SMKG Blog

First to remind everyone that our summer picnic is next month, Saturday, August 13^th each person will need to bring their own plate, silverware and cup.  Bring a food dish to share and since this is at 9:30 till noon maybe brunch type items would be good.  This will be held right at the Mill up on the hill above the stream.

Our September meeting will be a yarn swap/sale/trade and it does not have to be just yarn.  You can bring bags, books, patterns or anything you want to trade or sell.  We will make up some tags to use for marking your items.  So start thinking of cleaning out that stash.

We discussed some ideas to do for next year’s meetings.  If you have any ideas please let us know.

Our speaker this month was Laura from Textile A Manos.  Some of you may have seen her booth at Black Sheep.  She brought lots of yarn and
patterns to sell and had some nice finished samples to show us.  She explained her whole dying process and it was very informative.   Laura gets her dye color ideas from nature and pictures.  Some of her sources of pictures are travel magazines, Georgia O’Keefe books and impressionist art books.

Laura always starts with natural white not bleached white yarn.  She dyes all of it with a base color and then does her custom hand painting to the skein.

Laura saved the best for last and showed us what she calls the silk hankie scarf.  This is something we will be having Laura come back to teach us.  It may be at one of the meetings or we may have to have it on a different day.  This would be something that there would be a charge for and would be paid for by those of us who want to take the training.

Tash Wesp, a fiber artist from Newport, was the guest speaker at our June meeting.  She does not knit, but rather she works with roving and fabric to create wall hangings, 3-dimensional art, and garments.  Tash takes silk or cotton fabric, layers roving over the fabric, and then felts the two together.  It is a labor intensive process which produces beautiful lightweight garments of incredible beauty.  Through experimentation, she is able to produce one piece hats, coats, vests, shawls, skirts, and more.  Each garment is a one of a kind piece of art.  She has shown her work in galleries and museums.  Recently she has begun dying garments with leaves.  Unusual to say the least.  To view her work, you can go to ForArtSake Gallery in Newport or go on-line to www.tashwesp.com Tash also teaches a limited number of classes at the Sitka Art Center at the Coast.  Her e-mail is  tashwesp@charter.net

There are several events which you need to mark on your calendars.

Black Sheep a large expo featuring all things spinning and knitting, June 24-26 in Eugene.  www.blacksheepgathering.org

Sock Summit at the convention center in Portland, July 28-31, socksummit.com

Shaniko Wool Gathering September 10 and 11 which is held in Eastern Oregon and is put on by the High
Desert Wool Growers.  It will feature weavers and spinners, vendors, and
entertainment.  www.shanikowoolgathering.com.

Also Penny Cook is now setting up the retreat for local knitters, and some not so local, which will be held September 9-11 at Silver Falls Conference Center.  It is a fun time where you get to meet and chat with like-minded women who share a love of knitting.  Although there is presently a waiting list, you might want to get on that said waiting list as spots do open up.  Contact Penny at pcook@proaxis.com. The cost is $73 a night and includes meals.

We will be knitting at the State Fair this year.  Our time is Sunday, August 28 from 10 to 3.  It would be nice if we could have a really good showing as we have had at other events this year.  (The Knit in Public Day at the library had at least six knitters there all day with many more at times.)  lease think about setting that day aside.  I would like to run two shifts.  You do get free entrance to the fair.  I will have a sign-up sheet at our next meeting.  The coordinator would needs a list of attendees by August 1.

Our July meeting will feature Textiles a Mano, a dyer and artist from Eugene.  August will be our picnic which is held during our regular meeting times.

Also Dale is knitting small booties for donating to Salem Pregnancy Resource Center.  This is a Pro-life project through her church.  If anyone else would like to knit some, she will collect them at the meeting and deliver them for you.

This month we had Gail – The Angora Lady come and speak about her angora rabbits.  Her business name is Windsor Farms Rabbitry.  Gail has
been raising her angora rabbits for their fiber for 25 years.  These rabbits are German Angoras.

She brought pictures of the rabbits and they are the cutest little guys.  A 10 pound rabbit can produce 1 pound of fiber in 90 days.  Gail sends the fiber to be processed and it is mixed with a bit of merino wool when she gets it back in skeins she has to wash each one of them and that makes the fiber have the nice blooming effect.

