MY NEW BABY HAS ARRIVED!!!

Okay, okay, it's not a real baby, but it feels like a new baby -- I am now the proud adoptive mother of a beautiful Lendrum Saxony spinning wheel.  Am I happy? Oh, c'mon, do you really have to ask?   Well, here she is . . . .

And as many of you spinning wheel geeks know, Mr. Lendrum ships these wheels unfinished, so I will be doing a bit of sanding and finishing this week.  The previous owner had not gotten around to doing the finishing and, of course, I had to spin on it for a few days.  I did manage to test out some of the Danish oil on the bobbins and lazy kate first.  Here's the result.  I am thinking the wheel is going to be more than gorgeous after I'm done with finishing it.

And here's what I'm spinning on my new baby -- superfine merino, one of my random rovings.

Oh, the past few months have been trying -- that's why I haven't had any motivation to blog. Having my son in a major bicycle accident and then dealing with elderly parental issues put me in a blogger funk. It's hard to stay positive sometimes, but there is one thing that can keep you centered -- crocheting piles of granny squares with my colorful handspun yarn. What a comfort! and what an obsession as I must keep crocheting to see how the next square is going to play out. 

They are just so beautiful and fun and mindless.

So in the midst of everything going on, it turned from Winter into Spring.  The roses in my garden are more lovely than ever.  Just a few minutes out in my garden can reinvigorate me. I guess that's what Spring is all about.

BLACK SHEEP GATHERING COMING UP!

In between trips to hospitals and nursing homes, I have managed to squeeze in some dyeing. I am preparing once again for my booth at Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene, OR, on June 19th through 21st.  Here's a little preview of some merino/bombyx silk roving that I randomly handpainted.

And here's a new fiber product I will be taking to Black Sheep.  I call it Capistrano Fiber Arts Studio "Pastiche".  This is a jumble of miscellaneous fibers -- merino,wool,angora,kid mohair,mohair curls, cut up novelty yarns and angelina.  Most of the fibers in my "Pastiche" are hand-dyed by me and I use this fibery jumble to spin those big chunky novelty yarns made so popular by the book Intertwined.  I'll have lot of bags of "Pastiche" in many different and vibrant colors.  Here's just an example:

Whew!!  I can't believe it.  I made it over the nonblogging mental block hump.  Now I really feel good.  I'm off to knit with my girlie friends now.  

STUFF HAPPENS ALONG WITH OTHER STUFF

I usually don't talk about really personal things on my blog, but this past week has been a little over the top for me.  In the midst of preparing for the Southern California Handweavers Conference, my 22-year-old son had a head-on collision on his bicycle with another bicyclist. He was seriously injured and broke his nose and bones around one of his eyes.  This necessitated reconstructive plastic surgery and a four-day stay in the hospital. I've been kind of a basketcase, and holding it together by a thread.  Good news is that he's banged up pretty badly, but he's on the mend.  So . . . friends out there, send some good thoughts this way, okay? 

Friday, Saturday and Sunday marked the Southern California Handweavers Conference out in Riverside.  I made a huge effort to be there because I didn't want to back out at the last minute.  I took some pictures of the goings on at the conference.   Many good classes,guild booths, vendors, and the gallery exhibits of fiber artists' work and the fashion show garments were some of the best I've seen at this local conference.  

Here is Gwen Powell of the Greater Los Angeles Spinning Guild at one of the wheels in the guild's booth.  

Gwen did a terrific job of luring new spinners into the booth and getting them on wheels and drop spindles.  She also conducted mini-competitions including these newbie spinners and some of the more experienced spinners.  She had a great array of prizes for the winners, all of which were donated.  Here are some of the participants.  

Many of the local weaving and spinning guilds had booths that had been decorated with items made by guild members.  Here is the booth done by South Coast Weavers and Spinners, the guild to which I belong.  

Here is a display of beautifully woven and colorful scarves by another guild.

I'm not positive, but I think this was the Saturday Spinners' Guild booth.

And another guild booth.  I didn't photograph all of them, but for all of the local conferences I have attended, these were some of the best booths I have seen.  Each guild took so much time and effort at making each booth special.

The vendor hall featured top notch vendors, all of whom had wonderful products, many of them handcrafted.  Morgaine Wilder, well known owner of Carolina Homespun, had a wonderful booth as usual.  www.carolinahomespun.com     Kristine Brooks of Curious Creek Fibers (San Diego) was in the Carolina Homespun booth, as were Kristine's beautiful fibers and yarns. www.curiouscreek.com    It was a delight to have my booth across from theirs.  

