Snail Spirals

I wove off another set of bookmarks last week. This was the purple silk warp I dyed in January, along with some lighter purple silk to use as weft.



The one on top shows the lavender weft, in the sections on the ends. The rest of these have all white weft. There were two other bookmarks from this warp, which used the lavender weft, but I don't have pictures of them since they have already left my house...because...

I recently put some of my work in a gallery of local artists here in La Grande, the Blue Turtle Gallery. In a gallery! Me! In a completely uncharacteristic display of bravery, I walked into the gallery and asked the owner if she would be interested in displaying my textile creations. She was quite enthusiastic, and we set up an appointment for me to show her my work the next day. She said she's been looking for a textile artist to add to the gallery for a while, and was very impressed with what I brought to show her. So now I have woven, knit, and crochet items for sale in a gallery. Eep!

One last thing to report:



I am slowly succeeding in my plan to take over the entire house with fiber fun. This is what used to be the computer desk/bookcase in the dining room, formerly occupied by old textbooks and all our assorted clutter, and sometimes used by Shaun to work on his computer.

The bookcase part of the desk just sits on top and isn't attached, and last weekend we realized that hey, we could take that off and suddenly there's all this SPACE! We moved the bookcase part of the desk out to the utility room counter, cleared the clutter, and now I have a carding station!

Plus, the dining table is now available for actual dining, since the carder no longer resides on it.

I love having a dedicated spot for the carder, and it feels very productive to have everything set up and ready to go. Feel like carding a batt or two? Go for it! Right now I have two large bins of alpaca fleeces under the desk, which I plan to work through this spring and summer. The small box in the middle is for carding waste. On top of the counter, right to left: the carder; carding tools (flicker, batt picker, etc); a bin of "add-ins" like silk, bamboo, mohair, sparklies, etc.; bundles of hand dyed bluefaced leicester top ready for blending; a scale; a bin of finished batts; and my "office", with a desk organizer (pens, tape, stapler, etc) and the printer (with trays in the stand for paper storage).

There's plenty of space to work with the batts, pulling them apart for additional blending passes, and there's space to plug in my computer when I need to print labels or receipts. The dining table is close by if I need additional space for photographing and packaging batts.

It's working very well so far.