Peas Please

First thing to do upon arriving home from Stitches is plant snow peas. This year I planted them around the edge of last year's compost pile. I stopped adding to it when it was about 4 feet tall. It composted down to about 6 inches. I planted the peas around the edges and piled a bunch of mulberry leaves in the center. A soaker hose on top. I will have to put a chicken wire fence around the whole thing to keep the bunnies out but now I feel the need to embroider. 

Stitches 2016 has come and gone.

It seems we just set us and we are already packed up. I'm going to learn to work some photo taking in but we were so busy I completely forgot. 

In the morning we will head to Pinicals National Park to look for the California Condors. 

Stitches West Day Three.

Stephen West came to visit in his own subtle way. He does blend. 

Stitches 2016 Day Two

WOW! Day two was a non stop blast from start to finish. Knitting has really advanced from the twin set. The stitch patterns are fantastic. The way colors are put together are great. 

Just waiting for customers. Five minutes to go.

Stitches 2016

Got to the Conference Center, got loaded in and most of the racks set up. We have  all day tomorrow to finish setting up, then the show opens and selling starts at 6. 

The drive from home to Santa Clara takes 6 hours and once we left LA County the mountains turned an unbelievable green. It's like there is a "No Rain Allowed" south of this sign posted at the county line. 

This year we hit it perfectly as Almond Ally was in full bloom. Thousands of acres of almond trees in full bloom with the mountains covered in poppies is rather breathtaking. 

The drying rack

It's almost the end of the day and the drying rack is full. A good day's work. 

BlueFace and silk

Blue Face and Silk right out of the dyepot. 

Color Cards

Spending the day making up color cards. This would be a very boring job, except I listen to books. 

Straight from the pots

The dye pots came up with some great Silk Sock yarn. 

After Months, Years?

After forever, I have finally figured out how to fix the RedFish Blog, so we are up and running again..
More to come. I have so much to say.


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Test

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Traveling

I have finally learned to blog on my phone, only took me 2 days.

To catch up, we started late but caught up mile wise last night. We are getting close to Oklahoma City. We started seeing green in Eastern New Mexico. I'll try to get some photos on today.

Color

When people in the booth ask if this color goes with that color, I never know what to say. I know they like the two colors together, because one, they picked them out and two, they are usually wearing them. Do I like them? Maybe yes, maybe no. Others ask me to pick a color to go with one that they have picked. After I pick they say, "You have got to be kidding!" Did I like it? Yes, did they? No.

I look at a color and break it down to the basic color wheel, that's Orange. I know it's not true orange, it might have some red in it or yellow, but in my head it's Orange and I can go from there. Everyone looks at color a different way. Look at nature, you see all colors mixed up with excellent results. Take the time to really look at an object and pick out all the colors in it, very few things are one solid color.
This peach is light yellow/orange at the top with white highlights moving down to red/orange with purple highlights. All these colors mixed together would make a beautiful fabric. It my opinion.


Or sometimes we get lucky and find a beautiful skein of yarn. The peach was excellent also.

Color Sticks

We have always travelled with a book that has all our colors in it but it's not easy to compare colors in a book. This spring I made these color sticks to take along on road trips to show our most popular color wheels. Each stick has a clear wheel on the left half and the same wheel with black added on the right. Now I just have to figure out how to display them in the booth.


I used the ironing board to trim the fringe on the color sticks and ended up with a pile of all the colors. Now every time I walk by I can make a shape.


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The rest of the bl4a wheel

The bl4a wheel is finished and packed away for it's cross country trip.


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Green to Blue/Purple in bl4a

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Grrrrrrr

I have finally figured out my knitting machine and was zipping along on a sweater sleeve when I had a ooops! I had worked my way up the sleeve increases to the sleeve cap with no problems, did my first decrease on the left and was working on the last decrease on the right when I dropped the stitch and bumped the carriage at the same time. Ooops! A better person than I probably could pick up all those stitches but I'm opting for the easy way out and starting over.


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Jobs I can't train the dogs to do.

Yarn cards are at the bottom of my favorite list, right above color cards. Both have to be done and I usually wait until I'm out before I work on them but just weeks before we leave for Convergence and the Knit and Crochet Show I thought I would get a bunch done.


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What happened?

I pulled a Rip Van Winkle and a couple of months went by but I got a note from anonymous saying she hoped I'd post again soon and it woke me up. I think I've recovered from the 6 weeks of travel and will try to start creating.