Time flies....and so does Pegasus

Two years.....two years since posting anything on this blog!  Every time I post, I chide myself for not doing it regularly!  So, once again....CHIDE CHIDE!!

A bit has happened....I returned to Arizona Broadway Theatre as Prop Master after 4 years at Encore Creative doing everything from linen manager to scenic ninja to event producer.  I have also been dying a LOT of yarn and making batts and spinning yarn. I think I will start a whole new tab for FIBER.  In the meantime, I will just add some pics and captions highlighting craftiness that I have been up to.......here goes:

Pegasus puppet pieces in ABT's Xanadu

Pegasus

Cousin ITT from Addams Family...about 7 wigs!

The dead goose from Addams Family.  He is pretty much life-size!

Some yarn I spun

The yarn I spun...on its bobbin

The future Granny Wagon for Addams Family

Dying roving and yarn and fleece

Sock blanks, knit on my knitting machine, then hand painted

I always seem to go back to blues and greens while dying

More yarn I dyed

I made a bunch of newspaper stacks for Guys and Dolls

Our new shearer, Mick

I had to make several of these for Mamma Mia!

I knitted these socks for Nickela.

Mamma Mia! set...I made all the bougainvillea out of chicken wire and tissue paper

Flag Wool & Fiber Festival

Flag Wool & Fiber Festival

I had a booth at the Flagstaff Wool & Fiber Festival a couple of weeks ago.  I had so much fun and some fair success selling my colorful Cotswold locks, microbrew dye kits, carded mini-batts and handspun yarn.  I wish I could do it every weekend!  Nickela came with as my helper and photographer.  My business is officially called M'Lou Roo Studio (at least for now LOL).  I got to visit with a couple of my favorite vendors, and of course came back with some of their stuff:  Cactus Hill Farm from Colorado---I LOVE their merino and merino/rambouillet fleeces!  I can't wait to start spinning mine!  I also caught up with Brookmoore Creations from Tuscon.  They have awesome rovings of all fibers...my favorite being a Bfl/Silk mix.  I also ended up with 5 lbs of  Acala Cotton lint!  I got home and discovered I already HAD about 3 pounds of lint from years ago (don't tell my hubby!).  Needless to say, I am dyeing cotton like a mad woman and hope to start carding it soon! I started a  Facebook Page for the Studio and I hope to get the Etsy shop up and running again soon!  I met so many great folks at the festival, that I want to be able to keep in contact with them.

I was also invited to help teach a dyeing workshop with a gal up in Grand Canyon who teaches Nuno Felting! Kim Buchheit is an artist from up north and saw my dye kits and wants to incorporate them into the nuno scarves she makes.  I am so excited to get to work with her in the fall.

Also!  I get to demonstrate my spinning and carding next week to an open house called Arizona Make It With Wool.  It is put on by the Arizona Sheep Producer's Auxiliary in conjunction with an event/contest they do every year.  The event is designed to encourage seamstresses, knitters, etc to create with wool fabric and yarn.

Washing fleece

My Method of washing my Cotswold fleece:

I thought I had better record the way I have been washing my Cotswold fleece, so I don't forget.  Of course, it seems that once I establish something, I go and change it, anyway, so it may not matter!  I hope someone else can maybe use this info, as well.  It has sort of become a conglomeration of many methods I have researched on line.  Mostyl, I guess it really comes down to the climate you live in and the tools you have at hand:

So here goes:

Fill tub with water from hose 

Add Dawn

Add dirty fleece 

Sometimes I add handfuls the dirty stuff 

Sometimes I staple it; pulling gently and separating locks and putting them in a net bag, lined up next to each other.  (This works well with Merino, not so well with the Cotswold) 

Here it is just put into the tub.
Let that stand for up to a week. (Cover it with some screen or a sheet to avoid the extra leaves that blow into it!  And last time I found a GIANT water roach in it when I poured it out.  GROSS!!!  The chickens were happy to take care of it for me! :) ) 

Here is what it looks like after a week! (Look closely and you can spy the BUG!!)

