Smithsonian Folklife Festival

They are on their way – a bevy of needles and learn to spin kits are headed south to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. We were thrilled to be asked to supply the festival with hand crafted, made in the USA craft tools.  For the festival, Tom produced a straight needle that is engraved to commemorate the occasion:

And turned his heart out to produce enough spindles for hundreds of learn to spin kits:

Hopefully a new generation of knitters and spinners will be uncovered in the next two weeks as they discover the tools of our fiber heritage at the Folklife Festival!

Loom to Luna

(Note:  The loom is now under contract.)

Yesterday I listed our Cranbrook loom for sale.   She has a 72″ weaving width, 10 treadles, 8 harnesses, and a never used shaft switcher  – all made from rock maple by Norwood in Fremont, Michigan.  She’s in great shape, sans scratches on the steel beams.  New, the loom itself sells for $7400.  And the shaft switcher is no longer available.   The Fremont woodworkers designed the shaft switcher.  When Schacht purchased the rights to the Cranbrook, the shaft switcher disappeared.

The loom:

The shaft switcher (couldn’t get far enough away to get the whole piece in the photo):

The curve in the rails is an illusion from the photograph.

We are asking $5000 for both.  They must be picked up in southern Vermont – the loom is too large to ship.  Contact us at the studio if interested – 802-869-1880.  As the picture shows, the loom is up and complete.

After a long evening, I was about to turn in when I found a visitor at our door.  I took several pictures – best as I could through the window so as not to disturb him.  I went to bed and found myself playing that game where you alter one letter in a word at a time in order to arrive at a new word:

Loom . Room . Roam . Road . Toad . Toed . Toes . Tons . Tone . Tune . Tuna . . . Luna!

Darn Pretty™ Needles

now come in BubbleGum Slant!  Tom has turned – literally – the popular BubbleGum Stripe into a slant colorway perfect for knitting those light summer socks!

Home again

We’ve returned.  I took our boys to NYC for a few days.  We were in the city to have one of our boys assessed at The Yellin Center – I cannot say enough good things about Dr. Yellin, his wife, and the rest of the staff.  If you are in need of an educational assessment for your child, run to them.   Need financial assistance?  Ask for it.  Whatever you end up paying will be money well spent.

In our case, money well spent would have been cab fare.  Instead, I felt a need for frugality so we walked.  And walked.  And walked.  This woman is used to dirt roads, not never ending pavement.  My whole body is jarred beyond belief.  If I factor in the three days of work lost to recovering from the trip, cab fare would have been way less money!

We did have fun.  We looked up Lanny Finnerty, an old friend that I had not seen in 22 years – and discovered he has not one, but two albums out – 18 and Kissing in Public.  (Buy the albums!)  Lanny took us on a whirlwind tour of NY, including FAO Schwartz, where Chris did his best on the Big Piano:

Naturally, the NBA store was a must see.  And then we ended up at Sam Ash, where Chris was able to spend time with a gorgeous PRS guitar.  He was a bit bummed (and also excited) to learn that Paul Reed Smith, himself, had been in the store a few hours earlier.  We went through Rockefeller Center:

and Times Square, had dinner at a great diner, and then spent the remainder of the evening on Lanny’s rooftop, admiring the view, the lights, and breathing a little easier.

Our last day was an arduous, but fun, trek that took in the Central Park Zoo.

This guy reminded us of Charles, our golden retriever.  I fell in love, however, with a polar bear.  He was swimming right up to the window and then pushing off, over and over.  It was all I could do to refrain from jumping in and swimming with him.  I could have watched him all day.  His huge pads would push off the window and his fur would billow behind him, then he would swim back and squoosh up against the window so that you could almost feel him.

The boys would not permit me to spend the remainder of our time in NYC watching a polar bear, so I reluctantly left and marched them up to the Met, through Central Park, and took in a tour of the Museum of Natural History.  The amount of anonymous work in that museum, the paintings, the animals, the creations, all done for the sake of all of us – that blew me away more than any single exhibit.

