We’ve been super busy lately! We’ve been excessively making yarn, dyeing, spinning, weaving, teaching, and building. We can barely keep up to replace all that is flying out of here, and we have the Kentucky Guild of Artist and Craftsmen Fall Fair in just two weeks!
Here’s a little about what we’ve been doing-
On the Yarn front, we’ve developed a process of using our Greener Shades dye (of which we are a proud merchant of now) to dye cellulose fibers. The key to this is that most dyes are laden with heavy metals, which are harmful for us and the environment. Greener Shades is heavy metal free*, therefore safer for us and everything else. However, Greener Shades dye is for use on only protein fibers. That is, until we got ahold of it. We’re pretty sure we’ve perfected the process, and we’ve had more than consistent results. Look for a pamphlet to be available soon.
Also concerning yarn, we are now open for wholesale accounts for brick and mortar stores. Contact us for details! And if you need a large quantity our yarn, anyone can qualify for a bulk discount. Again, contact us for details! (Traci has been spinning some absolutely gorgeous yarn lately, so if you were considering ordering some, now’s the time!)
We’ve had a lot of classes lately too, and a higher demand of tailored classes suited towards the specific needs of an individual. While some institutions only give blanket instruction, we LOVE to work with people and help them along with their detailed interests! We have a ton of experience in nearly everything fiber arts, so if you want to learn just one thing, we’re there for you. We’ve got a lot of feedback of people telling us what a blessing we are because we actually teach technical ideals instead of creative ones. We believe that everyone is already creative, but the technical stuff is the vehicle to unleash all those creative juices. And apparently we a considerably cheaper than taking a class at a larger institution *cough* Penland *cough* Arrowmont *cough* John C. Campbell Folk school *cough*. Give us a call if you’re interested, we’re available nearly any time you are!
Through our brief hiatus, we’ve been building prototype fiber arts equipment. The one we’re most excited about is the Japanese braiding loom called a Takadai (see above). The Takadai can make complicated and wider braids than a Marudai (which we have our own prototype of too, but we’ll reveal it later). If you’re unfamiliar with kumihimo, let’s put it this way- A Marudai can usually comfortably utilize up to 16 bobbins. A Takadai can utilize up to 108 or more. Obviously this expands your options design and size wise, and expands its potential uses exponentially. Takadai’s are really hard to find too, so we will join the small ranks of Japanese fiber equipment producers.
Stay tuned, because in the near future we will offer a better version of the pictured prototype and you can purchase and use your own Silver Wheel Yarn made Takadai and other fibers equipment!
We’re going to get some pictures of the awesome weavings we’ve been making up soon too. We’ve been informed that we don’t have enough pictures for you guys, so we’re going to rectify that.
Talk to you soon!
