Handcrafted in the Hills 2013!

We had such a great time at the Hancrafted in the Hills fiber festival! We left Minnesota early Friday morning with a car full of wool and yarn (and a 2 year old!), and set up our booth that evening. It was fantastic to finally meet some familiar faces from Ravelry, as well as the other vendors. My booth was small but we had a great turnout! Thanks to everyone who came by.

I had the best booth space in the house, right between the coffee station and the gals who were giving massages! ;) I was right next to the Spindler's Cottage booth, Michael had some amazing handcrafted spinning tools. I purchased this lovely cherry wood spindle from him.

The spinning here is one of my gradiant colorways which progresses through yellow, lime green, turquoise, blue, and purple. I split the braid in half lengthwise and am spinning two singles to ply together to keep the color progression. I think this will become a pretty shawl for a booth sample.






I also snagged a few other items from the other vendors. A very cool purple 'kitchen sink' batt from Kim of Yarnsanity, which quickly became this two ply yarn on my new spindle. I spun and plied this 2 ounce skein during the second day of the festival. I love it, so funky! Kim also had some
undyed sock blanks, which I've been wanting
to try to dye so I grabbed one of those as well.

The organizers, Rita and Sue of C R Yarn in downtown Rapid, also had a booth with items from their shop set up. Rita took home a pretty burgandry skein of my BFL Silk Lace, and I got this pretty braid of her Merino/Silk top. Since we got home I've been spinning this braid into a thin single. I intend to ply it with something else to do some sort of novelty or art yarn. Not sure what yet!





It felt great to use my spindle so much again, but of course I needed a break from spinning too. The Saint Cloud Knitters started a KAL right before we left, so I hopped on the wagon! A few days before we left I quickly purchased the Color Affection pattern and dyed up a few colors of sport weight wool.



And I knit away! 10 hour drive to and from South Dakota, as well as plenty of knitting time sitting in my booth. I'm several repeats into the short row section and loving this knit! There's just something about the garter stitch, frequent color changes, and short rows. So easy, yet just enough interest to keep my sanity.

We're buying a house! Inspections finished and waiting on appraisal. We're closing the first week of June. We're so excited and just anxious to get moved! Luckily we will have about a month of overlap between closing and having to be out of our apartment, so we can take a little more time to move and get settled.

Mail!

Isn't getting packages in the mail the best?!

I've been getting alot of them this week. Kasha's Knits will be a vendor at Handcrafted (in the Hills) Fiber Festival in Rapid City, SD April 26th-28th, so I've been getting busy dyeing!

First in the mail, some new bases to dye! I've been dyeing yarn again, so we're now stocking BFL Silk laceweight and BFL Sock (with nylon). I also got a variety of wool tops, including some Merino/Bamboo and Merino/Tencel blends, superwash BFL, polwarth, and some longer staple wools such as Wensleydale and Masham.

This is what I dyed up yesterday! The semi solid lace weights and the variegated sock skeins are repeatable colorways.

I also got my package from fabric.com with this adorable combination. My best friend from high school is a major music buff and is having a baby. He's having a boy, so this music themed fabric had the perfect color scheme to coordinate with some solids for a faux chenille baby blanket. Can't wait to get started on this!

Samplings

I've been dyeing up a storm of 1 gram sample colors. In the last year I've been gradually switching from premixed dye colors to mixing my own from primaries, shooting for an ultimate goal of being able to create repeatable colorways.

I wrote down every possible 2 color combination of my primaries and set to work making samples of those combinations in different concentrations. All of these were dyed at a 1% depth of shade, so they are very clear, bright and cheery colors. I plan on redoing all of these at a 0.5% or 0.2% depth of shade to get a good range of light and pastels as well, since some colors can change drastically when the depth of shade is reduced.

I'm currently working through some 3 color combinations, which are much more muted and subtle colors.

 I just submitted our application to vend at HandCrafted (in the Hills) Fiber Festival April 26th-28th at the Grand Gateway Hotel in Rapid City, SD. I was born and raised in the Black Hills, and I'm thrilled that I have the opportunity to be a part of a fiber show happening there.

A very large order of yarn and roving are on their way to me right now and I'm ready to get the dye pots cooking!

!!!

This stuff is so gorgeous!

For real. I think I could braid this and dye it just like commercially prepped top. It is sooo soft and squooshy, and it isn't as airy and delicate as you might expect most hand combed top to be.

I think I have to spin this right now.

I haz wool.

Lots of wool...


27 pounds of it, to be exact. This is one garbage bag full - I have three more in my laundry room.
My dad found this lovely raw merino wool from a local source in Belle Fourche, SD. I'm so excited to start combing this stuff, it is super super soft!

I started washing it as soon as I could when we got home from SD, I couldn't help it! I pulled off big chunks of the fleece and layered them in a mesh laundry bag...

 

 Then I let my washing machine fill up with hot water, adding some dish soap and a few big glugs of ammonia. I leave the lid of the machine open so the agitate cycle won't run, and let the whole bag soak for a half hour or so. Then set the machine to spin cycle only and let the water spin out. I had to repeat the ammonia wash twice, then a rinse cycle with a glug of vinegar to balance out the ammonia.

It's on it's last rinse cycle now. Then I'll spin the water out one last time and lay the whole thing out on a towel with a nearby fan overnight to dry.

 I did a small test batch in the sink earlier, and the washed locks are gorgeous. Soft and clean!