Shawl finished!

The summer after I graduated from college, my mom borrowed a large floor loom from her local fiber arts guild or adult education service, I'm not quite sure.  It sat in her living room, and my godmother, who is a wonderful weaver, helped us warp it and design woven shawls to make.  We were motivated to finish the weaving, since we had to give the loom back, but after they were finished and off the loom, they sat in my mom's house for over two years, waiting for us to finish the fringes. 

When my mom came to visit a few weeks ago, she brought the shawls (and a fringe-twisting tool she borrowed from my godmother), and I finished mine!  It's pretty large, and very soft and warm.  If I remember right, the yarn is some sort of tencel blend, so it has a lovely shiny sheen.

Yellow Rose Fiber Producers Fiesta!

A few weeks ago (okay, the second week of April) my Mom and I met up to go to the Yellow Rose Fiber Producers Fiesta in Seguin, TX. We had an absolutely wonderful time, except for when my gluten-free mom and my vegan self were walking around tiny, economically distressed downtown Seguin looking for lunch on Saturday and they didn't have ANY FOOD. None at all.

We took a few classes: a short morning intro to needle felting and a longer afternoon introduction to rigid heddle weaving.

You can see the finished product of my needle-felted chicken at the top of this post. I think it's absolutely adorable, and my plan is to crop it, frame it, and hang it in my new kitchen when we move (next week!). We took a copy of a page from a coloring book and traced it onto the clear water-soluble "fabric" you can see in this picture:

Then we took a bit of fluffy fiber and poke-poke-poke it into the fabric, with a foam block behind it.

The second class was rigid heddle weaving. I made a small table-runner-ish item:

Here's the almost-finished product. I still need to tie off the ends for fringe.

Here's a close-up so you can see the lovely self-striping color of this bamboo yarn:

And finally, I only made one purchase at the show, but it was a good one. It seemed like most of the exhibitors were alpaca farmers from Texas. So of course I had to buy some alpaca fiber. I got this custom-made batt from a booth where they had a bunch of fiber in different solid colors on display. I got to choose my colors (which were purple, white, and a bit of blue-green silk) and the man ran it through his carding machine to blend it all together in a beautiful way. Here it is: