Fall is here...

Check out these pumpkins of the sea...

 

Los Angeles Commute

I snapped some shots of the city scape and crazy sunset while sitting in traffic on the way home tonight.

The 10 east to downtown 

sunset in the left-side mirror

The 110 north at 6th, LACO mural 

Living vacariously...

So, I got a huge batch of photos from my mom today that I wanted to share.  She went on an exciting trip yesterday to the Topsfield Fair in northern Massachusetts.  Last year, at this time, I happened to be home for a visit, so Jesse took us to the fair, but that was before I caught the fiber fever.  So I guess I'll have to live vicariously through my mom's photos this year and settle for the ration of fried dough I ate at the LA County Fair on Saturday.

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As usual for most fairs, there were lots of super cute animals (My favorite is the Rasta Sheep with the knarly bangs.) and a shearing demo.

(Please bear with me if the photos and text look disorganized.  I'm stuggling with the WYSIWYG formatting.  Seems dumb because it's supposed to be the "easy" way to do this sort of thing.  I can't figure out how to get my cursor to appear after the photos.  I've been working on this journal entry for 2 hours now. and have 4 photos and two paragraphs of text. Aarrruugh!  I guess this is what it feels like to learn something new after thirty.)


Cotswold ewe

 

The crazy thing about her trip to the fair was her amazing "small world" experience.  My mom ran into my friend Lisa's in-laws who own alpacas and recently moved to a new farm in Vermont called Champaign Valley alpacas.  They were at the Topsfield fair showing their animals and selling some fleeces.   the best part is that I got a beautiful creamy alpaca blanket fleece out of the deal from an alpaca named Fabian.

 

My too short, long weekend

It has been a pretty productive weekend.  Saturday, Omar and I went to the LA County Fair.  It was a lot of fun, but I forgot my camera so I didn't get to take a picture of the shearer, John, from Oregon.  He gave me this Suffolk fleece..




He told me that Suffolk is primarily a meat breed so the fiber is not the greatest, but what bad can be said about a free fleece??   I washed up about a half pound, which turned into just under 7 ozs.,  and put a handful through the drumcarder.  It's amazing how much sawdust falls out from the carder.  After spinning up a bit, I think it will work best to spin a bulky, lofty yarn to use for felted projects.  I think it will dye great too! 

I really wanted to spend the rest of the evening with my hands in Fiber, but I had a concert to play with San Fernando Valley Symphony.  It went well, but was brutally hot in the auditorium.  I had worn a tank top and the black mohair shrug my mom made me because it was a cool night and, since it would have been tackey to take off the shrug, I suffered in a pool of sweat.  (Glad there were no phots of that! ;-))

Sunday, I went out and bought my first tub of Orvus paste (which I used on the suffolk fleece).   Something about it freaks me out, but it sure works like a charm.  I spent sunday evening on the couch with Simposon, Family Guy, etc and my support spindle.  I was working on getting through more of the black Crosspatch Creations I started during Gwen Powell's class a few weeks ago.

I took the day off today, Monday, to deal with a bunch of Election Board work and spend time with my blog.  My squarespace trial ends on Wednesday.  I think I'm going to take the plunge tomorrow and sign up for the cadillac account.  Gobs of options I don't know how to use, but paying a little extra will hopefully give me the incentive to learn as much as I can about how this web/blog thing really works.

Nice weekend

I'm so excited cause Craig helped me with getting Photoshop and teaching me to fix photos for the web!  I've been busy all weekend taking pictures of my fiber endeavors so I can post tonight.

So Friday night and Saturday was spent spinning some Crosspatch Creations fiber, 2005 country quilt colorway.  It's a blend of wool and silk in a variety of muted colors as you'll see...

I plied it with a cream color thread.   It's amazing how clearly you can see how the twist is so tight on the bobbin and how much energy is lost/transferred when the single is plied.