Monday, June 8, 2015

Dancing Leaf Farm Field Trip

Our knit group took a field trip to Dancing Leaf Farm in Barnesville, MD on Saturday.  The owner, Dalis, opened up her farm and offered demos on taking a sheep fleece through the entire process until it becomes yarn.  Very interesting and fun to watch.  And the yarn is so nice!

 The sheep we saw had some dye on them...can you see her pink head?
 Yarn and roving in the dye pot.  A much bigger operation than mine, that's for sure!  I got some ideas from watching her operate.
 Here Dalis is, about to remove carded wool from the wash for the second time.  It takes a while to get all the lanolin (oil) out of the wool apparently.
 Her shop was in a little house and in addition to tons of yarn there were buttons, pins and artwork.
 Really colorful and pretty yarn!
 Yarn and roving in every nook and cranny!
 Stuff on the wall was hard to resist.  Yeah, I didn't.
 Clever display, don't you think...vintage suitcases and yarn!
 So we watched her dye the wool and hang it up on the fence to dry.  The colorful yarn hanging on the fence, outside in the sunshine...so cool!  It did dry pretty quick...but not quick enough, knitters were buying it up...right off the fence!  Someone in our group was watching a particular skein from our vantage point (under a tree, knitting).  When she figured out it didn't belong to anyone, she snatched it up!  Yeah Margaret!
 No mistaking this sheep belongs to Dancing Leaf Farms!

 Knitting going on under a tree with yarn drying fence in the background.  The weather was perfect, breezy and warm but super comfortable in the shade.

 Everyone got in on the action!  Watching the demos, shopping for yarn, eating lunch and relaxing on the farm.  It was a great day!
 I had to get this guys photo...face turned toward the sun, kicking back on the yarn fence. I think he enjoyed himself, too.

Monday, June 1, 2015

End of the Row Yarns FOs!

A couple knitting projects have been completed in my yarns!

The first one is a baby dress made by my friend Dolly.  It's Rose's Garden Dress in the Rose Garden colorway (don't cha love that?)! The bodice is a garter combination stitch that creates a kind of smocking effect and it buttons up the back for easy dressing of wiggly babies.
The pattern is her own design.  Hopefully we can all look forward to her releasing that pattern someday soon. 

I donated a skein of yarn for a prize in a KAL last month.   The winner, TinerW on Ravelry made this beautiful scarf for a graduation gift.  She really cranked this baby out quick! It's Streusel by Blue Peninsula and in my Blue Raspberry colorway it's just lovely!

I recently made this scarf too.  Justine was modeling it in my last post.  I love the shape of it. The shallow shape means you could easily wrap it around your shoulders like a shawl or around your neck like a scarf.  I weighted my yarn so I could add extra repeats and use up the majority of my skein...which was Madelinetosh Tosh Merino Light, by the way.  I wanted to use up as much of the yarn as possible and also make a super long scarf.  I love super long scarves.  Especially scarves made with fingering weight yarn because you can wrap them and wrap them around your neck without the bulk of a worsted weight.

I'll be adding more yarn to the shop this week so be sure to stop by!

Oh...and Happy June 1st!
It's the start of our knit group's One Skein Shawl KAL!
What will I be knitting?  You're gonna have to wait and see...
I'm not trying to torture you.  I just haven't even wound my yarn yet, let alone cast on.  I'll post when I do so you can follow along!