My life has changed a lot in the past two or three years.  A series of events led us to move and to put the ceramics studio on hold for a while.  I have returned to school to get an education license, and Jesse has found himself drawn into the world of sustainable urban gardening as Sweetwater Organics Director of Horticulture.

I am still involved in fiber arts – I am honored to serve as President to the Whitewater Fiber Guild and I do regularly get inspired to work on a knitting or crochet project.  I bring a small spindle made from a toy wheel to my classes in my backpack, and occasionally I spin my way through lecture.  I have also added weaving (basic rigid-heddle) to my list of interests.  And I do have a 4-harness Dorothy loom just waiting for me to work up the courage to use it.

My love of fiber arts lead me to explore natural dyeing a couple of years ago – and since I no longer live where scavenging for materials is the adventure it was in the countryside, I’ve grown into a gardener.   Although I started wanting to simply grow dyeplants,  I’ve really come to value and appreciate the time spent cultivating and nurturing plant life.  I grow herbs and dyeplants as well as flowers and hope to put in a good vegetable garden as well this summer.

My four bunny rabbits (two angoras, two jersey woolies) live just outside of my house in a small shed.  They’re getting older – Spike and the girls are around 8, and Gus is just about 7.   They love Jesse’s job as an urban gardener, since he often has lettuce and herbs for them when he comes home in the evening.  Since we don’t use any chemical herbicides, I’m able to harvest huge dandelion leaf salads for them as I weed my lawn and garden in the summer.   I do my best to keep up with their grooming, but I must admit I’ve stopped focusing as much on fiber production from them – I have more angora than I could ever use already!

I’ve been exploring polymer clay as an art form lately – but that’s a post in itself, and my philosophy readings are still unread.  I look forward to sharing my journey with the polymer clay process in a near future post.

I wanted to weave some samples with the yarn I had spun up, but I found out halfway through the warping of my 4″ Weave-it loom that I wasn’t going to have enough to make a complete square. Fortunately, I had just read this fun post on eLoomanator (the blog of Jana, of eLoomanation fame) on weaving rectangles on regular Weave-it looms.

I wove each sample into a small rectangle, then proceeded to wash them gently in warm soapy water and lay them onto a hand towel that I rolled up and squeezed gently to remove extra water. The next morning, when they were dry, I scanned them into my computer.

The final result?

From left to right, we have tog, combined tog and thel, and thel.  There is a lot more detail in the scan, click here to visit the original full-size scan on Flickr.

My conclusions?  I absolutely adore the way that the thel spun up.  It’s lacy with a substantial drape and it would be a perfect addition for my freeform shawl that I’m working on making out of naturally colored fibers.  The tog is also gorgeous, but in a more rustic way.  I’m thinking that it would lend a nice strength and body to a sock batt.

And I must admit I really liked the way that the woven samples turned out.  Maybe a project with Weave-it squares is in my future.

In conclusion, please feel free to visit my Links page to see a variety of resources that I found useful in this exploration.