Free Range Mama

around the house this morning

Trying to get back on the blogging bandwagon. I figured I’d start by sharing a few vignettes from around our house this morning. We’re kind of in holiday-hangover mode still, I’m afraid. You know how it is.

Z loves to write notes and letters, so we always have a bunch of them laying around. Today’s assortment includes a “Happy New Year” card for me featuring  a very menacing owl carrying off a mouse in it’s talons.

Fortunately the message inside is less scary.

A note to Alex’s friend Ryan from “Secret” – who is clearly Miss Z. I should probably be worried here, but I’m pretty sure it just says “Merry Christmas” inside.

A note found on the coffee table, which I’m fairly certain she intended for Alex.

Here she is, showing off her ukulele which never seems to be far from her hands, even though she hasn’t quite figured out how to play it yet.

In the kitchen we find Alex, who has been “down the rabbit hole” playing Skyrim for the last few days (in addition to having a yucky cold) and is taking a much needed refueling break. A little groggy looking, but quite contented.

Tiki is also a little tired looking. Though she did manage to rouse herself enough to bark half-heartedly at a deer.

We still have tons of candy left over form the Christmas stockings. This is the most interesting looking, though nobody seems to have been tempted to open it.

Downstairs we have the usual assortment of projects. Z is very insistent that I get this ornament she made fixed up in time to get it on the tree. Running out of time on that one.

The rest of the downstairs is dye-central. I got accepted as a vendor at Madrona Fiber Arts at the last minute (after being on the waitlist for *ahem* quite a while) so now I am working double time to build up enough inventory to fill my booth.

Also this weekend we had to do our final year-end inventory for the accountant, which was a bit daunting, plus I had to get my January fiber club installment dyed up, so I haven’t spent much time out of the studio.

offf 2011

We all drove down to Canby, Oregon on Friday for the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival. It was a bit of a miracle that we got out the door at all considering how totally unprepared we were, but somehow we got the trailer and all our stuff packed in the morning and were on the road not too far behind schedule. It’s a long drive, with traffic, and we were all pretty tired when we got to the fairgrounds, but we wanted to get as much of the booth set up as possible so that we wouldn’t have to rush in the morning. The kids were not very excited about this, however, so we only got as far as having the tent up and the tablecloths on before we called it a night.

Saturday was fantastic. We arrived early (minus the kids who stayed with their grandparents), and got everything completely set up with about 3 minutes to spare. Here’s what the booth looked like when we opened…

The weather was perfect, there was a great crowd of customers and old friends coming through, and we had a really fabulous time. The only dark spot was hearing about some shoplifting occurrences in some of the booths. It just sickens me that anyone could shoplift at an event like this. It’s not even like they are taking food to feed their starving children, they are stealing luxury / artisan yarns from hardworking independent (and undercompensated) business owners, and there just isn’t any excuse for it. Ugh.

In the evening, the kids were at Autumnal Equinox party with the grandparents, so Chris and I went to the Cornelius Pass Road House on the way home and had a lovely dinner.

Sunday I got out of the booth a bit more, made it to the fleece sale, the barns, visited the other vendors and watched a few demos. The kids were with us, so they explored quite a bit – especially the visiting the animals, which are their favorite. Our booth is nicely located under a shady tree, and right in front of the big lawn, and the musicians tent, so we got a little entertainment right in our ‘front yard’.

We knew some rain was coming, however, and we had done a bit of prep for it, but we had no idea. Basically around mid-day the skies opened up and we had a torrential downpour, with thunder and the whole bit.  It drenched me completely just in the time it took to get around the tent and put the tarps up. We got rained on last year at this event too, and it was such a drag. The rain drips through the tent, splashes mud up from the ground, and of course drives the customers away so nothing gets sold, either. 

So there I am, soaked, looking like a drowned rat, just shuffling from corner to corner in the booth (which is now a total mess) trying to protect things from getting ruined, and sending the kids off on errands so that we don’t have 5 people huddled in the same tiny space. Here’s Chris amid the chaos…

Shoppers fleeing for the shelter of the indoor marketplaces…

Yes, it was funny at times, but not exactly what we came for. Fortunately wet wool will dry (though we had to reprint some labels) and we didn’t damage any paper products. It was also fortunate that the rain stopped by the end of the show, so we didn’t have to get soaked packing the trailer. After the packing and the drive, we got home around midnight. Wiped out!

sock summit

I’m not sure I can adequately describe my weekend at Sock Summit, and unfortunately I was so busy that I didn’t really get enough pictures to tell the story for me, either.

