Every Saturday, if the sun is shining, my husband and I (and sometimes the pup) visit a Farmer’s Market. We get most of our vegetables, bread and eggs from the local farmers. I also recieve something a little less tangible – inspiration, a sense of community and deep gratitude for this excellent resource. In the past, I’ve created yarns inspired by nature, but I wanted to work on something a bit more immediate, more grounded in the present.
Thus, my Farmer’s Market Project: each week I’ll take one picture at the Farmer’s Market and will post it. During the next week I’ll dye and/or spin a yarn inspired by that picture and will list the yarn the very next weekend. This will force me to execute my plan quickly and spontaneously and I hope to photograph the yarn in it’s “natural habitat”, at the next week’s market!

This week’s picture was taken at the Abingdon Farmer’s Market; a tray of pepper plants and begonias.

At Maryland Sheep & Wool, strolling through the sheep barns, I came upon a table with some business cards, a skein of yarn and a bag of wool. As I plunged my hand into the wool (ecstasy!), the farmer approached and he and I my mom began chatting about his sheep. It took me about two seconds of admiring the sheep

and fondling the wool before I pounced on it! I was thrilled to learn that Wit’s End farm is just a few hours from my house, in rural Virginia. When I returned home, Jay had purchased the first of the season’s strawberries. Inspired, I pulled out the local wool, and dyed it in “local” colors.

Strawberry

I set aside 4 oz of fiber to sell and quickly spun up another 4 oz:

Strawberries, already sold!

A few days later, the leaves outside my office door inspired me to dye the rest of the wool:

Leaf

This fiber has been an absolute dream to spin with and serves as further proof that buying direct from the farmer makes for the most satisfying spinning experience!
If you want to find local farmers, search Local Harvest, or just google “sheep farm ___ (your city and state)”. If you know of any great local farms, please share in the comments!

As I’ve been spending most of my weekends with quilt in hand, making tiny, tiny handquilting stitches, I’m a little woozy with the quilting bug. Here’s a bit of the inspiration that led me down this rabbit hole:

• I’ve seen a lot of quilts made from blue jeans (in fact Crafting a Green World just posted about them), but this is my very favorite.
• Amanda makes excellent use of some old sheets.
• Jane is the reason I believed I could handquilt my very first quilt, and this post is the reason I wanted to.
• Alicia’s quilt is really the first that struck me as something I both wanted to make and wanted to own.
• The insight into Lisa’s quiltmaking (art making!) is remarkable.
• Malka’s post on quiltiness convinced me (before I even started) to make this quilt as “quilty” as possible.

I’m 7 out of 12 blocks, and then I’ll do a few rows around the border, and then it’s time for the bias tape (which I hear is pretty fun).

Long have I admired Liz, of Hobbledehoy’s use of color. I remember reading her Featured Seller interview on Etsy and feeling so inspired! I long watched and drooled over her batts, but they usually sell out so soon after listing, it seemed I kept missing them.
Imagine my delight and surprise when I finally did order a pair and she added a little extra batt!
The wait was definately worth it, the batts were squishy and soft and spun up into the bounciest yarns.
I was extra thrilled when, moments after finishing this yarn:

I went on a walk and snapped this picture:

Usually my pictures inspire my spinning, but this time my fresh yarn inspired to notice the beauty in these buds.
Today I listed the yarn spun from the little extra batt. I added it in with some of my own handdyed purpley mill-ends wool/mohair.
The results reminded me so much of the pansies blooming everwhere; I’m now inspired to try to photograph a few!

As I started writing this post, I realized I’d like to know a little more about the girl behind the yarn, so I asked to interview her and she agreed! Look for it here, on Monday!

My mom and I left Friday morning for Maryland, stopped at every coffeeshop, ice cream booth and bathroom between here and there, and arrived 6 hours later in Frederick.
We failed to take a single picture in which we didn’t look like death, so you’ll just have to trust me – we had a great time! Frederick is such an adorable town, with a great range of shops. Our perennial favorite is Muse, where each got a little handmade book from YeeHaw Industries to use a trip journal. We enjoyed fantastic sandwiches at Cafe Nola, where the waitress was knitting and was also going to the Festival!

At the festival, we got down to goat picking:

Mom & a sweet Pygora

and farmer meeting,

These lovely Rambouillets belonged to Wit’s End farm and produced this:

from the American Cormo Sheep Association, which had the nicest, most helpful lady farmers working!

Merino from Cloverleaf Farms

It was a fun, exhausting day, but I ended up with just what I wanted and needed! You’ll be seeing that Rambouillet roving, dyed this week, in the next few days.

Click to see more info

These are just a few of my favorite photos from this year Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival. Tomorrow I’ll be posting my own photos and acquisitions!

I admit it: I love TV. Not all of it, but the shows I watch…well, I can be a bit obsessive about them.
Obsessive enough that I memorialize my love in the form of yarn.
One of my favorite shows is LOST. I like the intrigue, the mysteries and the way a viewer is rewarded for paying attention. I also love the scenery. The lush greens and sinister black were the inspiration for my LOST yarn:
I started with jungle green and ocean blue local wool and swirled organic, undyed cotton, local naturally brown alpaca and a shot of mill-ends black wool. The black (like the Black Cloud on the island), shows up very little, but when it does it surrounds the other color in an immediate hive of noir. In other words, I let it wrap around the other ply, making scary little clouds of black! Despite my best efforts of making a sinister yarn, LOST is squishy and soft!

Another in the vein of dark and mysterious is Battlestar Gallactica:
Jay and I started watching it this winter, on DVD. We then anxiously awaited the release of Season 3 on DVD, and the return of it this March and it might just be the most exciting thing we do on Friday nights (yes, we are geeks – if you’re not a fan of the show, you might just want to skip to the pretty pictures)! I had been mulling over the BSG yarn for quite a while before I started it, trying to figure out the overall “color” of the show. Jay really gave me the idea, when we started talking about the overall “gray” tone of the show. The overarching theme of life on the Battlestar, is that life has a lot of gray areas: not all Cylons are bad, not all humans are good, even the good/bad people act out of character, sometimes the “right” thing involves leaving others behind, letting them die or letting the guilty go free. This ‘gray area’ that permeates the daily life on the Battlestar is symbolized with natural gray alpaca (from the small farm, North Star Alpacas). The stark white bamboo represents the Cylon’s coldness and the organic, naturally white Merino wool symbolizes Six’s unwavering religious fervor. Her striking red dress makes a small appearance in the form of a blood red recycled silk. The black of the ship and the vastness of space is represented by pitch black mill-end wool.

For lighter fair, I’m a fan of The Office, Friends, I love Lucy, The Cosby Show, Spongebob, Saved by the Bell; all of which inspired yarns for my Month Of Love Series:

Ross & Rachel

I’d love to do some more… are there any TV shows you think should be memorialized in yarny glory?

I’ll be here all weekend.
And on Saturday, at 11:30, I’ll be at the Ravelry meet-up, hoping to (finally) meet Lolly!
Will YOU be there? If so, drop me a line so we can meet up!

PS. The shop will continue as usual, anything purchased Friday – Sunday will be shipped on Monday (which is the usual way it goes)