Yesterday I posted this old picture of some yarn I spun from wool I dyed with kool-aid. Today I found that picture was posted on tumblr by robot heart. Currently that image has been “noted” and “reblogged” 47 times. How cool is that?
I love tumblr, but usually I just “heart” images that I like, and only share my own images, as I kind of feel weird reblogging another person’s work. BUT, in the case where my image is the one being reblogged, I’ll jump in on the fun and add it to my own tumblr.
Today, for Thing-A-Day, I spun for a couple hours. I’ve been working on this super thin yarn that will be plyed with another to make a crazy sock yarn. Normally I spin barefoot, but I just got home so I still had on my shoes. Normally I’ll just spin from a long roving, but because I want the colors to alternate a lot, I’ve been pulling bits the staple length and spinning from those. There are a total of 17 different colors and they are all a really nice merino wool.
I posted an animated gif file I made while spinning earlier this month, but you really can’t see much of a dent on the two hours more I’ve added. It’s so thin that it just doesn’t add up quickly.
The colors may not look that great right now, but once plyed, the finished product will look closer to this other yarn (below) that I spun, only all of that was dyed with kool-aid and it’s a much chunkier yarn.
Tonight my best friend and I went to go see Gaelic Storm (for the second time) at the Historic Egyptian Theatre. We had a really good time and now I’m in a St. Patrick’s Day mood. I always love going to concerts like that because the audiences are so energetic. Mostly, I think it’s the Irish crowd, because it’s the same vibe when I’ve gone to see Black 47 and Irish Festivals.
Here is a quick snapshot of what it looks like inside the theatre. We were sitting on the balcony.
The band performing. One thing that was REALLY cool was that the lead singer told the audience that he met his wife for the first time at Eduardo’s (a well known local restaurant). She was a grad student at NIU. How cool is that? Singer from Ireland, tours the world over and he met his wife in my own town.
And finally, the gratuitous shoe shot. I had to use the upstairs restroom and just loved the checkered flooring in there. Someday I will have black and white checkered floors in my home.
I made this yarn over the last few days. It’s 68 soft yards in length.
It uses a tiny bit of fiber I had left over from the most beautiful fiber I think I’ve ever purchased. I’m sad to see it all gone. I’m not even sure what kind of wool it was other than I bought it here and it has the most beautiful colors and is so soft to touch. With such a small portion remaining I decided to make a very fine yarn and extend the fiber as far as I could, plying it with a wonderful white Blue Face Leicester. There are so many colors in the first fiber, I think the white works wonderfully showcasing them all.
Here is the other yarn made using some of the same fiber. I striped this one with white and then plied it with a black cotton string.
As I mentioned in a previous post there was a knitalong for making tall socks with handspun yarn and I wanted to see if I would be able to make a yarn thin enough to be sock yarn. I have a tendency to spin thin, naturally, but have you seen sock yarn?!?! It’s SO thin! Well, when I showed this complete yarn to Matt he said “it’s like thread” so I will take that as a positive. Maybe I will be able to make my very first socks with my very own handspun someday :)
This was one of those nightmare fibers I spoke of yesterday, one I purchased based purely on the beautiful colors. And the colors are lovely, aren’t they? Very Autumn. In fact the fiber is a very itchy, wiry one that would not work well against the skin.
What else could you knit with this yarn that you wouldn’t wear?
I finished spinning and plying this yarn last night. You might recall it from a few posts back when I posted some poorly photographed progress pictures.
Last year, or earlier this year, I promised myself not to buy any new fiber until I spun up everything I already had. This is an attempt to prevent my collection growing out of control like my current store bought yarn situation.
I’m excited because I’m getting close to the end of the collection. When I first started spinning (2004) I would impulsively buy rovings based purely on colors. When I’d get home and try to spin them, I’d often find the colors didn’t suit me after all, or the fibers were troublesome, scratchy, nubby, riddled with vegetable matter, and/or over dyed/partially felted. Immediately I’d stick them on the shelf and not even want to look at them again.
The case with the fiber above was more of a color issue. Green is my favorite color and I LOVE LOVE LOVE the green and red color combination. They’re called complimentary colors, but I rather like to think of them as competitors, fighting for which one makes more of an impact. It wasn’t until I got it home that it struck me “oh no, Christmas colors”. You will never know how many times this has happened to me, where I create something that I love and only once it’s finished and I’m happily admiring my work that it occurs to me “Christmas!” and instantly I am repulsed by it. It’s not that I don’t like Christmas, it’s just that I have an aversion to my work resembling Christmas craft/decorations.
Well, now enough time and experience has passed that I know a better fiber when I see it. From now on I’d like to keep better track of what breed all my fibers are actually from for selling purposes. I’d also like to think I have a better eye for color and have learned that a more blueish green or teal-y color and red still create the same impact that green and red do, but without the negative connotations. AND lastly, I want to buy a ton of fiber because I’ve had this project in mind for a couple years, to spin enough yarn to make a simple vest for myself. I mentioned it first in this post.
One last bit of fiber inspiration: Yesterday I saw a tweet post by knittydirtygirl where she is starting a knitalong project on Ravelry to make knee high socks, toe up, from handspun yarn. Here is the yarn she will be using. Dare I say it, but after the vest project I’d like to tackle that one. I’ve never made socks before, not for lack of trying though. I think I will need some guidance from my sister, the sock knitting expert.
