Soon we'll be home

This gate leads from a little old cemetery into a pasture that is located on the edge of our home RV park just south of Gainesville, Florida.

I love this place for all of the nature: hiking and biking, spring-fed rivers for kayaking, and lots of birds -- water birds, little song birds, hawks, ospreys, and even a pair of eagles that nest across the road. They spend their days perched in the top of a big dead tree on the edge of Orange Lake looking for fish and unlucky critters. One day I was running and one of the eagles flew so low, just above my head! In his claws was a big old black snake. He was taking it to the nest to share with the baby eagles. Every day is an opportunity to see something exciting in nature.

Bye Bye Summer

SAFF

SAFF is the South-
eastern Animal Fiber Fair which is an annual festival of all things fiber related. It has fiber in all of its forms . . . from on the hoof to beautiful hanks of yarn and even gorgeous finished garments. As well as . . . spinning wheels and spinning tools, dyes and dyeing stuff, lots of felting materials, books, and classes galore!

The festival is held at the WNC Ag Center in Fletcher, NC for three days at the end of October. This was the 14th year for the wildly popular event. There are two floors in the main building filled with vendors. I heard that in order for a vendor to get a space in the main arena (pictured above), you have to go on a waiting list for years and years. There are so many vendors now that they are putting them out in the stables, right along with the llamas and alpacas! The sheep and goats get their own barn.

I took four classes, which left me just enough time to shop on Friday, Saturday and even Sunday right up until closing time. I'm sure I walked a few miles going around and around both the upper and lower levels of the Ag Center, as well as checking out the vendors and animals in the out buildings.

In my first class, Beginning Spinning, I learned how to spin a gnarly rope on a spinning wheel. The class was really too big for one instructor and an assistant, but it gave me a hands on taste of what spinning is all about. Next I had fun learning how to dye yarn with Kool Aid with Nancy Hamilton. Who knew you could have such fun with water, vinegar, Kool Aid, yarn and a microwave oven? I missed her class on dyeing with things you find in nature (leaves, acorns, etc.), so I hope to take that next year.

My favorite class was learning how to spin on a spindle with Leslie Bebensee, whose love for spinning was contagious. This was fascinating to me because spindles have been used since very early civilization. I recently listened to a wonderful audio book, THE RED TENT, which told the story of Dinah, the daughter of Jacob in biblical times, and she talked about how important spindling skills were to their survival. So, I now have a collection of spindles and some wool roving. I also learned a lot about different fibers from this class and a book, SPINDLE SPINNING by Connie Delaney (available at Leslie's website, I think) that I bought at the festival.

The last class was Point Spinning with a wonderful instructor, Eileen Hallman. We learned about the charka and attempted to spin cotton on Ghandi's little spinning wheel in a "book."

Here's a peek at the beautiful hand spun and dyed yarn I bought. I've already knitted a beautiful scarf with the white alpaca. This yarn is soooo soft. I still need to block it, so I don't have pictures yet.

Heading to SAFF!

I finished and blocked the lace scarf/ shawl while I was at my Mom's recently. She has tons of room in her basement workshop and she had the perfect thing to put under the towels for blocking. She had two big pieces of some sort of white art board that you could poke pins in. Worked great!

This week we'll be heading down to the Asheville, NC area for the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair (SAFF) where we will actually be camping right at the Ag Center SAFF site! Can you believe it? I have only to walk out the door and I'll be there! Three days of total fiber immersion!

Did you know that not everyone understands what a fiber festival is? My son just told me that he thought it was a festival for people who take Metamucil!!! Can you imagine all the porta-potties they'd need for that kind of festival????

As a non-spinner, I'm torn between the fascination of spinning and the sure knowledge that I already don't have enough time for knitting, so why do I think I have more time for spinning? But I ignored logic and signed up for three spinning classes (and one dyeing class) anyway! It is high time to expand my horizons, don't ya think? Although I pretty sure that a spinning wheel will not fit in the motorhome or my budget right now. I've heard of new spinners coming home from fiber festivals with spinning wheels, but I am strong. . . I can resist. . . I am strong. . . I can resist. . .

Right now we are near Lynch- burg, Virginia in the mountainettes (what I call the foothills) of the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains. Yesterday we went hiking at Holliday Lake State Park, so I thought I'd show you that the leaves are finally just starting to turn colors. You can read about it and see more pictures here and here.

And, finally, here are three cute little pumpkins that took only about an hour each to make. You can get the pattern here.

Current knitting

Just finished a pair of manly ankle socks in the Tampa Bay Buc's colors (red and gray) for a friend's birthday coming up this weekend. Both of the toes are gray, although the picture doesn't show this very well.







Next, I'm I just about finished with a lace scarf/ shawl in the most beautiful mohair blend 2-ply lace weight yarn . . . which I got on sale somewhere (Indiana?) this summer. I didn't know what I was going to do with it until I saw this pattern in Knit Simple magazine. This yarn is so soft, although a little warm to be knitting with in Florida in the summer.

Anyway, here's a picture of the work-in-progress (wip). This will be my first major lace blocking project, and I'm trying to figure out where in the motorhome I will find enough room to spread it out to block it!

An embarrassment of riches

This is all the sock yarn that I won in the Summer of Socks "vacation sock picture" contest!!!



I am totally flabbergasted ! ! !

This amazingly beautiful yarn arrived in the mail today and is enough for five pairs of socks. I piled all of these pretty skeins in a basket on my desk so I can admire them and dream about all the beautiful socks they will make.

You can see the winning picture (taken by EB, of course) here.

More Baby Surprise Jackets

Whew! These baby sweaters by E.Z. are addicting! They were knitted out of leftover yarn and donated to the charity knitting group at Yarnworks, my LYS in Gainesville, FL.

Here is more info on where to get the pattern, plus additional notes on the pattern.