A Few Sheep Shy of a Farm

Happy Saturday!

Wow! We have another beautiful day from the looks of things! I do believe I’ll be spending a portion of today catching up on some gardening. We were suppose to go to a cookout about an hour’s drive away, but DH has put his back out again (bad enough that he actually stayed home from work yesterday, something he never does) so we won’t be going for any long car rides. Poor dear is flat on his back for a second day.

I’ve also just finished “reskeining” yesterdays yarn samples and I took a new picture in some nice morning sunlight. I think this is a much truer representation of the colors. The one from last night was with flash and I think the colors look a bit light, more pastel than they really are.

Here is the new picture:

I’d like to thank everyone that has written to me with feedback on these colors. Your comments and suggestions have been very helpful.

There are some ideas forming for more colorways and I hope to do another dyeing day either Sunday or Monday so I will have more to show you soon!

Its been a busy, busy day . . .

PixieDust and I did a major round of dyeing today. We spent the first hour getting every thing ready and set up, including snacks set out in the other room for our breaks . . . Then we mixed all our colors, one color at a time and taking careful notes so we can recreate them later . . . then when I had made colors for 3 color ways and she had made colors for one color way we finally did the actually dyeing!

Here is a “Group shot” of the 4 colorways we created today:

And here are individual photos of each of the yarns. This first one is her’s:

This next one I’m calling “Wildflowers” after my inspiration for the colors:

This is “Herb Garden”. The colors represent a terracotta pot, older and new leaves on herb plants and the small flowers herbs tend to have . . .

And this last one is “Poppies”.

Please let me know what you think of these, I’m looking for feedback to help me decide which ones to make more of . . . thanks!

Photo Frenzy

I finally took the long awaited (at least for me) photos of some projects I’ve been telling you about.

First, here is a picture of what I have spun so far of the yarn for Mom’s shawl.  I have to say, I really love the way the colors in this have turned out so far and I can’t wait to see what it looks like plied!

This is the blanket I’m working on for my neice. Its just about 1/2 done here with 2 weeks to go before the shower! Yikes!

This is what I was working on yesterday . . .

Each of these strands represents one jar of “dye concentrate” which I’ll be using tomorrow to create our own colors. This gives us something to go by so we have a bit of clue what the color will look like . . .

Here is the first of the handspun scarves. The pattern is a variation of Old Shale and the yarn is a handspun merino.

and here is a closeup of the stitch:

This is the second scarf pattern, a traveling vine stitch. This one is done in a handspun, merino/silk blend and it just feels yummy!

and here is the stitch close up, it will be easier to see clearly after the scarf has been finished and blocked . . .

While I was out there I took these as well.

Our barn to date . . . and . . .

This is our dog, Arrow. Isn’t he adorable?

Can you tell I’m really enjoying having a camera again?

Photo time!

Here is a picture I took the other day of A, my fiber arts apprentice:

Tomorrow she is going to be helping me to do a whole bunch of dye samples! She may look young, but has a real nack for colors. This should be a whole bunch of fun!

Okay, going out to take project photos in the almost sunlight . . . more soon!

This is my 3rd attempt to post today. I posted similar posts twice earlier today, both even had new photos. Unfortunately, I don’t know if something wonky is happening with Blogger or if its my computer but I can’t see either attempt. The most recent thing I can see is from 2 days ago!

Could someone tell me if they can see 2 other post (or even 1) from earlier today?

Dyeing update:

I spend the afternoon making concentrated dye solutions in 36 colors. I now have jars of them ready for when I actually do some dyeing. I even made little swatches of what each color looks like in “full strength” of the concentrations I’ll be using . . . one step closer to actually working on colors!

That took the bulk of the afternoon and now I’m pretty much exhausted so I’m calling it a day on the fiber stuff.

Tomorrow we have a bunch of stuff going on so I won’t get to do any fiber stuff other than maybe a bit of knitting. Friday is likely going to be the start of working on actual colorways on skeins of yarn! Should be exciting!!!

I sure do hope this posting stuff gets cleared up soon!