Gail not only sells the awesome fiber but the bunnies too so if you are interested in spinning you could raise your own.  She also had some very beautiful shawls and scarves made from her angora.

In June we will have Tash Wesp coming to show us her felting.  The same day is Knit in Public
Day.  After the meeting at the Mill anyone who would like can join us at the Library to do Knitting in Public.

Every Saturday from 1-4pm a group of us knit at the Broadway Café Coffee Shop – we would love to have you join us there whenever you can.  At this point we do not have a room, you will have to look around the different seating areas of the 1^st floor to see what area we got seated in.  If we get a room we will be on 2^nd floor.

Hope to see you all next month and happy knitting!

Just to remind everyone next weekend is the Columbia Gorge Fiber Festival in Hood River.  www.lavendersheep.com/cgff.html

This month we had Sivia Harding join us to teach us about the Mobius cast on and show us her designs. Sivia uses the mobius design in cowls, shawls, a  headband and even a sweater she is designing with that as the top.  She brought many of her designs to show us.  Many of her designs had beads in them as well.

The Mobius is unique in that you cast on, which then becomes the middle and you are knitting out both directions.  The shawl she was wearing and showed us how the mobius idea works and how the cast on ends in the middle, is called Harmonia’s Rings.  Here is the link http://www.siviaharding.com/patterns/harmonias_rings_cowl   Sivia also had many of her other designs to show us.  She brought Socks, leg warmers, gloves, sleeves and scarves.  As promised here are some links to find Sivias patterns.  The yarn shop in Portland that carries her patterns is Twisted www.twistedpdx.com   on line places listed below:

www.Ravelry.com (search for Sivia Harding In pattern search area)

www.SiviaHarding.com  Her own web site

www.Patternfish.com  click on Shop link and then you need to know the name of the pattern to search for it.  This site lets you buy without using PayPal.  The other sites will only use PayPal.  You can look on the other sites to get the name of the pattern you want and then come here to search for it.

Here is the best video for the Mobius Cast on.  Cat Borhdi is the person who originally created this cast on and this is her video.  She used to be a grade school teacher and is very good at teaching knitting now.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVnTda7F2V4

To practice you will want a long (40 to 50 inch) circular needle.  Sivia said she starts with 90 stiches cast on for the Harmonia’s Ring cowl.  When you knit the first row these 90 stitches turn into 180 stiches.

We will be meeting at the Broadway Coffeehouse (by Salem Alliance Church) 1:00 – 4:00 pm on all Saturday afternoons and will help you learn the mobius cast on if interested.

This month we had several new visitors and hope they enjoyed the meeting and will be coming back.

We have been meeting for a couple of months at the Broadway Coffeehouse to knit on Saturday mornings.  1300 Broadway St. NE,  Salem, OR 97301         Phone:  (503) 990-8139 ‎   Web: broadwaycoffeehouse.com

We have decided to change the time for meeting to the afternoon from 1:00pm – 4:00 or 5:00 or however long you have.  That way you can get errands and yard work done in the morning and come join your friends to chat and knit after.

They do not have lunch type foods just snack kinds of things.  We are looking at getting a meeting room there and then we will always be in the same place.  Will keep you posted on that.  We had 9 people show up last week.

We talked about our group on Ravelry – Have you all gotten your account set up and found the Millstream Knitting group?  If you need help Teresa will help you at one of the meetings to get started and learn to navigate the site.  Thank you Teresa!!! 

Our own Joan Parker runs Barnhart Farms with her daughter – she spoke to us about the farm she has started up and operated for the past five years.  We got to hear about the process of turning her alpaca’s fluff to awesome yarn.  She had samples of the raw fiber and some items made from the finished product.  We also had the opportunity to purchase the yarn.  I need to look for a great pattern for knitting mine up.  She also has 2 Pygora goats and a Lama.  We got to see pictures of all her “yarn to be” creatures. 

Cindy and Gloria (who are sisters), joined our group this month – Yea!!! 

At our April meeting we will have Sivia Harding teaching us about knitting a Mobius – a circle with a half twist knitted in the round without having to sew it together that way at the end.  You can check out her web site at www.siviaharding.com She has some really great patterns and will have them for sale at our meeting.  Hope to see you there.

We have finally made it to the web – Millstream Knitting Guild is 26 years old and has a webpage!!!!