Nancy Colburn owner of Chameleon Colorworks had a beautiful array of her hand-dyed yarns and fibers.  She's got great sock yarns and patterns to go with them, and great spinning fibers, including the new Optim fiber.  Her website is:  www.chameleoncolorworks.com

Here's a peek at the Redfish Dyeworks booth.  So many lovely colors of 20/2 spun silk for weaving and knitting.  Sadly, Sandy and Elf were all out of their wonderful handpainted rovings, having sold them all at Stitches West the week before.  I was all set to pick up a few more for my stash.  Dang!  Here's their website:   http:redfishdyeworks.com

Some of the other vendors were Custom Handweaving from Redondo Beach, Nebo Rock Textiles from Covelo, John Marshall (silk guru) also from Covelo, Griffin Dyeworks, Village Spinning and Weaving, Just Our Yarns from Virginia, Northwest Looms, Glimakra Looms, Clemes & Clemes (handcards and spinning wheels) from Pinole, CA.  

I did manage to purchase a beautifully handcrafted Niddy Noddy from Northwest Looms, a set of Judith MacKenzie McCuin's acid dyes from Carolina Homespun, and a raw mohair fleece from Nebo Rock.  

And, of course, Margie and I had a booth for Capistrano Fiber Arts Studio.  Here are some pictures.  Margie's handspun mohair yarns (which she also sells at Strands and Stitches in Laguna Beach).  And some of my handpainted merino rovings.

More of my handpainted rovings -- merino/angora/silk, merino/bombyx silk and just plain merino.

Here's a rack of handpainted blueface leicester rovings.  Some of these lovelies will be posted in my Etsy shop this week.   www.capistranofiberarts.etsy.com

Our friend, Pam, shared the room at the Marriott with us and on Saturday night, we treated ourselves to a fabulous dinner at the Spanish restaurant, Sevilla.  So many exotic tastes and a picture of sangria.  All in all, we had a wonderful weekend.

So now it's back to the real world, catching my breath and nursing my baby back to health (well, he's 22 but he's still my baby) and off to the plastic surgeon today for removal of stitches, stints, and staples today. And, BTW, thank you to everyone who stopped by the booth at the conference with getting well wishes for my son.  

FUN WEEK

This week I have been very busy getting fibers and yarns ready for my booth at the Southern California Handweavers Conference at the Riverside Convention Center on March 6th, 7th and 8th. (www.aschsite.org) Despite the work that needs to be done, I did manage to take a couple of breaks during the week to play around.  My friend, Michelle, from Escondido came for a visit and we spun some bulky novelty yarns.  We made up a big mixture of mohair, mohair curls and such, and here is the skein I spun when she was here.  This is 46 yds. and weighs in at 3.8 oz.

After Michelle left, I kept looking at all these lovely natural colored fibers I had -- dark and light mohair, kid mohair curls, pygora, corriedale, merino, and angora. So I made up a concoction of fibers, threw in some novelty stuff, and here's the result -- 56 yds. and 4.5 oz. of loveliness:

Here are a couple of other bulky mohair novelty skeins I spun.

The bulky novelty handspinning really gets me out of my usual spinning box (below).  I handpainted some superfine merino wool recently, and began spinning two of the rovings with the idea of plying them together.  Rovings ("Avalon" and "Avalon II") and yarn below.  This is my normal spinning, 455 yds. and 3.8 oz. fingering weight -- knit on a US2 to US4 needle. 

I'm thinking this might be great for some more crocheted granny squares or maybe one of Vivian Hoxbro's mitered scarves.  

Yesterday, we had our little informal spinning group down at Common Threads in Encinitas. We had the best turnout yet -- I think we had eight spinners.  What a great time we had. We'll be meeting again on Friday, March 20th, from about 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.  I am hoping Martie from Taos Sunflower will be in town and join us.  

Well, back to work!

RAINY SATURDAY

Yesterday I traveled north to Manhattan Beach to have lunch with a friend who I had not seen in several years.  It had poured all night and was still at it when I got up.  A little nervous about driving an hour+ up the freeway, the radio reporting flooded carpool lanes,water spouts and thunderstorms approaching off Long Beach, etc. I almost canceled but then decided I'd venture out and if I had to turn back, I would.  The rain goddess must have been watching over me because as I approached Long Beach, the freeway was somewhat dry; further on, the sun came out, and I had a wonderful trip. One of the highlights of my day was visiting Twist, a yarn store located at Sepulveda and 8th Street in Manhattan Beach.  Such a delightful little shop and my very favorite in the L.A. area.   From the outside, the shop seems like a little hole in the wall, but it is actually a diamond in the rough. Once inside, it's quite magical, full of colorful, unique yarns -- many of which you won't find in other shops. Tons of artisan yarns -- all the things I love: Chasing Rainbows, Habu, Malabrigo and many other indy dyers. (www.twistyarns.com)

I had a nice chat with Cathy, Twist's owner, who also creates and carries her own line of Twist artisan yarns and spinning fibers. If you're in the area (or even if you're not), this is a destination little yarn shop.  

