fiber

Wedding Day Weaving

In celebration of my of 14th wedding anniversary, I wanted to share with you a weaving I did a few years ago honoring our wedding day.

My husband & I got married on the beach of Lake Michigan at sun set.

I love the idea of honoring special textiles in our lives by including them into art pieces.

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I’ve also written about a dream catcher that I made last Valentine’s Day using strips of fabric from my wedding & bridesmaid dresses.

What are some ways that you have preserved special textiles from your life?

Blackstone Tweed

When it comes to yarn, I admit that I am the biggest snob around.

I avoid synthetic fibers like the plague. I appreciate wool, but only for certain types of projects. Cotton, also has it’s place, but I prefer to use linen. I find fibers such as banana silk, nettle and flax, intriguing to work with. These fibers can add a lot of texture in a fiber art piece. I enjoy working with silk. It has great strength, is soft, and I like how it looks. It has a nice drape, and is comfortable to wear in warmer weather. Yarns like angora, and cashmere are extremely soft, but I find them to be lacking in strength and durability.

For most of my projects, I reach for my hand spun yak down. I still think it is the best yarn around ( but, I may have a biased opinion).

However, another yarn that I have enjoyed using a lot is this Blackstone Tweed by Berroco. It is made of 65% wool, 25% mohair 10% angora, so it is quite soft, and durable.

I knit my daughter a ballet sweater with matching leg warmers when she was 4. It was fabulous.

I also worked for years on a sweater that I called my anniversary sweater. I had only worked on it while my husband and I were away celebrating our anniversary. It was the only time I could relax and concentrate enough to follow the color charts without interruption from my little ones. Once, I got the sweater to a place where I could try it on, I discovered that I had made it WAY to large. Over those years I had been knitting the sweater, I also lost a lot of weight. I should rip it apart and start again, now that my children have grown more and I can easily follow a color chart at home.

Do you have a “go-to” yarn that you reach for time and time again? What is it?

Wild Fibers Magazine

My mail carrier brought me an unexpected box today! I love it when that happens. When, I opened it, I found this stack of magazines setting inside. I had been looking for the spring issue of Wild Fibers Magazine to arrive for a few days now, but I was not expecting a box of these magazines.

You see, Linda over at Wild Fibers Magazine chose to write a feature length story about The Rocking Yak in this spring issue. I have anxiously been waiting for months now for the story to be written & published. I am so excited about this.

It was well worth the wait. The article is FANTASTIC! Linda has this way of being in a moment. She has the ability to take in everything. The sights, the sounds, the smells. Then, when she sits down to write about it, she is able to put flesh & bones into her writing & the story comes to life.

I have been working with Bret on this project for 6 years now, having never set foot in China. Linda was able to pull stories out of the field & give me glimpses into the very heart & soul of this company that I love so much. It’s a gift that she gave to me.

If you have even an ounce of appreciation for the fibers of this world ( If you are reading this blog you probably do!), and have never read any of these magazines, you need to.
This is such a fantastic magazine, often being called, “The National Geographic of Fibers.” It is an extraordinary blend of photography, culture, environment and FIBER!

“The mission of Wild Fibers Magazine is to understand the role natural fibers have played in developing cultures and supporting communities throughout the world. We are as devoted to the people who spin, weave, and create “magic” with fiber, as we are to the farmers, nomads, and shepherds who have tended these endearing creatures from the start.

Wild Fibers travels to places that have yet to be rubber-stamped by the trappings of the modern world. We sleep in yurts. We comb camels. We spin cashmere. And most of all, we learn about a way of life that is held together by one very long, long thread.

But it’s not all yak butter tea and pup tents. With the voracious march of synthetic fibers, we stay connected to new initiatives including Prince Charles’ Campaign for Wool and Discover Natural Fibers – an international coalition of fiber producers and processors dedicated to preserving the importance of natural fibers on the planet.

Readers love Wild Fibers not only because they discover the world in ways they had never imagined, but because they have such wild fun in doing it!” ~ Wild Fiber Magazine

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