Avocado Fiber Arts

Cooperative Press is looking for funding!

2011-04-04T13:05:00.001-04:00

I have been working with Cooperative Press for one of their upcoming releases, and they could use your help!

Cooperative Press is trying to kickstart funds to speed along their upcoming books series (I promise you, it'll be worth it!). There are some images on the facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/cooperativepress#!/album.php?fbid=194145283957237&id=110941662277600&aid=40386) and if you want to donate, there is more information on the kickstart page (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1559246367/cooperative-press-indie-fiber-fashion-publishing).

I hope you'll all come check out Cooperative Press and be as excited as I am about it!!!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7

Busy busy busy

2011-03-23T01:42:00.001-04:00

So, Liz and I have been innundated with classwork. I've been learning the nuances of cataloging and collection development. And, I feel like a bad blogger and etsy store runner. I haven't made time for any real knitting or spinning lately, but I know it has to take a back seat to my homework (sadly).

However, we do have some new things (alright, mostly ideas at this point), but new none the less. They are in the works as we gather materials and find the time to work on them.

Regardless of the time we're spending on us-inspired projects, we're still very open to commissions. I knit a market bag in February and you can see it through our sold items on etsy. It turned out very well.

I'm about to take a midterm exam and then I'll have, hopefully, a bit more time in the second half of the semester.

Until next time, Carly.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7

Christmas Knitting

2010-12-15T15:33:00.001-05:00

So, we're all pretty entrenched in xmas knitting. Most it is over, I only have a bag of knit vegetables to finish. And a new project I just added for New Years. It should be good. :-D Then, the new year will be full of spinning and knitting and brochure planning. We're very excited to be expanding our offerings here at Avocado Fiber Arts!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Can't Post, Busy Knitting!

2010-12-06T12:39:00.000-05:00

A post about why I don't have time to post! How...meta.

This year's Giftmas knitting list has gotten out of control.

Finished:
- Mitten/gloves for my mother-in-law
- Commission socks via Etsy

Gifts for other people to give:
- Socks for Becca's brother-in-law
- iPad case for a friend
- "Something little and cute" for some person vaguely work-affiliated with my mom

Stuff I haven't even started yet:
- Socks. For my dad, for my mom, for my husband, for my friends...Might as well be knitting for a family of millipedes this year.
- Illusion piano keyboard scarf for my mom
- Something little and not insanity-inducing for the friends' New Year's get together - there are 10 of us, the not-losing-my-mind part might be unattainable.

At least the typing has given my wrists a break from the teeny, tiny needles required for all these projects. I'm thinking after New Year's is over I won't be touching a needle smaller than US 7 for at least a month.

Socks

2010-12-05T19:44:00.002-05:00

My wonderful, fantastic terrific husband kindly offered my knitting services as a Christmas gift this year. Now, this is fine, given that A) I like to knit, and B) I always have some hats or scarves or something tucked away. What is not so fine is that the individual he offered knitting services to wants socks. Let me repeat - Socks. So Liz and I have a deal. She is taking on my sock challenge, and I am taking on hats for her kids. I fully intend to loudly announce that the socks are handknit and smile mysteriously. I see no way this cunning plan can fail.

Early Christmas Presents!

2010-10-15T17:48:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, my Christmas/b-day present from Liz arrived.

(Mine's the one with black hair)

His name is Xander and he is adorable. His twin brother Dexter are sitting with their sister Maple. All three are absolutely adorable. :)

Anyways, in speedy fashion, Liz now has all the yarn to cast on her Sylvi coat! She's gauge swatching this color at the moment and it's going to be gorgeous!

Merry (early) Christmas, everyone!!!

Pot of Dye and Ball of Plarn. This is all.

2010-10-13T19:17:00.001-04:00

What I've been doing instead of spinning...

2010-10-11T01:26:00.003-04:00

I've been doing some mad knitting on my still secret project. (I should be doing that right now, and I'm feeling guilty that I've gone a few days without.) Also, I've been grad-schooling it up. I really love most of this stuff, and I'm very excited to be back in Academia. Mmmm, it sounds so delicious.

Anyways, Liz and I got yarn on Saturday to knit Super Scarves! It's a volunteer effort to knit enough Colt's blue and white scarfs to give one to every volunteer at the 2012 Indianapolis Super Bowl. They still have a long way to go, from what I've heard. So, everyone should go check it out. They have colors in a few different yarns listed by name/number so it's easy to find the ones you need. :) And, hey, maybe the Colts will make it in to our own Super Bowl. That'd be nifty. :)

Also, I got more Manos yarn from Stitches n Scones in Noblesville. They've become World Fair Trade Certified, so I bought some yarn to make a hat or something that I could wear to Global Gifts (the fair trade store I volunteer at). It should be very cool. :)

Well, that's all I've got for this post. Hopefully, I'll be posting more regularly, but it may still take until December/January for that to happen. :)

Until next time... :)

Why I Haven't Been Spinning and a Lament

2010-09-19T20:45:00.004-04:00

Hey all,

So as the title of my posts oh-so-cleverly indicates, I have spun nary a thing this weekend. I somehow managed to pull a muscle in my back and anything beyond sitting on the couch staring at the wall is painful.