This weekend I stayed in, kept cozy and kept busy. I put up insulation plastic on the windows to keep us warm. I also caught up on washing and folding/hanging laundry, which is no small feat when you live with a man who instead of doing the laundry ever, just goes out and buys an entirely new wardrobe. One time I counted the pairs of jeans of his I found that needed laundering and it was over a dozen! Me, well, I’m a girl so I have plenty of clothes (that’s a given) but I only wear my favorite few outfits over and over and over again, so my part of the laundry can usually be done in one big load. At any rate, it feels so nice to have all of our clothes folded or hanging up, instead of grabbing clothes from clean hampers or directly out of the dryer. Now the task is to stay that way, but that’s always the hardest part isn’t it?
Between loads I found time to knit these two hats this weekend. They are based on the Meathead pattern. I say based because if I follow the pattern for large, it still comes out child sized. Maybe it was designed to be a child’s hat? Funny thing is when I decided to knit one last weekend I whipped it up from the pattern in no time, but it was obviously too small. I grabbed the hat I made when I bought the pattern a couple years ago and I had made it completely different from the pattern. Which means that I had probaby made one and it was too small so I adjusted the pattern to re-make it. I love when I do things like that. Some might see it as making the same mistake twice, but I just see it as a sample that I really am who I am. “Look, I did this before, and now I’ll do it again, lol.” I love the shape of the hat, but had to alter the pattern so much that I really only borrowed the same ribbing for the bottom and reduced in the same style at the top to give it the acorn top shape. It’s not a hat for everyone, but it’s quirky and that fits me just fine.
I’m glad that so many people have gotten excited about the fontcapture site. I twittered about it and it got “retweeted” a handful of times. Rosa and Bri have already created their own fonts and Rosa is actually asking others to trade fonts with her. Colliebox on twitter suggested the creative idea that you don’t need to just stick to your handwriting, but you could use pictures like a dingbats/wingdings type font. How fun is that? Or just think of all the creative fonts you could create. I remember back in college my friend Jenny created a “left handed font” for design school and that completely blew my mind. The font I created for $15 through another site years ago and was so disappointed with was made with my block lettering that I use often in my artwork. I think I will redo that font with fontcapture. Please let me know if you’ve created your own font, I’d love to see it in action. I could have used it for my super secret code for my last Artomat series.
I’ve also added another reproduction print to my shop. It’s the Tree Stump piece from my August daily project. I loved this piece so much! After it sat in my shop for a week or two I started growing attached. I figured after the month was over I was going to remove it from the shop and keep it for myself. I don’t often get attached to my own pieces, so when it did eventually sell before the month was over I knew immediately I had to get prints done. What is it with tree stumps anyway? I love them, in a whimsical fairytale sort of way.
Speaking of woodland creatures, I found the awesome-ist creative halloween costume on craftster yesterday. It’s a gnome riding a snail. How cute.
You might recall this mitten from much earlier this year. Well, this weekend I finally got around to dyeing and spinning the fiber for it’s pair. The original plan was to have a green mitten with one pink stripe in it, but the green did not turn out as I’d hoped. In my mind it was going to be a darker green with some light highlights and blue highlights, but instead it turned out just light, bright green. I might try and dye the yarn with some darker greens and see what happens.
Just a couple more things to share: Here is a tiny little rhubarb plant growing at my parents house. It was planted with just one tiny leaf now it has three leaves, perfect for making one miniature rhubarb pie, lol.
I picked this huge bouquet at my parents’ house. I love lily of the valley, the smell so wonderful, plus their little bells fit perfectly in with my obsession with all things miniature.
I mowed at my parents’ house this weekend and yep, it finally happened. I mowed right over a little toad, fortunately that little sucker stayed close to the ground and didn’t get hurt. That was a relief, until after I passed it and it started to head back under the mower as I tried to scoop it up and move it. Please little creatures, stay clear of the twirling blades of death, it is not the safe refuge you might think it is.
I just finished talking with my friend Nikki, pictured above. Tonight she starts her intense chemo sessions, which she has humorously nick-named Camp Chemo, because once again chemo will be sucking away her summer break. She seemed to be in high spirits and we had some laughs while she waited in her hospital room for the fun to begin. If you are interested in reading about her, please check out her Caring Bridge page, she is a great writer, much more organized and thought out than my messy, train of thought written blog.
This weekend I hit up 3 fiber shops in one day with my friend Mary Kay. That has to be some sort of record.
Now I am on a mission to get the absolute worst yarn (above) done before I allow myself to dive into the luxurious fibers I just bought. I have this box full of horrible wirey, course fiber that I had bought when learning how to spin. I dyed it all with kool-aid when I first started dyeing stuff and it is all mostly bright kool-aid colors, not mixed, but just straight from the packet, cherry red, lime green, blue raspberry, orange, etc. That wouldn’t be so horrible if it weren’t for the texture, and the fact that when dyeing the wool I often felted it, AND it is out of control with nubs AND vegetable matter. I’ve finished about a bobbin and a half and it has taken me foreverrrrrrrr. I just want to be done with it. Honestly, I think it will look really cool because it is just about the same thing as this, but it just doesn’t feel as wonderful as it looks. It will be good to destash this monster pile of fiber, in perfect time for the move. Now if only I could do something about my 2+ tall laundry bins full of yarn (not handspun). Can we say garage sale?