The trip went well.  We rode the Vermonter to NY and back, and that was good.  Got a wee bit lost on the subway, but nothing major.  The Gershwin Hotel was clean, filled with art, and had the best shower I’ve ever found in a hotel room (although its location next door to the Museum of Sex elicited giggles and “why would they make a museum for sex?” each time we passed.)  Had some wonderful NY pizza and found a nice market near the hotel that had a little bit of everything.  All in all, a good trip – one that will be fondly remembered once I get my legs back!

The butterflies are back!

Spring has arrived!  Okay, so it sort of seemed like it was here in April, being relatively warm last month.  But now – now it’s really here.  Heck with the calendar – we have butterflies!  I just took a coffee break a few minutes ago and found these two fellows dancing around me:

Tom’s mother had told us she planned on returning in her next life as a yellow butterfly.  Whenever I see a yellow butterfly, I remember Nina.  Yellow butterflies seem to like us more than other butterflies, so perhaps she has sent them all some sort of ethereal message to be kind to our family.  As an example, I asked the butterflies if they would mind waiting until I ran into the shop and grabbed the camera, and once back, I asked if I might get a shot of them together.  They obliged.  I then asked if I could take one with wings wide open.  One butterfly agreed, while the other circled me the entire time.

Nice break.  Back to work.  Have to finish carding up May’s colorway – pictures can be found on the ColorWays™ page.

Maryland Sheep and Wool!

For the thirty-sixth time,  thousands upon thousands of fiber hungry souls will converge on the Howard County Fairgrounds in West Friendship, Maryland for two days of fiber inundation.  Although we won’t be there in person, we’ll be there in spirit – and in fiber, spindles, and knitting needles!

This morning Miriam Carter picked up all these babies (and many, many more) and will have them in her booth:

You can find her at Miriam Carter/Feltmaker (listed under M) in the Main Building, B20.  The batts will be somewhat subdued, however, by Miriam’s glorious feltwear:

Cloveryhill Yarn,  in the Main Building, Booths D2 and D3, will also have a selection of fibers on hand.

A fleet of FiberShips™ will be flying south today and landing in Carolina Homespun’s booth, Main Building, C24:

where they will nestle against the Darn Pretty™ Needles that will accompany them on their trip.

Shearing Day!

Saturday was shearing day here in Grafton.  Jim McRae, the nicest shearer on the planet, leads a shearing school each year in Grafton.  When he’s finished for the day, he heads up to our barn and shears our sheep too.

This year Bonnie needed a haircut.  She was none too happy about the process, fussing, growling, spitting and all sorts of histrionics.   Afterward, she felt much better.  She must have known she looks a bit silly without hair, though, as she began making silly faces at us:

After Bonnie, it was the sheep’s turn.  The sheep were even trickier at first.  An enterprising whether torn down a rail, allowing several to escape.  Then everyone made a break for it, requiring a bucket of grain and some serious running on a very hot day.  We succeeded, however, and one by one the sheep were shorn.  The rowdiest, Maxine, is on the right – she knows what’s coming:

Maxine is a big, gorgeous corriedale that does her best to slam me into walls and railings on a regular basis.  My revenge?  She gets shorn last!

That’s one big sheep!  Everyone feels much better today.  We have had an unusually warm few days.  It has never hit 85-90 degrees when the sheep still had wool on them, but it did Saturday.  As much as they protested, they all felt a whole lot better when all that wool came off.  Now comes the hard part – finding time to process all the wool!

A beautiful thing

I’m home from the first annual Chicks with Sticks weekend at the Comfort Suites in White River Junction, Vermont.  The hotel has declared the event a success and has committed to making it an annual event – though perhaps with a bit of tweaking on the name.  My only regret for the weekend is that I was unable to spend the entire time at the hotel.  Family and personal commitments required that I drive up only for the day, the most pressing being able to witness our oldest in a bravo performance of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, in the role of Orsino:

Isn’t he handsome?