So! In an effort to keep myself from starting to count how many roses are in the yellow wallpaper, I decided to teach myself how to knit using entrelac. It's a technique I've avoided in the past, I'm not really sure why, because I do like the way it looks. I guess I thought it looked hard. It's not too bad really, although I did end up looking at like 4 different patterns to figure out how to advance my triangles. I'm working on a cute Tam hat in an organic cotton.

And now for the lament portion of this post. Why, or why, oh why on the good green earth did I pick up my size 3 knitting needles? Someone shoot me now, or find me some wallpaper!

Happy Labor Day!

2010-09-06T15:41:00.000-04:00

We have some exciting news! Our yarn is going to be in stock at Nomad Yarn Shop in Plainfield, IN starting at the end of September! We're all very excited about the opportunity to show off our work in Erica's beautiful new store. US 40 is under construction and it's a bit of a magic trick to get into the parking lot, but she's got some gorgeous yarn (even without ours in the store) and she's super friendly and helpful, so it's worth the effort!

In other news, Carly and I (Liz) tackled dyeing roving this weekend with pretty dang successful results. We've been paying the premium for pre-dyed top so far to save time and effort, but the cost is really astronomical compared to the undyed. We're pretty happy with the results - this first batch is not going up for sale as roving, but it may be listed after we spin it. We want to make sure our method didn't felt it before we toss it out into the retail ether.

Originally we wanted to use little plastic squeeze bottles, but they turned out to be harder to find than we anticipated. Marsh carries these, though! Ethan and Colin emptied 6 of them for us.

We ended up having to perform some surgery on our bottles after discovering the tops don't unscrew, thus rendering the squeezey properties obsolete, but they still did the job. We poured some dye on our pretty white wool:

After a few refills (note to us: use larger bottles next time!) the pans were ready to go in the oven.

Since we were using the oven anyway...

(Obligatory disclaimer: there were five people eating those brownies, I swear Carly and I didn't do that much damage!)

(It's not that we couldn't, just that this particular time, we didn't.)

After a bunch of heat, a bunch of rinsing, and a bunch of waiting/panicking/attempting to draft wet wool in a fit of anxiety that we'd felted 16 oz of roving, we have finished wool!

Carly's is the springy greens and blues and mine is the...other one. :-/ I swear those colors were listed as "bright blue" and "bright orange." It's just as well mine didn't come out those colors; I'm not a huge fan of Da Bears.

Also in line for this month, I've got some (fingers crossed) 3-ply sock yarn on the wheel. It will probably be finished tonight, even!

On a more personal note, one of my favorite creations celebrated a birthday last week :) Happy 3rd, Bug! We love you!

"OMG CAKE"

"Mine."

ISO: Time Management Skills

2010-08-15T17:19:00.003-04:00

The August Etsy update is finally done. Which means the I-Cord yarn that I am super excited about is up. It turned out so cool. Plus, I'm really happy with the market bag pattern. It's a whopping 19 rows on US 50 needles, with a fabric handle. The yarn comes with everything for the bag except the needles.

Speaking of the US 50 needles, they may have been my most comical knitting experience. They don't weigh very much, but they are huge! I couldn't hold them like I normally do, and anytime I tried to set one aside (ie. hold it in my mouth), I kept forgetting that it was much too big and looking silly. Although, it may have looked more silly if I'd succeeded.

I am aiming for some more fun and unique yarns for September, and I'm crossing my fingers that I'll have time. The end of this month is picking up to be crazy busy because I've added yet another activity to my list. I'm starting graduate school to get my Masters in Library Science. I am super excited about it, just a little worried about not having been in school for 3.5 years. I'm starting off slowly, taking one class on campus, and a prerequisite class online that should be fairly easy.

Plus, I have a super secret knitting project that is my knitting focus number 1 until mid-September of so. I'd love to tell you all about it, but it has to remain super secret for a while yet. It's "OMG!!!111!!eleventyone!!!" exciting though.

As for projects I can share, I'm working on another free AFA pattern. It will be for a notions bag, and be adorable. Seriously cute. I'm trying a new yarn out for it, Michael's Loops & Threads "Impeccable." It's acrylic, but very soft and best of all, the right colors. Who would have thought that would have been the hard part? Although, given that I'm a bit compulsive, I can't mix yarn brands/types if I know I'm mixing them, and not doing it for effect. Which, made it slightly harder.

