Evening at the Spinning Guild at Hidden Valley Farm and Woolen Mill

Last night was our monthly guild meeting at Hidden Valley Farm and Woolen Mill.  Carol, the proprietor, graciously lets us meet in the upper portion of her studio and retail store building.  It's a beautiful place full of fiber and tools and finished yarns for purchase. We are so lucky to have such a great business located in our rural area of Wisconsin.

If you would like to visit this place, along with many other fiber places in our area, there is a big event coming up next weekend.  It's called Rites of Spring Fiber Frolic   This event is taking place:

Rites of Spring:

Fiber Frolic

April 17 - 18, 2015

10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Gas up your car, grab a fiber friend or two, stop for tea and a treat along the road and come frolic with new lambs and kids and the fabulous fiber they provide for us as 10 area fiber businesses and 4 cafes open their doors for... Rites of Spring: Fiber Frolic on April 17 - 18, 2015 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day.The fiber shops and cafes are all located around Lake Winnebago in northeast Wisconsin. It’s a quick drive from Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Door County and even Chicago. Plug the addresses into your GPS and come visit, enjoy the spring air and add to your yarn, fiber and fabric stash(es) (we suspect you may have more than one)!

Now--- commercial over, back to our meeting last night! Our Black Sheep Spinners guild group gets together for sharing ideas, creative skills and lots of laughter too. We have about 15 members and we try to make all of the meetings if we can.   I missed out on the March meeting while we were gone on vacation.

We all bring in our projects that we are currently working on.  

Some bring in their wheels to spin, some bring in knitting projects

or finished items to Show-N-Tell. 

We have all ages in our group;

from young single girls, 

to alpaca farmers, 

to busy moms,

 to retired ladies.  

But we all have something in common:  

The love of fibers! 

We had a new spinner join in our group last night!  Rachel had been patiently learning how to spin on one of Carol's own wheels and had completed two full bobbins of single ply spun wool.  Now tonight she was learning the task of how take two single plies from each bobbin, and now spin them together in the opposite direction to create .... YARN!

Once the yarn is created on the final bobbin, it needs to be wound off into a long loose skein for washing and setting the twist.  The tool used for this is called a Niddy Noddy.  It's a bit confusing at first, but once you get the hang of how to wind the finished yarn in a continuous loop fashion, it makes sense.

There is a little children's rhyme that goes:

"Niddy-noddy, niddy-noddy, two heads and one body.

 ‘Tis one, tain’t one, t’will be one soon.

 ‘Tis two, tain’t two, t’will be two soon.

 ‘Tis three, tain’t three, t’will be three soon..."

And this is it.. Rachel's finished skein of handspun yarn! 

I am sure there will be many, many more skeins to follow, as she learns and creates with fibers to make her own special yarns.

Before leaving our meeting, Carol had a little gift for me... two big trash bags that needed a new home.  Once I peeked inside, I was more than happy to take them with me!

What would make me so happy, you might ask?  Well, these bags were full of wonderful fresh clean blanket wool fabric!  They will be cut into strips and woven into thick plush full wool rugs!   There are about four different color combinations to choose from, and I think I can get about 5 nice rugs out of it.  The second stack bottom color is more of a camel brown, not a yellow. Kinda hard to see in the morning light when I snapped this pic.  Some of the wools are plaids so that will add interest to the stripes in the rugs.

It's a rainy icky day here, so I just might start cutting up these strips for rugs while they are all out on the island in my kitchen.  I use a large Olfa cutting mat and a rotary cutter.  I just bought a different cutter of a new design the other day at Joann's (with a 50% coupon!)  I think it's safer and seems to be nicer to handle.  A few times I almost cut myself when setting my old cutter flat down on the table in between uses without retracting the blade.  Plus, I almost cut a slice in my new big ironing table by setting down the old cutter on the surface!

The best part of this new rotary cutting tool, the blade automatically retracts when you let go to set it down. It appears to be more ergonomically comfortable for your hand when cutting a lot of fabric.

Yesterday I had a long-awaited doc appointment to go to.  It was with an orthopedic doc who travels to Chilton once a week from a bigger clinic in Appleton.  I have been having trouble with a hip for the last 3-4 months.  Mostly pain just at night, but not during the day or not while I was walking etc.  I first had some xrays done at the connected hospital and then met the doc in his examining room a few minutes later.  Wonderful new technology that sents the xrays right to his computer screen in a matter of minutes after having it done.  No longer waiting for emulsion films to be processed.  Ahhh we've come a long way baby! 

