shepherds harvest weekend

 I was invited to judge the photo contest and teach at Shepherds Harvest 2012, held last month in Minnesota. I jumped at the chance.  I've been hearing about this annual wooly festival for years.

So there I was. I judged.  It was not easy. A thirteen year old named Rachel made this image. Talent!

 

Minnesota's a forcefield in the fiberarts world. Shepherds Harvest is a truly vibrant, lively festival with 5+ barns of vendors and an equal number full of livestock. You could learn saori weaving, dyeing, knitting techniques or how to breed colored fleeces and build a flock. Anyway, it was just a flawlessly wonderful two days, unless you count that the Scandanavian food truck ran out of lefse  before I had some. (Got my walleye chunks though, so no worries.)

I booksigned, alone for Craft Activism and Shear Spirit (missed you, Joan Tapper!) and with my Minnesota knit author posse from WearWithAll. Here I am with Scott Rohr and Mary Lou Egan. And that stole. (I want to steal that stole).

Here are Theresa Gaffey and Shelly Sheehan. Shelly's working on the stole in an alternative colorway. In front? Those are stole kits. I still want to steal the stole, but perhaps I should just knit one? Speaking of WearWithAll, did you see this review from Clara Parkes? And, this one over at Mason Dixon Knitting? :-)))

I taught a large and diverse group for the Photo Safari class .  Knitwear designers, alpaca farmers, a dude who's photo hobby matched up with my class while his wife and daughters' indulged their knitting  jones, an Adobe PhotoShop engineer, someone who mostly knit & crocheted in all white, some friends...and a bustling festival to explore. I hadn't calculated how our group of photographers in action would draw a crowd, who seemed convinced they'd found a celebrity at the festival beyond all the lenses. (does Prince knit? That would be the local celeb sighting I'd be all over). So, what did we shoot on safari? All kinds of backgrounds, above.

Sheep, of course. Isn't this one's fleece magnificent? I want a sweater in just those gradations.

My exhortations to get close and try unusual angles were heard!-Here's Ellen Silva photographing in the reenactors tent. She may have gone home with some spinning wheel burn marks on her forehead. But excellent images. All in the line of duty.

On Sunday,  I strolled the festival as a civilian with Ellen, who mostly stayed  upright. It was so much fun--first off, Ellen seems to know everyone in the upper midwest fiber world. And,  she's a decisive shopper, with great taste in yarn/fiber. That makes for a satisfying festival buddy right there.

One of my favorite booths, from Great Wool. Can't wait till Zoe is old enough for wooly tutus and felted fox ears. Also soft squishy Rambouillet yarn.

More felting! My friends Judy & Tom MacDowell from Misty Meadows Icelandics were there. I hadn't seen them since I invaded their farm with the photo shoot for Shear Spirit. Judy is a felting artist, and had a wall display of these narrow scarves, I think she called them centipedes. One came home with me.

I said I wouldn't buy yarn,  I do not need any yarn right now.  And I don't do souvenir yarn. At least not until Ellen introduced me to this very cool fundraiser. See these bags? They contain fluff from all the vendors, who donate handfuls of their fibers. A committee divides it into bags (or, sometimes layers them into fiber sandwiches),  

and a swat team of volunteer spinners turn each bag into a skein or two of yarn which is auctioned silently. All of the money goes to Heifer International.  So--do you get it? It's not shopping for yarn. It's supporting a good cause! (Yup, the cause clause).

  

I'm thinking new mittens for next winter,  I will be so happy knowing where the yarn came from.

And, a hat from this skein. I am slightly ashamed to admit I was bidding against the spinner who so beautifully spun the mix into a fat single, and plied it with a single laceweight strand of turquoise silk. I won't tell you how little I paid, even so.  As a non-spinner with a longing for handspun  , this is heaven.  So to sum up: Shepherds Harvest= good. Go if you can, next year.

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 Next post--I'm going to show knitting. It's been awhile , hasn't it?

driving miss brenda

If you're reading this then you probably don't think it's entirely wacky to fetch a woman I’ve never met, visiting from Wales, and drive her 2 hours north to a farm in the rural Berkshires of Massachusetts. Just so I could, you know, hang out with the sheep peeps for tea.

But if I told you the sheep farm is Kristin Nicholas' home and studio, and the passenger was Brenda Dayne of the podcast Cast On , it’d seal the deal, right?

I've become friends with Kristin, loved her work forever, but  this was my first visit to their farm. We'd joked about people wanting to live her life and thinking her house was just perfect and the sheep were all fluffy and cute, and she plays with yarn all day but in reality.....

well....OMG... it is true.  No! just kidding! She and her husband The Farmer work hard, and farm life (as well as working for yourself) is at times difficult, gritty, messy and frustrating.  But, on a spectacular spring day, it looks idyllic. You should sign up for Kristin's  classes at the farm and see what I mean.

