bondage sheep
Sep. 11th, 2010 20:39![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
piranha
if its worth doing, it's worth overdoing. actually made it out of the house today, and went to two (!) events.
first the local fibre festival at the conference centre, a new offering. 25 vendors, and i bankrupted us buying fibre and yarn. mostly fibre: tussah silk, flax, romney/opossum, dyed romney/mohair, chiengora (the name cracks me up; it's the undercoat of samoyed dogs), mohair locks, silk hankies, dyed silk noil, and an entire shetland fleece. yarn: lorna's laces shepherd sock, unwind yarns nebiolo (a sport weight merino/suri alpaca), diamond's alpaca baby lace, and a 100% silk lace distributed by fun knits on quadra island (dirt cheap; C$ 9.95 for 500m).
weirdly enough our local yarn store was not represented; when i was visiting them yesterday they complained that they found out about the event from a random customer. seems the publicizing was directed primarily at spinning/weaving suppliers more so than at knitting stores, and the LYS has just started to carry a wee bit of fibre. that was short-sighted, because the show had a lot of yarn as well, and the LYS would have beaten the drum for them. i'm hoping this will become an annual event.
when carting my treasure home i listened to the radio, which was broadcasting from the cowichan fair, and since the paramour was amenable, we headed down island to check out the brandnew exhibition grounds. very nice. we had some mennonite sausage, which was yummy, and some frozen lemonade, watched a driving class (mmh, draft horses), ambled through the poultry and sheep barns, and looked at the crafts. it's interesting how widely the craftsmanship varies in some of the categories -- the quilts were fabulous; first class, as was the weaving, but the crochet was terrible, and the knitting mediocre. i took lots of quilt pictures; i'll share some of them tomorrow. it also amuses me just how detailed some of the categories get. my favourite one: 1706 NEWCYCLE, a design using roadside plant materials in a recycled container.
chatted with a lady who was demonstrating bobbin lace (this is NOT something i will ever do), and one with a nice 8-harness foldable tabletop loom (i think it was louet's jane). *lust*.
we were both flagging by the time the rain moved in, and headed home early. now i am back to mainlining tv shows (damages and true blood) while fondling my new fibre.
no subject
on 2010-09-12 06:47 (UTC)I've been looking at looms because I have so much handspun yarn that I would be years in knitting it all. They're expensive though!
I've seen a few episodes of True Blood and every time I wish I remembered to skip the intro theme part. I wish I didn't like the show because it's set in such a back-assward sort of place and they make really sure we can all see it with its pants down.
no subject
on 2010-09-12 16:21 (UTC)the expense depends on the type of loom, but even new floor looms with sufficient width for weaving light cloth for garments are expensive, yes. that gets into serious "build it yourself" territory for me; i can't afford thousands of dollars for hobby equipment. the loom the woman was demonstrating on retails for around C$800. it isn't wide enough to weave an entire back for a jacket, but it could do the fronts, and one can of course do scarves and table runners and towels, etc. and one could design the back of a jacket from strips. the cons are mainly that jack looms are hard on the warp, and that you need to take your hands off your weaving to change the sheds. i'm not sure i would mind this at the start, since all the weaving i've done has been on much more primitive looms.
i always skip the intro for true blood, yes. it's actually very well done, but it depresses the heck out of me. and yeah, bon temps is back-asswards -- though i am glad i can't hear people's thoughts here either; i don't think they would impress me much.
no subject
on 2010-09-12 19:24 (UTC)Looms with the 15" weaving width are a lot less expensive. I'd be okay seaming the back too if I was using it for garment fabric. It wouldn't be hard to make that into a decorative element. But I don't actually sew, which means I'd put a lot of effort into making fabric which would sit around while waiting for my SO to get around to working on making things for me.
I've been looking at rigid heddle looms, which run about $250. Some of them fold up really tight even while warped. Some of them have metal working bits. Note that these never occur in the same loom. I also considered a weaving class where they have floor looms, but couldn't quite talk myself into doing it. It would have been a LOT of driving.
There was a year we went to Vancouver and Mississippi. Canada was a lot more like California than Mississippi was, but Canada is the one with different money. I was queuing up to buy something at a big department store in the mall in Mississippi and got in the cashier's line with the fewest people. Everyone stopped and stared at me, customers, clerks, everyone. I'd chosen the wrong queue, since they still do racial matching there. My niece (no relation, totally not my fault) "explained" later that it's not right to interact with other folk. I can't even comprehend that. Every time I see the True Blood intro, especially with the child in the white hood, I remember that's actually what it's like.
no subject
on 2010-09-12 09:53 (UTC)opossum fibre
on 2010-09-12 15:45 (UTC)