Gaspereau Valley Fibres has long been on my list of places to visit, but this week I finally made it -- and what a treat it was! It is a beautiful, rustic space filled with lots of wool and yarn. I wish that I had remembered to bring my camera to show you all how warm and lovely the space is, but I guess that you will just have to check it out for yourself! The kids and I were warmly greeted, warned about the wonderful wood stove, and offered assistance. After walking around for a bit, I asked for some help in picking out some yarn for my next knitting project. I foolishly forgot to bring the pattern with me (I'm not sure if that has more to do with me being a new knitter, or just trying to get out of the house with 4 kids), but the staff person took me over to her computer, told me all about Ravelry, found the pattern that I had picked out, then was able to help me pick out the right kind of yarn for my project -- she was really great. Meanwhile, the boys had been eying the wool, so they each picked a piece out of a basket of end pieces (she even stopped to show the boys how to break off a piece so that it was just the size that they wanted) for a project to be determined later -- Aidan said that he wanted to make a coat for his pet, hmmmm...
The next challenge was to figure out what to do with the wool -- I have only taken 2 classes in wet felting, so my skills and knowledge are somewhat limited. Aidan's plan to make a coat seemed overly ambitious, so I Googled "wet felt animals" and found some simple instructions for a snake. Sounded easy enough, so with Laurel down for a nap, the boys and I got to work. I took the non slip mats out from under our rug (in my class we had used bubble wrap, but I didn't have any, so this would have to do) and laid them on the table with our other supplies (I'm not going to give a step by step of what we did, because that would imply that I had some idea of what I was doing and really we were winging it!). The boys did really well at putting their snakes together (although, in retrospect, we wished that we had picked some different colours so that we could have had more defined stripes), but we did get a little carried away with the soap -- oops! After a lot of rolling we had 4 great looking felted snakes and 3 very pleased boys.
Well, after all this fun, the table was covered with bubbles, LOTS of bubbles. And it just so happened that the floor in the dining room was particularly dirty. So, I did the only logical thing ... I pushed all of the water and bubbles onto the floor (there really was no other option, right? That's what I thought). Well, you'd be surprised at the commotion that this caused in our house -- socks flying off feet, boys arguing over who would have the first turn cleaning the floor ... it really was quite a sight (just call me Tom Sawyer!).
So there you have it, a wonderful visit to Gaspereau Valley Fibres, felted snakes, and a clean floor. I told you they were all related (I can't believe that you doubted me).
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