Wednesday

We were originally scheduled to load-in on Wednesday, but then we had the brilliant idea that if we could possibly get away with loading in on Thursday (the show’s opening day) Chris could get in a full day at the office and avoid using up yet another vacation day. So Wednesday was spent at home, packing everything up, prepping the pets, and hoping that the sun would come out long enough to get the last bit of fiber on the racks dry enough to take with us.

This was was all done in the shadow of the fact that my grandmother had passed away the night before, which pretty much sapped me of every ounce of my previous enthusiasm. It was a day I would have gladly spent quietly somewhere, rather than running around like a crazy person, but you can’t really stop a moving train, so I just kind of kept going down the checklist and putting one foot in front of the other.

It bears mentioning here, that my grandma, Mimi, was a wonderful lady with a sharp intellect and a strong personality. She has been a very big influence in my life, is a big part of my childhood memories, and will be terribly missed. Isn’t she lovely?

Also wreaking havoc on my mental state was the strange coincidence of it all. You may recall that we learned of Chris’ grandfather’s death just as we were getting ready to open our booth at the Columbia Gorge Festival back in April, so this kind of brought that back for us as well. I’m afraid that if this trend continues, I may have to give up on shows entirely..

In any case, somehow I managed to get completely packed, only abut 10 minutes behind schedule, and headed over to pick Chris up at his office. We rolled into Portland around 10:30pm – not too bad really, considering the time of day and the traffic and all that.

Thursday

Thursday, bright and early, Chris and I drove into Portland from his parents house (they live about an hour West of the city and were kind enough to watch the kids for us) and prepared to set up our booth. I wasn’t sure how hard it would be to get into the loading dock and all that, but everything went like a dream and we were loaded in and had the booth completely built with quite a bit of time to spare.  We tried some new stuff with the display (namely a whole lot more gridwall) and I really like the result.

I was able to get every bit of fiber I had brought with me out onto that display, which was a huge relief, because choosing which lovelies to hold back would have been agonizing for me.

All day long there was a bit of a buzz going amongst the vendors as people began to notice that the line outside was growing to truly epic proportions. The number of people waiting to get in (for a very short session of shopping) was truly staggering. It didn’t disappoint – as the doors opened, there was a huge wave of people (some running!) and the marketplace was saturated within minutes. There were a few vendors in particular  (like GothSocks) with highly coveted products that were immediately swamped and cleaned out, which definitely added to the air of excitement in the room. I think it was a great day for everyone (vendors and shoppers alike) and definitely had us all looking forward to Friday.

Friday

This was the day for the kids to come to to the show. Z came with us at opening, and Alex came in a bit later with his grandma, and we all left together when the marketplace closed at 6. I won’t say it was a bad idea to bring the kids, because I like them to see the booth and the shows that we do, and I think they do too - but I think it was a mistake to have them there for the entire day. They got pretty bored after a while, and were reluctant just to wander around and look at stuff. They wanted to be with me in the booth, ultimately, but you can only fit so many people in such a tiny space, so I felt like I was constantly chasing them off.

After we left the convention center, Chris dropped me off for the night with a good friend who lives downtown so that we could have some fun and catch up a bit. We had a delicious dinner at Justa Pasta (my favorite lunch spot from back when I lived in Portland), and then hit up some late night bar/restaurant places in Northwest until the wee hours.

Saturday

Saturday morning, I woke up at my friend’s place at 6am. I was a beautiful morning, and I felt fabulous and wide awake, so I got myself dressed and decided to walk to the Convention Center rather than wait around for  Chris to come pick me up. The walk was lovely and I was feeling fairly smug that I had managed not to get a hangover after all the wine I’d had. It was only a bit later that I realized that all of this good feeling had possibly been due to the fact that I was *still drunk* rather than being in such fabulous condition.  After a couple of tylenol and about a gallon of green tea, I was as good as new, though.

