Art Yarn

The Week After EGLFC

by CZeitler

This past week has been an absolute blast of creativity as well as work ‘stuff’.  On Tuesday I mailed out 4 applications for Civil Service Tests for Librarian positions in the larger county to the north of me.  If I get a job there it will be a 90 minute commute each way, however I will be able to stay in my home for a couple of years and save up a down payment on a home there.  I also re-interviewed for a position at one of my current jobs, I am not saving this as my only hope right now.  There is a job in Philadelphia I will submit an application for this afternoon.  Since my skill level is quite high, it really is a matter of which library will obtain me.  Enough about work, let’s talk about crafts!

Since I’ve gotten home I have been forcibly reminded why I need to make time to craft.   The weekend was amazing, and just in time since this past Saturday was the first anniversary of my mom’s passing.  I had a lot of fun, and this creativity stuck with me when I came home.  I have quite a few projects, KALs and more, that I want to be working on.  I took the time to finish the two soles for my knitted slippers for the Jimmy Beans Wool October-December project.

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They are the width of the large, however when I went to measure my foot, I decided to go with the length of the medium.  There seems to be enough yarn left over to create a pair of kids slipper soles, however I want to make sure I am not going to need this yarn for anything else before committing to that project.  I will confess that when I really got into ensuring that these were done they took about 2 days of knitting each.

I received the crochet project and have begun, though I have not gotten very far yet.

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I did manage to learn a new stitch, that is foundation single crochet.  This is going to be the basis of the slipper sole, I planned on working on this, however I managed to forget a stitch marker.  While the pattern does not call for any stitch markers I feel that it will be easier to keep track of where I am supposed to join the round using a slip stitch if I have a marker there.  Each sole is a total of 9 rounds, so even with the rather extreme number of stitches I will be working with toward the end these should not take too long.

The crochet hook I am working with is a Furls hook in an attempt to stave off carpal tunnel syndrome as early as possible.  With my extreme interest in all forms of craft, I need to keep my hands in tact as much as possible.  You may also notice underneath my project bag and hook is a colored piece of paper, that is my first experiment in ‘art’ since college.

IMG_2903This is a simple wash with watercolors on a special pad of watercolor paper with cheap Walmart watercolors.

I actually don’t think this turned out too badly, I plan on using similar techniques in the near future, though I believe I will have to work much harder to obtain clear color results.  The pigmentation does not layer very well at all when wet. I hope to try and improve this when I next have a stretch of time not occupied by crochet or spinning.  It is entirely possible that I will have better results if I try to work with Tube Watercolors instead of the hard palette, also if I try to wet the pigments more thoroughly.

7B969592-7C70-44CD-8E68-B82CC99F95D4The final crafts I managed this week were started at EGLFC. The first is to knit a lace sample with handspun Shetland yarn.  I love how this turned out, and fully intend to knit up the grey and black samples of yarn I have available. The other craft was to create stick-on sheets that can be applied to linen for crewel embroidery.  I found some sheets that I can print onto as well as several designs that were labelled on images.google.com as available for reuse.

I believe that these are going to be very difficult to spin the samples for and stitch, I really look forward to the challenge.  The D&D Dragon on the bottom left is certainly going to be a project for when I am a very good stitcher, until then I have plenty to work on .

Remember to Live Life A Little More Abstract!

Second Day of EGLFC

by CZeitler

I will confess that the first day of classes I spent most of the night in the classroom spinning and carding.  When talking to one of the other students we were a little loud and around 10pm were asked to be quiet because people were trying to sleep.  I managed to finish what I wanted to work on, brought my notebook upstairs to work on, and finally slept around 12:30am.  I woke up just before my alarm at 7am to drink an energy drink and get ready for the day.  Okay, so I then went down to the classroom to do a bit of organizing and tidying.  I knew that we would have opportunity to do some indigo dyeing that day, therefore I decided I wanted to have two skeins ready to be dyed.  The first was a grey skein, the second was chocolate merino, they were both two ply yarns.  As you can see the chocolate merino looked almost navy blue, in certain lights it looks almost black.