Well, that's all I've got today. I'll try to keep you posted on some of my progress as we get closer to September!

Carly :)

Getting Ready for August!

2010-07-22T22:55:00.005-04:00

I've been having fun creating some new yarn this month, and I'd thought I'd put up a few in-progress pictures to share all of the excitement with you!

First, I have some 100% cotton yarn. I didn't spin this in any sense of the word, but I did create what you see here. And, it's a pretty fun yarn, if I do say so myself.

As you can see, the yarn is pretty boring white right now, but it won't be the next time you see it! :)

My second teaser picture shows off a pretty single on the bobbin. It's not finished yet, but the colors in it are really fun and I wanted to share.

So, I hope you enjoyed my August teasers, and come check out the shop!

Avocado Fiber Arts Etsy Store!

Thank you!
Carly aka Goddess Sue

Avocado Dish Cloth - Free Pattern

2010-07-12T03:53:00.002-04:00

I'm hoping to begin a trend of creating fun new patterns to share with the followers of the Avocado Fiber Arts' blog.

My first pattern is a Dish Cloth with an avocado motif in knit-purl. It's very cute and I hope you'll give it a try!

You can find the pattern on Ravelry or click the button below for the PDF.
download now

Enjoy!
Carly

The Grand Opening is Here!

2010-07-01T04:30:00.001-04:00

We have yarn and stitch markers for sale is the store. Go check out the great stuff at our Etsy store!!!

Hi, my name is Liz, and I'm a fiberholic

2010-06-27T20:46:00.005-04:00

My name's Elizabeth, but please only call me that if I'm in trouble. It makes me nervous. Liz or Lizzy are just fine, and I will answer to Beth if you're someone who once changed my diapers. I'm the third (and most procrastinatey, apparently) of the trio of AFA founders.

I've been crocheting for...gosh, a really long time. My grandmother tried to teach me, but it was (somewhat ironically) my high school boyfriend who really got me into it. I picked up knitting about four years ago when I was pregnant with my oldest son, Ethan. I started out by teaching myself to knit teeny, tiny baby socks on aluminum DPNS and acrylic yarn; consequently I am almost certainly the most self-abusive crafter of our little group. I gravitate to all things tiny, fussy, adorable, and shiny.

About a year ago my mother and I attended what we thought was a class on using the drop spindle - I had one, but all the instructions I could find seemed to be written in Sanskrit. The class, as it turned out, was actually an introduction to wheel spinning. Less than two weeks later I had my first wheel and my first lumpy, bumpy mini-skein of Failyarn. Don't worry, it's much nicer now!

I spin mostly thinner yarns since that's what I like to use, but I have a (very inspirational) copy of Insubordiknit's Sit and Spin and am trying to branch out into other, more playful styles. I also really enjoy playing with polymer clay, which combines nicely with my urge to make the world in miniature to create frequently cute and occasionally strange stitch marker sets.

My day job at the moment is my two little boys: almost 3 year old Ethan and recently turned 1 year old Colin. They're almost entirely irrelevant to the subject of this blog, but they're also awesome and will probably come up from time to time. My very patient husband Kevin will also probably be talked about occasionally, since we all know and love him and he lets me get away with many, many crazy things. I hope you enjoy our blog and our store, and come back to both regularly!

Introduction of Becks. AKA, Becca

2010-06-21T21:06:00.002-04:00

Hi Folks,

I'm Becks, Becca, B, anything else you'd care to call me in polite company, and (to echo Carly) a founding partner of Avocado Fiber Arts. My interests are in sustainable fibers, spinning yarns that are knit-able on large needles, dyeing with organic materials and generally goofing around and having a good time.

I am unfortunately one of those individuals with wool allergies. For the longest time, I was using cotton yarns only. Through trial and error, and lots of skin break outs, I've figured out what works for me. As a spinner, you might rightly imagine, this is a really upsetting thing! Tips and tricks for the hypo-allergenic are coming your way! I don't want anyone else to have to deal with the icky skin issues!

I'm prone to trying experimental dyes, typically they include my veggie garden. Just a quick side note, if you decide to try to make dye out of radish greens, the resulting color is sort of... erm... urine colored? So don't do it. However! Beet greens make a lovely pinkish...

Cheers!

B

Introduction of Carly aka Goddess Sue

2010-06-18T00:45:00.003-04:00

My name is Carly and I'm a founding partner (oh, shiny!) of Avocado Fiber Arts. I am usually joking around, but I have an insane thirst for creativity and the new. And, the insane, as I am also starting grad school(!) this fall.

I hope to bring my multitude of talents to Avocado Fibers and have fun. I hope to spin yarns (literally and figuratively) that are fantastical and brilliant, to design knits that you really haven't seen before, and to embrace everything that can be done with a ball of yarn.

