Color Therapy

Awwww, ya'll are so good to me. Thanks for taking the time to comment. It's heart warming to know that someone is reading me out there. I don't have a whole lot of contact with people on a daily basis so I treasure any and all interactions, including comments. If your email is in your Blogger profile, then I'm able to and try to respond directly to you. (((Big Hugs))) right back at ya.

I've been sucked into dyeing again by a certain someone - ahem Catie - who showed me some kettle dyed yarn. I became totally obsessed with doing it and am now totally hooked. Here are some braided ropes of my experiments on Shetland, Finn and Cashmere-Finn...







I realized as I played with dyeing this roving that I LOVE COLOR and really need it ever present daily. I can't begin to tell you how happy these little braids have made me and have sucked me out of my funk. One is destined to be a birthday present and I just may pet the others until they tell me what they want to be.

So I can spend more time playing with color and less time processing fiber, I've sent off most of the fleece I accumulated last year to be processed at Ohio Valley Natural Fibers. Wish me luck. I hope that they do a good job.

So what makes you happy these days? What's your therapy for the winter doldrums?

Wild Kingdom of Southwest VA

Does anyone remember watching Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom when they were kids? I guess it was the precursor to the Discovery Channel. Between Marlon Perkins and Jacques Cousteau, I was riveted to the tv to get my nature fix when I was a youngster. However, its not so fun to live it if you're a city girl at heart. Over the past couple of weeks, many different birds have converged on our home, making nests in our dryer vents and pooing all over the deck and the cars. I love nature but it has been hard listening to the constant squawk of baby birds til all hours of the night and their skittering in the vents if we wake them up by accident. One nest has flown away and the others are slow to leave. For the second morning in a row, a woodpecker decided to knock on the windows next to my front door and greet me when I opened it as if I was expected to give him something. Do I look like Dr. Doolittle?

The scariest brush with nature was Sunday when a coyote ran through our front yard and disappeared into our neighbor's across the street - all of this in broad daylight. Thanks to the many skunks, deer, foxes and turkey buzzards, I was already skittish about going outside but now I have to worry about coyotes? Mavis was always nervous about going outside at night and perhaps she knew something that we didn't. People, I live in the burbs, albeit adjacent to a golf course which I understand is the culprit. Every year we live here, a new woodland creature appears. I wonder who's next.

Last week, I was in Charm City - Baltimore, Maryland - for a conference. It was nice to be away for a few days without cooking and cleaning duty. I got to see Cal Ripken, Jr., Bishop Desmond Tutu, eat fabulous food, network with 1800 of my colleagues and visit quite a lovely city. I did some knitting during workshops but sadly only finished this one afghan square for Rae's blanket our fiber group is making. The yarn is the Kaffe Fassett Regia sock.



As usual, I had visions of finishing many squares and am not quite sure why I'm always so delusional about how much knitting I can get done in a short period of time.

My favorite part of visiting Baltimore? Getting to visit with Ei and H for the second time in one month. We did ate, drank some great wine, did some spinning, and had lots of laughs. Its so wonderful to pass on a craft. They are far better spinners than I ever was when I first started. I'm so impressed with what they're able to crank out. I worked on spinning up the rest of the 5 oz of the Ruppert's fleece I washed a couple of weeks ago and started plying it last night. I'm thinking of spinning up a bunch of it to make the Drops version of the Hanne Falkenburg Mermaid Jacket. I love the turquoise and blue version but the ivory is so very pretty too. Perhaps I should keep spinning and swatch before I settle on what colors to dye the yarn. I'm not entirely sure that the yarn will have enough drape to showcase the pattern. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Memorial day is fast approaching. I'm looking forward to lots of knitting on the beach, grilling and spending quality time with family and friends. Hurray for warmer weather!

Asheville Yarn Crawl - The finale

Call it a fiber high or lack of judgement but we got greedy. We suddenly decided that we needed to hit ALL of the knitting shops in Asheville and the surrounding area. We spied one shop that wasn't in our list in some arts and craft directory and decided that we'd skoot over to visit since we had some extra time. This was the true dud of the trip - The Enchanted Forest (didn't even bother looking for a link because they don't deserve the patronage).

In our defense, there was a picture of luxury yarn in the ad. It encouraged us to come in and even promised 40% off all yarn. How could we resist? The first sign of trouble was that the navigation system took us to the wrong end of the road we needed to be on. Approximately 15 minutes out of our way. When we finally found the place, the sign read "Consignment Shop". Our spider senses told us to turn back but we'd already come so far. There on near-empty shelves, nestled between an old waffle maker and a wasp's nest, lay a few dozen orphan skeins. I wanted to save them from their fate. There were skeins of Fiesta, Needful, Lily Chin and Art Yarns that shouldn't have been subject to that suffering. But before I could rescue them, CM quickly ushered me out of the store. I don't think we spent more that 120 seconds in that shop. Talk about false advertising. Shame on you Enchanted Forest for not stating in your ad that it was a yarn clearance instead of a sale. We gave it a negative 5 our of 5 stars. It sucked big time.


By now it was 4pm and tick, tick, tick we had one shop left to visit - Yarn Paradise. Should we dare put all of our hopes and dreams in one basket? We'd purposely NOT gazed into the windows of the store so that we'd be surprised when we arrived. Our fingers and toes were crossed that we'd saved the best for last.

We almost trampled each other trying to get into the store. Not only was it growing colder as the sun began fade but we knew that we didn't have much time to shop. Once inside the doors, we knew that we'd reached yarn mecca. The store not only has a great selection of yarn, books, colors and customer service all under one roof. We marvelled at the fact that not only did they have great floor stock but they had plenty of backstock too. No problem finding enough yarn in a color you want for a large project here. Koigu and Claudia's Handpaint overflowed from several Lantern Book tiered baskets near the front of the store. Colinette and Noro dripped from the walls in the "fireplace room". We all immediately got ADD and wandered for a bit which I think made the staff suspicious because they followed us around for a while. This put me off at first but then again they might have a lot of theft so I tried to keep that in mind. After a while, they backed off unless we asked for help. My main goal besides buying fiber was to stock up on some yarns so that I could tackle some sort of fair isle or stranded project. I scored big time with some Koigu , Koigu mill ends (who knew there was such a thing) and some Debbie Bliss Silk. The others had bigger projects to buy for so we set to work on filling those needs.

Yarn Paradise is paradise!

Tons of great yarn

CM practicing her "mannequin pose" ala Fluffa in a Debbie Bliss cardigan

The staff and even their customers were too kind and very helpful. Thanks to their very nice store samples and swatches, we bought even more yarn than we'd planned. They have great selection of Louisa Harding, Ella Rae, Katia and Nashua yarns. And staples like Debbie Bliss, Noro, Cascade and Classic Elite. If we'd decided to stay until Monday, we could have gotten our Friday Night Knitting Club books signed by the author. Darn it. Talk about bad timing. Yarn Paradise scored a great big shiny 5 outta 5 stars! Worth every dime!

By now its almost 6 pm, its really cold and windy, our dogs were barking and hunger had set in. We decided to make reservations at another highly recommended restaurant - Zambra Tapas so that we'd have a snowball's chance of eating dinner at a decent hour. We couldn't get in until almost 8 pm so we decided to survey our haul and play with fiber for a while. SF is the fashion designer so she "laid out" all of our stuff on her bed for the photo shoot.

The whole kit and kaboodle

TE and S's Haul

IM and CM's Haul

Not bad, eh?

Zambra is everything that everyone said that it would be. The selection of tapas dishes was incredible. There was a three piece flamenco (?) band playing that was as flawless as a digital recording. We even ran into some friends from Roanoke. What a great way to cap the day and the weekend.

Of course we stayed up gabbing again and playing with all of our new fiber, yarn, pattern books and gadgets. We out lived the fire and reluctantly went to bed sometime around 2:30 am. Just one more row was heard more than once during the evening. After another one of Bruce's delicious breakfasts, we packed, knit until noon and then zipped by the Grove Park Inn just to see what all the buzz was about. This place is a behemoth. Just look at how small the cars are next to the building.

Grove Park Inn

And the view from the back of the property...

Breathtaking, no?

We finally couldn't put off the inevitable and headed back home to "reenter" the real world of kids, husbands, pets and housework. I spent the car trip deconstructing on of S's sweaters for TE in hopes that we can work up a pattern for it in the coming weeks. I've never done such a thing so we'll see how it turns out.

Don't you love the different buttons?

Now that I've done my little part for Asheville tourism, who wants to meet me there for SAFF in October? I'd love to see if we could rent the entire B&B and spin and knit all weekend. Come on, you know you wanna :)

Asheville Yarn Crawl - Day Two

Friday night we were reminded by the evening staff to get up in time to make Bruce's famous breakfast. Of course, we were all dragging butt. I'd stayed up reading the first couple of chapters of Friday Night Knitting Club and visions of fiber were dancing in all of our heads. There was lots of yummy, carb-filled goodness but for some reason all I can remember is the baked peach french toast and "smack yo-momma" blueberry muffins (they weren't named that but that's how good they were).

