Sewicked: Carolina Fiber Fest

Showing posts with label Carolina Fiber Fest. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

So much happened

I went to a house party for a friend's birthday. We played games, talked, and ate. Lots of fun. This was off the back porch.

I made progress on the 2024 TTAL. I worked on it during the Fiber Fest demo, but I forgot a key thread and was stumped after February 29th.

I showed extraordinary control and only bought a few vintage buttons, a mini-loom, and a speedweave loom. Here's our table at the Carolina Fiber Fest (yes, I asked permission 1st)

The NC Museum of Art has a new exhibit, as of March 2nd, To Take Shape and Meaning, Form and Design in Contemporary American Indian Art. It is incredible. I went on opening day because they had artists there and one is a friend so I wanted to see her. I'm sorry I didn't get any pictures of the dancers. These are just a sample of the exhibits; where all the artists are from, 2 pieces with information about the artist. The man standing next to the portrait is the artist.

Before going, I printed out directions, despite having driven by it several times, cause I am directionally challenged. And the directions sent me through a residential area, to a complete dead end. And it was a recent one, there were trees! Luckily, I do have a 'smart' phone and used GPS to get back on track.

There was also a pop-up market. I resisted temptation, mostly. I bought 1 small packet of tea. But I got her contact info, she's a local tea blender. And she has one that is no caffeine blend that smells, and tastes, like coffee.

I forgot about the outdoor exhibit spaces. I took a couple pictures of this one, a mirror spiral path/maze. It was after 4 pm when I stopped by so the light was incredible.

My favorite scarf, the one with 86" of tatted edging, got torn. I darned it, but didn't really like the darn so I covered it with tatting on both sides. Then I found another, larger tear. I've darned it, but I'm trying to decide if I'll do more tatting over it or something else (I do have that new mini loom).

I've started a patch, here it is, in case I like it. Now that it's in progress, I have my doubts. It's much denser than the scarf. It's size 10 crochet cotton and perle 5 cotton weft.

My scrap bag in progress (from Karey Solomon's Bring on the Buttons)

Monday, March 13, 2023

Carolina Fiber Fest 2023

Fiber Fest at the State Fairgrounds again (in the nice, large expo hall, yay). And once again, shared parking with 2 other events. One, if someone hadn't told me they were there, I wouldn't have known about them. OTOH, the other group has a subset of 'we have an RV, who cares about parking spaces'.

Most of them with RVs are not like this. They park in the camping area, which admittedly is not particularly close to their event location. There's some though, that take up 2-10 (and no, that is not a mistake, I counted) parking spaces. Which again, is okay if no one else is using the lot. Like someone who parks their car over 4 spots at the far end of a lot where it's completely empty, if it's not disrupting other people, then who cares.

And that is why my friend and I arrived at 7 am for an event in which the doors open at 9. We did need to be there enough before 9 to get our tables set up, but if it weren't for the parking issues, we would have aimed for 8 am.

We were towards the back, near some of the classrooms. We were also near this display about flax and flax spinning (picture is only part of display).

There were 2 spinning wheels, some fabric (both recent make and vintage), sample of linsey woolsey tape, 3 linen stricks, and flax in different stages of processing. There were also brochures for a book on homegrown flax and cotton.

I also bought a couple mini-skeins of linen yarn to try it for tatting. I bought some burgundy and black. I'll need to be careful of slubs, but it tats pretty well. The hanks are DK weight, so about size 5 for tatting, I think.

Here's the edging sample I did.

Pattern from New Dimensions in Tatting by To de Haan-van Beek

I saw lots of fiber friends; other members of Tri-Tatters, Sir Walter Lacers, weaving group, machine knitting, etc. I also saw Danielle, who I haven't seen since she moved to Texas. I also met her wife, Jen, who I only know from Danielle's FB posts. They've moved back to the east coast.

I also bought a nalbinding needle and then won some wool yarn! How about them odds. I only bought 1 ticket in the drawing. And funny enough, while I was up there getting my 'here's the cert for you to claim your prize', the vendor came up to see if the prize they'd offered had been claimed. I didn't have to search for their booth, they lead me right there.

I finished Jane Eborall's Tat It And See, although I used 2 different colors. I want to do this in light green and in grey, too. For reasons.

I've also been playing around with Mandala by Nami Art Patterns

You can't tell from the pictures, but the top one is size 20 and the lower one is size 40.

I also took some of my bits to mend a skirt. It's cotton gauze, so I stabilized the holes and then sewed tatting over them.

And of course, glued flowers, etc to a card.

We play the Pathfinder game again this weekend (crossed fingers) and our 5e game continues.

In the 5e game, we learned what poisoned our oldest sister (cousin for 1 player). We did some local investigating to see if there's a cure available locally and tried to get some information on who created the poison. We did learn a few things, but we had to go to another town, on the recommendation of someone we contacted, to someone who might know more.

Cousin (PC is 16, player is my age) continues to underestimate my PC, possibly because of jealousy. My PC went to college in the capital, is beautiful, and cosmopolitan. She (PC) is the smartest and most beautiful person the room; she says so.

Please note, the player is a good friend and it's all in fun.

I can't believe we had sleet/snow yesterday. Last year, we had snow (no accumulation) as we were leaving the Fiber Fest. And it's supposed to freeze tonight.

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Politics and Tatting

I'm starting this post on Friday, March 25th. The NC legislature and the NC governor had a special session (costing the state taxpayers a few thousand dollars) to pass this bill. These are some of the tweets responding. I don't usually talk about politics on my blog. But this, out of all the things the politicians have done this really gobsmacks me. I am not directly affected (I'm a moderately femme, ciswoman), but this bill is so rampantly discriminatory and they took special effort to pass it. This is a group who can't pass the frickin' budget on time. And it's also badly written. If Jane (name made up) doesn't want her 9-year-old son to go to the mall bathroom by himself, well, too bad. It's illegal for him to go with her. If they're cleaning the women's room at the gas station and I'm desperate to go, it's illegal for me to use the empty men's room. I definitely know some people who are definitely not getting my vote in November. I'm ordering an "I'll go with you" button, as soon as I have some spare change.

I went to the first work sponsored yoga class on Thursday. It's a work week, wind-down thing. We were in the Arboretum and it was lovely. I wish I'd gotten more than one picture. Note for next time; when it's time to lie down for the final relax phase, head uphill, not downhill. Just FYI.

Two bits of gaming news this week. They've started the beta playtest of Shadow of the Century Fate game. And I'm on the list. I'm reading through the book, sending in errata, and planning a game for the 3rd.

The other news is also Fate related. I submitted a pitch to write a building block for Fate Codex, and they accepted. I need to get my outline written by Friday, April 1st.

Tri-Tatters went to demonstrate for a few hours Saturday at Carolina Fiber Fest. I started a new bracelet and finished the hairstick dangle.