May has been a crazy-busy month here at Strauch Fiber. We've gone to four great fiber festivals, and we've introduced a new product. (More about the new addition in another post.)
Maryland Sheep and Wool was a blast, or a blast furnace, depending on your point of view. Yup, it was hot, hot, hot! But as always, we had fun reconnecting with Strauch friends and fans from previous years and meeting lots of wonderful new people. Demos at Carolina Homespun, Earth Guild, Stony Mountain Fibers, Misty Mountain Farm, and The Mannings were well-received. It's great to get to spend a little time with those folks that bring our equipment to the fiber world at large.
Lawre and I were also thrilled to meet some rock stars of the fiber world. Here's a photo of Lawre with her spinning wheel idol Gordon Lendrum, maker of the fabulous Lendrum Spinning Wheels. Lawre loves her Lendrum wheel and was pretty darned excited to meet Gord. (That might be a bit of an understatement.)
We also had a chance to go out to dinner with Owen and Glynis Poad from Majacraft. They were at Maryland to launch their new wheel, the Aura. What lovely and fun people they are. Otto and Joanne will be spending some time with them in July when the Strauch World Tour heads to New Zealand and Australia for their big wool festivals.
Of course no Strauch adventure would be complete without going out for great food and drink. We had a couple of good dinners at the Ellicott Mills Brewing Company in Ellicott City. Robin is a great waitress - be sure to ask for her! But the real stand-out dining experience was at Pure Wine Cafe, also in Ellicott City. Really. Beautiful. Food. Go there, eat Tapas, and by all means get some White Peach Sangria. You won't be sorry.
I'd also like to give a shout-out to David and Susan at the Wayside Inn. This is our home-away-from-home when we go to MD. S&W. We love staying with David and Susan. Not only is the Inn fabulous and the breakfasts very yummy, but they are fun people and gracious hosts.
Lawre, Liz and Joanne having fun at Pure Wine Cafe. We're not normally this blurry. Must have been the sangria... Or maybe Otto was just laughing too hard when he took the picture. Yeah, that must be it!
See all the photos from Maryland S&W on our Flickr page, or watch the slideshow, below!
Joanne Strauch has been working on a fabulous rug in locker hooking, using carded fleece instead of yarn or fabric. It's been so much fun watching the rugs progress that I wanted to share just a few photos here.
This is her color study/sample for the rug, which is really a work of art in its own right. (Click on it for a full-sized image.)
One of the real joys of starting with fleece, as I'm sure you spinners and felters know, is having so much control over your end product. As you can see, Joanne's been playing with lots of beautiful colors, and blending shades of dyed fleece using her Strauch Motorized carder to get everything just right.
The process starts with raw fleece, which she then washes and dyes. Then comes the blending and carding to get just the right colors. When the batts come off the carder, Joanne draws them out into rovings, which she winds into balls to keep until she's ready to use them in the rug.
The fleece is hooked onto a canvas, using a special locker hook threaded with wool yarn. This rug is so large that Joanne is having to do it in sections, which will then be joined together. Here's a little preview of two of the sections she's done so far. You can see in the bottom photo how beautifully she's blended the turquoise and grey fleece. (Again, click on the photos for larger versions.)
We're hoping to work up a "how-to" series for the blog on this topic, so
stay tuned for that. In the meantime, you can view either the photo set or a slide show on Flickr if you'd like to see some more pictures of the process.
We'd love to see what sorts of things you're doing with fiber. Send us a photo and let us know if we can share it here in The Wool Goes 'Round.
