Come see all of the craft vendors and get ready for local holiday shopping.

Black Tulip Farms will be a vendor offering fingering weight and sport weight alpaca yarn for knitters and crocheters.  For spinners we have alpaca roving in three natural colors; cream, gray, and chocolate brown.

Spinning demonstrations at 11:00 am.

Are you curious how silk is produced from the lowly worm?  This class will cover sericulture; the art of raising silk worms.  Students will practice hands on processing of the cocoons to make mawata (or expanded cocoons) and with knitting mawata.  Discussions will also include dyeing mawata, spinning silk fibers and blending silk with other fibers.  Silk worms will be available to take home at the end of the workshop.  Start looking in May for a mulberry tree to feed them!

Material fee includes:  cocoons, silk worms, mawata, silk samples and handouts

Students need to bring: assorted knitting needles; sizes 2-11 (whatever you have on hand), notebook

Optional: a Tupperware like container to take some silk worms home.

Silk worm workshop: 1:00-4:30 $45.00 plus $30.00 materials

Instructor: Cassie Dickson

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Full day discount: both workshops for $80.00 (plus materials fees)

lunch provided with full-day registration

Register no later than May 8, hurry space is limited

To Register contact Sue Szary 919-742-1122

Material fee includes:  Flax strick, samples of water retted and dew retted flax, and handouts

Students need to bring:  spinning wheel and notebook.   Distaffs will be provided if you do not have one.

Flax workshop: 8:30-12:00   $45.00 plus $25.00 materials fee 

Well they are all happy pacas today.  This morning we opened up the greener pastures.  The alpacas didn't waste time running into the green oasis.

Jubilo's boys were first.  It didn't take them long to realize that the gate has been opened. 

Meanwhile the girls are watching all the commotion wondering when it's their turn to get fresh grass.

We finally get down to the girls pasture to open the gate and most of them are gathered around as we fiddle with the ties to open the pasture gate.

Hurray!  We finally have grass!

And of course there are the stragglers making a mad dash.

 Wow!  Absolutely beautiful Turkish drop spindles.  Melissa hand crafts these spindles from reclaimed and re-purposed wood that she gathers from her local neighborhood in Chatham County.  Not only are the spindles beautiful to look at but, each spindle has its own story of how it came to be giving it an added personal touch.   In addition Melissa understands the functionality of a drop spindle and has made it her motto that “Balance = Beauty”.

 This is the story of my S. Lissie drop spindle:

 The spindle is handmade from reclaimed and re-purposed Tulip wood from the Tulip poplar tree and poplar wood (not related). The Tulip Poplar (Liriodendron Tulipifera) is part of the Magnolia family and the Poplar is a Salicaceae family Tree.  The spindle weighs about 1.5 ounces, stands 8-9 inches tall, and is about 6 inches wide at the flyer arms. It was finished with a proprietary blend of beeswax from Melissa’s back yard hives and essential oils. The Tulip wood was selected, hauled, milled, worked and balanced by hand making the spindle eco friendly and lowering the carbon footprint. The long flyer arms are designed for maximum balance and spin time. The Flyer wood for this particular spindle was from a tree on Melissa’s property that had been damaged during a storm last year and was dangerously overhanging the dirt road she lives on. Melissa axed the tree down at the weakened roots and dragged it in to the yard where it was racked and then sat for several months before she milled it into lumber. The spindle shaft was turned on her lathe by hand from a piece of scrap wood that would have been discarded or burned if she had not taken it in and given it its new special purpose.  Then she crafted it into a spindle that has Balance, Beauty, and Personality.  A work of art that I will cherish for many years.

You can see more of Melissa’s work at:

http://slissie.wordpress.com/

http://www.etsy.com/shop/slissie

We are working on a schedule for drop spindle classes featuring the S. Lissie Turkish spindle and spinning with BTF alpaca roving.

Yarns Etc. Chapel Hill

on the farm

it's off to work we go.