  

Slowly dump the dirty water out and rinse the fleece. I have a screen I use that is perched up on a horse cleaning stall to dump and rinse. 

I just run the hose gently, and move the hose over the fleece.  This photo is the locks in the net bag, but I do this even when there is no bag and the fleece is just sitting on the screen.  You can watch the water running out of the screen to see when it starts running clear.

Then fill tub again, with hose water and dawn.  (Make sure the dawn doesn't get too frothy, just sort of stir it in after the tub is nearly full.  Put the wet wool back into the tub.  I sort of swish it gently under the water.

Here is where I decided to experiment……

METHOD ONE:

I let it sit in the tub for a few minutes, about 10.  Then I filled my wool pot with warm water and dawn.  I put half the fleece in the pot and set it on the stove at about medium high heat.  ( I tried to do this outside on our grill burner, but I ran out of gas)  I let it slowly warm up until it is just about to boil……well I TRY to catch it before it boils, but I always ALWAYS forget about it so I take it off the stove when I hear the sizzle of the water overflowing onto the burner!  This doesn't seem to harm Cotswold, but I would NOT recommend this if you can help it….try not to boil it!  (Although you have to nearly boil it when you dye it, so……I let the fleece sit in the pot until it cools to room temperature or at least luke warm.

METHOD TWO:

After sitting the wool in the hose-filed tub with dawn again, I rinse it again.  Then back in another tub of water and Dawn.  Let it sit as long as you want.  I let it sit until the other wool boiled, then I rinsed it again.  One more time in a full tub, this time no Dawn.  Let it sit a bit, then rinse it one more time and leave to dry on the screen.  While rinsing you can use your hand to turn it gently and get it evenly rinsed.  I would not squeeze it or anything at this point.  Actually, I took half the wool and ONLY rinsed it and left it on the screen…..then the other half went into the clean tub for 5 minutes, then placed on screen to dry.

The left side did not get the extra rinse in the tub.  I am guessing they will turn out the same.


When the "boiled" wool cools to room temperature, I will dump it onto the screen, then rinse with the hose,  I may put it one more time in a clear water tub, no Dawn, then onto the rack to dry.  I am going to post this now, so I don't forget to....seeing as I don't tend  to BLOG that often!!!  And P.S----I apologize for any weird formatting with this post (like the fact that this text is in blue!) I always forget how to make things be seen the way i see them when I am writing!  I guess I need to do it more often!!!!

I love my Cotswold Fleece!

Finally, MORE WOOL!

Boy, doesn't it get old.....another apology for not blogging regularly?!  Yeah, yeah, we have heard it all before!

Well, I am here now...

I have been busy with my Cotswold Fleece!  I have been dying it, picking vegetable matter (vm) out of it, washing it.  Every weekend!

I have been spinning a bit, too.  I first spun this:

After many months of indecision...I have decided to name my yarn label:   M'Lou Roo....I even made labels!

There are:
 2 skeins of Black Cotswold.....my Rachel, a skein of Leah, a huge skein of I-Don't-Know-What (probably Romney).  I spun Rachel from roving that I had processed at Arizona Fiber Mill, in Prescott.  http://www.arizonafibermill.com /  Leah's skein was spun by just combing the locks and spinning on my Baynes spinning wheel.  The large skein, I found in my stash....I am pretty sure I spun it when I was living in Seattle.  The smaller skeins on the right are some pretty fine yarn that is from some raw Merino Fleece I brought back from New Zealand......over 15 years ago!

