I Went to a Fiber Garden Party

Yesterday I went to a Fiber Garden Party, lots of fiber, spinning, and eating as is common with my  friends so of course it was a fun day! We gathered at Betty Neer’s home in Ranier. Her family has lived there since the mid 1800’s and played a large part in logging and developing the area. Her home is perched on a large rock bluff overlooking the Colombia River. She says the dirt is only a few inches thick but she has extensive gardens with some of the biggest dahlias I have ever seen. Betty maintains all the gardens herself. When she treated us to a tour of her home we got to see her indoor swimming pool, she says she works out an hour a day in it. I can believe it, she is a strong and interesting woman.

This Fiber Party was also Area 6010 of NwRSA’s quarterly spinning meeting so we had a little guild business to take care of, like electing an area representative. I volunteered to organize our meetings while Audrey Sinner volunteered to be Area Rep, Lyn Ward agreed to continue as our Alt Rep. Shelia January, Diane McKinnon and Marlyn Balzat volunteering to help with whenever needed we voted Audrey in. Yay .

With the business over we helped ourselves to our potluck lunch, salads, homemade pickled beets, squash casserole, deviled eggs, crackers with cream cheese and mango preserve, peach berry pie, and rhubarb crumble topped with whipped cream. Thus fortified we got to the meat of our meeting- the Fiber Garden Party.

Now what is a Fiber Garden Party you ask? We each brought at least 8 oz of colorful fiber, (most of us brought a lot more than 8 oz, a LOT more). It could be any fiber, coarse or fine, from batts to locks, wool, silk, Angora rabbit, mohair and camel. We took it out of various bags and basket, pulled it apart and threw it on Betty’s clean kitchen floor. Poor Betty, it was quite the mess.

We stirred up our big pile of fluff, roughly blending the wide variety of fiber and then we ran it through Shelia’s picker. Diane sat at the end of the picker with a gardening fork raking the fiber from the bottom of the picker into not one but two large garbage bags. We took turns pushing the picker.

 Each of us got to take home as much fiber as we brought. The intention is that it will be spun into art yarn, bumpy lumpy and full of color and texture but there is nothing saying that the fiber couldn’t be run through a carder to smooth it out. I can’t wait to see what everyone makes with it.