Posting for the sake of Posting

Nothing new and exciting.

Saturday was spent at Eat! Vancouver. A trade show devoted to food and all things food related. Stuffed ourselves full of free samples there. Rolled home and spent the rest of the day doing nothing.

Sunday was spent doing laundry and a bit of house cleaning. Hubby was inspired by the big BBQs and Smokers at the show and decided to roast a duck on his BBQ. The cookbook said one hour...which translate to almost 3 hours real time. Needless to say, dinner was very late. Delicious but late. The meal was roasted duck with lemon glace, grilled asparagus, and sauted morel mushrooms with garlic.

Shuttleworks is fantastic! I ordered my new frame on Thursday and it arrived Monday! Love getting packages at work. Hate forgetting packages at work. I was looking forward to putting together my new gripper frame tonight.

Work is going ok. I think I'm slowly settling into this new position. I picked up a new flash drive last week. It's briefcase of the new millenium, I think. Stuff files into that thing and you can bring work home. yay. Actually, I don't mind bringing some stuff home. It takes me 10 minutes to do something at home that would have taken me a couple of hours to do at work with all the interuptions from the phone and people.

Tammy tagged me for a meme. I have to come up with 7 random facts about me. Have to think about this one...

Back to work!

It's Monday night and it's back to work tomorrow. I really need to win the lottery. Long weekends are just not long enough.

What did I accomplished this weekend?

1. Road trip to Quiltopia. It's a fun place! Almost tempted to try quilting again but had to tell myself over and over again that I have an unfinished quilt at home. I did find out about a place nearby that will machine stitch my quilt.

2. Didn't spin any more of the linen but worked on my silk noil and carded some more of the Shetland on the drum carder.

3. Accomplished 1 & half sleeves on the green cardigan. Still half a sleeve to go.

4. Did not even touch the books needing binding.

5. Did not come up with a project for the fibre challenge. Help!

What else did I do?

1. Bought some wool fabric - Fabricana was having a sale! Beautiful wool melton on sale! I picked up a metre of tweed for texture and 2 metres of a pale baby blue (ick!) - they didn't have any white or beige in the weight I wanted.

2. Felted, dyed, & separated the wool fabric. Some of the pieces will be overdyed for accents at another time.

3. Drew out my pattern for another rug.

4. Hemmed up 2 pairs of pants that have been around since last summer.

5. Started a pair of chevron socks for my take-along knitting with the Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn I got at Fibre Fest. I really love the Chevron pattern from Elan. It's easy to remember and make socks less boring to knit than stockinette stitch. It's also easier to keep track of rows too. Every pattern is two rows...just count the YO's. No need to carry around a row counter. Perfect for a take-along project.

On the bright side...

...the new issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors arrived today! Along with my new Moo cards! Yeah, I jumped on the Moo bandwagon. The cards were too cute to pass up. They're about half the size of a regular business cards. You can have whatever you want printed on the back. The front is an assortment of your photos...or you can have them all the same.

Work was crazy today so it was great to come to find stuff in the mail.

This weekend is the May long weekend. I have plans.

1. Road trip to Quiltopia.
2. Spin some more linen.
3. Finish the sleeves on the green sweater.
4. Finish binding the three books sitting on my work table for the past two months.
5. Think of a project for my skein for the Fibre Challenge.

Woohoo! Look! It's linen!

Ugly linen but it's linen! The roving was all prepared so you don't have to do anything to it but spin it. Exactly what I was looking for. I've never tried the preparation process with flax but have done it with nettle for papermaking. Dew retting takes forever (months). A process that's interesting to try it at least once and that's about it.

Colleen at Wild Rose sugggested wrapping the roving in a towel. The moisture from your hands will gum the fibres together. I found some more tips on the internet. Spin counter-clockwise, low twist and very little tension. Wet spinning is not a problem as that's how I spin my paper. All that moisture does make your fingers chapped and wrinkled. You can spin this roving wet or dry but wet will give you a smoother thread.

It took a long time to spin this little bit! Well, I was looking for a new fibre challenge and this stuff is really a challenge. I feel like I should go spin some cotton to make me feel better...just kidding.

Total fibre weekend!

As usual, Fibre Fest was an absolute blast! What I love about Fibre Fest (aside from the obvious fibre) is the people. There is no such thing as a stranger there. You pick up a skein of yarn or a bag of roving and someone will come up and start talking to you. Total strangers will become enablers.

This year's Fibre Fest was a little different because it was combined with the Country Life show. I think it worked because it gave my poor husband something to look at other than fibre. I did noticed that there seemed to be more yarn and a little less raw fibre than previous years. There were certainly more animals! I fell in love with a beautiful alpaca named Louis.

Total haul for today:

4 bags of prepared flax rovings, ready for spinning from Wild Rose
1 bag of Fox Fire organic cotton from Wild Rose.
1 skein of Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn kit
1 Sock blocker key chain with mini Opal yarn
2 skeins of Laura Fry's handdyed bamboo
1 bag of alpaca/silk with Angelina fibre from Princess Farms



The little sock blocker and mini Opal was too cute to pass up! I think I'll keep the Opal intact and use some of my leftover sock yarns to knit the mini sock. Is it strange to want to change the sock on my keychain to match the socks I'm wearing?

In addition to the Fibre Fest stuff today, I picked up 4 skeins of linen at the Guild meeting on Thursday night. It was all Rusty's fault...I was doing so well not buying anything until she calls out that there's no tax! I'm only human.

On the way home, we stopped off to pick up a package at the post office...

It's a fabric cutter from Harry M. Fraser & Co. It comes with your choice of a cutter head and I ordered two additional cutters. I used to have an old one - not a Fraser cutter. It was a very old plastic thing that didn't cut very well. The cutter can't be sharpened. It was something I picked up secondhand long time ago. It was so annoying having to go over all the cuts by hand because it never cut all the way through. I always wanted a good one. These things are handy to have around.

So, yeah, I missed Friday with my friends but I think I did quite well fibre-wise. :D

Well, that sucks!

Everyone is off today and tomorrow for some kind of conference. So I'm working Friday because we have a newbie and a temp in. That means no Fibre Fest for me on Friday. People who are going on Friday, don't buy everything up...save some fibre for me. I'll be there Saturday but it's not the same. All my friends will be there on Friday.

:whine:
:whine:

The Spin-in will be on Saturday afternoon. I'm thinking of bringing my wheel but I may be too busy shopping. Shopping for fibre always makes me feel better. :D

My Igolochkoy needles have arrived!

My Igolochkoy punch needles arrived today! I can't wait to try them out. The needles are really well made - no burrs to catch on the fabric. I was going to wait until I finished my green sweater first but just had to try these needles out. Gail Bird at http://www.gailbird.com/ is really fast! I just ordered the needles last week!

It's four or five sleeps to Fiber Fest - four sleeps if I go on Friday and five sleeps if I go on Saturday. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's going to be Friday. This will depend on how things go at work this week.