The St. Croix Hair Sheep

Mother's Day and it's snowing like a blizzard out there! I thought the 6" of snow we had on April 28th was unusual and kind of fun in its novelty, but this is ridiculous! I had planned to garden today but knew as Chloe and I were returning from our early morning walk and I could see snowflakes building up on her black coat that we were in for it! So I thought while I enjoyed my second cup of coffee and before I laid out some felt slippers for next weekend's Footwear and Sox Extravaganza, that I'd blog about another one of the unusual sheep I encountered at the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival last weekend(there's a little blurb on the Ouessant Sheep in the latest newsletter which you can access from the website's homepage if you're interested)...
There were several sheep breeds at the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival last weekend that were new to me. It seemed to be the year for "island" breeds...the Barbados Blackbelly, the St. Croix, and the Ouessant (from a small island off the coast of Brittany)!
None of these are breeds that are going to take the spinning, knitting or felting world by storm since they either have no wool or little wool but just the same, I thought it interesting to learn about them if for no other reason than they are relatviely rare and it is nice to see that there are breeders doing what they can to preserve some of these unusual breeds. Diversity is a good thing.
The St. Croix is a hornless, all white sheep that does not have wool but rather a hollow medular hair that sheds on its own. While shedding, the St. Croix look rather ragged, as you can see from the photo of the sheeps back, above. I wish I could have gotten a photo of a ram's mane....it is really lion-like! Unfortunately,the only sheep I could get head shots of were the ewes, shown above. St. Croix's feature a fine grained, low fat meat(my apologies to all vegetarians for talking about them this way!) and since they don't require the cost of shearing, have few hoof problems and a great inherent resistance to internal parasites and fly strike, they make a lot of sense to raise if you're raising sheep for meat.
I suppose the St. Croix hair, like horse hair or the outer guard hairs of other double coated sheep, might be good for spinning into a coarse rug warp or into twine, but from what I gleaned from the handlers at the show about this sheep, if anyone offers you some hair from a St. Croix sheep for your fiber arts activities, you might want to pass on it and save your precious time with a nice wool!

Felting with Beads

Oh....it's been a long time. I'm obviously just not cut out to be much of a blogger! Seems like it always gets put on the bottom of the "to-do" list!
Anyway, thought I'd share the results of an experiment my neighbor did last week. She asked me whether I'd advise her on a beaded felting project. She wondered whether she should sew the beads on with needle and thread after the felting or if I thought she should knit the beads in as she knit the bag. Not having ever added beads to a knitted-felted project before, I told her I imagined that the felting process could obscure the bead if it was small and therefore she might want to sew them on afterwards, but also suggested that the only way to know was to sample.
So a couple of days later, she brought by her sample for show and tell and it was quite interesting. The beads she knit in as she went were not obscurred, but nestled in nicely to the fabric yet still very visible, whereas the beads that were sewn on after the fact sat atop the fabric in an unpleasing and unstable way. Quite the opposite of what I had expected!
Tho', I suppose the results might have been as I anticipated had the beads been smaller. Since she used quite large beads, knitting them in before felting worked just fine. I don't know if you can tell from the photo much, but the beads on the left were worked in as she knit the bag and the beads on the right (those that have more surface protuberance and if you could see it up close, are literally hanging on by a visible thread, which is not visually appealing) were sewn on after the fact.
Just a good reminder how a little time spent sampling can make all the difference!

The Importance of "Playing"....not "Making"

So a few friends & I got together here last night and played with colors on the drum carders. We decided to do this, instead of our usual monthly felting challenge, because not one of us has felt (no pun intended) particularly inspired or motivated lately to "create" anything. Willa's been trying to use up odds and ends of yarn so her stash doesn't take over the house; I've been too overwhelmed by computer & online stuff that I haven't felt my head was "clear" enough to take on anything new; Lynn's been busy writing and not motivated but hoping that the pressure of some upcoming classes would get her going again. And Linda's been busy teaching and hasn't had the time to do anything for herself. All situations I'm sure you've all experienced at some point or another!
So our hope was that just "playing" with color and fiber without the pressure of "making something" and in the guise of a social gathering, might spark the creative juices again and help jump start us.
And it worked! We all were mumbling about things we might like to try next on our way out the door.
I'm not sure any of us learned anything new about color, but playing reminded us of a couple of basics. First, as Lynn commented, it was a good reminder that everything is darker than you expect after felting so you really need to have some little burst of color or light to make things "pop". Also, as Linda's sample reminded us, for felting (as opposed to spinning) you really need to have thin layers if you want the colors beneath to show thru. We all liked the ability on the drum carder to add color "edgings" or highlights.
And we all were surprised we hadn't thought of this before: since we all make yardage and work with commercial merino or merino/silk top....rather than laying out yardage by laboriously shingling wisps it would be a TON faster to take the top and card it quickly into thin layers and then shingle the batts!
So my takehome from this little gathering....play more & work less! Something I'd lost track of lately. Don't always get caught up in feeling like every free minute for fiber must be used to "make something"! Simply "playing" without an end in sight is very freeing...there's no long term commitment to a project to weight you down and if you don't like what you "played" with, the garbage can is handy and easier to use if you've only invested a couple ounces of fiber and 15 minutes of your time! And it just might inspire something grander.
The samples of some of our playing can be seen on the gallery (I don't want to bother posting it all over again, so check out this link for the photos here.

Light at the end of the Tunnel!

I can't believe it was October 16th when I last posted anything! Kind of pathetic if you think that my intention with this blog was to share some new information or technique that I'd learned each week about fiber.