The diagnosis is not what I was fearing (arthritis, osteoporosis, bone cancer, etc)  instead it's only BURSITIS!   Wheeeee what a relief!  It's the small pads on the hip bones called "bursae's" that help pad the hip bone and allows the ligaments and tendons and muscles to glide smoothly over the bone. My bursea are inflamed and causing pain. Because of my nissen fundoplication stomach surgeries, I sleep best on the right side, which is the one hip that is bothering me.  He prepped a needle with cortisone and gave me a deep shot right into the hip.  It hurt a bit, but nothing compared to the pains I have been having at night.  He said it would take a day or two to take effect and would last me about 3-6 months and perhaps I might not ever need another one. 

Well... I tell you, that cortisone shot REALLY worked!  About halfway through my spinning guild meeting, I noticed that I was getting more comfortable.  Then when going up to bed last night, I didn't have any creaking joint pain.  I slept all night laying on that side with no problems!   

Best of all, this morning I woke up without any stiffness, and I came down the stairs and felt NORMAL!!!!   (well as normal as I can be?) 

Reinventing the Wheel.... Spinning Wheel that is!

I find myself sooo fortunate to have moved to an area so rich in fiber groups (or guilds as they are called) of people who share my same interests.

• I have a monthly weaving guild in Menasha.
• I have a weekly knitting group in Chilton.
• I have a fun crafting group that meets occasionally at Terre Verde Coffee House in Chilton

plus----

• I have a monthly spinning guild that meets at Hidden Valley Farm Woolen Mill near Valders. We are called the Black Sheep Spinners and folks from the various small towns around Chilton attend. It's so nice that Carol from Hidden Valley lets us meet in her place of business.

That is where I had to go last night.  The snow was blowing and swirling around by 6pm when I left for the meeting.  I drove our little Tracker and put it into four wheel drive as the roads were getting worse. As I traveled closer to the Lake Michigan location the "Lake Effect" snow was falling harder.  This phenomenon creates more snowfall closer to the water, and this area suffers from that condition. I followed a little old lady who was crawling along at 25 miles per hour, almost going in the ditch three times.  I wanted to go around her and get to my destination, but I felt I should follow her in case she DID need help.  Finally she turned into a driveway near St. Nazienz, so I was able to arrive at my meeting only 10 minutes late.  Seven of us fiber folks braved the weather to get to the meeting.

I arranged for the group to listen to a guest speaker named Chuck Spann, who is a talented woodworker.

He loves to create and make things of exotic woods. He has a workshop in his home to restore vintage spinning and weaving tools. I met him a while back, and he did some restoration work for me on a wheel.

Here is the blog post about that:

  Restoring a Daneker Spinning Wheel

Here is where we meet, in the upper loft of the retail shop at

 Hidden Valley Wool Farm and Fiber Mill

Chuck had brought a nice array of his prototypes of some new wheel designs. This one pictured below is an oak wheel with sturdy base and a nice large bobbin.  Large bobbins are great to spin a lot of yarn in one long continuous piece instead of using smaller separate bobbins. The wheel is small enough to store easily, and great for traveling.  It is only in prototype stage and he not yet making them for the masses.  He needs more time as he still works as a craftsman for a large yacht building company.  We said he needs to retire and make these fun tools full time!

Chuck makes these lovely drop spindles of a Turkish design.  What is great is that the two cross pieces of wood can be slid out once the spindle is fully loaded with handspun yarn.  Then you only have to slide out the pieces and the result is a finished ball of yarn.

Another spinner, Stephanie, is demonstrating to the group how well they work.  These Turkish spindles offer very easy portable spinning, which can be taken along in a car, using it while waiting for doc appts, long lines, visiting boring relatives, or just for having fun!

Chuck also brought along a weaving device known as an "inkle loom". These looms are used to make woven straps with intricate designs or patterns if wished. It's a small portable device, plus children can catch on to this process easily and learn to weave on it.

Guitar straps, belts, trims and decorative textiles can be made on these small inkle looms in long woven portions, or in shorter pieces they can be bookmarks, or as trims in cardmaking or scrapbooking.

Here is the Daneker spinning wheel that Chuck restored for me.  He also made three larger custom bobbins for it that are so much better than the original small bobbin.  It spins like a dream, and gobbles through my fiber at a hungry pace, and creates lovely soft skinny yarn for my sockknitting machine!

Last, here is shot of some of the spinning wheels in the loft at Hidden Valley Wool Farm and Fiber Mill. Carol grows the sheep with great fleeces to shear and process. We buy the fluffy clean fiber to spin up into yarn. Then we can knit, crochet or weave the yarns into textiles. It's so easy to be creative when surrounded by such wonderful inspirational tools!

While I was gone to my meeting, my darling Steveio was at home doing some preventative furnace work!   There is a little device on our furnace called an "Inducer Motor" that blows the exhaust air out of the energy efficiency plastic pipes out the side of the house.  If that little motor quits, the furnace will shut down before allowing noxious gasses to get into the house.  Our little motor has been making funny noises lately, like a loud whirring buzz of a bearing going to heck.

We decided to bite the bullet and replace that part now, before we leave for a 6 week vacation.  We do have a wi-fi controlled thermostat that shoots us a warning if the temperature in the house ever drops too low or if the furnace malfunctions.  But if this part goes to heck, we would have to get the house sitter to arrange repairmen access, pay a service call, and probably at emergency rates because things like that seem to go to heck during the nights or weekends!

Being handy, my dear Steveio decided to just order the part and change it himself.  Of course, the danged part was $550.  Ouch! The first part I picked up last week was missing the wire harness from the box.  I called back and they figured some technician robbed the box while on the shelf for the harness.  Oh vey!   So they ordered another one and it came in yesterday.

Now that Steve had all the correct parts....

 it was time....

 to....

 read....

 the .... 

DIRECTIONS!!!!

(note: this is a rare photo of a MAN reading DIRECTIONS!)

While I was gone to my meeting, he zoom zoom zoomed to get this project done.  He turned the furnace off, replaced the part, and got it up and running in no time flat.  He said it was an easy repair job, and he did the adaptation of some older part removal with a newer format, so more had to be removed than what was installed back in. Hey.. that means parts leftover???  But he did it all, with no service calls.  Saves us a lot of money that he is so handy. What a guy!   

Ahhhh so that is more thing that we should not have to worry about 

while we are gone on vacation.  

Stay tuned for launch sequence early next week. 

Hidden Valley Woolen Mill Sale coming up

I just wanted to give a blurb out for my local readers about the upcoming sale at the Hidden Valley Woolen Mill in Valders, WI (about halfway between Manitowoc and Chilton.)  Every year Carol Wagner hosts an Open House and has many gift items for your holiday shopping....

Link:  http://www.hiddenvalleyfarmwoolenmill.com/

Holiday Open House Sale

November 22 ~ 24, 2013

Friday: 1pm ~ 6pm

Saturday: 9am ~ 6pm

Sunday: 10am ~ 3pm

Address: 14804 Newton Rd, Valders, WI 54245

Phone:(920) 758-2803

Carol has a beautiful fiber farm and does wool processing.  

She sells yarns, spinning materials, weaving items and quilting fabrics too.

During her sale, she features gift items from local artists too. 

She lets me put up a few baskets on display for the sale... 

so I fill them with hotpads, hats and of course, my socks! 

I am wayyy behind on sock production lately, being sick for the last two weeks.  So this weekend I was cranking away furiously to get more socks finished.  For my new readers, I have an antique circular sockknitting machine and I make the coziest wool socks!  (if I say so myself)  I also make acrylic socks for those who don't like wool.  It takes me about an hour to do a complete pair.  The machine is fascinating to watch, and if you ever get a chance to see one in operation, do so.  

This is my 1925 Gearhart sockknitting machine. It's finicky, cranky, irritating and frustrating at times.  But it's also FUN!   I love the socks it makes, and I use all different kinds of wool yarns to make interesting combinations of colors in my woolen socks.  

I have had this particular machine for about 5 or 6 years now, but I have been cranking since 1997.  This one is slowly wearing out from my heavy usage, it's skipping teeth on the gears it's gotten so worn, and the hand shaft is wearing down and no longer tight so it skips. It is getting wobbly and loose and is not operating properly.  I am spending more time than usual fiddling with it.  ARGGHHH

Today Steve and I did a little "operating" on it. We examined it closely and determined three things that might help it function better. He ground off a tiny bit on the end of the shaft so the handle could ride in more closely to the gear wheel. The flat washer holding the handle on the shaft was running too tight, so we bent the washer in a concave shape and it holds everything much better.  Then for grins, I figured I was wearing out the slots on one side of the cylinder where I create the toes and heels... its like double the use of the slots on one side of the cylinder vs. the other side I unscrewed it and rotated it 180 degrees and I will start using the other side of the cylinder instead.  Voila!  All three fixes helped, and the machine is cranking smoothly again..... 

We pretty much laid low this weekend, and hunkered down for the snow fall.  I made some comfort food like beef stew and somemore bars.  I did manage one run to Walmart to replenish a few supplies.  Steve and I both are still down with the cold/flu/infection yucky stuff... but we are doing better.  Not 100% yet, but on the upswing. Finally.

We didn't get much snow this weekend, but it was pretty and soft and silent during the night.  I went out in the front porch to take this pic....

I know it's not in focus, so it's not the best picture.  I think it conveys the soft silent peaceful night in our tiny town as we got our first snowfall of the season.  It was special... and I am glad to be able to look out of my warm cozy home and see it and experience it.

We will see how I feel in mid-January when the Winter Doldrums set in! 

Another Week at Our Old House

We are blessed with a sunshiney day here in Wisconsin again... perfect autumn weather!  Yesterday we were able to get some projects done and still get outside and take a nice walk with the dogs.

Steve finished up the heat vent he ran to the bathroom on the main floor. (see my last blog for details) ... and here is the finished result:

NO MORE COLD TUSHIES! 

Next project, we will work on the little corner sink and 

reverse the swing of the door into this little half bathroom. 

We also wandered over and scoped out a big auction at a neighbor's house...  the elderly gent had passed away and this was his life long accumulation of tools and guns and interesting collections.  

Now as for tools..... well..... I swear the man not only had doubles, but triples and quadruples of the same power and hand tools!  Honestly!  I think he would start a project, and not know he already had the proper tool, so he went out and bought others exactly like the ones he already had!  I mean, who needs 20 staplers? 3 identical hand held DeWalt shop vacs? 10+ identical sets of Craftsmen tools? 4 pad sanders? 3 routers? 2 paint sprayers etc.   We stocked up an few items to complete what we needed.  Many of tools were either brand new unused in the boxes or barely used.  

I bid on a collect of old kerosene lamps for $12.50

We nabbed this $60 paint sprayer  brand new in a box for only $10.

There were literally hundreds of toys--- tractors and car collectibles still in boxes, brand new condition.  We got a bit tired of all the toy tractors being interspersed between other items, but we sat patiently through them all. The auction lasted 6 hours, and at the end, many things were going for $1 or $2 a box. 

There was a lot of antique furniture that went for very reasonable prices.  We really didn't need anything, but I did get a nice wooden antique plant stand for $3.00.  Steve got a drill press, palm sander, heat gun and a big box full of hammers.... our total for the day was  $73.00!

Next, the house is being put on the market for only $112,000..... so if any of you would like to be my neighbor, it's just down the street from me at 316 N. Madison in Chilton, WI  Big beautiful stucco house with tile entry, wood floors, pocket doors to the dining room with built in hutch, fireplace, etc.  We only peeked at the main floor while registering, and will wait for a proper open house to explore the rest. LOL  (if you read my embarrassing Open House blog a few weeks ago, you will get my joke!)

Later today I am going to Camp Sinawa with a group of my Black Sheep Spinners Guild .... we are going to demonstrate spinning with wool for the guests. So I better get my wheel packed up and some fiber dug out to spin up for visitors.  Here is some info about the camp:

Camp Sinawa is a non profit entity which provides recreational and educational opportunities for youth groups, church groups and other organizations wishing to spend time in the great outdoors.  

In order to provide funding to keep this facility operational, several annual events are held at this facility to raise funds to maintain this area.

All events are organized by Friends Of Sinawa.

Here are a few pics of my spinning gals at last week's meeting:

We meet out at Hidden Valley Woolen Mill near Valders, WI 

 http://www.hiddenvalleyfarmwoolenmill.com/ on a monthly basis.  

How great it is to have a woolen mill so close to my house! 

I am so fortunate to have such a creative bunch of fibery folks to gather with, since we moved to Chilton.  This is the spinning guild, but sometimes we overlap with other loves, such as quilting.  Here Pat Filzen is working on a quilt that she is hand stitching.

I also have a weaving guild that meets monthly in Menasha, WI, about a 30 mile drive away, and then a casual knitting group that meets at our Chilton library one night a week.  To top that off, our little coffee shop down the street has a monthly craft meeting where you can bring anything you are working on!  Such a good fibery creative area we chose to live in!


