Evil Toys

Article A: Examine the current bane of my existence in these two toys:




Now, I know I shouldn't complain. I'm very lucky to have a rigid hettle loom and a new drum carder. But these things are seriously trying every ounce of my patience. The first time I warped my loom, I had the help of Bob and Patrick, my friends at Winderwood Farm. So I thought I'd take 45 minutes on Friday night and whip that together and be well on my way weaving by Saturday morning. But the loom decided to teach me humility by having the warping peg fly off the windowsill I had it attached to and then refusing to have any even tension. Needless to say, my loving boyfriend Joe was not happy at being woken up late Friday night to hold my warp threads as I slowly wound them on. Then, in my cranky mood, he thought it would be good for him to give me advice on how to do it. Ah, men.
And then there's the drum carder. Sunday was going to be an easy morning of playing with some scrap fibers and making beautiful bats like my friends at Winderwood make. And of course, the drum carder laughed at me when I cranked it too fast and fibers refused to blend.
So now you know why I have not posted anything lately. Lots of creative ideas, but the tools and I are still getting used to each other. I'm thinking of buying them chocolate to appease them--that usually works for me.

Response to post on transfer paints

I kept meaning to do this, but forgot. Someone asked me when I posted my transfer paint pieces if I had a source for the paints in the U.S. I did get mine from Ario, but I found that even though they are overseas, they were very fast in delivery and the currency exchange was not a big deal. If anyone does know of a U.S. source, please leave me a comment so others can know!

Fabulous Fiber Fest Finish!

What a weekend! Anyone that is a fiber enthusiast will appreciate the fun of attending a fiber fest! Its wonderful, because you're encouraged to be totally tactile with what you're buying and there are so many things to touch and feel. The Genesee Valley Fiber Festival is always around this time of year and we had decent weather today, although yesterday was quite wet and damp. I helped out at the Winderwood Farm tent and I must say, I highly recommend people to visit their website on ebay (its on my "Websites I Recommend"). Not only do they have an amazing selection of fiber, but for anyone that does silk fusion--be prepared to spend money! They have silk dyed in every color of the rainbow: its gorgeous and high quality. Here are some pictures from their tent:


The guild also does a skein and garment competition, so here is a picture with some of the beautiful entries for that:


And to have fiber, it helps to have animals. These llamas, cashgoras, and shetland sheep are available for kids and adults alike to pet and get familiar with:




This is the booth of Spinning Bunny, another website I recommend. She has some wonderful colorways of fiber and silk and she's ever so friendly and helpful to poor people like me that get stuck working on a pattern for knitting and come close to throwing it out the window!


I finally followed suit of so many of the creative blogs I love and made a padfolio based on Sue Bleiweiss' directions on the Fibre & Stitch page. This was done with silk fusion in a hope to sell it at the show, but alas, no takers...

Fiber Fest

Oh My Goodness!!!! I have been incredibly busy helping friends prepare for the Genesee Valley Fiber Festival we have in our region these past couple of days and have had no time to post anything! It should all be over on Sunday evening, so I should be back after that. Never realized how draining it is preparing and selling hundreds of fibers!

Opinion on silk fusion

Well, I did this silk fusion book over the weekend, but now I'm debating if it needs a little pizzazz. The first photo is how it looks now, but I'm debating if I should attach this bright little diamond I have placed on it in the second photo for a focal point. Anyone have any thoughts?

Transfer dyes

I finally got off my duff and decided to start using the wonderful transfer dyes that I ordered. I used the article by Margaret Roberts in Fibre & Stitch to get my creative juices going. Her ideas on how to manipulate the paper to get patterns is wonderful! The first two pictures, I did a background and then cut up pieces of my other work and layered it on. I love the technique that Margaret uses in which she crumples the paper and then paints on the tops of the little hills to achieve a marbled effect--you can see the ghostly image on some of them. A couple of the pieces I did not layer because they were so pretty on their own and so, I would just do a second transfer and then layer on it. The green and purple piece I did on Lutradur. The piece with circles toward the end is from during a rubbing with my transfer crayons on an Indian wooden block, but I think I'm going to need to add something else to it, since it looks kind of blah.