Another fun day – I can honestly say a fiber show feels more like a social event than a day of work. It can be tiring, but it is so energizing at the same time to get to hang out with all of these interesting and creative people. I loved seeing all of the fabulous knitwear that walked into the booth, and talking to people about their projects (though it also makes me realize how much I have to learn). I was so glad that many of the participants were wearing nametags, though – there are so many people that I have met in online situations (Ravelry, Etsy) and I have no idea what they look like, and this really helped me identify a lot of people that I might have missed. My husband is awesome sauce and helped enormously by doing a lot of the businessy stuff so that I could do the fun chatty part and walk around a  bit.

Sunday

Sunday was another busy day – the marketplace was humming once again, and everyone (including me) was zeroing in on those last minute purchases. You know, the ones you have been thinking about all weekend and now need to make a final decision about, lest you be kicking yourself on Monday that you don’t have it? I didn’t go too crazy – the main thing I wanted had already been secured – the elusive Jennie the Potter Sock Summit Coffee Mug.  I already have one of her mugs and it is just the most perfect mug shape ever created, so how could I resist this?

Did I mention this show was super fun? I hope so, because the next part is going to sound really grim. I’m not sure where we got the idea that we could pull this off. Running the booth until 4pm, packing it all up, driving an hour west of town to pick up the kids and the dog (and get them packed) followed by a five hour drive home.

The saving grace was that the trailer was way less full on the way home, so it wasn’t quite as challenging to fit everything in as it had been on the way down. We also sent a box of rovings to Linda at Northwest Wools so that she could re-stock her shelves, further lightening our load.  We pulled into the driveway just shy of 1am.

more big sky

Guess who else can rock a cowboy hat?

Yep, here’s Alex checking out the Yaks in the animal barn.  And outside (before he got the hat) …

I spent most of the day minding my booth in the fiber show, so I didn’t get out much. Just a quick jaunt around with Alex at lunchtime to get a BBQ sandwich, check out the animals, and get a peek at the Mule Days vendors and the other Fiber vendors.

I always love seeing the animals – and there were some gorgeous ones…

Of course, while I was working the kids got to see a bit more of it. They also watched the mule show for quite a while, which apparently was a lot of fun.

Chris took these pictures, including some of the “Mulettes” which are basically men who ride mules while wearing fancy dresses. I’m quite sorry I missed that one.

The fiber show was good -  not terribly busy from a sales perspective, but I still had a nice time chatting with folks, and getting the good word out about the awesomeness of spinning and fiber.  There were a lot more people today, but there wasn’t a particularly high concentration of spinners. I picked up some luscious Cormo roving, so it was definitely a successful shopping day.

The weather was full of surprises – sunny and warm one minute and then a thunderstorm would roll in, dump some rain, and roll back out again. Never a dull moment.

big sky country

Thursday morning (early!) we packed up the kids and a trailer full of wool and headed East to Montana for the Big Sky Fiber Arts festival. The drive wasn’t too bad. Straight shot, fairly painless (though slow with a trailer in tow), and plenty scenic. Of course there were many beautiful vistas crossing the vast expanse of Washington, not to mention a whole lot that looked like a basic Windows™ desktop.

It only took an hour to cross Idaho up there at the panhandle, but it was gorgeous and a lot more like the scenery we see in Western Washington. Lake Coeur d’ Alene was as beautiful as it was reputed to be.

I definitely would have liked a little more time to check it out, but we were in a hurry to get to our destination in time to set up our booth. Crossing into Montana over a mountaintop, we could definitely tell we’d entered a new place. The quality of the road went from normal to a mess of potholes and deep trenches, and the speed limit went up to 75mph. Yee-haw! Gorgeous, though, winding our way down through the forest, past still snow-topped mountains and into a valley of wild and very swollen rivers.

The western ambiance of Montana is definitely still in tact. Old silver mines, historic buildings, casinos and liquor stores, pickup trucks and cowboy hats -  the whole thing.  Love it.

We got to the fairgrounds too late to set up – they were trying to close the doors, but they let us unload the trailer at least before sending us on our way.  We capped off the evening at a local brewery with some loud music, buffalo burgers, and some of the house brews.

Bright and early on Friday morning we were at the show when the doors opened at 7:30, in a panic, trying to get the booth ready for business by 9. We (barely) made it, not without a few glitches, but I’m happy enough with the results.

