Fibrefest in Almonte this weekend

I will be a vendor at the Almonte Fibrefest this weekend. Look for my colourful dish towels and new Tencel and silk scarves! I also have more hand-dyed yarn available in lace to worsted weights, most of which is suitable for weaving.

Here are just a few handwoven items that will be available at my booth:

100% Canadian Virgin Wool blanket

Cotton and linen scarf

Cotton and linen Swedish-style table runner

Another 100% Canadian Virgin Wool blanket

And of course I'll have more dyer balls available. If you've never heard of dryer balls, come out to see what they're all about!

There will be a sheep-shearing demo on Saturday as well as an alpaca fleece sorting and competition. Note that if you go to see the exhibit at the MVTM (Missisippi Valley Textile Museum), your entrance fee ($5) covers that of the festival too. The festival is at the arena/curling club. I recommend going to the see the exhibit in the morning since it gets very crowded there later in the day.

We're back and we've been busy

Due to personal health and family issues, I have not been blogging and did not do any weaving for many months at the beginning of this year. I have somewhat regained my weaving mojo and am actively weaving again. Apologies if I wasn't able to complete commissions on time, but I am now back into the swing of things and will be able to fulfil those commissions. Please contact me if you have any questions.

A few weeks ago I did my first show of the season at the Twist Fibre Festival in St. André-Avellin in Quebec. It's within an hour's drive of Orleans, so it's not too far away.

My booth at Twist, near the end of the show on Sunday. My booth was in the gym.

I participated in a pre-festival class on natural dyeing on the Friday before the show. It was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot.

We picked some fresh hops off a vine that was conveniently
located in the backyard we were using..

... and boiled them! Smelled like beer.

Then we boiled and strained some Osage orange chips...

... and put some yarn in it.

Then we put some heathered grey yarn into the partially-exhausted
osage dye bath and got a nice green.

We used cochineal (dried bugs from Mexico and Central & South America)
to get a rich red

We then put grey yarn in the cochineal dye an got a nice burgundy-purple

We got a nice rich yellow from onion skins

A lovely turquoise blue from Saxon Blue (derived from Indigo)
and a minty green from Fustic with a bit of Saxon Blue.

We used Madder to get a nice orange

then added iron and got some rich browns
from a white and a grey skein

We ended up with some great colours

A rainbow of natural colour!

I didn't get any photos of the Logwood dye pot. The result was a very dark purple that can be seen in the above photo between the Cochineal-dyed grey yarn and the Saxon Blue.


Of course now I'm planning to try some natural dyeing at home. I hope to have some natural-dyed yarns available for sale in November at my guild's annual sale.