 Anyway back to Brenda. Our original plan: I was going to coach her on photography and she was going to interview me about shooting knitting and handcraft books.

 

 But we had way too much fun blabbing, just blabbing, on the way up. And then relaxing with a pot of proper UK tea and then walking the fields with the sheep while she recorded ambient sounds and interviewed The Farmer. We decided we just have to hang out again sometime.  (fyi, she sounds just the same, in person, as on her podcast. Mind blowing, it is).

It was a wonderful day. You really really need to try to see Brenda when she passes through your area on her US tour this month. Her classes are sure to be wonderful,  but definitely attend her performance piece,  A Memorable Yarn. (read about it on Kristin's blog, here ).

 

True confession: I got that line from Sweet Baby James*  , " the Berkshires seemed dreamlike on accounta' that frosting...."  as an earworm on the way home. And then  discovered,  I can remember all the words. No wonder there's no room for important facts in my brain.

 I

Had to end with the kitten. 

* go listen & look at that video from 1970 . So long ago!

the week ahead

I'm usually a live-in-the-moment type, but not this week. I'm looking ahead, and can you blame me?

 

Next weekend,  Shepherds Harvest in Lake Elmo MN ! I love me a sheep & wool fest, and I've been hearing about this one for ages. This is like a 3fer look forward. One I am honored to be the judge of the photo contest for this 15th year of the festival.   And Two I'll be teaching a Photo Safari class on Saturday  (still 3 or 4  seats left but you need to email the festival or try your luck at walk-in registration). We will be up to our eyeballs in good subjects. (They don't call me She Shoots Sheep Shots for nothin').  Also Three  I'm  book signing at 11 am on Saturday and at noon on Sunday. On each day I'll also go bother my Wear With All friends, who'll be selling and signing just after me on Saturday and just before on Sunday. Come by and say hi.

But that's the end of the week. Right now I'm  picking up Brenda Dayne, of Cast On, and driving her to Kristin Nicholas'  farm in Western Massachusetts. Check out her fab North American tour, she might  near you soon-she is at Webs all this week and The Yarnery later this month.. Lucky!   Any Monday that includes talented knitter/designer/authors, yarn, a road trip and a SHEEP FARM stands to have a lot of promise. (Also Kristin lives near the best ice cream stand I've visited in ages, and that is no small thing.)

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craft activism goes literary in Little Rock AR!

...with a side-order of yarn bombing, thankyouverymuch. To recap: the Arkansas Literary Festival invited me as a presenting guest author, and asked if I'd also lead a Craft Activism event.  It took about a split second to choose yarn bombing, masterminded by the kniteratiLR . We decided to also make flowers from recycled sweaters as embellishments,  giving  non-knitters a break.

We worried no one would join us.

Not a problem! We also worried the weather'd be bad, that it'd be confusing, that we wouldn't have good materials...

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Here's Patrice, my partner in crime.  Really, more of a fun ringleader. If we ever pull a big heist she'll be the one with the excellent map with the duct systems schematic and the timing to get to the getaway car. I'll be the one...um...whatever, I am sure I'll be useful.  Anyhoo, we had felted old sweaters, colorful buttons and Patrice scored a bunch of One Thousand Percent Old Nylon hand crocheted afghans at Savers Village. I've noticed people like to have directions, even for open-ended projects, so we made a handout and did some test-crafting, to keep calm the night before. We were worried that it was too "Make & Take" Nope, not a problem. The template & directions became a launchpad. Just liked we'd hoped.The table quickly filled. Recycled sweater flowers piled up, but then we worried we wouldn't engage a wider audience.Again,not a problem. Teenage boys! The most wonderful part is this: see the dude in the blue T-shirt? He'd said in a disdaining teen tough boy way that he didn't know how to sew, when I tried to hand him a needle & yarn to attach flowers. He said it in the same way one would  back away from an offer to smell something rotting in the back of the fridge. His friend, the one you see giving him a hand said something like Damn, what do you mean you can't sew? Instantly turning it around, making it a desirable skill. Then he showed his friend how. Now that is some pretty cool craft activism, right  there (also, they were lured away from video gaming to do this. Let that sink in..video games)

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We moved outside to yarnbomb a small parklike area. This little girl will no doubt be the editor of Vogue Knitting someday. She was on task and delightful. When we were done,  I observed that it looked magical, to which she replied" It looks like my kind of world."while sweeping her hands around the area.  awwwww.

