Spring Fiber Day 2024

I have quite a few friends and family members who like to attend Fiber Day at the Ellison’s sheep farm in Pelican Rapids, Minnesota. It is more than a day trip from Minneapolis, and the spring event is Mother’s Day weekend, so often people have conflicts. Spring Fiber Day is usually the same day as Fishing Opener in Minnesota. My husband is normally away on an annual fishing opener trip with some friends.

Some years all my people are busy with other things. I do not mind attending Fiber Day on my own and having a solo weekend to focus on what I want to do. This year I had a houseful of people. We lucked out and had a beautiful day and a fun girls weekend (plus one young man!).

Deb, a former coworker and knitter friend, came from Minneapolis. She had never been to Fiber Day before, but was excited to check it out. Another friend who has attended many times, Mary Lou, came with a knitting project. They enjoyed talking knitting, and Mary Lou was able to pick Deb’s mind while figuring out a complicated part of a pattern.

My cousin Lisa came with her seven year old daughter, plus three young adult children. It was her way of celebrating Mother’s Day. Her 20 year old son Everett tagged along for the weekend, without having any idea what “Fiber Day” was. He is a great kid interested in many things. At the event he sat down at a table with 90 something year old Grandma Alice and made a beautiful felted landscape. Everett has also done some blacksmithing, and talked to Dave Ellison about his forge. I did know know Dave had a forge. Everett added his name to the mailing list for future Fiber Day events.

There was a chair behind the house that looked like it had been out there for a long time. I thought it was kind of funny and artistic. Fortunately, there were plenty of other chairs for actual sitting.

My sister Betsy used to do quilting, but lately has been taking painting classes at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She set up her equipment behind the Ellison’s house and worked on a landscape painting, while most of the other people were working on something related to knitting, spinning, felting, or dyeing.

I brought my spinning wheel along, but never set it up. My knitting project never made it out of the bag either. Instead I was busy loading my blending board with fiber to make rolags, and working on a couple of dyeing projects. Following is a photo with me and other people looking over dyeing supplies.

The pots for wool dyeing were over the fire and ready to go.

Deb and I bought skeins of yarn from the Ellison’s sheep for dyeing. One of the dye pots had dye left from someone else’s project, so we added more in a slightly different color and dropped our yarn in. After simmering for about 20 minutes we took it out to cool off, and then rinsed it carefully in cold water.

The yarn turned out a beautiful turquoise color.

I had brought some 100% linen yarn from home, plus an old white tee shirt, to dye in jars using the cold method with a different type of dye for cotton and linen fibers.

I had wanted to dye the yarn and tee shirt lavender, but there were only a few colors of dye that did not include purple or blue. There were several jars of yellow and red dye, so instead I tried for a light orange color. After soaking the items in water with soda ash, I added the water and dye to the jars without measuring very carefully, and then stuffed in the skeins of yarn and the tee shirt. I left the jars soaking overnight which was longer than necessary.

One of the skeins of yarn turned out darker than the other one. They both have some variegation. The tee shirt came out quite tie dyed looking from being bunched up in the jar.

It seemed like part of the lighter skein of yarn did not take any dye, but when comparing it to the original undyed natural yarn, it was a different color.

I have not used my Blending Board in quite a while. After watching a School of Sweet Georgia class called Blending Boards: From Rolags to Roving, I wanted to make rolags. They are rolls of fiber that are fun to spin. Fiber Day seemed like a good opportunity to use a block of time for this. Ahead of time at home I dug through my fiber stash closet and picked out some various types of fiber that went together. I weighed all the fiber and divided it into six groups of about one ounce each. The fibers included wool roving from the Ellison’s, a silk/camel roving from a fiber fair, two different colors of Alpaca locks, and some Angora rabbit. After I had weighed and divided it all, I decided to throw in some orange wool for a pop of color.

I didn’t get a picture of loading the Blending Board in action, but following are photos of the board with layers of fiber on it.

Back at home I used dowels to lift and roll fiber off the board into rolags. I got three or four rolags off of one board full of fiber.

I tried to “diz” off the blending board, which is pulling the fiber off the board through a tiny hole to make roving. It worked, but was not going smoothly, so I went back to making rolags, which was what I wanted anyway.

I finished making the rolags back at home. Spinning them into yarn will be for another time, after I finish two other spinning projects in process.

Friday evening before Fiber Day was the night when many areas around the country had Northern Lights. We went outside at about 10:00 pm and could see them from the yard. With my eyes I could see shimmering lights, but not the colors. When I looked through my phone camera I could see the colors. I saw photos other people posted with more brilliant colors, but following are a couple I took. I considered getting up later in the night to see if the sky looked different, but that did not happen.

The colors in the Northern Lights would make a beautiful blended yarn colorway! I might even have fiber in all those colors that I could blend on my blending board or drum carder some day.

Last weekend was our extended family cabin work weekend. We had family at our house and a full schedule of maintenance projects. In addition to some weeding, I was in charge of group lunches and dinners for the work crew, with assistance from a few others. The peonies along the road were planted by my great grandmother. One end of the bed had a gap, followed by a very unhealthy looking plant. On the spur of the moment while weeding, I made the executive decision to move the edging bricks over leaving a smaller symmetrical garden with less future maintenance. It looks nice now, but it will be full of weeds again in a couple of weeks.

It is going to be a busy summer with a couple of trips, and groups of people coming to stay at our house and the cabin. We are also in the process of picking out what product to use in place of 24 year old living room, dining area and bedroom carpeting. At one time I had hoped to have that project complete by June, but that was not realistic. It is difficult finding time to work on the projects I already have in progress, and it is not even summer yet.