I couldn't get away without coming home with some silk/wool Malabrigo in beautiful colors of blue,violet,gold and green, perfect for another Buttonhole scarf. This will be the take-along project for my trip to Seattle on Weds.

Here's my latest handspun project:

For the past week, I've been working on a capelet, knitting with my handspun yarns. Until I started knitting with my handspun again, I had forgotten what a special thing it was.  Now I'm addicted to using all these colorful yarns sitting in baskets around my studio.  This capelet is my own design and uses three different skeins of fingering weight handspun.  

The lace body of the capelet was knit with a merino/cashmere handspun in my colorway "Goldenrod".  I used a traveling vine lace -- lovely with handspun.  The bottom lace edge is a yarn, plied using a merino/cashmere in "Cabo" and a merino/kid mohair handpainted in gold, rust and gray.

The gold lacey ruffle was spun using a Foxfire Fibres cormo wool/tussah silk roving, which I later dyed with coreopsis from my garden.

The shawl pin is a "Perl Grey" creation and I purchased the handcrafted ceramic buttons from an artist at Rhinebeck a couple of years ago.  

The end of the day Saturday produced a stunning picture. Not quite a full moon, but it was pretty spectacular to see it floating above the huge thunderhead clouds. 

So excited to be heading up to Seattle on Wednesday and to take in the Madrona Winter Fiber Retreat in Tacoma. 

SPINNING FUN ON SATURDAY

Last Saturday, I hosted a spinning workshop at my house (on behalf of South Coast Weavers and Spinners Guild).  Janel Laidman, author of "The Eclectic Sole" and master of the Spindilicity website, was our workshop leader. There were 12 spinner participants and we all had the best time, learned so much and left with lots of colorful handspun yarns and new techniques.

After each exercise, we wound our yarn on cards so that we could see the color sequencing.

These are just some of the wraps.  Gorgeous!  

And Janel was so generous -- she signed books and then gifted everyone a 2009 Spindilicity calendar.   The latest issue of Spindilicity is now up: http://www.spindilicity.com

And here I was flipping through the calendar when July's picture came up.  I was more than surprised to see a great picture of one of my Capistrano Fiber Arts Studio rovings -- Chili Peppers.  What a great treat!  

So, on Sunday, I just had to swatch with some of the yarns I had spun in Janel's workshop. Granny squares with handspun yarn are more than lovely. 

Closeup of one of my singles yarns crocheted into a granny square.

Here's the fake Noro square.

And I'm working on a capelet with some of my handspun yarn.  

Another reminder -- the Association of Southern California Handweaver's conference will be March 4 through 7.  For more information, here's the site:   www.aschsite.org 

Puxatawney Phil saw his shadow today -- six more weeks of winter!  All for now. 

DOLLY, BLANKET AND OTHER STUFFS

Surfing around this morning, I came across a blog entitled "Purple Stockings" on which the writer had posted a picture of this doll.  I thought this was the cutest ever.  I covet this little lovely -- as do many others, I am sure.

Yesterday, I finished knitting another little artsy neck warmer, using my colorful variegated handspun yarn.  This time, I knitted a lace edging and stitched it to a lacey ruffled neck piece.  The knit edging is from a wimple in one of my lace knitting books, Lace Style.  I didn't like the rest of the wimple but I liked the edging.

I have so many skeins of beautiful handspun calling me, it's hard not to knit day and night. Knitting with handspun is addicting, so I started experimenting last night with little mitered squares of color after I saw a number of projects done by Ravelers using Vivian Hoxbro patterns. They are amazing when knit with variegated handspuns. One in particular was beautiful:  the modular scarf knit by "Llunallama" on Ravelry. And after seeing a sweater knit by my NY friend, Jan, -- the African Domino Cardigan -- when she visited last November, I bought the book Knitting out of Africa.  Lots of fun ideas swirling around.   

THE HANDSPUN BLANKET IS DONE

Yesterday, Margie finished weaving her ginormous handspun blanket.  I didn't fully appreciate how big it was until we actually took it off the loom.  Here it is still on the loom, and down to the end of the warp.  

This was a double weave, so it has two layers with a fold at one side.  Here, Margie has finished untying the warp, and she's opening up the width of the blanket.

Twisting the fringe is a must, otherwise, the ends could make a big mess when the blanket is washed and fulled.  (I knew those old encyclopedias would come in handy for something.)

Fringe finished on one end of the blanket.

Here it is fully layed out on the floor.  Those are 12" tiles, so the blanket is about 8 feet long and 5 feet wide -- and don't forget -- all handspun from fleeces Margie bought and processed herself.  Quite the project!  

I hear warmer weather is in store for the weekend, perhaps 80 degrees, so it should be a gorgeous day for our spinning workshop with Janel Laidman.  Everyone is getting very excited.  And Janel promises to bring some of her books "The Eclectic Sole".