Hand knit one-of-a-kind HATS!! -- Coming to a craft fair near you!!

Come visit me at my booth next weekend, October 5th and 6th from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the John C. Campbell Folk School Fall Festival.  This festival is something special.  It has been going strong for forty years! I will be sharing a booth with my mother Martha Owen and my sister Annie Fain Liden. Click their names to see their work.  We will have special handmade knitwear, hand spun yarn, fleeces, blankets, scarves, paintings, and handmade books for sale -- everything you need to cozy up for the winter (except for a fuzzy kitty cat or a hot cup of tea.) We probably will have tea cozies though! 

I wrote about this wonderful gathering a few years ago on the folk school blog. 

Read more here: Folk School Blog - Fall Festival

October is CRAFT MONTH in western North Carolina.  

"Winters'a'comin'!"

Emolynknits on Etsy

This fall you can find my work at my shop on Etsy.  I have my handknit hats and a new line of handspun scarves for this fall.  There is a lot to be excited about.

More to come. Keep in touch!

Spinning in Louisiana - Part I

As I travel around southwest Louisiana, I am noticing colors combinations in the swamps, the trees, the birds, the crops, and the houses. They are different from western North Carolina.  It is hot here too, and I can't ignore the humidity, two things I'm not so used to in high caliber, but I feel rejuvenated by the signs that autumn (my favorite season) is coming.  September 1st is my self designated holiday-just-because.  These aren't ideal knitting conditions per se but they are perfect for getting out the bicycles and cruising down country roads, to paths under the shade of the trees in the swamp; for hopping off to walk to a waters edge. I was warned not to dip my toes in the water like I would in a mountain creek - unless I was comfortable offering my toes to the tree-trunk sized alligators.

Back at the house, sitting at my spinning wheel, I am thinking about that scene: mother nature a la Louisiana. I wonder as I take tufts of wool from the basket on the floor, "Can I make a combination too that will put a sense of place in these yarns I make here?"  By working on small projects, I am able to test out different combinations.  I fill up a bobbin and knit it into a soft cozy scarf, spin up another bobbin and knit it again.

Emolyn will be Teaching from June 16th - 21st

I am really looking forward to this summer.  I guess it's already here!

I have been invited to teach fiber arts at a great kids camp in western North Carolina called Little/Middle Folk School. It is held every year during the third week of June at the John C. Campbell Folk School .

The Folk School puts on classes year round for adults, but Little/Middle is for the youngsters! I attended the camp EVERY year from age seven to seventeen; now I get to go back as a big person. You can read about the fun we had last year on my friend's site: The Blind Pig and the Acorn.   There, you can also read about everything appalacian, from Appalachian medicine, to old civil war letters, to planting by the moon signs. Her website is a gem.

Looking for inspiration in all the right places

I am a knitter but I love color as much as the feeling of yarn going through my fingers. Nature always provides me with good ideas for arrangements of color.  This past January I was lucky enough to travel to Kauai, HI and boy-oh-boy, were there some beautiful sights to see!

On the way to Polihale State Park

I had a skein of handspun light brown yarn tucked in my beach bag.  I had spun it from my mother's Corriedale/Romney flock, from a sheep that happened to be light brown.  It was also the color of the sunbaked dirt in the corn fields.  As we pulled off the road onto the trail it was the color of the sand too.

We parked under a tree in the shade and walked out onto the seven mile long stretch of beach. 

The site of Polihale is...hm... magnificent doesn't do it justice.  It's inspiring!

I plopped down in the sand and got to work.