Spinning

Last week I learned how to spin so I’ve been working on trying to get the technique down. Although Candace told us not to look at the yarn we’re producing (Cindy is learning with me too), Candace said that it looks good. Here is a picture of the loom room. My spinning wheel is the one on the left. We moved the spinning wheels into this room because we needed to get them out of the way for an Alpaca 101 class that they held yesterday. They had a great turnout for the class…one of the attendees came from five hours away. So, I continue to work on my spinning technique so I can create my first skein of yarn.
I finished weaving another scarf. Here is where we trim the fringe and lay our items to dry, after washing them. This area is in the same room as the looms.

This is a commercial loom that someone donated to the center although I’ve never seen anyone work on it. The building where all of these looms are located is in the back of the White Violet Center and it used to be the laundry for the sisters. All of the items would come here to be washed in a commercial laundry area. All of the equipment was ripped out and the sisters are now responsible for doing their own laundry. There are two laundry areas on each floor in the building where I live, as do many of the sisters. One of the sisters must be responsible for putting out fresh towels in the rest rooms cause if I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, there’s a fresh towel there. I swear there’s a towel fairy that works hand in hand with the tooth fairy, making evening rounds. 

“Seconds” of fiber, from the skirting process that are located in the fiber room.




The skirting table and the bare shelves where “blankets” of fleece are usually kept. We have all of White Violet’s blankets done. We’re now working on some fiber that was donated to the center. We spend a lot of time on snowy days, sitting around this table skirting fiber.

The brick building, on the right, is the White Violet Center. You can see the smoke stacks of the big furnaces for the complex in the background and the steeple of the church in the left corner.

Sister Ruth was hired to do a portrait of a family’s pet donkey. This was done by felting fiber onto a wet felted base material. She did an awesome job making it look just like the photo that they sent.

I’ve entered two photos into the National Alpaca photo contest. Once all of the entries are in (deadline is 2/18), then I believe the photos all go up on the web for folks to vote on them and the ones with the most votes, from each category, will be printed and sent to Harrisburg, PA (how appropriate that the contest will be back home) to be on display at the National Conference this year and a judge will pick the winner in each category. Wish me luck !!
Not much else going on. I’m on “close” duty this week so in another hour I’ll be going out to check the alpacas water, hay, minerals and condition of the animals. We check to make sure they are all set for the night and Mariah will need to have her physical therapy where we hoist her up with the sling and pulley and exercise her back legs while the weight is off them. She didn’t do so well with it this morning, not wanting to stand at all or put weight on her legs. Hopefully she’ll do better this afternoon.
I think it was last week that I had a really profound and powerful moment, as I was sitting in my room. I was working on the pink scarf on the loom and looked over at my bed. When I packed stuff to come here, I packed an afghan that my grandmother had given me many years ago that means a lot to me. I brought it in case it was cold in my room. On top of that blanket I also have a small lap blanket that my mom made recently because I was freezing a few months ago when the weather started to get colder and I couldn’t get warm. I also have the shawl, that you’ll recall my sister made for me that I wear around my shoulders when it gets chilly. I saw all of these things that great women in my family have made for me and it really struck me (it’s making me cry just to write about it). As hard as my grandmother and my mother tried to teach me, as a kid growing up, how to crochet or do “crafty types of things”, I could never “get it”. Back then my fine motor skills were way better than they are now. I seem to be all thumbs and have no coordination at all now and I’m not sure what that is all about. But I have learned to weave and I’m learning to spin and I’ve learned to felt and I felt a really strong connection to these wonderful women in my life that have done this stuff for so long. Pardon my pun but I felt like a fiber had connected all of us with a commonality that I’d never felt before. It was a strong epiphany for me in that moment and something I will always cherish about what the people here have taught me and given to me.
I hope your week is a powerful one and one full of inspiration and love ! May you find a connection to something new or rekindle a connection to something forgotten. Make the most of the week in front of you.