Oh, speaking of creative, here is the finished result of my stenciled etching door painting I had in the last blog. I think it came out pretty nice!  Next I will work on my french doors to my studio room.

Steve is outside pulling out my dead tomato plants, so I better go help him before I leave for the Camp Sinawa demonstation.  Later Gators! 

Have you been Felted? At Hidden Valley Farm and Woolen Mill

I am very fortunate to have moved to a little town that is close by a woolen mill!   The Hidden Valley Farm and Woolen Mill is located only 15 miles away near St. Nazienz and Valders, WI.  (about 60 miles north of Milwaukee)   http://www.hiddenvalleyfarmwoolenmill.com   Carol and Paul raise hundreds of Coopworth sheep, process wool for area fiber folks, and sell lovely products in their shop and at fiber festivals and events.  Check out their website link above to see more about their place.

They have having a Holiday Open House coming up Nov. 22-24 featuring a lot of wonderful handmade items by local artists  (including some of my own knit socks and hats!)    So stop on by and get your Christmas shopping wish list filled!

Here are a few shots I took around the fiber working area and the shop----

These are two large carding machines that smooth clean wool fibers into flat batts for quilts 

or made into roving for spinning into yarn

Many bags of customers' wool, some waiting to be processed, and some done and finished up and ready to ship back out again.  Oooooh all the fiber makes my fingers twitch to want to touch it and fondle it and take it home and spin it up!!!

Upstairs of the wool processing area, Carol has set up this big old barn loom.. it's sooo lovely!  I bought my Newcomb Studio loom from her to make space so she could set this one up!   Also, here are a couple Country Craftsman and saxony style spinning wheels she picked up, waiting to be restored and used and loved again.

This sweet device is a cool old paper press!  Carold showed us how it worked, and the date on the front is 1910.  It appears that one shelf had to be replaced, but it sure is an interesting piece of history to have in the studio.

OKAY.. ENOUGH OF A TOUR, 

YOU WILL JUST HAVE TO GO THERE YOURSELF TO SEE MORE! 

Once a month I head on over there for a guild meeting (a guild is like a club of artists)  and this month we were learning about "felting" on Tuesday night.  We meet up in the work area portion of the shop, surrounded by fibers, looms, spinning wheels and other assorted treasures!

We learned how to first lay out thin pieces of wool laid like shingles in layers across either a roll-up thin matchstick blind, or a piece of bubble wrap.    After we watched the teachers, we did our own work.  The photo on the right is mine, all those layered lovely soft pieces of wool.

Once we got four alternating layers of tufts of wool laid like shingles on a roof, then we spritzed it down with bottles of warm water mixed with a dollop of Dawn dish soap.   After we had it fully moistened, now the fun part begins!  We had an assortment of fibers and yarns to choose from to put on top of our felted creations.  

 Some worked out patterns, some worked out landscapes.... 

and some did pretty colors of fibers just for the fun of it! 

We really had no idea what our finished products would look like,

but we had fun putting stuff on our white wool backgrounds.

Puffs of wool or streaks of sleek fibers (the striped one is MINE)

 When we had our stuff arranged on the way we liked, we spritzed with more water and then carefully laid a piece of nylon screen across our creations.  Now we could rub hard on top of the piece of screen material without disturbing our fiber patterns.   When we could see bubbly foamy soap come to the surface, we were able to carefully peel back the screen and see the start of our creation.  

The it was time to roll it up and start the REAL WORK to make felt! 

Some of us had the matchstick blinds to roll up our work, the rest of us had bubble wrap and a towel wrapped around it.  Now we had to evenly roll roll roll back and forth, creating friction.

Friction and heat is what will felt up wool.  That is why you DON'T put wool sweaters or socks in the dryer!  After we rolled long enough in one direction, we would unroll our creation, and re-roll it in another direction....  trying to get it evenly felted in all four directions.   We rubbed and rolled for about an hour or so.   It was amazing how much it shrinks up (about 20%) from when I started mine.  

Here is my finished piece of wool, still wet.  I know it doesn't look like much....   but I am going to fold it triple, sew side seams, make a silk lining, add a magnetic catch, a pretty button, and make a clutch purse out of it! 

Here are some of the other gals' creations... some are going to use theirs as a wall hanging, some will use as a mat on a table, and some maybe to cut up into pieces for making ornaments or coasters.   Once I had felted with a guild up in Marinette/Menominee and we made thick Tundra Mittens from our pieces with heavy blanket stitching around the edges.

And that was how we got Felted at Hidden Valley!