward to in 2011.

WORK IN PROGRESS

I've just returned from New Mexico where I attended the Taos Wool Festival with my friend, Michelle. Had the most wonderful time -- the weather was gorgeous, unseasonably warm, big white clouds, blue skies. Will upload pictures later from the festival and our time there. While in Taos, we spent a relaxing day just sitting out in the backyard of the Old Taos Guesthouse on a picnic table stitching and knitting. I hand-stitched together a shawl of various pieces of wool and silk that I had dyed using India Flint's eco print technique. This is still a work in progress but here are some pictures:

First, the idyllic environs

For some of the pieces, I cut up and dyed a wool crepe skirt that had been hanging in my closet from my long ago days of practicing law. Glad to put that skirt to good re-use. I used an iron trivet in one of my dyepots -- hence the black areas.

I also used some pieces of silk charmeuse that I had dyed with eucalyptus leaves, sagebrush and other plant materials I found up the hills and in my garden. I threw a handful of madder root into another of my dyepots and ended up with beautiful rusty brown areas.

It's hard to see, but I used a laceweight 20/2 spun silk yarn -- something I had hand-dyed for weaving -- to do my stitching. The color is a rusty pumpkin and goes really well with the natural colors derived from the plants.

This is a work in progress, so there will be much more stitching. I might try some Colcha embroidery that I saw in New Mexico and I am planning to stitch a silk edge around the entire shawl. It felt really good to sit around with a friend, enjoying some quiet time together, stitching.

ARTISTIC LICENSE FAIR

Almost forgot, Michelle (Hoffee) and I will be exhibiting and selling our fiber arts at the Artistic License Fair at Estancia Park in Costa Mesa on Friday, Oct. 29th and Saturday, Oct. 30th. We will have an array of our handspun yarns, handknits, felted scarves, shawls and such and plant-dyed wearables. I'll also have some handpainted fibers in my booth.