This blog is no longer being updated.  Please visit my  new blog, Atelier 2100.

How Linen Is Made From Flax Movie

This video was sent to our Porrey Cross weaving study group.  The movie is in French with English subtitles and lasts 15 minutes.

I so enjoy spinning flax.  I hope you find this an informative movie.


BE LINEN MOVIE from Benoit MILLOT on Vimeo.

Free Shipping Until October 15, 2010

In honor of my Happy Birthday, any orders placed through midnight mountain time Friday, October 15, 2010 will receive free shipping.  In order to participate in this offer you must email me prior to purchasing your hat so I can adjust the shipping fee to zero.  Send those emails to hospitalhats.gmail.com.  Stock up on your Halloween hats today!

Janice

Hemp - Spinning and Weaving

I'm working on a Spinning Certificate.  The current fiber I'm learning to work with is hemp.  I'm discovering much about this "forbidden" fiber.  Firstly here's a post about a 200 year old nightgown made from hemp.

Here's the beginning of this interesting post.  Photos and closeups are on the linked page.

"My fiancee deals in antiques & I help him on the side. I went to an estate sale & purchased a bunch of handspun cloth nightgowns from the 1820s/30s era. The woman at the sale was telling me about the process of how the woman made the cloth from hemp & showing me the beautiful tiny details of their work.


There was not a hole in ANY of the fifteen I purchased. They were thick & sturdy. I brought them home & gently washed them with some oxyclean & put a little fabric softner in with them. They came out white & beautiful.

I was awe-struck. I have always known, intectually, that hemp was suppossed to make great clothing & it has a million & one other uses as well. But, it wasn’t until I put my hands on these nearly 200 YEAR OLD pieces of fabric that I realized why industry would want to fight this plant. It lasts, if not forever, then for a couple of life-times or more. How on earth would they be able to generate profit. . . . "  [misspellings are from original post]


Read the entire post at Found Handspun Antique Hemp Nightgowns – I now know why Pot is illegal
Janice

New Women Scrub Hats Being Listed

Halloween and Fall listings are continuing!  Here is the latest batch I am photoing for Etsy.  Contact me if you have questions or would like to reserve a particular hat for yourself or a colleague.

Janice

I just stepped in for a sandwich when . . .

unexpectedly I saw this gentlemen sitting by the fireplace sketching. He looked friendly. He had just a Number 2 pencil sharpened with a blade of some sort and a very fine Sakura black pen.

On his lap was a sketch of a mountain lion lounging on some Arizona rocks. Naturally I ventured over to him and asked about his sketches and why on earth he was sitting in the Wildflower Bread eatery sketching away. It seems he spends about 3 hours every day there sketching. He once taught art but no longer. He has been a resident of Prescott, Arizona for about 35 years. He takes photos and then sketches them or actual drawings in the woods and then continually refines them.

His name is William R. Buttler, (928.308.4651) and specializes in Western Art. What a pleasant surprise!

Planting Future Cotton for Spinning!

Jillan (from Ravelry) sent me four colors of cotton seeds recently. Surprisingly I planted six of each color and have these adorable little plants. Now I need to figure out where to plant them so they will grow! grow!! grow!!!!

A Day at the Alpaca Farm

Friendly, personable and totally cute! My visit to the GTF Alpaca Farm in Pinedale, AZ. was enjoyable and educational, thanks to owners Pat and Cheryl Dempsey. These beautiful alpacas fleece and fiber are for sale, in case you are fiber-frenzied. Here are some photos for your enjoyment.

Here DH and I are feeding treats to these lovely animals.

I couldn't resist this! This is a totally black male. He didn't have this frightened look when I took this photo, I believe.

Here are the girls all milling about looking for extra yummies from us.

Here's Pat, the owner. Just look at this lovely alpaca face!

Thanks Pat and Cheryl and all the alpacas for a wonderful day!

Nest Building, Again!

Earlier this Spring we had a pair of Mourning Doves decide to nest on our patio. I *really* didn't think they would finally settle there, but they did, and produced two little "dove-ettes" who thought living with us was grand. After all their nesting site was under the patio roof, protected from the glaring sunlight and out of the way of rain! But, after they officially were able to leave the nest we had one of those high wind days and their former nest was now in my flower bed. Not to worry, I see them hanging around the sprinklers in the front flower beds and they seem to be happy living around our house.

Well, that was okay until last week. We went to Tucson for the week and when we came back the doves had decided to build their new nest atop my patio ceiling fan. (This photo was after my Sweetie brushed most of the twigs off the fan housing. Squeeky-Wings is wondering where it went!) We knew this because the sticks and twigs were covering our patio seating area. I got a couple of photos, but after my husband had pretty much cleaned up the detritus on the ground.

After some discussion with my Sweetie I convinced him to allow me to relocate the twigs to a new, more acceptable area on the patio. He agreed. However, the Doves (who I affectionately call Squeeky-Wings) seemed to understand me initially, and went to investigate their new location, but ultimately didn't like it as well as the fan housing.

I know these Doves are very persistent when they like a nesting location. So, we have had the patio fan running on low ever since last week. Hopefully Squeeky-Wings will get the message.

Happy Birthday, America!!

I love America. There's no denying it. I've travelled to Europe, South America, the Canary Islands, and though these sites are beautiful and different than the U.S.A. they cannot compare somehow. I remember returning from my first trip abroad. I was so glad to get back to American soil I could have kissed the tarmac at JFK. I do appreciate America and all it stands for, good and not so good. We are a nation who wanted to be self-governing and made tracks to do just that. Thank you founding fathers!

Well, our picnic was cancelled, unfortunately for us. I was looking forward to visiting with our friends and enjoying the 4th celebration, but they were called out of town for the birth of their very first grandbaby. Who can compete with that?

In the meantime, my Sweetie and I worked around the house and spent time together. We rearranged my sewing room and moved my loom to the living room (not many choices in my little home) and now I have some more space for sewing.

Here I am at my machine. I've also included a photo of one of the fabrics I used to make patriotic Florence Nightingale scrub hats.

Stop by my Etsy site and check out my other patriotic hats.

Preparing For The 4th!!

Today, much to the pleasure of my CoCo, I was baking a zillion peanut butter cookies for our July 4th picnic.

Of course that means that nearly a quadrillion were eaten by CoCo and myself before they made it to the cookie jar. (Not so good). But, it was a productive morning nonetheless. This was the first time I made an entire batch in my convection oven. I was pleasantly surprised. I used the round pan that came with the microwave for the cookies. I made parchment circles to line the pan with and they baked wonderfully. I was able to get 14 cookies to a pan. That's about how many I'd put on a rectangular cookie sheet in the regular oven. And, it wasn't hot in the house and I had only the one pan to clean up from the oven. I'm sold.

I thought you'd appreciate some photos, you can almost taste them!

Simple Acts Have Global Impact!

Who knew that a simple software registration would turn into a opportunity to tell someone across the globe about my Etsy shop? Not me!

So, there I was dialing the 800 number to register my software. A nice enough gentlemen, Leo (though I expect that's not his *real* name), went through all the necessary steps to authenicate me, then paused.

Yep, he called up my Etsy shop to see what on earth HospitalHats was. It was rather unnerving to have someone a half a world away read the descriptions of your female Florence Nightingale scrub hats. After all, I only made that call to register my software!

A friendly discussion ensued. Leo told me that in India the normal blue paper hats were worn by surgical personnel. He thought it was rather humorous that someone would go to all the work of making attractive scrub hats, though he liked them.

Who knows, Leo may be my sales rep for the Indian subcontinent in the future. Go Etsy!