Another Adventure

So, Skylar and I have been having some fun times.  I've been spinning everything I had in my stash ending up with such interesting creations as:

And:

I'm working on some singles for a sweater:

And culminating in a lovely merino/silk mix:

A couple weekends ago, we have the priviledge of watching some sheep get sheared.  I rescued a fleece from decomposing in a farm yard (from a mix breed meat sheep with a nice coat) and have been playing with it. 

Let me tell you, if you've never had the opportunity to dunk a large amount of not too terribly dirty looking raw fleece into a sink full of cold water and watch the previously clean water turn a very stunning muddy brown, you're missing out.  I was seriously impressed by the hidden yuck.  I don't yet have carders, but a cheap pair of dog slickers have been filling in until my birthday. 

The insanity spreads

I'm a crafter...  I hope one day to be able to call myself a fiber artist.  Until then, I will just spend my time tormenting my friends and family through tours of my projects, supplies, projects and stock. 

However, it appears that it is catching.  My 5yo sees me do things and desperately wants to do them too.  I guess this is the natural order of things.  But - it still increases the level of insanity in the house. 

After many frustrating attempts at knitting, I finally broke down and bought her one of the fancy spool knitters at Michaels.   She plugged away at it for along time, but eventually got tired of it.  I'm still impressed with her progress.

Then her pleas turned to sewing like mama...  I don't have pictures of the first rice bag we made.  But it was fleece and a small square.  Then she convinced me to help her make another one.  She chose some cotton in my stash.  We had to quilt it to some flannel to make it thick enough.  I helped to guide her hands but she ran the peddle mostly fed the fabric.  She also got to fill the bag.  I think that was her favorite part. 

Then I got my spinning wheel.  So far she only treadles.   But, I'm sure that it won't be long before she gets the hang of drafting and is able to spin something. 

And then there's her loom.  She works on this most days.  Generally, she only does a row and then moves on.  But - she seems to think it's alot of fun and very relaxing.  

And, finally, we made some progress on the knitting.  Each painstaking stitch by painstaking stitch, she has worked through these few rows.  "Under the fence, catch the sheep, back we go, and off we leap" :)  She generally likes to work on it on her own, then I find it on the shelf in some state of chaos, fix it and put it back.  Today, before I took the picture, I undid a row that had been knitted with the tail.  She ran out of tail with 3 stitches to go and left it for me.  

So now what?  This afternoon she announced to me that she wanted to make the cats a quilt...  O_o  So we went through my stash and she picked 5 fabrics.   After we'd put them in the washer to wash, I suggested that we look on Pinterest for ideas.  We did for awhile and then she said, "What about something like this." and then she went and got some paper to draw a square with a rectangle attached to it. 

This is my rendition of her idea.  

Next up - ironing her fabrics.  Somehow that doesn't scare me as much as working with her to cut the pieces. 

Not living a dream

I'm a dreamer and a planner.  While this has given me some kind of direction and focus in my life, it's also lead to spending alot of time dreaming rather than living.  I have spent alot of time dreaming about what I want to do with my life and yearning for the next phase to begin.  This last year has been really good for me.  I've been actually doing the things I've spent so long dreaming about. 

As I started to prepare for this summer, I felt myself slip back into my old habits.  My instinct was to spend my time waiting for next fall.  Figuring out how to keep the girls happy enough to leave me alone so that I could pass the days.  And then it hit me.  I need to stop living my dreams and start living the now. 

I have four months of time to enjoy my kids.  We can play games and go places and do stuff.  The now isn't interesting on it's own merits.  It is interesting because of what I make it.  I can sew, knit, dye, spin, design.  I can create things for my kids and help them create things.  I can retake control of my house!  That might just be the most exciting part of all this.  I have spent the last 8 12 umpteen months doing stuff.  I think the last time I was this much in control was when Natalie was a baby.  Once I went back to work, I got busy and stressed and spent my free time with little family.  Then I got pregnant and sick (for what was really a very long time with everything combined).  Once Gwen was born, I plunged into a world of colic, reflux and PPD.  When I emerged from that fog, I entered the crazy world of babysitting.  And then came school.  Right now there is nothing.  I have 2 kids who are at an age where I can actually do things.  Natalie's in school for 3 hours a day and Gwen takes the most obliging naps. 

So, what am I actually going to do with my now?  The possibilities are really endless. 

The answer I think is very anti-climatic.  I think we're mostly just going to relax.  It's time for a change of pace.  No dreams this summer. 

