Well, I had a nasty surprise today. I went down into my studio, which is located in our finished basement, and the throw rug was wet. Sopping wet. Squishing wet. Wet enough that there was no possible way that my little 6 lb. dog had that big of an accident.

That could only mean one thing. Water.

Sure enough, upon closer inspection, thanks to all the heavy rain in the past week, water had come in (again!) under my yarn wall in my fiber room.

This, for anyone not paying attention, is The Bad of today’s posting. The only thing I fear getting in my studio more than water is *looks around to make sure they are not listening, the nasty things* is moths. Oh, I shudder just to think it!!!! Well, and fire. And mice. And little kids. And icky bugs. Okay, so that are a lot of things I’m afraid of getting down there. But this is the third time since we’ve lived here that water has come in under the walls. Not gushing or anything, more like very large, very inconvenient puddles.

After flipping out for a few minutes, running around frantically looking for towels and wishing with every fiber of my being (no pun intended) that Marcus hadn’t had to go into the office today of all days, I discovered that there wasn’t as much water as last time. The Good is that most of the water was absorbed by the throw rug (which prevented any water from going under my computer desk and chair) and by a large pile of fabric waiting to be washed. Lyssie’s pillow didn’t even get wet this time.

I did have tons of yarn on the floor in front of my yarn wall, but it was all in plastic bags, so it didn’t get wet. Thank goodness for plastic!

So, all in all, I decided that my fiber room really was getting a little out of control - Okay! Fine! A lot out of control and it really wasn’t taking me all that long to clean up since all the shelves are up on 2×4’s so most things were still dry. Mostly just of lot of putting away that I’d been putting off.

And then I discovered one bag. One oversized, paper bag that was filled to the top with novelty yarn. And the yarn was soaked. Completely and utterly soaked. A whole bag. And that, ladies and gentlemen, that was when The Swearing started.

Edit: I ended up only having to rewind seven balls back onto my yarn swift.  But still. Grrrrrrrr!!!!!!!

This is “Staring at Eternity.” The picture was taken while it was hanging at the Valley Art Center juried art show a few months ago. The piece is back in my possession now.

This is me, wearing the knitted stole I made to wear to the opening.

I designed the stole myself and was really happy with how it turned out. I am trying to knit up various stoles to wear to art show openings, but it is slow goings since I keep having to work on Christmas presents. But now that Christmas is over, I can start knitting for me again.

Actually, now that Christmas is over, I will be starting the commissions I received this summer. I may take a bit of a break here in January and work on a Valentine’s Day throw for Marcus. We shall see.

I just wanted to let everyone know that I’ve got some family stuff going on right now so my blog posts are going to be pretty sporadic. At some point, I’ll write about what’s going on, but for now, I’ll be taking a bit of a blog break. Thank you for reading my blog and keep checking back.

We have been working really hard in our garden and everything is looking really great. The butterfly bush, which Marcus has been so excited about, has finally started to bloom. And, we’ve finally had butterflies in our garden. Some small, pale yellow butterflies (about the size of a half-dollar coin) really seem to like our Basil plant in our herb box so I haven’t been cutting back its blooms, which is probably stunting the growth of the leaves, but since we haven’t actually used any of the basil, it probably doesn’t matter.

But the really exciting part is that a couple days ago, a monarch butterfly came to visit our butterfly bush!

It was absolutely amazing, watching this tiny, perfect creature climb all over our butterfly bush, drinking the nectar.

Since the butterfly was on the bush for at least 20 minutes, I took nearly 40 pictures, but I’m not going to post all of them.

Since I love butterflies, it was a real treat to have this monarch tolerate me being so close for so long. The last time I was this close to a butterfly was when Marcus and I went up to the Butterfly Conservatory at Niagara Falls. And that was right before we were married, which, incidentally, was four years ago today. Yep, today, July 26, is our four-year wedding anniversary. Marcus, you are so wonderful. I love you even more today than I did four years ago. You are my everything.

Happy Anniversary, My Love!

