I heard about Fibre Week, what Olds College calls “the week dedicated to all things fibre”, at a Northern Fibres Guild meeting some years ago. Peggy came to talk about the Master Spinners class she had taken and I was interested. In fact, interested enough that when a friend asked “Do you want to go to Olds this year?” I said “Sure!” That was more than three years ago now. I did Level 2 to start as I thought Level 1 might be a bit elementary for me. But by the end of the week of class I decided to pursue my Master’s and hence I needed to get Level 1 homework to do. Once home I set aside Level 2 and just worked on Level 1. I managed to finish my homework, sent it off for marking and my instructor returned my work at Olds Fibre Week in July. Nice mark and good comments. Level 2 was only about half finished, so I asked for, and received, an extension on that. Then my second Fibre Week I took Level 3. Now, because we were temporarily retired, I finished Level 2 homework by October and then plowed directly into Level 3 and finished all but a weeks worth of homework by December. Long story short, by the time the 2009 Fibre Week rolled around, I was finished and had passed the first three levels. At time of publishing this post I have taken Level 4 but not really started the homework.

This past year and a half have been crazy and spinning has just had to take a back seat. But this is one way of getting on with that work, or so I hope. I’m very sorry to have fallen behind some of my classmates, but I do still have some great company as Adele needed a year off. We shall have to encourage each other in the coming six or so months.

Olds College is a very nice location for me, just an hour north of Calgary, so I get grandson time! Yeah! The college is also a lovely place to be with some nice gardens to walk through. Of course I have to include some flower photos!

The first scarf is the result of a beginner’s weaving class I took near the end of October. We thread our looms in a twill pattern, used the same weight wool yarn for both warp and weft, and were then left to our own devices as to colour and pattern. I had fun with both as you can see. Though my colour choices are perhaps a bit mundane. I’m thinking I should have had a bit of lime green or something edgy in there. Oh well, done is done and I’m not unhappy with my efforts really.

Scarf number two is the surprise Lucy tucked in a package of misplaced trip items. I really enjoyed the knitting and love the colour combination and how the scarf feels with the weight of the beads. Very intriguing design as you knit on the diagonal, but bead in the opposite direction on each side. Love it!

Scarf number three is also a Lucy Neatby pattern. The Sea Lettuce Scarf pattern in fact. (I purchased the pattern on-line at The Yarn Vault and ended up having to ask for access to the file two more times than I should have. Lesson learned was … save and print immediately after downloading the first time, then don’t order things on the Internet until after you have successfully migrated from the old computer to the new computer. Life will be much less embarrassing!) The yarn is from another recent workshop. A lichen dyeing workshop. I could have twisted the colours into skeins and kept them on a ring with their directions attached, but I thought I would prefer to knit something that would show the colours off. I think this pattern was perfect for that and I love how the colours all go together so well.