 I took Rachel's and Leah's (both Cotswold sheep) first fleeces up to the mill to get processed.  Rita and her crew did a great job!  I had them only pick and clean Leah, who is white.  And Rachel was made into roving.  While that was being processed (it takes a few weeks because they are so busy), Aimee Leon (my fan-tab-u-lous shearer lady!) sheared the Girls again!  I have been cleaning that on my own, and trying to be very careful to leave as much curl in as possible.  I have heard it makes great doll hair and Santa Beards.  I have started trying to spin Core spun and Tail spun art yarns with the fabulous curly locks!  But I digress.....The photo above is yarn I spun for Aimee.  She is working on a huge wool art installation involving wool yarn from all over the world!  Here is the link to the web page of that project. http://www.herdbeast.com/

So far, here are my biggest influences in trying to relearn how to spin fine yarn and art yarns:
 Judith MacKenzie
Margaret Stove (I actually met her in New Zealand!)
Natalie Redding from Namaste Farms
 Ashley Martineau

Here are my first attempts at "Art Yarn":

So many blues!  This yarn was not exactly core spun.  It was core-less spun.  It is one ply and I actually just plucked and shoved and pinched the fiber as it twisted into my wheel.  For art yarns,I have a Louet S10 wheel.......my first wheel.

 Purples and pinks.....boy, I guess I need some photography lessons!  This was my tail spinning attempt.  I did not follow "the rules", and again, I spun without a core.  The locks are mostly curly on one end but frizzy on the cut end.  I just sort of kept adding locks together and letting them twist into a yarn.  This skein is about 25 yds!  (I think that is pretty good for tail spinning!)

FIBER!!!

No, not eating it......spinning it!  I am finally getting around to spinning the Leah's first shearing.  Since Rachel and Leah (we did not name them) are going to have to get their hairs cut soon, I thought (well, darling hubby thought) I had better get stuck in to doing something with the first batch!  I washed a bunch of Leah (the white) and have been carding it and spinning it.  I can't wait until I have a full skein!

Some of the locks are 10" long!

All picked and ready to card.....just like a cloud!

Almost a whole spool.

My Baines upright spinning wheel from New Zealand.

The poor wool is full of vegetation.  I may have to give up and take it to Arizona Fiber Mill for cleaning.  It is spinning up real nice and fine, though!

Leah's First Haircut

Leah's First Fleece

Leah

Rachel 

More past projects

Sound of Music

Before/After

I bought 2 of these fun shabby chic chairs from my favorite Antique Strip Mall, but sadly, had to reupholster them to fit into the Von Trapp house for Sound of Music.  I also did a sofa and 2 other chairs for the show.  Nick Mozak, our designer from Chicago painted the wood, and I just kept on stapling.

I made 2 cute pillow to go on the sofa.....

Hay carpet

Kim mostly made this hay carpet thingy that went inside a hay cart.  She spent DAYS tying string and yarn to bird netting.  It was worth it in the end, as it has already been in two shows!  Doesn't it look like fluffy straw?

 I made this Prie-Dieu (a prayer kneeler) ALL BY MYSELF!  I am trying to work on my Prop Carpenter skills.  Sadly, it was cut from the show for needing to be placed in an awkward spot on the set that everyone was running into with their Nun Costumes!!  

Thanksgiving Lefse & Chocolate Covered Cherries

For Thanksgiivng, we went to Gramma's in Pahrump, Nevada.  We made over 200 chocolate covered cherries.  My Mom's recipes for both the cherries and the lefse have been used nearly EVERY YEAR for the past 50 or so!!!

Fondant of powdered sugar and Eagle Brand Milk

Dipped in any kind of melted chocolate

I felt like Lucille Ball with all that candy!

We had two lefse griddles going to make this traditional Norwegian  food that we always have around the holidays.  Spread with butter and sprinkled with sugar is my favorite way to eat it!

Arizona Craft Rave

Nickela & I had a table at the Arizona Craft Rave this year. Nikki taught how to make the cute butterfly necklaces, and I taught making charms and bobby pins with cabochons and fun beads and paper decoupage.  We had a blast!

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

There are lots of fun props in Seven Brides!  I made 6 fake axes that men have to dance with, a fake stretched animal hide.  (When asked what animal, the scene shop boys thought I should say "Nawga"!)

Future Fake Axes

I also resolved myself to researching an making some snow shoes!  I got a bit obsessed.  They are a nice touch on the trapping cabin in the winter!  I dare say, they look pretty real....but I wouldn't test them against any polar bears!