It's not that I haven't been learning....it's just been that my learning was, most unfortunately, diverted these past 5 months to the realm of computers, websites furnaces & pellet stoves! I think that the aggravation and frustration of equipment & software not working well just didn't leave room in my psyche to create, play or experiment with anything fiber. It made me lose my muse and I really hated it...I have been so uninspired and unproductive.

But now that all is working again (fixed the pellet stove this morning with a metal tablespoon and a Lancome eyeshadow case - I bet that's a first!) I'm finally feeling open to diving back in the sandbox to play!

To jump start my muse this weekend (assuming Shutter Island doesn't traumatize me Saturday night!) I intend to play with fiber on the drum carder all day Sunday...I've got pounds and pounds of fleece I dyed this past summer I need to card and blend. I've already done a few experimental runs and spun it up and am looking forward to breaking out of my usual color prejudices and come up with some novel combinations (I was thinking this little trial was novel, but now that I look at it closely I see both my favorite orange and my tried and true lime green!). I'm expecting that perhaps some of my felting group friends will be joining me Monday night too, so, that will be fun and I should have some show & tell and some interesting things to share next week based on our gathering Monday night!
Until then, may your muse stay with you!

Art and Fear-The perils of art making

Enjoyed an interesting and quick read a while ago that I never got around to sharing with you. You might be interested in it if you ever get hung up starting a new project. Whether it's because you have too many ideas and have troule deciding which one or two to attack or because your desire for "perfectionism" inhibits your freedom to "just explore", this book by Ted Orland and David Bayles is worth some time and contemplation. Art and Fear; Observations and Perils of Art Making.

Fibonacci & the Fiber Challenge ...ideas and incentives!!

As you may know, we're running a Fiber Challenge here this fall (for more info, check out http://www.northeastfiberarts.com/) and this has generated some discussion among customers....both about the "challenge" of it and the fabulous prizes. So here are some thoughts on design ideas and inspiration....

For those that have expressed some anxiety about how to use the materials required, I've suggested something as simple as using the Fibonacci numbers to knit or crochet stripes for a pillow, afghan, or scarf! Or the Fibonacci could be used to weave the yarns into a shawl or to felt the yarns into a felt rug. The Fibonacci numbers are 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc (you see the progression?). Anyway, it has been determined that working designs based on these numbers creates a pleasing visual....so you could use the numbers to symbolize shots of weft or pics of warp, rows of knitting, or units of crocheted motifs, for example. The numbers don't have to be used in order....I've often used them to wet up warps (see the woven kimono jacket above) where I might thread 3 ends of blue, 5 of green, 1 of orange, 3 of black, 8 of green, 3 of orange, etc. It's a way of seeming to create a random design but assuring that it looks good and it can't be simpler.

Here's another option for design ideas....look to nature! The designer of the silver shawl pin prize, Kerin Rose, looked to nature for her design idea when I asked her about designing a shawl pin for the contest. You can see her design inspiration and learn how she made the pin for the contest on her blog below. And you'll want to check her blog out regularly as she's always got something interesting to write about and fabulous jewelry to put on your wish-list!

kerin rose: my creative space......

What does color do for you?

The last couple of weeks I've been thinking about color a little differently. Usually I think about how colors "look" together or how they "look" on an individual.
But this week, partly prompted by some research for a little blurb I was writing for an email newsletter and further fueled by a funny discussion on Saturday at a social knitting gathering here, I have become fascinated with how we "feel" color! It really is a "physical" reaction we have. I'm relieved to know that studies have shown this and that I'm not (at least entirely) crazy to think my pulse raced when Martha pulled out her lap blanket on Saturday! The riot of colors was so exciting it was food for the soul. Even for those (like myself) who usually gravitate toward darker, murkier earthtones, seeing it really resonated in a way that made us all feel happy! I laugh now recalling the cackle our group of ladies made "oohing and ahhing" over which were our favorite squares.
I remembered reading years ago how a study had shown that painting prison cells pink had been demonstrated to calm violence among the inmates. And this notion of color affecting us physically & emotionally was reaffirmed this week as I read about a study of blindfolded individuals that consistently identified which hand was held over a red piece of paper and which hand was held over a blue piece of paper! The researchers attribute the results and our physical response to color to the fact that we truly "feel" the difference in the wavelengths of each color!
So now I realize that it's not just that we "see" colors differently, but we "feel" them differently too. And it must be this physical reaction that makes them so personally compelling. So next time my sister Joany rolls her eyes at me coveting another burnt orange, chartreuse or chocolate brown yarn (I'm definitely drawn to the warm colors), I can tell her it's a physical thing I can't control!
And, next time we're picking out colors to use in a fiber project, maybe we should ask ourselves how the color makes us "feel" rather than how it "looks" on us!
Happy day!
P.S.
As an interesting aside....some languages only have words for 2 colors (basically black and light) into which all colors are grouped. As languages evolve and get more sophisticated, they add additional words to further break the colors out. Linguistics scholars have found that in over 80% of languages, the order in which colors are consistently added as the language evolves is as follows:

1) all seem to start with black (covers blues, purples) and light (covers whites, yellows, reds).

• This is interesting and makes sense since the eye sees "value" (light and darkness) before it sees "hue" (colors like red, blue, etc)

2) then they add red (so languages with 3 words for color have black, light and red)
3)then they add green next and then yellow after green
4)then blue (which had been either grouped with green or black to this point) is added!
Apparently "orange" wasn't used to describe a color until the mid 20th century...until then it had been always referred to as yellow-red until it took the name of the fruit it resembled!