T Stands for Tuesday and Fibers

  Good morning, T stands for Tuesday 
      To join the party just click on the button in my right hand column to visit our hostess Elizabeth and Bleubeard-where we all share a beverage inspired post.

      Despite our extreme heat here in the ozarks I have been keeping myself busy. It is still so hot and humid here that I have to do outdoor projects early and be in the house by 10 am. The a/c works overtime in the afternoons and doesn't seem to catch up til about 4 am in the mornings now. 
   My little veggie garden all things considered is not doing so bad considering I planted late this year. I have blossoms on some of the beans now, the summer squash plants so far look amazing, but that wilt has gotten to most of my cucumbers hoping enough survives for a little canning of pickles and relish. My tomatoes looking pretty decent too-but again I see many of the blooms are not getting pollinated. I would like to get enough tomatoes to can up a batch of salsa. Yesterday I laid out the soaker hose as we missed the last rain that was in the area and no rain in sight for awhile.
   My big bag of the cheviot wool is now almost all spun up-I will be finished this week--I see a dye pot in the works soon.

   Last weekend was the annual Fiber U event in a town near me. The last two years I took classes, this year I decided not to-which ended up to be a good thing as my husband's sister from Chicago decided on a last minute drive down. So we had a nice visit on Saturday. 
   Sunday I drove in early to go shopping!  I  never wanted to do things like this in the past by myself but now that I am older I don't mind as much. My one friend was busy making baby blankets with her church for charity and my other friend was out of town. 
    Sorry about no photos of the event-I did bring my camera but ended up not taking photos. I went early so I was the only one wondering around the vendors.
    I do feel bad for the vendors in this event as it is never crowded. Most of the vendors teach a class also so they get shoppers from the students but they don't seem to get many people in just shopping which I find sad. Many of my favorites were not there this time.

   I did bring a shopping list-lol  

         The buffalo fiber I have is so soft but not being a pro spinner I was having a difficult time with it so decided to mix it with alpaca. I have seen it being sold either blended with merino wool or alpaca. The lady at Whirlwind Ranch helped me with the right alpaca-she suggested baby alpaca as the softness and texture matched the bison well-so I think that will be my next spinning project-to get out my blending board and blend the buffalo and baby alpaca fibers together. I wasn't sure about the beige-white color since the bison fiber is a light brown but she assured me it would fine.
   The first photo is the baby alpaca up close and the second photo is her show special of three bags (in back of photo) our choice of colors for $12.00 which I pick up most years.      The vendor I also get good deals on alpaca from was not at the event this year.
     
all photos will enlarge just click on them

The next item on my list was to look for more spinning fibers that were Yellowstone inspired colors. I had several rovings already that I have collected since last year but I needed that blue especially- the one seen in the springs at Yellowstone, also a little pink and I needed a nice grey and what ever else I could find.

I fell in love with the gorgeous long wool you see in the first photo. It is from the breed Gotland. The fibers are long, luxurious, and will have a bit of a shine when spun. bred in Sweden. This one is also known as Stansborough grey I asked the vendor if she knew more about this wool and she told me that the producer of the Lord of the Rings film saw these sheep and loved the shine of the wool so much that he bought all the fleece and had it spun and woven into the cloaks for the fairies for the movie-thought that was fun to know. I have a breed book at home so when I looked it up it mentioned this movie and several others that used this wool to make into garments.

     In the second photo I found these three rovings-it has that blue I was looking for and the other one has the pinks and greens.

These are some of the rovings I already have that I bought to reflect Yellowstone

My plan is to weave a couple scarves and I would really love to weave an artsy piece to hang on the wall. I am now anxious to see how these spin up-I may need to tone down the shine in some of them we'll see.  This grouping needs a rich dark brown added as well, and a bit of white showing for the snow.

At Fiber U I also learned about a new fiber arts guild that is near me that I think I will check that out next month. I also talked with a vendor that has a new shop in town near me driving towards the lake-mostly for crochet and knitting but she is also getting into rovings for spinners.

    I love gnomes and I had read about a vendor that makes gnome felted sculptures-allot of the wool she used was the navajo churro which I love. She also had gotten into pottery making so I picked up this new mug--loving it. I just filled it up with chicory-dandelion root that I brewed early this morning.

This week I dug out my handmade Russian spindle and played around with a little churro wool-I had to give this up a couple years ago too cause of my hand injury--but I didn't do too bad with it-although I needed to refresh my memory on how to do it. lol  More challenging for sure but one can get a finer yarn with this spindle.

Have an awesome Tuesday! 

    Note: since our internet provider does not play nice-I am visiting all of til 8am my time, and any of you that post a link later I will visit early tomorrow morning.