I digress.  Saturday was lovely.  The representatives for Cascade Yarns arrived and presented a yarn tasting:  Skeins of the various yarns from Cascade were available for folks to sample.  A dozen or so souls sat around the tables and took turns swatching the various yarns.  What a cool concept!  Sue McCain of Vermont Fiber Designs was in attendance with all her gorgeous sweater designs arrayed around her.

And at the far end of the room, Lois of White River Yarns held court, keeping the stitchers in stitches while demonstrating mysterious magic loop methods:

I managed to fit the dragon into my little Toyota, and a lovely woman took a shine to him and needle felted on him most of the day.  I managed to get a bit more done on his belly.  Several women learned to spin, and I learned some wonderful tips and tricks for sock knitting from Lois.

Late in the afternoon, just when everyone was beginning to feel the mid afternoon fog, the aroma of fresh baked cookies began to waft into the main room.  Within minutes, Mary Lee, our hostess extraordinaire, waltzed into the room bearing a tray of fresh baked cookies.  Could it get any better?

It is a beautiful thing to observe individuals doing what they do well.  Walter, Sue, and Lois were wonderful examples of this.  But Mary Lee – Mary Lee is a master.  For all the shows I have done, no one has ever gotten the coffee thing right.  Too many event organizers don’t think vendors require coffee at all, let alone see to it that fresh coffee is readily available throughout an event.  Mary Lee knows better, however.  Having done many a show herself, she recognizes the value of good coffee.  Not only did she make it fresh and make it available, she – sorry if I stumble here, but this still amazes me – she gave each of us a lovely ceramic mug so that we would not have to suffer styrofoam!

Will I return next year?  You have to ask?

When the going gets tough

some of us run to a hotel with a couple hundred other like minded souls, play with fiber all day, and generally chill out.  Weekend after next, we’ll be doing just that – heading up to White River Junction, Vermont to the Comfort Suites.  There will be demos and impromptu instructions in all things yarn and fiber related.  I’m thinking of bringing this guy with me:

Progress on this fellow has hopelessly stalled.  What better way to teach folks how to needle felt than to give ‘em a six foot tall dragon-to-be to stab?  And maybe it will light enough of a fire under me to get him finished – or at least, closer to completion.  The deciding factor on whether or not he comes with me is whether or not he fits in the car.  When he was first created, we had a much larger vehicle!

Reports are that Sue McCain will be at the event, as well as Cascade Yarns.  There will be vendors, us included, and a yarn store crawl offering discounts from the participating stores.  More info on the event can be found on Planet Purl.

It’s official!

The house is on the market.   Can include 11 sheep and a guard llama.

When we bought this house, I thought it was for life.  Tom knew better.  He worked every night on it for months, gutting it completely and rebuilding it.  He came to know this house intimately and insisted the house told him we wouldn’t be here permanently.

When we purchased the house, it had only 4 outlets and no heat other than the woodstove.  Tom stripped it down to the bare minimum, with a little help from the boys:

Look how little the boys are in these pictures!  These two are both bigger than me now.

That was the demolition crew on a well deserved lunch break in what had been the kitchen.

This is the same corner of the kitchen after the crew was finished.

Once stripped, the house was raised up and reinforced, plumbed, wired, insulated and, for the first time in nearly 200 years, heat was installed.  We put in a Monitor system – propane fired, on demand.  The 1903 Glenwood stove still serves as our primary heat, however, and does a fine job.

The house comes with a bonus -

Them’s naked sheep, just after shearing last spring, a spinners’ flock of 11 assorted and lovable sheep:  Marcy, Deanna, Carole, Abigail, Suzie, Maxine, George, Zelda, Duncan, Donny, and Veronica.  And Bonny – the guard llama with a great attitude.  There are Cheviot, Cheviot/Black Welsh Mountain Cross, Corriedale, Navajo Churro, Lincoln, and Moorit Shetlands.  I promised these sheep they would be taken care of for the remainder of their days.  If the new owners don’t want sheep, I will be searching for a home for everyone.