The show was pleasant – many nice vendors, though the foot traffic was a bit light, possibly because it was Friday morning.  We are lucky enough to be sharing the fairgrounds with Montana Donkey Days which added an element of fun to the mix –  BBQ booths, Rodeo Queens, vendors selling saddles and Western stuff. I *had* to pick myself up a cowboy hat. Here is Z modeling it, because I’m having a hard time getting her to give it back:

The vendor was understandably a bit skeptical of my cowgirl street cred (I didn’t try to fake it), but was kind enough to sell it to me anyway. I was so enamored with my hat that my husband decided he needed one too (and got his own) and the kids probably won’t be far behind.

Dinner this time was at one of those local “home cookin’ kind of places that serves breakfast all day, was full of older guys in work boots, and had good pie. We enjoyed our omelettes, our pie, soaked up the ambiance (dogs playing poker!) and went back the room for a DVD (for the kids) and wine in a paper cup (for me). Looking forward to what tomorrow brings :)

columbia gorge fiber festival

This weekend the whole family drove down to Oregon for the Columbia Gorge Fiber Festival, where I had a booth for my fiber business.

On the way down on Friday, we stopped at the hospital to have visit Dh’s Grandfather, a wonderful man, 2 days shy of his 95th birthday, who was in his last hours of life.  He had held on a bit longer than expected, and was even showing occasional flickers of consciousness, but we can’t be sure if he knew we were there. Some family members were staying close at his bedside, and he was very well loved and cared for, which was good to see. We said our goodbyes, which I am very glad we did, and then learned of his death early on Saturday morning. It was a bit difficult to get up the enthusiasm to work and deal with the public all day after such news, but we managed to get rolling and  the show went very well.

My booth set-up looked like this:

It was kind of an irregular shape (apparently the floor plan changed a bit before we got there) but my display stuff is flexible, and I didn’t really have a plan anyway, so it worked just fine.

The charming Mr. Duncan of Duncan Carders was right behind me, so I could lean through the wall and chat with him from time to time. I had purchased one of his carders (!) and took delivery at the show, and he was so nice about giving me all the tips and tricks for using it.  Yes, it is still clean, and I am deeply ashamed of this fact, but I need to get a sturdy table and a good location to be it’s permanent home before I start messing with it. It is way too heavy to be moving around.

We were also lucky enough to have some really fun vendors in the booths around us, which made for great conversation (and shopping) during the slower times. I got some lovely Pygora fiber from the awesome ladies next next door at the Rainbow Farms Pygora booth. I was directly across from the Spindlewood booth, so after staring at the beautiful spindles all weekend, I actually came home with my first ever drop spindle:

I have been a wheel spinner for a long time, but never had a need for a spindle (other than their aesthetic value – but the pretty ones can be expensive, so I needed a bit more motivation). I am still trying to get the hang of it, but I am having a ton of fun trying. I had a major breakthrough when I figured out that it would work better spinning from the fold.

The hotel was very comfortable, with a good restaurant, and a nice waterfront location on the Columbia River. Here is the view from our room:

Ok, this was our second room – I upgraded to a ‘river view’ room after I saw how much better it was than the “mountain view’ aka ‘parking lot view’ room we originally booked. I like to save a buck, but… yeah. Saturday night, Alex and I took a lovely long walk along the riverfront trail, and Sunday night all 4 of us did the same, except cutting across into the downtown area to have dinner at the Full Sail brewpub. Good stuff. We left Monday morning for the looooong drive home, but made it in reasonable time.

dye party

Monday night, we had Z’s friends over to dye their own yarn for a weaving project they are working on. I decided to go with kool-aid dyeing just for the fruity-smelling, non-toxic fun of it.  I had a heck of a time finding all the appropriate colors, and never did manage to find a store that stocked the blue stuff, so I used regular food coloring as an add-in.  It was pretty amusing, actually - buying that much kool-aid at a store invites some suspicion… none of the checkers failed to ask me what I could possibly want with that much of the stuff.

The girls had a good time, and made some lovely yarns, that I hope they will be happy with.

If you’ve never dyed with Kool-aid, the procedure is very fun and simple, and a great project for kids.

Supplies:

• Undyed yarn (must be a protein fiber, like wool, but not cotton) in loosely-tied skeins.
• Kool-Aid packets (those little $.25 sleeves of color and flavoring). Food coloring and Easter egg dye will also work.
• Cups ( I used basic plastic ones)
• Water
• Plastic Wrap
• Vinegar (the regular white stuff)
• Dish Soap or something to wash it with.

