creating

Last Weekend’s Show

mulchandmorecrafts 2 Comments

Last weekend’s show was a morel (mushroom) festival.We set up Fri morning for the three days. Friday it was somewhat cold, but it is May in Michigan, so we prepared with our winter coats. (Problem; my finger-less gloves kept getting caught in the wool I was demonstrating spinning with.) At almost closing time the brave souls who had ventured out had slowed to a frozen trickle, so I took my wheel back to the car and we prepared to close.

An outdoor event meant my husband’s paintings needed to be packed safely away for the night, maybe a plastic over my yarn, table skirts raised to keep them from wicking ground moisture up to the displays, and finally we finished by dropping and zipping down the sides.

It started a cold rain as we finished up, so son and I sat with the car heater running to warm up. Luckily I had spoken to one of the food vendors and he was staying open past closing time. We chose a delicious smoked turkey sandwich (hot) and retreated to our warm “dining car.” (Husband had left before the rain started for his part-time job, and then home !) Son and I were “camping” in the car (actually a suburban) and the utility trailer- (I have a mattress in it!) We were “parked in” for the duration, so driving to a local restaurant wasn’t possible and we didn’t want to get wetter walking! Especially when the weather is iffy I prefer being closer to our set-up for night-time security.

Saturday I put on flannel lined pants and as many jackets as I could, happy to have brought my felted hat! High temperatures were in the 30’s (F). Whitecaps were blowing in from as far out as we could see, and by closing time we had decided to break down and lose vending for Sunday! We weren’t the only ones, as many tents were close to blowing away. (In case of weather show organizers will normally agree with that decision 🙂

Sales seemed slow, but after adding things up, better than I’d thought! Sunday we awoke to SNOW!

snow in May

Those white specks are falling snow!

I did return to the town to discuss a custom order that had been initiated in a conversation on Sat. (glad she took my number to call) and I have started work on it.

3-ply linen

3-ply, two shades of blue+one white, linen.

Sorry I didn’t take any pictures of the show, but didn’t want to freeze my camera! It took a day for us to thaw out 🙂

Here are some of my FO’s (finished objects). I have also been making prints and more magnet prints of husband’s art for the up-coming shows.

“Skewed” small shawl, shades of purple
matching purple hat.

 

skewed small shawl.

multi-color shawlette, plied with black. Shawl pin by Cliff.

third skewed shalette

almost finished, wild-berry with variegated burgundy edge

It’s a never-ending process when re-stocking inventory means making instead of ordering, but we wouldn’t have it any other way 🙂

tree fungus

fungi from a friend, waiting to be wood-burned and varnished!

garden

and a garden that needs planting.

Are you making things? Buying more local? Buying more hand made things?

 

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Three in 3 Days!

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Three knit hats

Three knit hats

One each day for the past three days, I started knitting and completed a hat! No I’m not going to keep up that pace as I have other projects to work on too. But it was a nice challenge to myself and a way to see how the new yarn that I dyed last week would look in a project. I’ll be dyeing some more before too long!

hand dyed thick and thin hat.

Thick and thin yarn plus sock yarn

For Wednesday’s hat I used a pattern found on Ravelry written by Carol Tyler. Instead of using the thick and thin wool by itself, I combined it with some of the leftover (shawl) sock yarn that had been the inspiration for the dyes I had used for this skein of lumpy. It was a quick fun knit on large needles, so to keep the fun going I finished by adding a tassel of sorts!

knit from hand spun

brown hand spun hat

Thursday’s hat was another sample of a pattern that a friend designed to go with my hand spun. The pattern will be given free with the purchase of 100yds. or more my yarn this summer. Plus I wanted to make a hat that wasn’t specifically for a woman. (The brown color is more realistic in the first picture than this one)

knit hat

lumpy, slightly slouchy hat

Today’s hat was another of the skeins I had dyed, using the same pattern as Wednesday’s, but making some modifications to the straight stockinette stitch by throwing in some random purls and using a solid hand spun for a more stable band than the thick and thin gave on the first one.

A Painting in Progress

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Right now my husband is working on a painting on canvas using a mixture of mediums.

(Warning to all artists, I’m not one, so please excuse me if I get some of the terminology wrong) He is starting with inspiration from a photo of the Roger Blough , a ship on the Great Lakes.  I’ve taken a few pictures as things develop, so enjoy….it’s still a work in progress.

Start of a painting

Beginning of the sky.

More paint is added.

The artist in action.

Blocking in the main parts of land and water.

Land and water is beginning to take shape.

The boat will soon appear and then some final shading.

More shading has been done, more to come after the boat appears.

 

A Fiber Day!

mulchandmorecrafts 8 Comments

Yesterday I felt like playing with color!  I started with my big bump of soft white merino top for the kettle dying.

wool fiber

white Merino top

Actually it’s about half a bump, as you can see from the missing center.

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center view of bump of merino top

 

one pound of merino top
the top placed in a mesh laundry bag
Another batch in the dye kettle

(click these pictures for captions)

 

I decided to experiment, to see if I could capture a golden tone. The first pound looks more like a tiger, yellow,orange and brown tones.

merino -gold? experiment #1
gold experiment #1 plus first rainbow dyed

The second is shaded, using the same combination of dyes, but I think it came closer to what I’d envisioned. After seeing them dried, I think I will spin a sample (ounce or two) of each and ply them together. (I’ll try to remember to post a follow-up picture)

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experiment #2 gold?

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some of my dyes

Since I had my dyes out was playing mad chemist, I also rainbow dyed four batches. Two of them utilized the same colors (I’d actually written them down!) that I’d used on some that sold at the fall fiber festival. (I had hoped that it would be left for me to spin this winter.)  These came out a little busier than I remember and then my husband commented that it looked pretty, like a tropical snake—eek!

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rainbow dyed and experiment # 2 gold

For the second two batches, I chose to over-dye  a soft drab olive wool with autumn shades. (I know it’s the wrong season, but I don’t enjoy spinning snow!) And yes I was a little heavy handed with the color application, so even this came out brighter than expected.  This is the last of this fiber, which I’ve been hoarding for a while. (Did I mention it’s a very soft wool, but of an unknown sheep breed, so hard to find more of it) I may decide to spin it for my own use.

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drab olive top before dyeing

two batches of rainbow dyed drab olive
rainbow dyed drab olive

 

In conclusion, four pounds of fiber gave me some to spin, some to sell, and dyes left for another day. This equals work accomplished toward one of my sub-goals and more future fun.

 

Hello, Glad to meet you!

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I signed up for Blogging101 to learn more about making a blog.

For those of you who may have read my first writing of this post and you realize it sounds different, that’s because it is!   MY COMPUTER ATE my homework!   Yes I forgot to push that all important button that says “Save Draft” Lesson learned as I struggle to remember some of what I said the first time!

Hi, I’m Bev. I actually opened my blog earlier this spring to showcase and help the growth of our craft business. Yes I am technically challenged! (See above paragraph for example) Thanks to the response for my post for help I think I have things straightened out and hope not to make the same mistakes again…I know there’s many other mistakes I can find to make:)

The purpose of my blog is to find other people interested in hand made crafts, share information about the craft shows that we attend and about some of the methods used in creating things. I also hope to learn more by exploring some crafts that I haven’t done (yet)  while feeding my computer better to prevent random snacks! I’m also interested in organic gardening, healthier eating, better business practices,organizing inventory, etc.

If you would like to learn more about our family business, please check out our Home and About pages too. I welcome feedback and constructive criticism and meeting new people.