The long and not so short of it
Mood:  bright
Now Playing: Billy Idol "White Wedding"
Topic: A bit of everything
NHS&W was a nice show. I love the fairgrounds (peaceful, and yet, lots of things going on there). I know that some of the alpaca people weren't thrilled, as one of the neighbors started burning brush on Sunday, which engulfed them in smoke, but other than that, it is a very nice show. We were located in the Home Arts Center building. I was next to MaryLynn from Indigo Moon and she's a very nice person, with beautiful batts. I had my husband and two kids with me, and they enjoyed the fair as well. DH is a glutton for fair food, my oldest son is happy eating hamburgers daily, and my youngest is getting a taste for fair food too. Me, on the other hand, did some serious damage on the charge card, all in one felled swoop! Cate happened to be walking by with Marcy on Saturday morning, carrying her Hitchhiker Wheel from the Merlin Tree. She was on the way to return it to Dave, as she had accidentally grabbed a leftie wheel at another show, and wanted to exchange it for a righty wheel. Well, since my Joy wheel was buried in my garage, and at 5 a.m. on Saturday morning, I wasn't about to start moving stuff around, and potentially wake up our neighbors, I had left without a wheel. I asked Cate to give me a try, and decided that that was the wheel for me for the weekend. Cate says I mugged her for it. ;-) All I know is that she took my credit card up to Dave, and as he explains it, she handed it to him and he said "Wait, this card says "Helen" on it; are my wheels already on the used wheel market when they have only been out for 2 weeks?" He thought that was amusing. I did get a bit of spinning done, especially since I decided that the Bobbin Trees needed more filled bobbins on them. AND I discovered that plying from a Bobbin Tree makes life much easier, especially since no cord is needed, as there is enough drag on the bobbin from the wood to allow for easy plying.

We had a lot of people stop by and introduce themselves. It makes me laugh to hear people say "Oh, I know you! You post on the NETA all the time." That just cracks me up (Do I really post that much??) :) Helen from NETA and Fibertraditions stopped by, and took a picture of me. Granted, it is by far from being my best picture, but hey, I had worked on Bobbin Trees until midnight on Friday, got less than 3 hours of sleep, drove to NH and set up a booth. I think I'm entitled to look less than stellar. BCF booth picture. If you want to see Helen's entire picture folder, click here. She's a wonderful photographer! :)
A surprise was finding Stephanie, the Yarn Harlot shopping in my booth. It was a real treat to meet her, as I had missed her appearance in Amherst at the Fiber Arts Center. And I sent her home with a skein from the IAGARB Yarn Co-op. I think she liked that.

Karla from NETA stopped by the booth with her two handsome and very well mannered sons. It was a pleasure to finally meet her. I also saw LauraJ (a long time friend) Judy, Kat, Barbara L., and so many others (forgive me if I don't mention you here; the weekend is a blur, but a fun blur). It is always a pleasure to meet people face to face that I've "known" on the various lists, or through blogging.

Anyway, we had a nice time for the weekend, and I was exhausted by the time I came home on Sunday night.

And now, for some pictures.

I've had a few people ask about the Felted Coat/Vest Class that Leslie Samson is teaching here in June. Here are some samples of what you can do;

The purple/blue vest done on a white batting

The white vest with silver streaks

The red/purple vest with really cool buttons!

And here is a picture of some of the dyeing I did last week. These skeins are part of the IAGARB yarn, and will go into kits. I've designed an easy shawl pattern, which will be ready for MA Sheep and Wool in Cummington in two weeks.

And for those of you needing a bunny fix, here are pictures I took today of the babies, which are now 6 weeks old, and below that is a picture of Molly Mae, who will be bred later this summer.

This picture above shows their favorite place to sit; the large bowl of oats. Of course, it also makes for messy clean up, as they like to pee in there too. Ewwwwww!

Mia and one of her babies.

Molly Mae, who was just shorn last week before NH. She has a great body on her, and nice wool. She's going to make a great breeding doe!

Help the Lowell Textile Museum
Mood:  cool
Now Playing: Paul McCartney and Wings "With a Little Luck"
Topic: Help this Cause!
This just in (and I'll post about NHS&W later today):

***Mike Smith, the CEO of ATHM invites all weavers and spinners to attend the
Annual Meeting on Friday, May 20th at noon, at the museum in Lowell. You
may have heard that the museum is in financial difficulty. The Board of
Trustees may vote at this meeting to close the museum to the public in the
fall in order to conserve funds. The support indicated by our presence at
this meeting can have a strong impact on the decisions that will be made.

