lots of things, and a pendant :D

I know, I know, serious blogging did not happen Friday... or Saturday for that matter. My only excuse, I've actually been rather busy and got some things done. I spun some yarn for myself, I set LOTS of yarn. Eight skeins to be exact and have begun building up my inventory of jewelry for this year's shows. I've been told that the first few months of the year are perfect for this and I am beginning to understand why. The weather of course sucks so all the more reason to stay in and be productive BUT, also because you are lining up your year at that point for show season. You are applying or getting ready to do so at all the shows, and once they start you SO you just don't have time to get a lot done without some all nighters.

That being said, I've also been working on getting some long overdue projects to friends and family done. It is a very wonderful and unburdening process and every time I finished one of the pieces, I feel that a weight has been lifted.

One of those very projects was this pendant that I finished about two weeks ago for my dear friend Linette. She only asked me to make something for her from this fossil she gave me about 3 years ago...

What can I say, I'm a slow poke. I am very happy with how it turned out though and I sure hope she likes it too. :D

We had a fiber dying party on Saturday at Jill's. She just started carrying the Greener Shades dyes (you can find them in her etsy store here.) I was so impressed with these dyes. They are made without heavy metals and have excellent colorfastness, lightfastness, etc., etc. Basically they are everything wonderful about an acid dye without all bad stuff for you and the environment. Really vibrant colors! Here are a few snaps of what we got out of em' on our first try.

I dyed a few different types of fiber but not very much of anything because I spent the day properly cleaning my now very beautiful alpaca that I had been hoarding. Kathy was kind enough to show me the way that she has found works best and carded all the dirty fiber prior to cleaning it so it went super smoothly for me. Thanks Kathy!!!  I will post pictures of my dry fiber hopefully on Tuesday.

There will be a shop update on Tuesday with a sneaky peak on flickr and the blog tomorrow (monday.)