Fiber Musings – Page 63 – Random thoughts of a fiber enthusiast – mostly fiber related, sometimes coherent

Giddy

On 22 May, 2012

CNCH Ribbons! (click to enlarge)

Look what came home with me from CNCH? A pair of blue ribbons!

Here are the judging criteria. Both of these received perfect scores. Yes, the sketch book, the one I didn’t like and wanted to re-work, received a blue ribbon. The note from the judge on my skein was that she would have given me sixes if she could (on a scale of 1-5). I am beyond tickled!

The beggar’s bag, however, did not win a ribbon. The judges disagreed on the scoring (14.5 and 25, respectively, out of 26 points). According to the notes, what aspect liked by one was the very thing that the other judge didn’t like. Ah, well. I was told to expect that. In any case, I still like the bag. And 2 ribbons out of 3 submissions isn’t bad, especially since this is my first juried show.

Now, I just need to figure out what to weave with my skein.

CNCH Gallery Submissions

By Ann

On 18 May, 2012

In FO, Sew, Weave

Beggar's Bag (click to enlarge)

CNCHÂ starts tomorrow. I’ll provide a report next week. In the meantime, here are some eye candy on a few of my submissions. Drop by the gallery and take a look if you are in the Bay Area this weekend!

The bag on the left is the Beggar’s Bag for the Traditions and Innovations Gallery.

Draft: Floral Dance Star Variation (Anne Dixon)
Warp: Borgs 22/2 Cottolin (natural)
Tabby Weft: 8/2 cotton (natural)
Pattern Weft: Â assorted handspun handpainted BFL singles (purchased at 2011 Whidbey Island Spin In from Island Fibers, I think)
Construction: all hand pieced, even down to the zipper and Â lining.

I definitely learned quite a bit on this project. Even after re-sleying, I think the sett is still too close. I found out later in my research that I should have sleyed it for a loose plain weave. This is why I had to go to a 8/2 cotton instead of cottolin for weft. It’s a good thing too since I ran out of natural cottolin.

Return to Sender Yarn

Return to Sender Batt

On the left is my Return to Sender skein, blocking on the skeinwinder. On the right is what the batt looked like before I started. The fiber is 85/15 BFL/tussah, dyed with natural dyes by Mary Finley and Roger Salter of Dreamy Goat Design Studio.

I split the batt into pure colors, and stripped out the mixed bits as my “in-between”. Spun the colors in progression as a fine single and plied it with an 80/20 “black” BFL/tussah (SOAR 2009 ? special — Bend, OR). You can see that the black BFL toned down the colors quite a bit, but still quite nice.

Weight: 4 oz. (2 oz. RTS, 2 oz. black BFL)
Yardage: 1,012 yards
Plies: 2
WPI: 44

I have one more gallery submission for the Return of the Return to Sender (yarn spun for the 2010 CNCH), but I forgot to photograph it before sending it on. I used an alternate treadling to Floral Dance with my 2 ply yarn and turned it into a sketchbook cover. Probably subliminal. I’m not that happy with the cover. I will likely re-do it after the conference.

Serendipity

By Ann

On 7 May, 2012

In Knit

I was looking through my web stats (*) this morning and saw that someone had been viewing my Baby Blanket post from several years ago. This was made for a girl friend’s first baby. She just had her third last fall and very recently made the decision to take a respite from work and stay at home with the three little ones. (Tomorrow is her exit interview. Congratulations!)

Summer is upon us. Summer means lazy outdoor meals, including meals in the marina with my friends. And after the sun goes down, we scramble for blankets and wraps. These “baby” blankets will be fabulous as a shoulder wrap. Even better, all that mindless knitting is perfect for social knitting. Â I think I may have have some yarn around here that might work. snerk.

* The reason I was looking through the stats wasn’t due to vanity, but security. Last week, I installed a Word Press plug-in that limits failed login attempts. It’s completely configurable, but I have it set to 4 failed attempts before it locks that IP out from further logins for 20 minutes. I can not believe how many people / robots / what-have-you have attempted to log into my WP installation as “Admin”, which is the default administrator account. I have since (a) created a strong password for all of my WP accounts, and (b) changed my default administrator account to another account name. All this is in addition to the plug-in.

It’s scary out there! How about you? What are you doing to protect your blog?