Meet Meredith Martin-Moats, folklorist, writer, editor, NPR producer and craft activist, who wrote about us in her excellent blog The Boiled Down Juice . It's full of interesting subjects that aren't us, too. Also, her twin toddler sons' stroller got yarnbombed as they passed through.

If you want to see even more from this day, hop over to CraftActivism, I put up a full slideshow.

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It'd be a shame to not mention how cool Little Rock itself is.  Thanks to Patrice, I had a fab visit. She and her hubby Roy opened up their home, fed me deliciously,  and  put up with my endless chicken and bee questions.  Turns out Patrice and I had the same job, years ago, but not at the same time, in Boston, at a photo agency.  (I know, you really can't make up stuff like this). Even more satisfying than comparing notes about old bosses/co-workers was the fact that Patrice is a talented knitter.  She  has the good taste to have knit, and wears, many sweaters in my queue. ( I am sure you  understand how great this is).  When we had a teeny slice of free time, she gave me a tour of LR.  Here's some of it, captioned.

The Clinton Library. Gorgeous architecture, fascinating presentation of recent history. Along with momentous world events, there was a display dedicated to handmade gifts that President & Hillary Clinton received, like the beaded necklaces. There's something so sweet and also so pop culture about all of it.Central High School, a place I  knew from the old Life Mag photos from  early days of the civil rights movement. It's beautiful, peaceful, still turning out graduates. Of all colors.

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Detail of a statue in front of Heifer International.

 

And the Big Dam Bridge, which as you might guess, was built on top of a dam. It's a long pedestrian bridge over the Arkansas River connecting two riverfront parks, in Little Rock & North Little Rock.

flying (but not) home

Sometimes the stars align. Like yesterday,  I found I could spend a couple of hours in tiny Arlington Tennesee with a Jerusalem-based photographer friend who's in the US this week. We picked the meeting place solely by its spot on the map, halfway between where I needed to be later and where she could drive to. Could have been a bad choice but ,no.

It was the perfect setting to shoot  my Flying Home shawl .Yes, this is how I wear lacy shawls. Love this shawl.  Debbi is not a knitter but she made my FO portrait.

For two photographers, this little town was heaven. Abandoned agriculture/ industry buildings!  We're suckers for some rusty tin.

Also, a large old dry good & feed store now filled with antiquey/flea market stalls. If only I were wasp-waisted,this is what you'd have seen me wearing to the Arkansas Literary Fest authors' cocktail party tonight. Instead, I was woefully underdressed. As usual.

Zoe can thank me some day for not leaping on this find. There were a lot of vintage sewing patterns, too.

A couple hours later, I walked into the very welcoming  Hank Of Yarn in Southaven MS. Don't you want to just pull up a chair? And yes , those are The KnitGirllls Leslie & Laura spinning right there. They took my class! Just as warm and friendly as they are online. I had a surreal moment sitting across from them at a booth for dinner. There they were, in the same order as on their video cast, finishing each others' sentences in the same charming way. It was as if they'd popped out of my monitor and landed at a sushi covered table.

Here's Hank herself, caught on the phone. If this is your LYS you are very lucky indeed.

 

Detail of Flying Home, in Breathless from Shalimar Yarns. Everything about this pattern is just right, except for my less-than-stellar blocking.  But don't let that stop you from knitting one.

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Still a couple of seats left at Yarn Mart on Sunday afternoon for the Photo for Knitters Workshop in Little Rock! Also we did some practice crafting and planning - it seems the noon yarnbombing at Lit Fest is going to be amazing. Come by and say hi.

some good things

I am posting from  Little Rock, Arkansas  where I'm a guest of the Arkansas Literary Festival. I've had the privilege of being in all kinds interesting, unusual, challenging, quirky and beautiful places for my work but this? This is different. I'm not reporting on it with my camera, I am actually IN it. I am not yet having those dreams where I get up to talk and realize I forgot to put on pants and instead  am naked yet covered with yarnbombing....but yeah, kind of like that. So when words fail, I'll show instead, what else has been making me happy this week.

 

 Borscht. Cold beet soup. For lunch, with chopped hard boiled egg, boiled potato, fresh green onion , a little plain yogurt and a good shake of pepper. It tastes like Spring.

The most wonderful new knitting book, Wear with All. Yes, that is my name smack dab on the cover, so take this as a biased opinion.  I was working on this in Minneapolis in November. So far you can get it in Minnesota at. the Yarnery, and Unicorn will be distributing it later this month, so tell your LYS to hop on it. You WILL want to own it. 

My Flying Home shawl in the last stage of cast off. It was soaked, blocked, and I wove the ends in on the plane.  I am planning to make sure it gets used as a practice piece when I'm teaching at Hank of Yarn this evening and at Yarn Mart on Sunday-- hehe lazy way to get some project photos to share, let the students do the work, right? 

Bobo, who is now officially heartworm free.

So, what's making you happy this week?

taking it to the street

Still seats left in  Photo for Knitters  THIS WEEK at Hank of Yarn in Southaven MS - home turf of The Knit Girllls , doncha know- on Thursday eve April 12, and at YarnMart in Little Rock AR on Sunday April 15. Tempted? Or make it a weekend because...On a Craft Activism note, I'll be speaking and  helping  lead a yarnbombing at the Central Arkansas Library as part of the Arkansas Literary Festival on Saturday April 14th, at 11 (slideshow talk) and noon (hands on crafting). I am honored and quite amazed to be part of this. I can't wait to share what my book is about with the other truly literary authors on Friday at the cocktail reception and watch them struggle for composure. Ian Frazier, a writer I admire to bits, will be there. I wish I fit into the Tongue in Chic skirt from the book. That'd be just the thing. Or, at least a spectacle.

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I taught a new class, Photo Safari for Knitter/Crafters while in California. It's street photography meets handcrafting. We spend most of our time out & about. First, there are photographic calisthenics to warm up. For example, above. Limited amount of time, a limited space--in this case, the city block we were on-  and each person must shoot only versions of a single color.  Bossy, yes? I've got a ton of these visual squat-thrusts. They break you out of your box a little before we move on to subjects  like FO's in the streets and posing and action and choosing dfferent backgrounds....

Celeste Varner, Loop & Leaf owner, designer/author  & knitter extraordinaire with her beaded Girasole.

Karin & Sandy testing backgrounds & posing in an alley in Santa Barbara CA. Check out Karin's link for the photos--and also, her designs are pretty great. Sandy had to leave class, flying off for a work emergency in Mexico. She's a seismologist. Stressful for her--but fascinating to us all. And definitely a first in a knits' class.

Lori models her shawl on a borrowed downtown porch. Go to her link--she has such a wonderful blog, and scrolling down, you can see the images Mirna & Celeste are shooting.  Super talented group, they are. I get so seriously inspired in the classes that I don't know what to knit next... although, ahem, finishing something might be the way to go, right?

class acts

Slackerly blogging , I know! Before I touch another airplane bag of weird tasting crackers, let's get back to March and some  Photography for Knitters classes, all over the place. 

If this looks like fun and you happen to be in Little Rock Arkansas or Southaven MS , right by Memphis, then you could  join me at Yarn Mart or Hank of Yarn, respectively--next week! I'll also be showing slides & telling and leading some yarn bombing/making at the Arkansas Literary Festival, it's Craft Activism on Saturday afternoon, April 14th. Very cool--I am looking forward to every single minute of this adventure.

Jill and a display at the Wildfiber counter in Santa Monica CA. If I was one of those people who can decisively grab a skein or ten quickly, I would have- it's a very happy making yarn store. And I should have.True to my indecisive retail-challenged nature, not a single skein joined me. Fail!

The class, though, was win. Looking at the clothing & lack of sun, you'd think I was faking this as Santa Monica, right? Such an interesting & talented group, from beginner knitters to experienced designers. I wanted to add a happy hour segment to the class so we could all get better acquainted and look at each other's work.Maybe with a nice fruity cocktail. Return visit, on the to-do list.

Closer to home , last Saturday at Katonah Yarn in Katonah NY.  A sympatico group, we could have happily sat there, out of the gray drizzle surrounded by the welcoming yarniness, and chatted till midnight. (In fact, at times  we sounded like that was the plan.)  We were blessed with a mid-class driveby modeling by Carrie, full reportage with photos, here . Thanks to Kay's indoctrination good parenting , Carrie knows not to question the gleam in knitters' eyes when they are holding cameras and she is in a fabulous bulky cowl. Katonah's own Liz Kaplan is shown here with the traveling trio. Betsy brought her Fussy Cuts blanket (from Craft Activism) -brilliantly knit from Silk Garden Chunky. Why couldn't I have thought of that? Chunky=done faster yet still all the fun of the Noro.

Houseboat in Santa Barbara, back to Cali. Note lace curtains in porthole windows and brushed metal handmade chairs on sundeck. If I disappear and you hear about an incident at the Santa Barbara Marina where a woman shows up and commandeers one of the smallest vessels docked there, muttering something about just wanting a quiet place to knit.....well, no, I wouldn't know anything about that.