Bulgarian Ensemble Sings like a Nightingale

I spent the evening on Saturday listening to the glorious harmonies of Slaveya, a Washington, DC based ensemble whose name means "nightingale" in Bulgarian. As a former member, I enjoyed singing along under my breath and joining in on the Bulgarian style dancing at the end of the concert. The group has just introduced their first CD recording available now to download or order.

When I sang with the group last, a couple years ago, we wore beautifully handstitched blouses from Romania, but in the past year, the members commissioned these exquisite costumes handmade in Bulgaria. It's a rather small country, but there are many regions with a tremendous variety of costume details. Take a look at the wonderful costumes available from BalkanFolk.

ravelry Love Affair

OK, I finally got the invite to join ravelry although it went into my junk mail a week ago. I set up my "notebook" with photos of all my projects, joined lots of cool groups like "Knittin' Musicians" and have been frittering away the hours reading posts and looking at great projects. It is THE home for knitting and crocheting fanatics. There is a waiting list, but it's worth the wait if you want to connect with people all over the world who love anything made with yarn.

We have Mask Appeal !

My talented and artsy friend, Anthony makes these fantastic masks which we modeled at a Brazilian carnival party. He also makes fabulous one-of-a-kind wearable sculpture which he displays in galleries and art shows. He has a variety of these comfortable all leather handmade masks for sale in his Etsy shop, Mask Appeal . We wore these at last night's performance of our all-women samba-reggae percussion band, Batala Washington at a carnival party. The Heritage Restaurant on Connecticut Avenue was packed, everyone had masks, long peacock feathers, glow sticks and the place was rocking when we played our set. When you hang out with Brazilians, you are guaranteed to have a good time !

FFF finally !

My cherished idea of posting my favorite new fiber-related Etsy shop every Friday is hanging on buy a "thread" so to speak. Here is the a wonderful shop I just found this week: Knitting Dream. She sells knitting patterns for modular knit totes, purses and hats which convert to wall-hangings. I love these shapes and of course, the colors. I'm going to order a pattern pretty soon I'm sure.