Please attend if you possibly can!!! If you cannot attend, please send me
an email in support of the museum and its work of preserving the textile
history of America. I would like to have a fist full of emails from those
who cannot attend!


Lunch will be provided, and I need a count for lunch by Tuesday morning at
the latest. You may email me at peggychurch@earthlink.net or call me at
860-455-0724 to RSVP.

Peggy Church

Trustee***

Please do what you can to support this museum. This is our link and lifeline to our fiber arts past!

The countdown continues.....
Mood:  rushed
Now Playing: Mr. Mister "Broken Wings"

I had to miss the Harlot in Amherst tonight. DH didn't get home until 7:45, and the kids were just too busy playing in the sandbox for me to drag them out. Besides, I was busy dyeing wool and yarn in preparation for this weekend. Sometimes (most of the time, who am I kidding???) work takes precedence over fun. This is just one of those times.

I washed my lot of the IAGARB co-op yarn today. All the skeins are drying or dyeing. ;-) I'll keep some natural, but I'm having fun with Cushings dyes on a few others. And I've been busy over dyeing some grey corriedale roving too. Tomorrow is a major dye day and fleece washing day. And I'll be dyeing some grease fleece too, just for fun.

I did purchase a turkey roaster tonight at Target. That will allow me to dye a lot of washed wool at one time.

And did I mention the other day that all of my fleeces from Whitefish Bay Farm showed up? Four (yes, 4!) boxes, plus a box that Leslie Samson sent to me containing samples of the vests and coats for me to display at NH for the Felted Coat Class in June. I'm sure my postal carrier Sue just loved me that day. She's a good sport, and laughs at the boxes of wool when they show up. The former carrier Penny thought it was really funny last year when I tracked her down, after just missing her at my house by about 25 minutes. I found her up road, two streets over, and was able to get all my boxes from her then, rather than have to go to the PO later that day. They must find my obsession with wool amusing.

Now I'm headed back out to the garage to check on the skeins that are in the microwave right now. If I'm lucky, the dye has absorbed, and I'll be able to put more of the corriedale roving into dye. Grey corriedale overdyed with purple. I'll take pictures when I put it out to dry tomorrow morning. :)

Alden Amos and Stephenie Gaustad coming to Western MA!
Mood:  celebratory
Topic: Class information
After having known Alden and Stephenie via ST's since 1999, I'm please to announce that I have booked them to come teach in Amherst on June 12th from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. A write up courtesy of Stephenie is listed below. If you are interested, please sign up quickly, as I need 7 people so that I can run this class. Alden and Stephenie will only be in this area for a short while, so this is a great chance to meet and learn from some of the best!

A materials fee of $15 is not included with the registration fee, and is due the day of the class.

***************

Production Spinning:

There are tips and techniques that can improve your yarn production. This class will present ways to get the most out of your wheel as well as several drafting techniques that improve the speed with which you make yarn.

Please bring a functional spinning wheel, pocket calculator, skein winder (niddy or reel), extra bobbins.

And related topic questions are of course welcomed.

We will supply all fiber, handouts.

Fiber/handout fee: $15.00.

I can't say that this class will make you a production spinner, but you certainly will have a good idea where the bottle necks are and have several options getting 'round them.

(When I took this class from Alden some years ago, it transformed my attitude towards spinning, and all for the better!)

*******************************

If you are intersted in taking this class, please e-mail me at Baycolonyfarm @ aol.com for a registration sheet.

Payments must be received to be considered registered for the class; no phone or e-mail registrations accepted. Payments are due by June 3, 2005.

Please register ASAP so that we can run this class! :-)

Hell needs a cat, and her name is.....
Mood:  don't ask


Trina.

This is Calvin's cat. We got her from the pound when she was about 6-8 weeks old (the pound said 8 weeks, vet said 6 weeks, tops!). Trina has always been "special". I think her brain has been scrambled a bit. She's never been right since coming here. That might explain why she was the last kitten left at the pound too.

