High Fiber--Dancing With the Alpacas, and Other Fiber Fun!

This weekend was Alpaca Days in Woodland, UT, and many other places in the US. I spent the weekend spinning at the Blue Moon Alpaca Ranch. More about that later.

This week saw the completion of the knitting on DH's Fair Isle sleeveless cardi. I'm still working on trimming and sewing down the steek sts. I found a stretching contraption (wooly board or jumper board) at Walmart online. Soon It will be finished!

I continued the spinning of the natural dark chocolate Corriedale. Here's the latest finished skein:

Two more to go! And one is almost ready to ply!

Remember my Koolaid dyeing? I needed more spinning fiber to dye. My Knit Picks order came in THREE DAYS!

The bulky Wool of the Andes yarn is for tea cozies. The spinning fiber is Superwash merino and nylon (machine washable) to dye with Koolaid and to spin close (hopefully) to worsted weight for a BSJ* for Daphne.

Vintage Stitchers was special this week. We got to go to Barbara's, which meant we got to see her beautiful quilts! A local man made the ladder for this display:

Here's Barbara's version of my quilt--the one in my dining room--made almost entirely of half-square triangles.

She made hers just like mine, except that her half-square triangles are tiny!

My favorite, though, is this appliqué masterpiece! It's hand-appliqué, not fused!

Here's another one of Barbara's lovely appliqué pieces.

Her table was decorated for fall:

She had this Halloween top ready to give to Julie for quilting:

She made two of these identical tops for Christmas presents. Yum!

No gratuitous baby photos this week unless this counts:

Alpaca Days is just a memory! I had a great time! I didn't get my dark chocolate Corriedale plied, but most of the bobbin is filled. I added some alpaca spinning fiber to my stash and did some early Christmas shopping.

Here's Linda, getting her shop set up for customers:

Here's an example of just a few of her goodies! If you see anything you like, you can contact Linda at Free Spirit Fiber Arts. (I had to key this in, so if it doesn't work, please let me know.)

I think I'm on fiber-fun overload! I may have to lie down! Happy knitting/quilting/spinning!

*For my non-knitting friends, the BSJ is the Baby Surprise Jacket by Elizabeth Zimmermann. It looks like a potato chip until you sew the shoulder seams!

Tags: Baby, Elizabeth, Jacket, Surprise, Zimmermann, alpacas, knitting, quilting, spinning

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Comment by Peggy Stuart on November 1, 2010 at 6:55am: I either do the quilting by hand or give it to my friend Julie, who quilts professionally and has a long-arm quilter.

Comment by Debra Phifer on October 31, 2010 at 9:35pm: The quilts are all so beautiful. I think I like the one you liked and the Christmas one. You guys are like quilting machines. You all just whip them up! I love seeing them all. It gives me motivation.

Comment by Peggy Stuart on October 31, 2010 at 9:23pm: Cheryl has a great imagination! Very creative!

Comment by wendy on October 31, 2010 at 8:32pm: Cheryl - I just saw the lyrics you came up with for Wooly Fiber High, what fun! You always manage to amaze me.

Comment by Peggy Stuart on October 5, 2010 at 5:58pm: Yes, Debra! They are the greatest!
Janice, you have my sympathy! At least you can look online and drool! I hope someday they will ship overseas.

Comment by Debra Phifer on October 5, 2010 at 8:33am: Peggy, isn't KP the greatest. And, the shipping isn't bad either .I've had to call them on a couple of occasions and the people are so nice and helpful. Love it.

Comment by Janice Aitkens on October 5, 2010 at 8:08am: I don't get either as they don't ship internationally may be just as well lol
Hugs Janice

Comment by Peggy Stuart on October 5, 2010 at 8:05am: I just started getting the CT catalog, maybe because of the UQG mailing list. Then the KP catalog started coming. That got me back into knitting big time!

Comment by Janice Aitkens on October 5, 2010 at 2:04am: I was one who was told about Connecting Threads by some of the girls at my quilting group i go to, then from there i been told about here
Hugs Janice

Comment by cherylbwaters on October 4, 2010 at 10:08pm: Connecting Threads doesn't give a start date, but it seems like I remember either on a podcast or staff blog talking about how they were in the Connecting Threads division and were excited about the KP division opening. It seems like it was Tina.