A friend of mine from high school, Jessica, came to visit us a few weekends ago. Since she might be joining Christian Peacemaker Teams (also known as CPT), we might not see her for quite a while. So, I decided to give her the hand-knit matching fingerless mittens and hat set that I made for her. She absolutely loved them! She could hardly sit still long enough for me to take these pictures of her.

Right after the last time Jess visited us, I started making these fingerless mittens for Jess because she really admired a pair of similar “monster mittens” that my Mom had made for me.

Here is Jess again, with the “Monster Mittens” starting to take control of her.

I used black Ironstone wool held with green Fun Fur yarn for the fingerless mittens (which I call “f’ittens”) and the hat. They were all done in a Knit 2, Purl 2 rib, and the “f’ittens” were created in a rectangle then sewn up the side, leaving a large hole for the thumb.

Paul, another friend from high school as well as a good friend of Jessica’s, also came to visit on Sunday, so we made both Paul and Marcus model the Hat and F’ittens, too.

Here is Paul, ashamed that the promise of London Broil and home-made pasta makes him so willing to humilate himself.

And of course, Marcus:

Don’t you just love watching a grown man pout? Actually, Marcus could hardly stop laughing long enough for me to take a “mad” picture.

Too fun.

Mom and I went to the Lake Farm Parks Wool Fest all day yesterday. (We went all day Saturday, and Friday night, too, and were very bad.) We had such a fun time! The sheep! The wool! The yarn! The bamboo! The silk! You get the idea.

The only thing worse than Mom and I going to a wool festival together is Mom and I going to a wool festival together without Marcus . Marcus, you see, lends a bit of restraint to our wild abandon of spending. Only a bit, but still.

Jamie and Matt from the Wooly Knob were there. Two cooler guys you’ll never meet! I bought some very nice Rambouillet Merino/Black Alpaca/ Rayon fiber from them. Mom is having them process some Alpaca and Jacob and Finn fleeces.

Now, besides being spindle sluts, fiber snob (in my case), and wool “collectors,” Mom and I and are also what is known as enablers. In the fiber world, an enabler is someone who feels somewhat guilty about how much she (he) is purchasing/ size of stash/ number of projects/ how much time she (he) spends on said projects, so, they convince other people to buy fiber/ increase their stash/ start new projects/ spend every waking hour on those projects in an effort to somehow legitimize their own problem obsession hobby. We found a new victim fiber enthusiast today in Rebecca Thomas of Waters Edge Jewelry. (She has beautiful stitch markers for knitting and really pretty jewelry. Go buy some. I’ll wait. Go!)

We managed to convince her that she that she had to learn to drop spindle. Had to. That if she didn’t, all the wool in the world would disappear over night or some such disaster. So, she bought a silk cap and a very nice drop spindle and I taught her to spin. Here she is, spinning:

And here is some of her jewelry (I bought lots. I mean, of course I didn’t buy much, Marcus! ):

And here we are at the end of the show today with her. Rebecca is so sweet!

This is a very cute bunny from Millennial Way. Mom and I bought some very fun second-grade white angora bunny fiber for $5 per 6 oz. Actually, we bought all the rest they had. The girl holding this cute little guy was making a rather good case that he should come home to live with me. She is already quite the salesperson! I did not purchase the bunny, just the fiber! Lyssa (and Marcus) are not quite that tolerant. In the background is some fun Cotswold locks that I also bought. The excellent salesperson pictured said that she likes to spin it straight from the locks so that is what I am going to try.

Anne’s Fiber Expressions (their shop is in Montello, WI, phone #: 1-608-297-7254) had a booth filled with very cool stuff. I bought over a pound of Black Diamonds fiber, which is charrcoled bamboo, in a lovely gray. It is seems similar to soy silk. I also bought some ingeo fiber which is made from corn. How fun is that!

Maple Creek Farm had beautiful hanks of yarn that were just calling to me, but sadly, my money ran out before my enthusiasm did so I didn’t get to buy any.

And here is Mom, “hoofing it” back to the car after a long, hard weekend of buying fiber. All that shopping is really quite exhausting.

Saturday night was the opening reception for the artists at the Fairmount Russell Art Show. I was very excited to be there, and to have just finished knitting my black stole the night before. Nothing like waiting til the last minute, eh?

I pretty happy about where my pieces were hung in the show. Two of them, the ones that didn’t win an award, were hung in the main room so that was pretty cool.

This is “Stepping Stones.” For some reason, it photographed horribly, so I had to do quite a bit of Photo-shopping to get it to look decent. Even, then you can’t really see the cool spiral paperclips on some of the brown squares or the beading in the center block, which is too bad because I spent a lot of time on it!

And this is “Staring at Eternity.” It has a really cool back, too, but obviously I couldn’t get a picture of that. Lots of people loved the wavy edges. I spent a lot of time on the quilting (kind of of square spirals that fit together like puzzle pieces) but it doesn’t show up very well in this picture. I’ll put up some detailed pictures after I get the quilt back.

Several people wondered why “Staring at Eternity” didn’t win anything because it is so striking. The only thing I could come up with is that it isn’t quite as flashy as “Wildflowers.” I received quite a few compliments about all three of my art quilts so that was really nice.

Here I am, wearing my new knitted stole, standing in front of “Wildflowers.”

And how could I forget Marcus? He drove in all the way from the Memorial camping trip at his parents’ farm to go to the opening with me. Mom also came down to go to the opening with us, but I forgot to get a picture of her. Too bad, because she looked really cute. My mentor, Mary Urbas, also came to the opening. Anyway, here is a nice picture of Marcus and me, all dressed up, which doesn’t happen very often anymore. He cleans up good, doesn’t he?

This is a picture of Barbara James, another member of CoCA, and one of the pieces she entered. I just this piece! Just gorgeous! And Barbara’s blouse was beautiful, too. She shibori-dyed it herself.

So, very nice opening. Already Marcus and Mom are telling me to get busy on next year’s entries, preferably award-winners.

I entered three of my fiber pieces in the Fairmount Russel Art Show and tonight I received the phone call from them saying that not only had all three of my pieces been accepted, but that “Wildflowers” had won second place in the textile division!!!!

Last year, I recieved an honorable mention for the piece I entered, “Ice and Shadows.” I sold that one last fall but “Wildflowers” is still available for sale.

So I guess next year, I guess I’ll just have to work really, really, hard to get a first place!

Hello, world. I am introducing myself to the gods of blogging. (You programmers out there will know what I mean. ) My wonderful husband, (who is, incidentally, a programmer) has finally set up a blog on my website for me.

My name is Meagan Weidner and I am a fiber artist, married, and have a cute little yorkie named Alyssa. Isn’t she adorable?

My husband, Marcus, and I moved to Willowick, OH, (near Cleveland) about a year and a half ago from Jamestown, NY, where I grew up. We bought a house here with a very nice studio space in the finished basement. Such a nice studio, in fact, that I never seem to leave the house.

I just attended a 3-day workshop taught by Janet Edmonds. The workshop was from her book Embroidered Caskets (In England “Caskets” means boxes) I would highly recommend this book to anyone is interested in making boxes. The book’s directions are very clear and easy to understand. In the class, we all started out with the same box pattern, but look how different they turned out:

Mine, of course, is the lime green one. It isn’t quite finished; I still have to attach the bottom and make a fabric bead for the top. This picture is right about life-sized:

I will try to post another picture when I finish it, which should be today.

I had such a fun time in this workshop. I really felt I learned a lot. My box was created using pellon (Timtex), nettings, sheers, metallics, angelina fiber and other fun things. I have used all those materials in the past, but now I feel a lot more comfortable using them. The boxes were created mostly by machine, but all had a great deal of handwork, too. Because the class was only 3 days, and involved a lot of design and detail work, I was forced to make quicker decisions and not spend a lot of time agonizing over the piece. I am definitely wanting to make more boxes now.

Right now, though, I need to busy working on my entries for an art show I am entering next month. Out of the three pieces I want to enter, only 1 is finished, and 1 is still just the top! (Not pinned up or quilted) So I will be signing off now and getting back to work!