Color Wheel in Fiber

I taught Exploring the Fiber Color Wheel this week. Here are some photos.

We used the three primary colors to create secondary and tertiary colors and complete a 12-color color wheel. Dona's wheel has some other blends in it as well.

Mary used printer's primaries (cyan, magenta, yellow) to create her color wheel.

Jean also used printer's primaries and spun her fiber.

We made tints by carding with white.

Here is the left-overs from the floor and the carders blended together.

Today I had a chance to card my own colors. I will spin this tomorrow night at Spinners Night Out. What will I weave???

You can find out more about this class by clicking here.

Where's Robin?

TNNA is The National Needle Arts Association. I have just been at the winter trade show in Phoenix. This is where wholesalers show their newest lines of yarns, accessories, and gadgets and retailers make selections while trying not to max out their credit cards.

Sunrise over Phoenix from the 6th floor of the Hilton. I stayed with my good friend, Irene, owner of Cotton Clouds.

This is the inside of the Hilton looking down from the 6th floor. I reminded me of the space-age Jetson's. (I know this dates me.) The Hilton was a nice hotel, but the internet was down for the last night we were there. That was frustrating as I wanted to work on my new newsletter (stay tuned) and the blog. But there were other things to keep us entertained.

Inside the Phoenix Convention Center.

I took a class on Thursday afternoon and in the evening went to Sample It where retailers can purchase selected items from the vendors so that they have something to take home. Look at what I got!

The show opened on Friday with an Apache blessing.

This is the first show since the Spinning & Weaving Group became a part of TNNA. Their debut was marked by some fun garments in the fashion show...

...and a beautiful blanket.

Irene and I spent time discussing new weaving projects and choosing items for both of our stores.

Someone who will remain nameless pretending that she is not in a booth full of wool.

Irene and I have been friends for 31 years. We had a great time together and I am grateful to her for helping me with things relating to my business. (I'm also grateful that she had a car in Phoenix and is willing to ship all my clothes home to me because I couldn't take them and my new books and fun samples home on the plane.)

Using Yarn

There is a photoshoot next week for the Fibershed Marketplace and I have wanted to get some new items ready for it. I have boxes of yarn that I have intended to use and have just never got to. Now is the time. In fact, my goal is to use up all of these boxes by the end of the year.

First box--Single ply Jacob yarn spun years ago at Yolo Wool Mill.

Three scarves in a plaited twill. They feel nice, but have a few issues. They curl at the edges because this is an unbalanced twill--warp emphasis on one side and weft emphasis on the other. Besides that the center stripe turned out to be something else. It probably has some llama fiber in it--it has less elasticity than the rest so it puckers. Are these design features? It serves me right for keeping yarn for so long that I don't remember what it is.

Second box. Full of funky, slubby, heavy handspun yarn, mostly spun by my mom--that means it was many years ago. It will make wonderful throws.

Here it is going on to the loom.

I wove two blankets using the handspun as warp and the finer singles yarn from the first box for weft. Handspun yarn has such a nice feel to it--I don't think you can duplicate that with millspun yarn.

Third box--heavy 2-ply mill-spun Jacob yarn.

On the loom.

I was going to make ponchos, but I took this off the loom and decided that it was a great shawl (and if it was a shawl it was finished--no cutting and sewing). It is very soft with wonderful drape.

Three boxes started. I haven't counted how many more to go.

Let there be light...of the right color

One of the things on my Christmas list was a light reflector for helping with photography. This is a big round disc with changeable covers to give reflect light in different ways. After figuring out how to get better product photos by using manual settings on my camera, I was still limited by being able to direct light in the best way.  I still have a lot to learn, but this is a start. These photos are of  a beautiful Targhee yarn that I just got back from the mill.

The photo above was taken using my camera on automatic. Yuck.

The yarn is in the same place but I have the gold cover on the disc. I also changed the camera to using manual settings for aperture and shutter speed, but I kept those the same for all the following photos.

This is the photo using the gold. It's a pretty photo, but probably doesn't show the true color of the yarn.

This is the cover that is not reflective, but diffuses light as it shines through.

Here is the yarn using that diffuse light. Not bad.

Here is a white reflective cover...

and the yarn. The yarn looks ok but there is more of a blue background.

How about the silver reflective cover?

This is the photo using the silver cover.

There are other variables of course--especially how my computer monitor displays the color and how your monitor displays the color. Those may be two different things.

And while I'm at it, here is a photo of felt that I got back from the mill last month. This is incredibly soft.

Look at the back side of that felt. Isn't that cool?  I think this will inspire something interesting.

What's happening in the studio

I taught a v-shawl class last week.

The second day of the class was Sunday. On that day the weavers were ready to weave the "v" part of the shawl. These shawls are woven in 2 layers up to the "v" where the fronts join to create the back.

Here is what the shawls looked like when they came off the looms. (The fringes will be trimmed later.)

I think they are happy because they survived this class!

I've been doing my own work in the shop as well.

Red chenille scarves.

More chenille scarves.

These are samples of needlefelted ornaments that we will make this weekend at our Holiday Market Open House. These will also be available as kits.

Lambtown

Another post by Robin. I don't have time to straighten out WP right now. I think Rusty needs his own e-mail address to fix this problem. Lambtown was Saturday. What an incredibly busy day! There is no way that I could have made it through the day without the help of friends. The event was packed. Here is my booth before the doors opened.

I had the booth pretty well set up the night before when I was asked to move it 18" to the north because the neighboring booth wasn't given the allotted space. Can you imagine? I was not happy, but after dealing with it, I didn't feel so guilty about spilling over into the empty space next to me. Next year I think I'll get two booth spaces, but I'll definitely need a full-time person to help. Friends, Aaron and Alison and Jackie helped with the booth and we even pulled in a few other friends who happened to be walking by.

I taught a rigid heddle class in the morning and had five students. We crammed as many new techniques into that class as we could in 2 hours. Everyone wove a sampler with Italian hemstitching, Danish medallions, and warp and weft pick-up.

There was also a sheep show. Tina helped in the show ring and Dona and Rick spend most of their day monitoring the timing of the show. I thought that we might be showing in the morning, but there were enough sheep entered that we didn't show until later in the afternoon. This is the yearling ewe class. That is Meridian Vicki in second place. She was Reserve Champion ewe in the Primitive Breeds division.

Tina brought her service puppy in training to Lambtown. Isn't Golly cute?

Thanks to Dona for the last 2 photos.