The shop will be closed until Tuesday September 8th!!
This weekend an awesome juried arts and crafts festival is taking place at the Ulster County Fairgrounds in New Paltz NY. The seasonal feature of this event is Fiber Arts! Swing by the festival and stop by the ‘Demonstrators Tent’ to say “HI” to the members of the Ulster County Handspinners Guild. In addition to fiber art demonstrations we will be featuring the artwork of many of our talented guild members.
Sorry, no time to post, too busy dyeing some luscious new 80/20 Merino & Silk fiber. So, instead of words I share a photo of my Tour de Fleece ‘09 progress:
So I am driving home from Knit and Spin night and I realized that I have not posted to the blog in some time, suddenly the phone rings…
(Don’t all good stories start like that?)
Anyway, it is James telling me all about how the dog scared off a bear. Cool, good dog – earn your kibble little one…
Then, with a loud bang, we both realize that the bear is back. Did I mention that our dogs nickname is Peanut – yea, exactly, not so scary as one might imagine.
Let me just set the scene: Our trashcan is up against the side of our house pretty much right next to the front door – but to get from said trash can to front door one would have to go down a set of porch steps, turn right and turn right one more time. So as you can imagine, even though the trash can is just feet from the door – we do have a little safety barrier.
So anyway, back to the phone call and the loud bang. I will do my best to keep this short: The bear came back, helped itself to some delicious table scraps, littered trash all around the neighborhood and then went about its business.
Or so we thought…
After about 30 minutes on the road I arrive to the house. Being concerned that a bear was about (and really curious how much trash we had to clean up the next morning) I drove around the neighborhood searching. Not once, but twice I drove around our block making sure the bear was gone. Then feeling safe, and seeing that James had left all the lights on for my arrival I pulled into the driveway and opened the door.
Sitting in the car I listed for any noises, watched for movement and waited for James to open the front door. Greeting each other as loudly as possible, we decided that all was safe.
Or so we thought…
As I approached the porch steps about to hand my spinning wheel off to James we both heard the craziest noise. It can only be described as clapping, or better yet horse hooves hitting the ground and a painful wailing noise. Looking immediately to our left we say a HUGE black bear headed right for us. Needless to say we both squealed like school girls and ran into the house.
Having found the camera and locked all the furry ones away we peaked out the front door and spotted the bear trying to (or at least so we though – yea see a trend with that phrase?) climb the tree a few feet back from the trashcan.
As we watched (and videotaped) we realized that she was NOT happy that we were so curious. But it was strange – she never went further then that tree. Teeth chomping, wailing and pacing, she simply refused to go any further then the tree…
The we saw why; Momma bear was not alone.
You guessed it, there was a bear cub up the tree.
Needless to say, the second we saw that second face – that cute little baby bear face – we slammed the door (yes there was a little school girl screaming at that moment too) and watched from our side windows as they sauntered off away from the house and into the woods.
James and I were lucky to play host and hostess to my parents this week, it was just a few days but those days were awesome! Sadly they drove off this morning to spend some time at my sister’s. Oh well, guess I have to share.
While they were in town I got to play show and tell with Mom, actually one better, I got to teach mom about what I do in the dye studio. Although I asked her every 10 minutes “are you sure you want me to keep going” she never tried to escape. Quite the contrary, she seemed to absorb every single detail! And for those of you who have not actually met me – I have LOTS of those details to share – some call it obsessive, others, well, they choose more creative words…
Would you like to see what we collaborated on?
First up was some painting! I have been working with a awesome customer on the west coast to recreate a colourway I created before I started to document my dyes. After seeing everything hanging on the drying racks, I think I hit the mark. Here is what Mom did with the same colours I used to create ‘Born Again’ …
Introducing ‘Judy Bloom’
Next up is a batt named ‘Pootsie Muffin’
After learning all that is involved in creating a batt, Mom decided that we should set the price at $175.00 USD. After a great deal of debate (and review of the pricing matrix and excel documents – told you I obsess on every detail) she let me set the price. Rest assured, you can find the batt a a significant discount in the Shop.
Yes, but for good reason! I have so much to tell you, but so much still to do. So what does one do in this situation? Share a picture of one of the latest drying racks until I can compose another post. So without further ado:
