Brooke and I left for the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat on Tuesday morning with a cargo van full of Tactile fibery goodness. It is approximately an 800 mile drive up to the Puget Sound area.
A few shots from the road:
Black Butte from just south of Weed, California.
Mount Shasta in all her glory.
It is a beautiful drive. Long and tiring, but beautiful. Wednesday we took a quick field trip to Earthues in Ballard (neighborhood in Seattle). Earthues is an amazing place. I wish we had had more time to spend there. (pictures of Earthues soon)
We set up in the marketplace on Wednesday afternoon. I don't have pictures at the moment, they are in Brooke's camera. More on that later. For now, imagine a booth full to the brim with naturally dyed goodness.
The marketplace only had 34 venders, but there were some great ones. You want to see what I got, right?
On the left is Sock Hop yarn from Crown Mountain Farms in the Ebony & Ivory colorway (now discontinued). On the right is 8 oz of natural grey Gotland roving from Butternut Woolens. Gotland is a mid-grade longwool that is great for socks. I can't wait to spin it up!
Here are two yarns from Toots LeBlanc. The large grey hank is 1200 yards of fingering weight lace yarn made from Jacob wool, Alpaca, and Mohair. I am itching to make a big rectangular shawl out of it. The white hank is 250 yards of fingering weight yarn from Blue Faced Leicester and Pygora. Just enough for a little lace scarf. Toots LeBlanc will be at Stitches west this weekend and I may come home with more of their fibery goodness. It is always a favorite Stitches destination.
On the right is three hanks of wonderous Alpaca-Bison from Judith MacKenzie McCuin. As soon as I touched it, I KNEW I had to have it. I can't begin to describe how delicious it is. It is wow with a capital WOW. There is no way a picture can do it justice.
The next picture is all from one booth. It is all Kakishibu. Never heard of it? Me too. It is traditional natural dyeing from Japan using persimmons. Chris Conrad studied the art in Japan and is now doing it in Washington state. The book is a self-published by Chris and is full of history and methodology. I really hope to take an extensive workshop with her soon.
The dark hank is overdyed organic green cotton. The other hank is 50/50 cotton/hemp. Under everything is a fabulous cotton hankie. I love this stuff!
Last, but certainly not least, is some homemade jam from Denise. Not only do I love homemade jam, I adore raspberries. The jam won't last long. If there was toast to be had in the house, you would be looking at an empty jar.
It was wonderful to meet her (and get a sneak peek at her new cards!). Thank you Denise!
ETA: See Denise's new cards here. They are beautiful!
Next time I will tell you about the class I took with Judith MacKenzie McCuin and more about our booth.
It all looks so beautiful and natural. Can't wait to hear about your class! It must have been a blast.
Ahh, Mount Shasta.
you've got to give Brooke a nudge to update her blog more often :)
Posted by: michelle | February 20, 2008 at 07:16 PM
Hi Maia! It was so wonderful to have an opportunity to meet you (and all your gorgeous fiber and yarn) in person!
I can't wait to use my yarn. I took it to work for the obligatory post-Madrona admiration by co-workers and everyone wanted to know where I got it.
I haven't gotten the new cards on my website yet (it involves some HTML wrangling on my part), but they are here on the company blog if anyone wants to see them:
http://unravelledinc.blogspot.com/
ps - I'm glad you liked the jam. It's a Madrona tradition so be sure to come back! :-)
Posted by: Denise | February 20, 2008 at 09:08 PM
I was doing fine, I even managed the raspberry jam but then you said you'd taken a class from Judith and I exploded into a little pile of green envious muck.
See ya this week end.
Posted by: Ronni | February 20, 2008 at 10:12 PM
What yummys! I have some buffalo down to spin, I was wondering what to ply it with....Maybe alpaca is the ticket!
Posted by: Donna B | February 21, 2008 at 05:54 AM
Pretty views, pretty yarn, pretty cards -- yum!
I'll see you Saturday!
Posted by: AuntieAnn | February 21, 2008 at 02:59 PM
It was great to meet you in person. I wish you loads and loads of success with your new business. You have such a great product. I've already felted with two of the rovings I bought from you and plan to do much more. I'll be watching for announcements in the near future. If you get a chance pop over to my blog to see the props I gave you.
Posted by: Leah Adams | March 03, 2008 at 09:59 PM