Taos Wool Festival, Part 2
The vendors are gone, but the workshops will be going through Tuesday. I had the day off, so we visited the 200-year-old adobe Martinez Hacienda this morning. Thought to be among the products of the Hacienda were woolen socks, knitted from churro wool, by Indian servants or enslaved people. They started with the fleece, washing, carding, spinning, and finally knitting it. One pair of socks probably took about thirty hours to make, from washing to darning in the last threads. They were important for trade. One isn’t allowed to publish any photos taken at the hacienda, so you’ll just have to go along and see the replica stockings and a leg-shaped stretching board in the weaving room.
Then we stopped by Weaving Southwest, a tapestry gallery, weaving studio, and yarn store. The friendly folks at Weaving Southwest were glad to talk about their Rio Grande brand Hand-Dyed Yarns for knitters and weavers. The multi-color yarns at left are for knitting, the yarns at right looked like they might have been baked to perfection by a desert sun.
Look at this wall of tapestry yarn! As soon as I saw this, my mind immediately started planning a wall hanging. The yarn comes in two weights: a two-ply which has 162 yards in a 4 ounce skein, and a thin single yarn that comes in at 736 yards in a 4 ounce skein (2,944 yards per pound). Each of the 22 colors come in five shades, light to dark.
The thin yarn is great for blending, because you can knit several strands together, and gradually change them in and out to get effects like this store sample. It was knitted with three strands, using size 8 needles.
Taos Wool Festival, Part 1
Yes, it’s worth the twelve-hour drive from central Texas to the mountains of New Mexico. The Taos Wool Festival is the place to find American-grown animal fiber of every description: sheepswool, mohair, angora, llama, alpaca, and probably more that escaped my attention. There’s something for textile-lovers of all persuasions:
fleece and batts for spinners and dyers
yarns for dyers, weavers, crocheters, and knitters
finished garments, rugs, art, and accessories.
Here’s my 10-yr-old, Eva, choosing mohair locks, one ounce for $2.00. “What do you do with those?” a lady asked me. “Oh, you can spin them, or use them in a wall hanging,” I said. But who knows what Eva will do with them? She always surprises me with her ingenuity.
Mohair and mohair/wool combinations were impossible to resist in Brooks Farm’s booth. We stood in front of their small mirror, trying one skein after another to find the perfect one for our complexions. Eva looks good in cool greens, yellows, and blues. I prefer the warmer tones. Here’s our purchase.
The Wool Festival hosts competitions for handspun yarns, home accessories, garments, and fleeces. The items must be made from American-grown animal fibers (the percentages differ for the various contests). I plan to enter a wall hanging next year, so I bought some wool quilt batting.
My husband, Charles, played with our two-year-old, Ella, while we shopped. She fed and petted the wooly animals, and climbed in a tree. Many dogs were at the show, and she had to visit them all. By lunchtime, she was hot and tired and ready to go.
While Ella had a nap, Charles and Eva went to the Rio Grande Gorge.
Housekeeping Time
My desk is piled high with papers I should deal with and file, and publications I should read. My sewing table is stacked with remnants of finished projects, mixed in with bags of stuff for planned projects. I can’t find anything! I have to sew in the kitchen!
Not only that! The Taos Wool Festival is coming up, and I need to put the finishing touches on my “Small Quilts/Tote Bags from Your Old Sweaters” workshop. Also, I must prepare for the many networking opportunities there…and find some cool-weather clothes for me and two girls who have worn shorts and tank tops and gone bare-footed for the last several months.
Furthermore! I must finish two articles before Friday, September 30th. Since I am not ready to reveal the projects I made for either one, no blog pics of them for now.
So! I’m taking a couple of weeks off of feeding the blog with knitting, crochet, and TextileFusion projects. I will spend those two weeks preparing, finishing, cleaning, and reading.
Speaking of reading! I will post some book reviews, not about knitting books, but about knitted books. Not about sewing books, but about sewn books. Stay tuned.
My Vest in Sew News Magazine
At last! TextileFusion techniques have debuted in a sewing magazine! My article about recycling an old sweater into a vest appears in the November issue of Sew News, pages 66-70. Here’s the cover, so you can recognize it on the newsstand. I’m ‘New Looks for Old Sweaters,’ there on the cover. Hurray!
The editors did a great job with the article. The illustrations done at the magazine are perfect, and they convey exactly the information they were meant to. I am so pleased to be included in Sew News.
