Then It Hit Me....

I spent last weekend in Elliot Lake, Ontario at the WASOON 2012 conference.  WASOON stands for Weavers and Spinners of Ontario North.  The conference takes place every two years, with the location rotating through the member guilds in Northern Ontario.   I attended the conference as a vendor, but also as part of the community of fibre artists that gather to share knowledge, inspire each other's creativity and maintain our friendships.

The Elliot Lake area is truly beautiful in the springtime with blue sky, clean lakes and pine trees.  It displays all the beauty of Northern Ontario.  Elliot Lake was once a booming mining town.  I was there once in the 80's when I worked for a mine safety association to tour the large underground facility.  Sometime in the 90's the decreasing market value of uranium led to the closure of the area mines and very quickly the economic base of this town was gone.  In the heyday of a boom mining town, the population was 25,000, now it is closer to 11,500.  The infrastructure of a wealthy "company town" is still there set amid this beautiful Northern Ontario vista, so the city leaders have marketed Elliot Lake as a dream Northern Ontario retirement destination.

WASOON conference participants found 3 different town promotion packages in our conference package, complete with the Retirement Living pricing list for retirement rentals.  The town mayor opened our WASOON banquet, welcoming us to his town, saying he was happy we were visiting, hoping that we would visit again....and "then come and stay for the rest of your lives".

My travelmate and I got a lot of giggles out of the 'stay for the rest of your lives' comment...it would've made a good movie.  So many people moving in...nobody moves out...

And then it hit me.

Apparently as spinning and weaving conference participants, we totally fit the Retirement Living target demographic.  

If you've ever witnessed a hotel invaded by weavers and spinners...you will notice the candidates are predominately 1) women 2)  gray haired 3) wearing stunningly beautiful handspun, handwoven, beaded shawls you can't afford to buy...(often with..uhm...running shoes...and that's not because we don't have a fashion sense, but in our fibre arts world, beauty only applies to things handcrafted and not many of us can wear handcrafted shoes that you can carry or treadle a spinning wheel in.  Also, by the time we've stuffed the car with bags of fibre, our seatbelted spinning wheels, looms and 2 years of accumulated show-n-tell items we've forgotten the dress shoes). 

Anyway, I headed home inspired to finish all my UFOs (un-finished objects), including this handspun yarn that's been on my wheel since last month.

I'm plying two single strands into a balanced 2 ply yarn on my electric Eortel Roberta spinning wheel.  It does ply quicker than my treadled wheel and of course, I can work at it for a lot longer without wearing out my legs and ankles on the treadles.

The two bobbins of singles sit on what is called a Lazy Kate and ply from there onto my Roberta.  I have no idea why this equipment is called a Lazy Kate.  I did just Google it and could not find an answer.  Perhaps I'll try finding it in my old spinning books or asking some friends who are into this type of trivia.  If you know, leave a comment!

My first skein is 138g and feels lovely.  I have more to spin.  It's 100% alpaca, so it will have lovely drape but possibly not much elasticity.  I think it will knit into some lovely scarves or it might end up on my Etsy site. 

Getting back to the topic of the demographics of the spinners and weavers group.  Yes, the predominate hair colour at the conference was gray.  I've let my hair go 'au natural' for the last couple years.  I have friends and family that applaud that and say that my natural aging hair was a lovely mixture of shades.  I have other friends that frankly look at my unpampered, graying hair and say "Why?" or "What's wrong, hon?".

After last weekend, I decided I no longer wanted to appear as Elliot Lake's target market.  This box got emptied on Wednesday night.  My hubby put the colour in for me as I sat in the kitchen chair and I think he did a very nice job.

This weekend we started shearing.  My hubby actually does the shearing and my daughter and I are the crew.  We began with the female alpacas first.  As one girl was led away from the shearing table, I complimented her on her new hairdo.

Then it hit me.

I have the same hair care expert as the livestock.

I need to get off the farm more.....

 

It's Been a Month!

Here's a picture of the "Simple Shawl for Fancy Yarns" that I made out of my hand spun, handpainted alpaca\kid mohair\merino blend. The pattern is by Jenn Hintz of FibreFibers and can be found on Ravelry. The shawl's for me and I love it! So soft and colourful.


It's been a month since my last blog entry. I could say that I've been awfully busy but that would be true of my life in general, no more this month than others. Well, I can say that I was rather distracted with an sad event that was unfolding in our family. I'll leave it at that for now and tell you about the positive things that happened in the month.

On May 16th, the Country Roads Studio members had it's own studio tour. This is the day that we set aside to travel together to each others' studio, have a meal and a meeting together. It was a beautiful day, spent with friends. I'm always amazed at the talent that is possessed by these artists and artisans on our tour. I'll be posting some pictures of this work in later entries.

The next weekend was our Victoria Day long weekend in Canada. We don't usually shear until the end of May or early June, but it's been terribly hot and I gambled that the May 8th snowstorm would be our last. Our family of three decided to try shearing without help this year. It went marvelous. We started with the little ones and found that it was so easy, we continued on. Usually we would be having a very long day trying to get all 17 animals sheared while help was onsite. This year, we sheared a comfortable number each morning and when it got hot, we quit and went to the lake. On the last morning, our friends Tim and Lise came over to help lift the table when we did the last 4 heavyweights. It was such a relief to get it done!

The following week, May 28-30, I drove to Kapuskasing, Ontario to participate as a vendor at the 2010 Weavers and Spinners of Ontario North conference. It's a 6 1/2 hour drive north, through a lovely part of Canada. I was happy to have my friend Jane travel in my car for company. The conference was wonderful as always. It is always amazing that such a large event can be put on by the members of these small guilds. I was the chair of the conference in 2008 when it was in North Bay, and I appreciate the amount of work and organization involved. Seeing it from the 'outside' this time, I can also appreciate what this conference does to help keep our craft and our important artist relationships alive.
Hat's off to the Kapuskasing guild, especially for juggling to find numerous generators to keep the conference going when Ontario Hydro announced a total town power outage for Sunday morning!

My friend and fellow weaver, Suzanne Philbin, completed our two black alpaca jackets in time for Wasoon 2010. We wore them in the fashion show and received much praise for them. Staying in a hotel crawling with textile artists and carrying these jackets on a hanger through the lobby made me feel like a celebrity! Everyone wanted to touch and admire! These jackets deserve their own blog entry - so pictures will follow on another day.

We are on "cria-watch" at the farm. That means that one female has passed the 11-month mark in her pregnancy, so we have to keep an eye on her. The other will follow shortly. We are only expecting 2 cria this year.

However, we have some new life springing forth. One of the eggs under Velma has hatched the night before last! Cute! We are waiting for 9 more....

This is our first time having chicks! I hope he has some buddies soon, he looks a bit bewildered!

So...the sad event unfolding is the death of our 14 year old dog, Molly, last week. We knew it was coming and thinking about it overwhelmed a lot of other things in our family life. Someday soon, I'll write about Molly and share some pictures to honor her. Not now. It's too soon. It's too hard to write it.