Happy New Year

I have a relaxing day off so thought I’d get caught up on our blog. Yesterday, we had a weaving workshop with Robyn, the intern coordinator. There’s a couple more specific things I want to learn, while I’m still here, and weaving is one of the them. This is a rigid heddle loom, which when you hear someone say it to you for the first time sounds like rigid kettle. That’s what happened when Sister Ruth said I should start out on a rigid heddle loom to learn about weaving. Since I heard “kettle”, I’m thinking what kind of a silly name is that….of course a kettle is rigid. It wouldn’t hold water otherwise. After she spelled it for me, and I stopped laughing my head off, I got it. So Robyn taught us how to weave. A really cool thing Robyn said about weaving is that when you think way back to stone age times, weaving is like the earliest form of artistry or craftsmanship that existed. The men were hunters, the women cooked and someone did weaving to provide the basics of clothing (loin cloths would have been a really easy thing to weave….like a mug rug on a string…LOL.
I found that little history lesson really cool…all primal and such. There is a whole language that goes with weaving. Warps and wefts, heddles and shuttles. And the terminology has stuck since those stone age days….no evolution into newer words. It seems to take more time to set the loom up than it does to actually weave something but it’s really fun. The rigid heddle loom comes in different widths and the smaller ones, like this one, folds up and goes in a carrying bag. It sits on your lap when you use it and you see results really quickly, unlike crocheting. I started weaving this scarf around 3:00 p.m. and had it done by bedtime, with several breaks during that time. Now, I don’t know how to take it off the loom or finish the edges yet but I had a blast doing it. There is a workshop coming up at the end of this month, called Fiber Frolic and it’s a 3 day event. You can choose to learn spinning, weaving or Nuno felting. I will probably participate…just not sure which one I want to focus on. I can learn to spin from Robyn or Candace and most definitely want to before I leave here. I might do the Nuno felting because no one else does that here and it looks really cool. Here’s a short video so you can see what it’s about. I’m not sure I care to learn how to weave on the huge looms here cause I don’t ever see myself getting something that big if I wanted to do it on my own. The rigid heddle size of loom seems to be my speed.

  Right before Christmas, White Violet Center had an Open House for last minute shoppers. At 3:00 p.m. the drawing was held for the alpaca rug and alpaca teddy bear that raffle tickets had been sold for. I was really hoping to win the alpaca rug but I did win the teddy bear. I had felted a bracelet for Linda so I packed up the teddy bear, bracelet and the felted soap I had made and sent it to Linda for Christmas. She loved it and named the bear Hootie….my nickname. Hootie is keeping her company until I get to see her again in about 7 weeks time. She sent me a great tree of life necklace, along with a care box of all sorts of things.
Speaking of alpacas, Mariah is not doing well. About a week ago, she got so she couldn’t stand up on her own so we have to help her get up. That’s driven my back a little crazy, which I’ve been surprised that lugging hundreds of pounds of veggies hadn’t hurt it up until now. The weekend that I was on duty I had to move her (pick her up and help her keep her balance) to a new part of the pasture a couple times throughout the day so the ice pack I have with me, was my best friend for a couple days. Tracy has ordered some different vitamins and such to see if that will help improve function to her rear legs. Anything is worth a try at this point !
Not much going on in the greenhouse or gardens. The pea shoots, micro greens, lettuce mix, chard and kale are growing great in the greenhouse. The indoor farmer’s market starts this Saturday, in Terra Haute, but I’m not sure if we’ll have enough stuff to take. We shall see….
Seven weeks to go till Linda comes to get me. As a full-time RV’er, we spend 24/7 with each other so when we’re apart for 6 months, it’s really hard. We try to Skype when our devices are working ok (her tablet hasn’t been taking a charge lately) but having a conversation that way isn’t the same as sitting across the table from each other and not having interruptions and talking about “stuff”. It will be great to see her and share all the details of what I’ve been doing and show her how things are done with the projects I’ve been working on.
Linda had a great time at her son’s house, for Christmas, in spite of our car breaking down on the way up there and the fact that she was sick. Turned out the battery needed to be replaced in the car (way better outcome than the alternator we thought it was) so that has now been replaced. Linda is still sick but it may take a while for her to kick this viral infection she has. There’s nothing she can do for it….it’s just gotta run its’ course.
Well…that’s all the news that’s fit to print for this go round. Wishing a blessed 2014 to all our friends and readers of our blog. If you’re reading this and we haven’t met you yet, we’ll see you “down the road”. Happy New Year !

National Alpaca Open House

Last Sunday was the Open House event to learn about alpacas and what we do with the fiber. The day was celebrated all across the country at alpaca farms. Perhaps you saw an ad for a farm near you that was hosting the open house.
We had sisters set up at different stations working on fiber. Here one of the sisters is using a tabletop loom to make a scarf. It was really easy to use (I think even I could do it). She had the scarf done by the end of the Open House (it ran from 1 – 4). Lots of little kids enjoyed learning how to do it.