Besides my recycled sweater story, you’ll find articles on how to make very cute bags from upholstery fabric, sew snowflakes and other pretty designs with satin stitch, and basics of serging. A piece on machine-embroidered quick gifts made me want to run to my Designer I and start embroidering. References to knitting are sprinkled here and there. I hope you will pick up a copy.
Pink Tassel Done, But What Buttons?
The pink tassel finally has a finial. Hurray! It should have been knitted circularly, but it wasn’t, so it has a seam. The cover made me think of a sweater, so I thought of making the seam like a cardigan band.
“Let’s play buttons!” I said to my two-year-old, Ella. She’s always up for a game of buttons. We poured our big button jar out onto a blanket. She immediately began sorting out her favorites, while I tried different button combinations. My 10-year-old Eva joined in. She cast her stylish eye over my choices and nixed a couple. She went to her own stash for more.
Here are the finalists (please ignore the temporary yellow pin fasteners). What do you think?
Pink Tassel Progress Slow
With one thing and another, this pink tassel is taking way too long! Since the last post about it, I finished knitting the top, knitted on a loop, darned in ends, and rolled and sewed the knitting to change the fringe into a tassel. All that’s left is to knit a cover for the finial. Well, I did name this project Alternative Tassels .
In other news, our house is beginning to begin to start to take shape. Our foundation contractor put up these two boards almost two weeks ago. They mark the south end of what will someday be our garage. My studio will look out upon these trees, minus the ones that will be blocked by the garage. It’s going to take a while.
Oh, well.
I’ve Been Collected!
The Knitting and Crochet Guild of Great Britain has this small wall hanging of mine in its collection–Thank you, Liz Gillett! The Guild has a fantastic collection and a grand vision for preserving and displaying old and new knitting and crochet for future generations. They gladly accept donations.
New Pink Project
In preparation for one of my workshops at Taos and for the ThinkPinkKAL, I’ve been working on a pink tassel. First, I threaded 4mm pink beads onto some heavy sewing thread and crocheted them in a chain st.
The fringe is begun by overspinning a few yarns together on the spinning wheel. You need a book for the next step:
This one is going to have a knitted top. Here it is on the needles. I’ll post the finished tassel later. If I hadn’t already planned to make a tassel, I could simply keep knitting, and this would be fringe on a scarf or other garment. Pretty neat, huh? I love the little gold beads. They add weight and make the fringe seem very substantial.
Busy Week, New Tape, Progress on Snowman Rug
The busy-ness of this week left me pretty tired in the evenings, so I relaxed by listening to my new book tape from the library, Miss Julia Meets Her Match , by Ann B. Ross, read by Claudia Hughes. It’s good, and while listening, I have made lots of progress on the snowman rug.
We had a belated birthday party for my 10-year-old daughter Eva yesterday. Our party project was to decorate a frame with polymer clay. The only tools they had were small cookie cutters and the pasta machine, which is always popular among kids. We took a photo of the party-goers and put one in each frame. They loved it! I wish I had taken a photo of the finished frames. But I didn’t and I can’t even find the photo of the cake. It was supposed to be a beetle. I later exchanged the cherry sour eyes for lemon drop eyes, which looked a little better.
Digitizing Paisley
Oh, the wonderful Designer I!!!! I have used it for about a year and a half now, and I think it is a great sewing and embroidery machine. Having this machine has given me so many options for sewing and embroidering my knitting—a TextileFusion dream.
I’ve been digitizing a few designs lately, using the Husqvarna Viking Professional Plus digitizing software. Good digitizing is an art that requires a lot of skill. I’m a beginner. This is what I’ve done most recently. The program prints an information sheet showing the stitch-out of the pattern (above), the thread colors and technical information. On-screen, you can ask for a 3-D rendering, so you can get a clearer idea of what your design will look like. I used lots of colors in the design, but I will probably only use one or two colors in the actual embroidery.
And here it is on fabric. I quit before all the motifs were done, because it seemed perfect with just the flower inside. It needs to be bigger to have all the other stuff.
The Designer I has recently been one-upped by the new Husqvarna Viking Designer SE, which has a USB port, so you can digitize on your computer, hook up to the embroidery machine, and start embroidering without having to save to a diskette.
Is this an ad for Husqvarna Viking? Let’s call it an enthusiastic testimonial. And if this helps you decide to buy one, be sure and mention that Suzann Thompson influenced your decision.
Wait, there’s more! Husqvarna Viking is providing sewing machines for my Small Quilt/Tote Bag from Your Old Sweaters workshop in Taos, October 4, 2005. Scarlet Alt, a HV educator will assist participants with the machines. See the sidebar for links.