My second quilt

A few months ago, I was fabric shopping with Amanda on a lovely Friday afternoon and I asked her the fateful question "So - how do you pick fabrics to make a quilt?"

Without hesitation she informed me that generally, you find a fabric or two (or a line) that you fall in love with and then you build the quilt from there.  I accepted this and continued browsing.  In the very next aisle, my eyes fell on the blue fabric:

 

I HAD to have it.  So I bought it.  Then, slowly but surely, I started seeing and collecting others from the same line.  I now have most of them.  :)  I cannot tell you how ridiculously happy  these fabrics make me.  When I was struggling to study and work  on school stuff, sometimes I would just look at and think about what I was going to do with my trees.  I finally figured it out.  Enjoy!  (I know I will.  I'm already sitting here cuddling under my wonderful new couch quilt.)

A new journey begins

As I get older, I'm finding that I am happier and happier to follow my own dreams and forget about the dreams that other people think I should have.  Part of that has been exploring using my hands to make things.  In the past I've experimented with clay and wood (an had decent success with wood), but over the last 5 years I've found fiber.  Knitting spoke to me in a way that no other art ever has.  I've spent hours staring at pieces of paper trying to draw something, or feeling blind while trying to make paint do my bidding.  But, when I started knitting it was as if I finally understood something. 

From that I became curious about spinning.  2 years ago my lovely sister got me a drop spindle and some wonderful fiber.  I fell in love.  Once I got the basic ideas, I started dreaming of a wheel.  But the price was always prohibitive.  I finally found a lost orphan wheel on Kijiji and I had to have it. 

A lovely lady from Ravelry worked on it and made it awesome!

I've been busy

I've been really busy. 

School reached it's crunch point, and so I decided it was time to take up numerous new hobbies...  That makes perfect sense right?  Papers were due, assignments needed to be finished, I have finals to study for, and I made my first quilt, perfected my 2-at-a-time self striping sock yarn, learned to needle felt, taught myself how to knit socks 2-at-a-time, bought a spinning wheel..

*sigh*

It's been a good time. 

Here are the goodies.  First the quilt:

Amanda was very patient with me as I picked the fabrics.  At one point I think I had ~20 different bolts layed out trying to decide what to do.

If I had to piece them all you get to look at them all...  (be thankful there aren't pictures of each individual block!)

My first attempt at laying out the pieces.  It got very confusing.

Then we came up with something else.  It seemed good at the time, but I didn't really like it when it was done.

So then I used powerpoint and did this:

And the finished quilt out of the wash!

 So soft...

As I said...  I've been busy.  Here is the yarn that I just listed on Etsy.

This orange gave me fits.  First it was too bright.  So I played with colors and used some blue to tone it down.  Then it was too "dirty"...  So I had to add more orange and red to brighten it up.  The end result is gorgeous!  Such a deep color totally made it worth it. 

Black Widow!!!  Yarns like this make me wish I could find out what people do with them.  I want to see the socks knit from this.

Same with this.  It makes me smile.  

Long Color Repeats #1

The first couple pictures suck...  I fixed the white balance after.

I wanted to try some long color repeats.  I did this a bit ago to make some self striping sock yarn.  I used a different method to make my mini-skeins which I liked better.  I'll blog about that another day though.

This time I used my niddy-noddy and wrapped 4 times before pulling off the loops, tieing in a few places and then doing it again (and again and again).  

 Here's my re-purposed canning pot with water in it getting hot.

I'm REALLY glad I test fit my yarn while it was dry.  The first jars I tried were not big enough.  I know you're supposed to soak the yarn first - but I've tried to move/untangle wet yarn before and it's a nightmare.  So I decided to do this my way and see what happened.  

 I filled the jars and then heated everything and let them soak for an hour.  (That seems like a good time.  It was a bit unintentional since it was while I was trying to convince my kids to go to sleep...)

My dyes...  I have a sad.  I wanted to make up a 0.3% DOS solution for the 1/3 of the skein that each dye was going to be used for.  I CAREFULLY figured out how much dye powder I'd need for each dye for 1% DOS.  Then I divided that to get my 0.3% solution.  However, I forgot/got distracted and neglected to divide by 3.  So - I got really nice bright colors when I was going for pastels.

All heated up.

I added the dye slowly.  I diluted my mixtures quite alot so that I could vary where I added it.  I used a large syringe to start at the bottom with some, then mix with a stir stick.  Then I added more and more and stirred trying my best to get even coverage.  

After it cooked for the suggested times, I added the citric acid and my dye bath nicely exhausted.

Drying.

It's growing on me.  It was supposed to be light blue, pink and purple - but I like this too!