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.

Fiber Arts Cruise Book

I finally finished the book I started on my Fabulous Fiber Arts and Creative Embroidery Cruise to Alaska, hosted by Quilting Arts. The class was taught by Beryl Taylor and Patricia Bolton and the cover is made with fabric from Beryl's fabric paper technique (see the first issue of Cloth Paper Scissors). I had most of the cover done on the trip, but I finally got around with filling the watercolor pages with words, pictures, stamping, and things to fill the pockets I created. The fabric paper was backed with felt and the edge was covered with strips of sheer ribbon, handstitched and tiny beads added. The Canada goose picture was a transfer done on habatoi silk--I loved this technique, because I never get all the paper off with tranfers, but it didn't matter, because you flip it to the other side of the silk and you get a clear (although backwards) image, with just enough of that ghostly distortion.

No time

Ah, I was so thinking that this blog would help me get my act together and really work more diligently on my projects, if only out of an obligation to post. However, last night was a perfect example of why that does not often happen as I plan. I am a social worker and I work in the domestic violence field, so my days are often long and unpredictable. I have several job titles right now, including Supervising Case Manager at the shelter I work at, Prevention/Education Services Coordinator in which I do presentations to students (elementary through college) and community members, Outreach Cooredinator in which I try to make sure we distribute any materials to agencies and doctor's offices that let people know about our services, and the Family Safety Advocate. The last one is the hardest, but most rewarding. I work with our local Department of Social Services. They will identify a family that is currently experiencing domestic violence or still being impacted by it from the past and I work with them in their home. Sometime I do couples counseling, sometimes its anger management, sometimes its education of post-traumatic stress disorder, and sometimes its working with kids whose behavior has changed due to the domestic violence. I like the work, but sometimes I come home and simply have no energy, even to do mindless things like knitting or spinning. Well, I guess I can only hope things will slow down toward the end of the week so I can try to get stuff done again, wish me luck!

Oops!

This is why you should preview your post first, I did two of the same pic! Here's a pic of the stole I'm working on, see description in previous post. I swear, I'll get this posting a pic thing eventually!