 Instructions:

Pre-soak the yarn in plain water until it is fully saturated (at least 30 minutes)

Lay out a piece of plastic wrap on the table and then take some yarn from the pre-soak. Squeeze out the excess water, and then arrange it however you like on the plastic wrap, leaving some room around it on all sides.

For each color you want to use, partially fill a cup with warm water and empty the contents of the appropriate kool-aid packet into the cup. More dye = darker color, and more water = lighter color, so add powder or water as needed, and mix and blend as much as you like. When the color looks good, pour it directly on the yarn wherever you would like it to stay, trying to add just enough to soak through, but not create a puddle.

When you are happy with the yarn, dribble vinegar all over it, or spray it all over with a  spray bottle until you have a nice coating of acid all over the yarn, but again, not a puddle.

Lay another piece of plastic wrap over the top of the yarn and  fold the edges all around to get a nice, sealed packet. Steam the packet on the stove in a veggie steamer or something like it for at least 30 minutes or so, and then let it cool completely.  Wash it in the sink with a little soap and water, and then hang it up to dry. Easy peasy.

Yes, sometimes it comes in handy to have a dye kitchen in one’s house, though I did have to clean up every scrap of my regular dye stuff to make the space available. Usually all the surfaces are covered with gross stuff and debris from my work. Look mom (!), I even put my fibers away (sort of).

I didn’t tidy up Z’s workspace, as she’s such a prolific crafter that I can’t really stay ahead of her. I’m showing it anyway, since we’re touring the workroom. Cute new desk, no?

offf

After I got home from NZ I was delighted and somewhat terrified to discover that most of my wool inventory had sold while I was away. The terror part was largely because I only had 1 week to prepare for the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival, a huge annual fiber show where I was planning to be a vendor, sharing a booth with the lovely Linda of Northwest Wools. So, 1 week, less a few days of drying time, meant I had to dye a ridiculous amount of fiber in 4 days… all while coming off some wicked jet lag. I am proud to say that I pulled it off, though not without some serious sleep deprivation. By the time the festival rolled around I was in a kind of zombie-like state, and only marginally functional as an actual human being. Fortunately my very helpful husband saw how useless I was, and agreed to come down and help out, though of course we had to come down separately so that we’d have room for all the gear.

I went down early on Friday morning so that I could run a few errands, set up the booth and get everything ready to go. The set-up went fine – we had the same space as last year, which we really like because it allows us a little bit of overflow room so our booth isn’t so crowded. Even though I was compounding tiredness with tiredness, I also couldn’t resist going out afterwards for Sushi and Gelato with a Portland friend, before heading back to the farm for a few hours of precious sleep. Yes, I know - I do this to myself. Dh and the kids rolled in at Midnight, so they weren’t a whole lot better off than I was. Saturday morning, I was up with the sun – pulling out of the driveway at 7:15, and getting to the fairgrounds an hour later. I let the rest of my crew sleep in – no sense in dragging crabby children out before they are ready. The weather had been the subject of much speculation, but it turned out to be a spectacular sunny day. The mood was awesome and the festival was packed – which made for great fun and lots of busy. Dh and the kids showed up in the late morning and Dh grabbed an apron and got to work checking out customers and helping out in the booth – giving me more time to relax and chat with fiber friends. The kids took off and went exploring – mostly watching the sheepdog trials and visiting with the animals. Fortunately, they took some pictures for me, because I really didn’t have much of a chance to get my camera out or even walk around the festival much,.  I barely even got pictures of my own booth.

Here’s one where you can see our resident fiber-dude in his apron..

Here’s Alex showing off how he’s now taller than his Grandma…

Most of the kids’ pictures looked like this…

And this…

and of course, this…

It looks like they managed to convince people to let them hold and pet the animals, I hope they didn’t hassle anyone too much. As an added bonus, Z’s best buddy showed up with her mom  so the kids had fun playing with her as well. Z and B also managed to purchase matching angora bunny toys:

Later in the afternoon (she was supposed to arrive earlier but had a harrowing adventure that cost her some time), we also had Symeon North, (author of Get Spun: The Step-by-Step Guide to Spinning Art Yarns) come by for a book signing and set up her table of gorgeous creations in our booth. No, she’s not in this picture, but this is her table…

It was fun to meet her, and she also stayed overnight at the farm with us, so we got to chat with her further over dinner, and again at the festival on Sunday.

