Thought for the Day

Why do golfers wear two pair of socks?

In case they get a hole-in-one....


Courtesy of my dad!

Natural Dye Workshop with Cheryl Kolander

I got a flier that there's going to be a natural dye workshop for THREE DAYS! in Portland in November. If you're interested in natural dyes, you should look into this! Cheryl Kolander is the author of "A Silkworker's Notebook", "Hemp! for Textile Artists" and "Brilliant Colours with Natural Dyes". The workshop is November 20-22 and will include indigo and surface design as well as immersion dyeing. Check out all the information at www.aurorasilk.com or email her at dyer @ aurorasilk.com .

Looks like a great opportunity!

(no affiliation, just spreading the word)

Rabbit rabbit!

A million years ago, I knew someone who would always say "rabbit rabbit!" on the first day of the month. According to her, doing this would get her good luck for the rest of the month if she said it to you before you said it to her. Anybody know where this bit of lore comes from? Anybody else every heard it? Ever said it to everyone you meet on the 1st day of the month?

Funny things we do.... Can I just wish good luck to everyone, every day?

And would saying "knit knit" mean we get happy knitting all month?

Getting Ready for OFFF

Like lots of folks, we're getting ready to go to the Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival (OFFF) this week.... deciding what to take, should we do something different, or mostly the same, should we change our layout of our booth of stay mostly the same.... Every year, at every fiber fest we think of all these great improvements and things to do, and sometimes we even write them down. Then, just before the next fest we try to think up what all those great improvements were. It's a tradition. If we wrote them down, we can't find them later anyway. So we get to do it again! THIS time we're really going to write it down and act on those fabulous ideas!

This time we get to see Karen! Karen who worked here for several years and made everybody just a little bit happier all the time with her happy chipper positive attitude. Karen and her hubby moved away (DARN this economy and what it's done to the school budgets and everything else), but she promised to come help out at the fests anyway, so we get to see her this weekend!

Please come see us, and make us write down all the great ideas! We'll be on the porch, as usual.

New Colors

New yarns for fall are starting to roll in, and they're getting all the glory via the email announcements. We're also getting new colors of existing yarns, which is just as fun. The temptations just never stop around here.

Here are some new colors of Crystal Palace Panda Soy:

I don't know what I did to the lighting for that poor picture, sorry about that! The colors are 2223 Aqua Lullaby, 2225 Bluebell, 2226 Happy Baby, 2222 Lilac Lullaby, and 2224 Pink Cameo.


We've also added 6 more colors of Fibra Natura's Yummy sock yarn (where "yummy" is both a proper name AND an adjective!)Above are Yummy 92 Tequila Sunrise, 94 Grilled Chilies, and 61 Grapesicle. I love how colors are named, don't you?

And these three are Yummy 91 Raspberry Mocha, 87 Mint Julep, and 93 Madorie Margarita. There's a nice variety here, from the manly Raspberry Mocha and Grilled Chilies, to the wilder Tequila Sunrise. Too much fun!!

Lizard Ridge in Poems

We have a new yarn called Poems that's a lovely worsted weight self-striping yarn with wonderful colors. I sent out an email announcement and sale notice and a wonderful customer shared pictures of her project using Poems - a Lizard Ridge afghan! (free pattern found on Knitty.com) I've been wanting to make one of these myself, and this may be the push I need to cast on.... And Poems is on sale through Labor Day, so it's a great time to snap some up!

Here is Lisa B's Lizard Ridge. She tells us that she used 18 skeins of Poems for this afghan, and did the edging in Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted. It looks wonderful!! Thanks so much for sharing!!

I just love how the ridges and valleys are in different colors. I think a project like this goes quickly because you just keep knitting to see what the next color combo looks like, and you can't stop. And then you get to curl up in it, or wrap a loved one in it when its done. Perfect! I can also see doing pillows in this technique, or felting some up for a purse/bag. Wouldn't that be cool?

Happy September!

Dyeing is such fun!

We had a great time dyeing last night, and hope to do this again while the weather is decent for hanging out in the warehouse, maybe on a Saturday.

We did a 2-step process on Karen's first batch. She wants to knit a shawl with these 3 skeins. We put some dye in the dye pot and heated it up, tossed in the skeins for a semi-solid look. Then we laid them out on plastic and put "dots" of a darker version of the same color (more intense amount of dye, plus a dab of dark blue) on the yarn. These were rolled up in their plastic robes and steamed to set the 2nd dye job.


Here are some rolls of painted yarns in the steamer:


We had some very lovely helpers, who dyed their skeins in coordinating colors for the outfits they were wearing:

And here are some pics of some skeins that have been steamed and rinsed. Yum, color!


Hope you can join us for the next dye party!


Diane