With a map of Asheville in hand, a list of our stops and comfy shoes on our feet, we braved the cold in search of fiber. First stop of the day, the Grove Arcade and Asheville NC Homecrafts (The Arcade in and of itself is a work of art. It was built by the same person who built the Grove Park Inn. This place has all sorts of great shops, food and fun. Add this to your must see list.).


The Grove Arcade

Asheville Homecrafts is a refreshingly unique store. Half is committed to finished handcrafted items - mostly fiber related - such as handspun/hand knit hats and scarves, dolls, baskets, quilts and clothing. The other half is chock full of yarn, a significant percentage of which is locally produced. An entire wall dangled with locally spun yarns of all fibers. Its such a rare treat to find a store so committed to prominently promoting regional talent. S was so smitten with the handspun that we revisited the store on Sunday. There were also some staples such as Brown Sheep, Debbie Bliss and Noro and hard to find yarns such as Tilli Tomas. There was only one person on duty so the personalized service was spotty but good when available. This shop ranks a strong 4 out of 5!


TE, CM and SF at Asheville Homecrafts

There are three, yes THREE, fiber related shops in downtown Asheville. We barely have three within a 50 mile radius in the Roanoke Valley so imagine our giddiness when we realized that we could walk to most of the shops on our list. I believe we might have skipped to our next stop (mostly because it was so damn cold) - Earthguild.

Earthguild is located on Haywood Street in the Woolworth Walk across the street from Chocolate Fetish. In just the past few months, I've had severe allergic reactions to chocolate that's been processed on the same equipment with tree nuts so I was warned by the staff not to indulge. But others in our group said something about the chocolate being orgasmic. Sucks having allergies. Back to Earthguild. The store is huge. It truly covers a wide swath hobby and craft supplies from leather tooling to weaving to spinning to dyeing and everything in between. I ended up buying a pound and a half of medium grade "wool" (they had no idea what breed it was) with the intention of spinning some yarn as a gift for S. However, she wasn't "feelin" the fiber and honestly had a hard time envisioning what it might look like spun up so I gave up on trying to sell her on it and decided to use it to experiment with dyes when I got home. As far as yarns, they too had a large selection of Brown Sheep (too much Brown Sheep in one town if you ask me), Christopher Sheep Farm yarns and the Louet Gems line (I bought some white to dye with especially since I LURV Koigu) but nothing really stood out. There weren't many spinning or needle felting supplies in stock so I wasn't able to shop for most of the things on my list - boo hoo :( Now I have to issue a small disclaimer: I set my sights very high for this shop because I came to load up on fiber not yarn. Plus, I've had over two years to stock up on basic spinning stuff. I need much more specialized fibers and gadgets. I believe that the store doesn't have enough depth in a particular craft to truly meet the broader needs of the crafter but has more than enough to allow people to dabble very nicely. The customer service was at both ends of the spectrum and depended heavily on the staff tending to you. This shop gets a 3 out of 5.

Wanna see the funniest part of our Earthguild trip? An old (like 1990s) Vogue knitting book. We were so distracted by the models that we couldn't focus on the patterns.


Stop laughing. I'm related to Eddie Munster and can't help it if I have thick eyebrows


It's like she wants us to see that she shaved her pits


Huh? What? Can't hear you because of these giant starfish on my ears.

What were we thinking in the 80's? Okay enough kidding around. Feeling a bit let down, we headed to Chocolate Fetish first (good to drown your sorrows in chocolate) and then to Purls Yarn Emporium (Someone in Asheville please get these people a decent website. It does NOT do the store justice). When we walked through the door, a light shown down. For me, I was in heaven. The yarns are arranged by color that makes for a striking presentation.

Look at all of that red, orange and yellow!

Now I know some of you hate your yarn arranged this way but we were working on color palette projects so this set up was perfect. For whatever reason, we could focus better and a S & C actually camped out on the floor by the "greens" at one point to put together an array of yarns for a throw. There was an entire table full of cashmere, silk and blends of both (I just wanted to roll on it) from Art Yarns and Fiesta. Another entire table with some uber cool handspun yarns by local artist Urban GypZ.

CM and TE in full color palette project mode @ Purls

Great buttons, a case full of antique knitting supplies and good selection of books. Their choice of staff for the store that day left a lot to be desired. The guy on duty seemed to be bored out of his mind and somewhat annoyed that we were there. Interesting considering how much money was spent by our group alone not to mention the other customers. Go figure. This store was the first to get 5 stars even with the lukewarm reception. I didn't buy a thing mostly because I had a hard time breathing once some of the yarn winding started. For some odd reason, I've recently become allergic to baby alpaca. Its so bad that I can't breathe and after about 20 minutes at Purls, I had to leave the store to get some fresh air. Bummer.