Ah, Sunday. The second and final day of the show. The weather was not as kind to us. On the drive in, the fog was incredibly thick, casting a very eerie light over everything. The fog turned to drizzle, and by the time I had pulled into the fairgrounds, it was raining in earnest. The first few hours of the show was more of an exercise in keeping our stuff dry than really trying to sell anything… just maneuvering tarps this way and that, and moving a lot of stuff back into our cars just to get more dry space in the tent. I phoned Dh and told him not to bother coming – just to take the kids back home to Washington so we wouldn’t all have to huddle together under the tent all day. Around 1:00, however, the rain stopped, and things picked up again. I still ended up with a bit of wet wool, but nothing too bad. Of course I still hadn’t had any quality sleep by this time, and I doubt my slow-wittedness impressed any of our customers  as I was trying to tally up their purchases (very sloooooow and using a calculator for things a normal person could probably do in their head) but I muddled through as best I could on the numbers stuff, and of course enjoyed chatting with all the fab fiber folks. At the end of it all, we loaded out and I hit the road (in retrospect, probably in a somewhat unsafe condition to drive) pulling into my driveway at 11:00. Whew! It was nuts, but I’m already looking forward to next year.

twisted weekend

A mere 48 hours after getting home from camping, the kids and I packed ourselves back into the car for a trip down to Oregon. I dropped the kids at my mom’s beach house for a weekend of fun with Nana and their cousins, and then went to a different beach house to meet up with some of the Twisted Sisters for a different brand of fun  - spinning, good food and drink, and movies.

The beach house we rented was very cute – right on the beach. This is the view from the back porch:

There was a cozy little living room, where we could set up our wheels (this is Jane’s Corner)…

Saturday we took a long walk on the beach. It was lovely, but a bit chilly when the storm clouds started rolling in.

Wildlife encounter!

I brought a box of Polwarth down for Linda to take to Northwest Wools. Some of it didn’t make it as far as the shop – here is some on sandy’s wheel:

Here are the results of what I spun  (from top to bottom) Mixed BFL, Milk Fiber, carded batts from a swap, more mixed BFL.

We left the beach on Sunday, but stayed over one more night in the Portland area before driving back on Monday. 

recycling center

Well, I was hoping to keep the outings to a minimum this week after to much time away from home last week, but there was some extra space on a field trip to the recycling center (with a local homeschool group) and I couldn’t pass it up. I love seeing ‘behind the scenes’ stuff like that. Sure, we go to the waste transfer station occasionally when we have more garbage than we can fit in our can (like construction debris) but there you just throw stuff in the back of a truck to get it carted off to the landfill, or put your recyclables in huge dumpsters, which is a bit different.

The first part of the tour was a basic overview of the recycling process – what you can recycle, why you should reduce/ reuse/ recycle, how the sorting process works, and what happens to stuff once they are done with it. Very interesting, and a great opportunity to ask those burning questions, like “Do I need to rip the plastic windows off the envelopes my bills come in?” (The answer is no, you don’t have to, but they’d appreciate it if you would.)

The second part of the tour was watching the actual process: pushing stuff around with heavy equipment (apparently this is only today’s recycling load – they get 500 tons per day)…

loading it onto conveyor belts…

manually pulling out all the non-recyclable junk that people throw in their bins…

…sorting it out, and baling it up to be shipped off to places like China.

They said only 5% of the stuff they received needed to be thrown out, but it looked like a lot more to me. I had to imagine that if I worked there I would get really frustrated with all the stupid stuff people throw in there.  The kids found it quite interesting.

When we were done, we had kind of an awkward amount of time to kill – not quite enough to go home and have much time there, but too much to just go straight to Alex’s fencing practice. Instead, we went out to lunch and then did some errands, and then finally went to fencing.

At home I washed out some stuff I dyed yesterday – mohair locks – soooo lovely!

The latter ones are meant to blend with the Coopworth fleece I picked up last week, shown here (not the best pic, I’m afraid):

No, it didn’t take me long to get around to dyeing that up, did it?