I have been working on a series of large "V" shawls lately that are turning out very nicely using hand painted and dip dyed bamboo warp and dip dyed bamboo weft.  I'm really enjoying the contrasts between the dark sections and the bold colors.  Here are some shots of my most recent one, which was woven for a long-time friend.

 

Road Trip to Tazewell, TN

Saturday, I went on a road trip to spend the day with my friend, Linda.  She lives in Luttrell, Tn and wanted to show me a fantastic fabric store that she had found.

After finally making it to Linda's house, we headed off to Tazewell.  This store, Discount Fabrics, has been in business for many years, but I had never heard of it.  I must say:  WOW!  They have everything.  I could go wild in there.  Charlie and Beckie Yeary own the store.  They are so friendly and helpful.  This huge metal building houses an enormous supply of fabric, notions, craft supplies, upholstrey fabrics, yarns, and machines.  They are an authorized Janome seller and service center and also sell several very large quilting machines.  I fell in love with a couple of their machines.  They also have classes there.  On the day we were there, several people were working on some machine embroidery and seemed to be having a terrific time.  I will definitely return to this store.  I really appreciate business owners and managers who treat their customers so well. Beckie gave me some very good help in trying to decide what kind of machine I want to buy next.

Once we dragged ourselves out of the cloth shop, Linda and I followed the directions that Charlie had provided to the Mountain Hollow Farm and Store.  It was just a little bit further.  Linda had heard of this place and wanted to see it.  The Bohnert family has built a lovely farm in a little hollow and Beth operates a beautiful shop there.

We left the highway, followed the paved road a little way, thenleft it to go on a gravel road that followed a beautiful stream.  Almost to the house, we stopped to look at this lovely dam and waterfall.  (I took a picture of it, but this one from their Facebook page from some earlier winter, looks so much better.)

Then we were there.  They have beautiful casmere goats, rabbits, llamas and a wild assortment of other animals. We walked past a small ampatheater where they offer talks about their animals to school students. Once  inside the shop, it was warm, welcoming and loaded full of yarn!  Yehaa!  Beautiful wools, silks, cottons, and mixtures of loads of other fibers.  I broke down and bought skeins different brilliant colors of a fiber made from the Banana tree.  I wound some of it today to use in a scarf I'm putting on my table loom. It's going to be gorgeous.

Linda and I lingered there for quite a while.  We really enjoyed meeting Beth and the others in the shop...






What a fun day.  I definitaly want to revisit both of these places and highly recomment them to anyone who loves fiber and cloth.

Discount Fabric, 2030 Old Hwy 25E, Taxewell, TN, 37879, 423-626-5337

Mountain Hollow Farm, 553 Vancel Road, Tazewell, TN  37879, 423-869-8927
www.mtnholoow.com and on Facebook.com

Finally, I've figured out how to get back on my blog.

Several months ago, I started having problems with my email freezing up.  So, I opened up a gmail account and started using it instead.  As soon as I did that, I was locked out of my blog.  Just couldn't find the way to get back on.  I've tried to find help on Google several times, with no help.  Google seems to have almost completely distanced themselves from their users.

But, today, I landed on a page that made such a simple suggestion.  Why had I not thought of that before?  Just log out and log back in under the old email.  And I'm back in.  I tried everything under the sun to reopen my blog, but not that.  So simple!