After a fascinating excursion to the 2nd annual CNY Fiber Festival, I came away with some hand dyed silk ‘caps’ and ‘tussah’, along with some colorfully dyed mohair curls from a shearing – all of which have me itching to get back to the loom. These lovely products will surely make it into my next weaving projects. Now I have to learn to knit, so I can use some newly acquired alpaca yarns. Too many of you have heard that before, but now I really mean it!

     On the ‘bench’, I am working with my hand-forged gold, finally ready to use after many months -3 years, actually, since I poured the ingots I have been working with. This required hours and hours painstaking hammering and mill rolling with lots of ‘annealing’ to soften the metal, then cooling, and hammering some more. Very labor intensive, but rewarding. I’m also getting into mastering setting small faceted stones at the moment. Some of you already have my sterling “organic nugget” pendants set with tiny white zircons, or the rust-colored ‘fire citrine’ earrings. I’m also playing with some vivid green ‘chromium diopside’, and beautiful teal colored ‘london blue’ topaz, so…stay tuned!