But, that does NOT give her the right to drag my IAGARB angora yarn all over the place, still attached to my needles, and royally mess up my shawl. It isn't going to look right at one section, but I'm not fixing it and ripping out. I'm too darn tired and too sick to care. Yes, that's right. The annual Spring Cold has struck Chez BCF, and now both boys and I have it. I've resisted for several days, but tonight; I feel like, well, you know. And I'm too tired to care. The only good thing is that DH is busy with other stuff at work, so I don't have to go in tonight or possibly tomorrow to work. That is good, as I'm supposed to attend my god daughter's (and neice) first communion and then take Calvin to a birthday party at a place that will have him coughing up a lung (Kidsports, which has some serious exercise for kids during their birthday parties).

I'll worry about that tomorrow too. Right now I'm too tired and sick to care.

Yes, I'll take some more cheese with that whine.

I thought this was fun
Mood:  a-ok

Your Linguistic Profile:

60% General American English

40% Yankee

0% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

I did it!
Mood:  celebratory
Now Playing: Stevie Nicks "Stop Dragging My Heart Around"

With 2 hours left in the day, I got the IAGARB newsletter uploaded to our Yahoogroup. No small feat since I was given the newsletter job 2 weeks ago, used a new software program, and had to learn that too. So far, the people that have responded have done so positively, which is nice. :)

On another note, DH and I bought a planer yesterday down at Woodcraft. This will be used for planing down wood for the Bobbin Trees. Dale is excited about this purchase, as it takes him one step closer to his dream of having a complete wood shop at our house. ;-)

Big whine
Now Playing: Thomas Dolby "She Blinded Me With Science"

I think that Tripod needs to add two more emoticons to their "Mood" list; Tired and Exhausted. Right now I would pick either one of those.

This incentive work is really exhausting. Right now, my whole body aches. We worked until 9 last night, and today will be another 6-8 hours (o.k., yesterday wasn't that long, but when you get up at 4 a.m., it feels like that!).

I'm heading to Whole Foods today to get myself some decent lunch. No more of this fast food which isn't helping things.

I knit about two rows on the angora shawl last night after we came home (10:30 after a side trip to B&N to see the poem that Cal entered into the poetry contest). I was too tired to do any more.

My friend Charlene from Honeybuns is coming up tomorrow to look at a rabbit. It will be nice to have something normal going on this week; I desparately need some "me" time, and the visit with her will do the trick. :)

Yipppeeeee!
Mood:  party time!
Now Playing: Peter Gabriel "Shock the Monkey"

This is too cool! I just got an e-mail from NHS&W that I'll be in building #2, space 13. I guess there was a last minute cancellation, and I was quick to answer if I wanted the space. It sure will beat having to set up a tent outside and vend. :)

Actual Knitting Content? No way! WAY!
Mood:  incredulous
Now Playing: Bryan Adams
Topic: Fiber
Last week this arrived:

Five pounds of millspun 85% angora/15% wool in a fingering weight yarn. This is from the IAGARB yarn co-op that has been set up for members.

So I grabbed a skein on Friday and set out to wash it to see what it would look like. And here is what I started working on last night:

Yes, I confess to going through two of my three Barbara Walker treasuries looking for lace patterns. Even picked a few out, but right now I just can't handling doing something that requires more than easy knitting, as I'm currently working three jobs, and I'm exhausted at the end of the day. Anyway, I want this to be finished in time for NHS&W so that I can wear it there (hey, I'll have washed skeins with me to sell, and people like to see exactly what you can do with the yarn). I might even dye it after I'm done knitting.

So, that is my goal; one finished triangular shawl in two weeks. I think I can do it.

AND (Drum roll please!), WEBS will be selling Bobbin Trees! So now they are carrying Bay Colony Farm's angora/wool blend batts, and the Original Bobbin Trees. (Helen doing the Happy Dance here!)

Today is finish the newsletter day, and prepare for a meeting later tonight, if I can't get my co-chair to move it to next week. If we move it, then I go to work tonight with DH and get more of those pieces ready to send out. I must get that done quickly, as I have 14 fleeces coming, and I have to process those before NHS&W too. :)

Oh yes, on the house front. I've finally picked out my flooring for the bathroom. This is my fifth attempt to find something (floors one and two were going to run me $1,200 and $1,900 respectively; for a 30 sq.ft. space? I think not. Floor three was only sold in 12 foot widths, and floor four was discontinued). It is a commercial grade flooring, currently made, and it looks nice with my "Colonial Cream" colored walls, and my Berber carpeting in the hallway. Once I get that ordered, it's 2 weeks until installation! Do I actually see a finished bathroom on the horizon?