Craft Show Tent

I've had my old pipe,elbow, and tarp tent for many years, and it serves well when I have help and set it up as a 10'x20' but for one person trying to use a 10'x10' space it sets up as 10'x7' and still takes up a lot of room in the van.

This week I treated my business and myself to a new easy-up tent. It's white! It has sides that actually fit and zip closed at night! It's an exact 10'x10'! It's heavy but takes up less room in the van!...Yes I need to make a set of weights for the places I can't stake, but I am very happy with it so far as I head into my season of weekly shows. (To know where I'm at check my store weekly http://mulchandmore.etsy.com/

The new tent pictures ended up first, but you really wanted to see them first anyway:) You can see how much more I can display (and I still have 3 totes of yarn that I couldn't fit out so need to do a little more display tweaking) Each show is set up a little differently anyways because of traffic flow and sun (candles and soap need to be shaded) so it's always a work in progress.

Gathering from Nature

This is the best time of year to begin gathering nature's bounty. We have been busy digging wild leeks, also known as wild onions or ramps. They seem to grow best in open hardwoods and have reached their peak when the trilliums are in bloom and just before they send up their own blossom spike. We have had enough rain this spring that they are a nice size this year (sometimes they are about half as big) but you can see from the picture below that in the onion world they are not huge.

Flavor wise they seem to me a cross between an onion and garlic. They can be eaten raw or cooked, I've even sauteed the whole thing(bulb with leaves attached) but that can have the same effect as beans on some systems!

My favorite way to use them is remove the outer layer of dirt and root, then slice and dehydrate. They make the cutest little "onion O's" and store well in a plastic bag for a year or two (if they last that long) I use them in soups, stews, sloppy joes, omelets, as whole rings or crushed in my fingers. My daughter already has her request in for her share.

Enjoy the woods, but please remember to harvest responsibly. Leeks have roots but are also attached to (I think) a rhizome which connects groups of them and helps them spread. To not disrupt their system, I use a garden fork to loosen the clump, then hand pull several of the bulbs, leaving a few to nourish the mother root, firming the loosened dirt back in place with my foot. As I write this, I'm thinking I really make work out of the process, but I've been picking this way for years and not disturbing the other wild flowers around them.

Spring is Finally Here

We had a nice week's vacation, driving to up-state New York last month. I've been lazy about writing here- too much e-mail and house duties to catch up on. We had a booth at the National Trout Festival in Kalkaska back in April, it seems hard to believe May is almost half over, am I in a time warp?

Happy Mother's Day everyone! (Even if you aren't one, chances are if you are reading this you did have one!)

This week I'm trying to get more yarn labelled to pack for the craft show. This Friday and Saturday we will be at Yoder's Quilt Auction near Clare. If you are in the area, please stop by and introduce yourself. I'll be the one in the bright polka-dotted hat with a spinning wheel:) I plan to take lots of pictures and actually post some. Need to spend some time listing on my Esty and Artfire shops too, but when the weather warms the woods and garden call louder.

Scraps Update

Voting is now open for the contest and even if you aren't a member of Ravelry you can see all the entries on Painted moth's blog (where the voting is being held) http://kiriko-moth.com/paintedmoth/index.php/2009/04/02/spin-your-scraps-contest-entries/
Thanks for looking and supporting my effort as well as all the others.
After I have a chance to show it to my spinning guild and family, the skein will probably be listed in my etsy shop.

Spin Your Scraps - Project

My little pile of scraps included snips of handspun, white bamboo mill ends, and little slubs and mats that seemed too short to spin.

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Since the above weighed less than an ounce, I added about 2 ounces from a grab bag of roving ends I had purchased from Hanks in the hood.

below and------>

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In a way it was like making cocoons, since I was including some very short slubs of about 1/4 inch, as well as some clips of handspun yarn. I had decided not to card the fibers first, since I wanted a more textured yarn.

I used my louet s-10 to spin, plied it with a Trilobal Polyester thread and wound it onto my niddy-noddy to measure the skein.

Depending on the lighting the actual yarn is just a little brighter than the darker colors.

Busy Days = Blog Neglect

I've been feeling bad about neglecting my blog, but it was the only way to fit in everything else I've been trying to accomplish.
Last week end was the first craft show of this years season, luckily inside, but I still had new yarn to label/price, tables and other display shelves to fit into my car, along with sleeping bags and of course my big leprachaun hat- it was an Irish Festival! We camped at my daughter's place for the weekend and she had a booth next to mine for the show. Sales were up from a year ago and we're looking forward to next week's show.

Located in the school hallway, instead of the gym, we had 2- 6x18 spaces, could have used at least one more 5 foot table and I will be building more riser shelves for the rest of the tealights and tarts that got lost on the table.

Will add another post soon to show you more of my projects.

I'm a Fiber-holic

I'm a fiber-holic and a business-woman so when TheClayMuse tagged me, I had to delay my response for a little. I'm glad that Christina tagged me for a little blogosphere fun! This is the first one I'm participating in so hope I'm doing it right.

The rules of this one are as such: go to your picture file and blog about the 4th picture in there, then tag 4 other bloggers to do the same.

Since all of my pics on this computer are in folders also, I went to the fourth folder and choose the sixth picture (the fourth was uninteresting except to family) It was fun to look through my pictures from 2006 and great to see the green of summer-too much white out there right now.

This was taken on our deck on a sunny July day, this friendly Monarch butterfly came to visit, resting on my finger long enough for my husband to grab the camera. It stayed long enough that my arm was getting tired.

This next picture I couldn't resist sharing. It is a dream catcher that has a motto which is the basis of our expanding business as we approach retirement age. (No retirement-just a lot of creating)

And now to keep the album sharing going I tag;

HanamiGallery

NorthstarAlpacas

Farmingintheshade

MidnightCoiler

Hope you will all have time to respond, you know you were planning to blog anyway.

Time to do a little more spinning as I watch the end of Jesse Stone- yes I'm a Tom Selleck fan:)