Here Sister Ruth is doing a wall hanging with fiber. She has a picture sitting off to the right of her foam and she is combining two alpaca faces to create the picture of two different alpacas on her felted backing. By using a felting needle, with short jabbing motions, the fiber is pressed onto the backing and bound together. She is really artistic and has a wonderful eye for drawing and has made a lot of different items that are for sale in the center. She is the one who taught me how to dry felt the ornaments.

Ann is spinning fiber into yarn. She asked this little boy if he wanted to learn how to do it and he said “maybe when I get bigger”. She says that it takes quite a bit of coordination to get the hang of keeping the wheel going at the right speed and using your hands to pull the yarn as you go. On Tuesday nights the spinners meet in the center and I’m going to go this coming Tuesday to see if I can learn. I hope they have someone there who is really patient to teach me. I think it’s one of those things that if you can rub your belly and pat your head, you’ll be able to do it. I’ll let you know how I make out.

Sister Jean was running a big loom. It’s portable but much more complicated looking than the table top one. It reminded me of a pipe organ with all the different foot pedals. Each pedal raises a different set of arms so you can create intricate patterns. She was also working on a scarf but she can make much bigger items on this loom. In the back room, at the center, they have a giant loom that is probably 5-6 x the size of this one. Candace, who is the manager of the garden office, runs that one so perhaps when she returns from maternity leave I’ll get to see that one in action.
It rained the evening before our open house and the day started off really cool and damp so Sister Mo decided to have the activities inside the center. It didn’t seem to affect the crowd size though. We had a really good turnout with a steady flow of people all day. Some folks drove from several hours away to come and see the alpacas and fiber items. I worked the tomato stand and sold quarts of our wonderful tomatoes. We sold a little over 14 quarts which helped us get rid of some. They are still going pretty strong. We picked over 300# yesterday and there are still quite a few green ones. They are getting smaller in size and the slugs are starting to get ahead of us for doing damage but we’re holding our own. Yesterday we delivered two totes to both dining halls (these dining rooms serve the sisters). They made eggplant parmesan in the dining halls the other day, with our eggplant, and it was wonderful.
Tomorrow is one of the big fund raisers that the White Violet Center does each year. It’s the Harvest Dinner and much of the food comes from our gardens. I know the soup is Pumpkin Bisque (with our pumpkins) but once I hear the whole menu, I’ll update the blog with it. We’ve been sending over herbs and different items to the chef who is preparing the meal. He works at Indiana State University, here in Terre Haute, and I will be working with him tomorrow once he arrives here to start work on the meal. Today, Sister Mo, me and Bree (another intern) will decorate the tables in the dining room so they will be ready.
Not much else going on here. We are getting a little bit of rain. It poured yesterday for a little bit and again overnight. We sure need it….has been really dry the whole time I’ve been here. Temps this week were in the 80’s most of the time and it was really humid. This morning I awoke and couldn’t even see out my window cause it’s all fogged up with moisture. I had to go out to set some seedlings outside the greenhouse and it is really muggy out. It’s freezing in my room so I usually have a sweatshirt or hoodie on and if I don’t check my phone to see what the temp is outside, I usually am overdressed when I go out. I had Linda send me my heating pad so I can sit on it when it gets really cold in my room. Warms me all over….That’s the hard thing with retrofitting a building with AC that never had it before. It’s so hard for them to regulate the temps from one floor to the next. The first floor temps are very comfortable and most of the second floor (where the intern rooms are) tend to be ok but it’s our west wing area that you could hang meat in….dang it’s cold.
We started harvesting turnips this week. This coming Wednesday will be the last pick-up of food for the summer CSA folks. We’ll have a week off (from packing bags and picking for the CSA – not to lounge around and eat bon bons all week – no such luck) and then the fall/winter CSA program starts. We’ve been busy starting lettuce, beets, carrots, turnips, broccoli and other veggies for the winter group. All of these seeds get planted in the high tunnels so they will stay protected from the snow and harsh temperatures. The plastic on the roof and sides allows the sun to heat the interior of the space so the plants can grow. The plastic on the sides is mounted on a roller so you can raise or lower the sides. As the temperatures drop, we’ll raise the sides so the tunnel will be completely enclosed to keep the heat in. Right now they are part way open so they are not so hot to work inside of.
Well that’s all from the farm. Be sure to support your local farmers….Buy fresh, Buy local !

LiveJournal Tags: White Violet Center for Eco Justice,CSA,Harvest Dinner,high tunnel