Ladden with heavy bags, we headed started back to the car but got sidetracked by growling stomachs and decided to stop and eat lunch. S quickly spied Early Girl Eatery and we popped in, not knowing that this was one of the best places in Asheville to eat lunch.

Most everything on their menu is organic or healthy or vegan which was what we needed after the Southern style breakfast we'd consumed. We got back to the car just in time to find a ticket on the window. We'd forgotten to feed the meter! Fear not, good karma intervened and it was only a warning. No tickie today! However that's where the luck ended. We were about to find the dud of the day.

This post is already getting too long so against my better judgement, I'm gonna post the rest tomorrow.

Asheville Yarn Crawl - Day One

Photo by Susan Stanton

(Long post and plenty o' pictures ahead...)

Yes, I know its not Monday (several of you have already called me on the carpet for not blogging about my trip on Monday). This crazy little thing called work keeps getting in the way. Perhaps I'll hit the VA lottery tonight - its over $130 MILLION! In the meantime, I have to pay the bills and blogging's not doing the trick just yet.

So four knitters decided back in Nov. that we needed a retreat, a penis free knitting retreat to be exact. We scoped out the possibilities and Asheville won out. It was only a little over 4 hours away, had multitudes of quaint B&B's, excellent food and most important - a high concentration of yarn shops. I must confess that this is the second penis free fiber retreat I've been on since the beginning of the year. I'll back track and tell you about the first one another day (Just wanted the F5 to know that I didn't forget).

Our three day trip began last Friday (hurray for the three day weekend). We stopped first at Circle of Friends Yarn Shop, a cute shop nestled in the very small downtown of Elkins. The shop had a great array of yarns including Debbie Bliss, Brown Sheep, Malabrigo, Noro, and Araucania. The staff was very attentive and friendly. While nothing appealed to me in particular (I was more in the mood for fiber than yarn), the others found quite a bit that they liked. We gave this shop 3.5 stars out of 5! A great find.

Next stop, Much Ado About Knitting in Lewisburg. While there was more selection than we have at our LYS (which isn't saying much), twasn't much to get excited about. A butt load of various and sundry novelty yarns. I did get to smell the Skacel aromatherapy yarns Meditation and Bravura. And it was nice to fondle Dale Yarns and flip through Phildar patterns. Was it worth the detour? Nope. A very disappointing 1.5 out of 5 stars.

With time ticking and no more shops to visit along the way, we decided to make a beeline for our lodging - Cedar Crest Victorian Inn B&B.



Cedar Crest B&B

How can you not love a place that greets you with the photo at the very top of this post? This is the cover of the Feb. 07 issue of the Laurel of Asheville Visitors Magazine. Take a closer look at the white specks in the left corner. Yep, those are sheep (sorry I couldn't enlarge the photo so you could see a close up shot of the sheepies). I LOVE this photo! It's by photographer Susan Stanton and is available as a greeting card in addition to prints. Visit her website - http://stantonphoto.com/ for more information.

Anyhoo, back to Cedar Crest. Built in 1891, this Victorian mansion is run by Rita and Bruce Wightman - the most incredible hosts I've encountered in many years. There was always something yummy in the parlour and the main house is as beautiful as a museum. We reserved the entire guest cottage for our stay so our late night gabbing wouldn't disturb anyone.



Cedar Crest Guest Cottage

We arrived both hungry and eager to play with fiber so we quickly unpacked, sat and knit for a while and made dinner reservations at the Corner Kitchen.

Corner Kitchen

Don't let the name fool you. Corner Kitchen is far from "home cookin". They call it "comfortable Caromerican cuisine" and it did NOT disappoint. Located in the historic Biltmore Village, the added bonus of dining at Corner Kitchen is that its a stones throw from what would be our final destination of the weekend, Yarn Paradise (more about that in a minute).

Peeps, it was C.O.L.D. Friday night. We headed directly back to our cottage to find that the fire had been "set" for us - all we had to do was light it. This is a shot of the sitting room between


Cedar Crest Guest Cottage sitting room


our rooms. By the time we had our jammies on, it was roaring hot. S, being the sweetheart that she is, gifted us with a copy of Friday Night Knitting Club





to celebrate our retreat. I can't believe that I missed hearing about this book. I'm only a couple of chapters in but its still got my attention.


Late night knitting and spinning next to the fire

Sometime well after 1 am and after the fire had dimmed to a glowing whisper, we turned in. There was much yarn and fiber to be had on Saturday and we planned to hit the shops promptly at 10 am, when they opened.

Next post - more eating, lots of shopping and one real dud