Here is a yarn I spun on Monday. That was a record for me. One complete yarn in one day, woah. You can see other yarns I have spun over the years here in this flickr photoset.
And, I made a few more little book page spreads. The rest can be seen here.
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.
This is my third entry into the Thing-A-Day blog, cross posted here.
I’ve been working on this way longer than I should have, and the result is not quite the image I had envisioned, but I am still pretty proud of myself.
I have been spinning some very fine/thin wool to make a sock yarn which I will knit up to make a pair of socks. I thought it would be pretty cool to make an animated gif of myself spinning yarn. I borrowed Matt’s camera which has a program on it that allows you to set increments of pictures taken for a given duration. I started with a picture every second but that was way too much, so I set it for every 5 seconds. I spun for over 300 pictures and then using photoshop and imageready I put the images together for the result below. I ended up only using the first 75 pictures because it was taking so long and our “TAD”s shouldn’t become a chore. I also made it only 100 pixels wide, but I wish it had been a bit larger.
I have only made a couple basic animated banner ad gifs in the past. I don’t know a ton and have taught myself how to do this, so, no help from the computer geek boyfriend :)
Oh, this also counts for one of my animated gifs for my 2010 to-do list.
Another handspun yarn done!
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’ve added one more reproduction print to my shop. This piece was another from my August challenge that sold very quickly. It was based on a blurry photograph I took of a street scene. After posting the original back in August I immediately received messages from a small handful of people who wanted to buy it but were disappointed to find it already snatched up. Here is another chance to make it yours for only $9.
For weeks I have barely passed the threshold to my art studio. Honestly, it’s a mess and instead of facing the monster I would dash in, grab materials I needed and work in my bedroom or living room. Finally this weekend my desire to use my spinning wheel grew larger than the power that laziness has over me. Once I got into the groove of the pedal and fiber, inspiration took over. I wanted to make more. I found myself cleaning off my drawing table which had been mounded with a foot high’s worth of materials. I wanted to paint, I want to draw, I want to create new paper spiral pendants, I want to knit mittens, I want to assemble envelope sets, I want to create found art pieces, I wanted to break out my sewing machine, put together more recycled bubble mailers and create the coloring book extra I mentioned a post or two ago. It goes without saying a simple action has refueled my creativity.
Last week I signed up for a local community education wheel throwing ceramics class with a bunch of friends. It starts this week, meets for 5 sessions, and the teacher is great and is allowing us to come in on our own time outside of class and work. I’ve been thinking of all sorts of ideas. I have so many areas of interest and have the idea of incorporating some of my handspun into some porcelain pieces. It’s been a while since I’ve done wheel throwing so we will see if any of my designs make it to fruition.
7.28 spun, originally uploaded by robayre.
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.
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