My personally fiber fanatic blog is at Goddess Sue Knits, please check it out, as I'm trying to update it more regularly. :)

Hopefully, you'll follow our blog to stay apprised of shop updates as well as various other activities and prizes!

Stay tuned!

Carly

Plarn

2010-06-16T22:51:00.002-04:00

I've been experimenting with Plarn. For those of you scratching your heads - this is yarn made of plastic. In my case - plastic grocery bags. I'm an environmental type in my professional career - and the idea of recycled yarn really appeals to my inner hippie. Keep and eye out for denim yarn and tye-dye t-shirt yarn notes. I think they might be next on my experimental list.
So in my effort to spread peace, love and the plastic yarn, I designed an original market bag pattern that I am test knitting with double plyed grocery bags.

Some preliminary notes on my double plyed Plarn.

1. It is sticky. It likes to cling to itself, the chair, your hair, your significant other, etc.
2. It is slippery. Yarn-overs like to slide off needles, stitches like to pretend to co-exist with one another.
3. It is tough! I've yanked, tugged, put weights inside, and generally done my level best to break it into bits, and thus far the base of the test knit bag is holding together.
4. It actually looks pretty cool. The plastic bags I initially used had some blue and red lettering, which, when plyed, turns into cool blue and red stripes.
5. I feel a little better about my plastic bag usage. Typically, I will take my own bags to the grocery. We request plastic when we think we need baggies for the cat litter. Like any good kitty owner, I always think I need more bags than I use. Thus far, I've used about 75 plastic bags destined for the landfill to make my recycled yarn.

As a quick side note, if you decide to try something similar, don't let your significant other tell the friendly checkout clerks why you are requesting plastic bags. Take my word for it, they look at you funny and say "won't that be nice" or something similarly inane.

Cheers!

Becks

6th Annual Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival

2010-06-09T09:58:00.008-04:00

Last Saturday, our lovely trio went down to the Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival in Franklin, Indiana.

We started out entering our lovely handspun in the skein contest.

Then we started on our first of three walks around the festival. Our rule was that on the first walk, we couldn't buy anything. We had to look at everything and see what there was for sale so we didn't miss any goodies in the final buildings. It was a fantastic plan because there was so much pretty fiber and yarn.

At the beginning of the second building, there was a booth for [? Fibers!] and they were raffling off an angora rabbit. He was sitting in the spinner's lap and she was pulling tufts of fiber and spinning them right into yarn. It was really cool.

Next we came across a booth full of naturally dyed fibers. Every fiber on this wall was labeled with the type of fiber and with what it was dyed. Liz was also excited by the yarn that was spun with Great Pyrenees hair, in remembrance of her dog Zilla. We also entered a drawing for a bundle of naturally dyed roving.

A few booths later, we saw a guy doing bobbin lace. It looks way more complicated than it is, so of course, Liz and Carly had to give it a try.

Once we'd finished the third building and looped back around to the beginning, it was time to start buying. Poundage-wise, we mostly bought undyed fibers so that we could both dye and spin with it. However, some lovely braids and bundles of dyed fiber also made their way into our bags, along with just a few skeins of spun yarn for personal stash acquisition.

Towards the end of the day, we headed back to the natural dyeing booth to attend the drawing. None of us won, but it was very exciting.

Then we walked around a bit more and finally it was time for the Angora Rabbit Raffle! They had a little girl draw a name from the hat and it was Becca! The rabbit's name is Willem, and he's adorable. He's a little over 5 years old, and we have his pedigree going back 4 generations.

After we won the rabbit, we went to check on the skein competition. Liz won a first and second place for two of her yarns, and we were all very excited. The feedback was useful and encouraging, and we can't wait to enter again next year.

Finally, we picked up our rabbit and headed home. It was a fabulously fun fiber festival!

A quick note for the curious...

2010-06-05T23:30:00.002-04:00

If you suddenly find yourself in possession of a nice shiny new pair of hand carders, and decide to try them out - Do NOT under any circumstances decide to see if dryer lint will make a nice roving. Trust me. It is not a good idea. This is all.

Cheers!

Becks

Welcome to Avocado Fiber Arts

2010-05-26T23:25:00.004-04:00

The Grand Opening of Avocado Fiber Arts will be July 1st, 2010!

Avacado Fiber Arts is a cooperative yarn and fiber store run by Liz, Carly, and Becca. Avocado Fibers showcases unique hand-dyed and handspun yarn, as well as other fun knitting and crocheting accessories. Their whimsical product line can be found at http://www.etsy.com/shop/AvocadoFiberArts.

Be sure to check out our Grand Opening for specials during the first week of July!

Thank you,
Liz, Carly, and Becca