After those skeins I kept making embroidery yarn as well as using each of the colors of Shetland to make yarn to try colorwork knitting.  I also decided to make a gradient of white, grey, and black, to try some lace knitting.  I confess I wound up spinning and not knitting.

After an amazing day of spinning, dyeing, as well as carding wool, learning techniques, good food, and wonderful company, we were given an opportunity to do a bit of shopping.  There was an alpaca truck (with alpaca) where I purchased some amazing random locks, a yarn truck (where I bought a Batt and Mini Skeins), and various individuals selling out of their trunks.  I managed to buy a cross holder (for weaving), a shuttle, a book, and lotion bar.

The fashion show was that evening.  There was some distressing news, we were told before the banquet that one of the instructors husband died and had been found earlier that day.  The banquet was lovely, the stress upset my stomach so I missed the first part of the fashion show.  I managed to see some of it, fortunately they had all of the models come through one more time.  I then tried to go back to the classroom to find it locked.  This turned out to be for the best since I spent hours listening to and speaking with the other students and our instructor, as well as discovering a brand of champagne that I not only did not mind but actively enjoyed.

The final day was lovely, with an amazing breakfast, decent lunch (with bread pudding) and a day working on our own pursuits.  For the final day we learned about core spinning, making a lockspun yarn, and chain plying while inserting locks.

I will certainly be planning on saving for the next EGLFC in 2 years.  I am fully converted to attending classes in person.  This class has me looking at my stash in a whole new way.  I love the idea of using some of this yarn as crewel embroidery.  My mind is firing on all creative cylinders, I feel quite rejuvenated.  Remember to live life A Little More Abstract!

51 Yarns to Spin Before You Cast Off by Jacey Boggs Faulkner

by CZeitler

Before getting into a review, I have to state that this book ROCKS!  So does the contest Jacey Boggs Faulkner is running on Ravelry, Instagram, etc. to give away subscriptions to her magazine Ply.  #PlyMagazine

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Yarn is not nearly as simple as non-crafts-people would have you believe.  “There’s like, bulky, and really tiny, right?” ; “What do you mean linen is from a plant, it’s a cloth right?” ; “Doesn’t that hurt the sheep?” ; etc.  There are plenty of non crafts people that have a clue, so I’m not putting all non crafts people down, just the ignorant ones, lol.  Because of this, for you non crafts people, if you have a SO or loved one that is into any fiber craft, pick up this book so you can start to throw around terms like low-twist singles, coil yarn, or z twist with ease. Or at least have a clue of what they are talking about when they throw those terms around.

For people interested in crafts already, or active crafters this is a great book.  Originally I was going to say, if you like/love/live & breathe spinning then this is a good book for you, but scratch that.  If you have any interest in fiber arts/crafts then this is a great book for you.  I imagine that there are plenty of K&Cs (knitters & crocheters) that see the Koigu yarns (very pretty yarns that seem to come as singles a lot of the time) and have not known that this is only one kind of yarn.  Why should you use 2, 3, or 5 ply yarns?  Why aren’t there many 20 ply yarns?  This is a worsted weight yarn, what do you mean worsted spun?  Etc.  I think that this should be titled 51 Yarns to spin & Knit/Crochet/Weave before you cast off, because I think that any fiber artists would benefit from a deeper understanding of the yarns available for their crafts, how they are constructed, and why they do what they do.

In Short, BUY THIS BOOK!  READ THIS BOOK!

Miscalculation

by CZeitler

It turns out that the Spin Along for the Olympics starts on the 15th, whoopsie.  Oh well.  The ravellenics knit along is going strong.  I’m working on my shawl, a little haphazardly but it will get knit.  I recieved my February 2018 Paradise Fibers box of the month and I really enjoyed the challenge.  They decided to advise that we create a crepe yarn from the supplies they gave us.  I decided to go with that choice.  I did change things up a bit, while they advised that we spin from the top, first one shade of blue then the other and ply them together from there I modified things.  I like carding rolags, not sure why I just get a kick out of them, so I carded the two blues together in a striped rolag formation adding sparkle along the way.  I also didn’t use their silk that they provided instead I spun up some of the silk blend I had left-over from december that I tried to dye black.  It wound up grey instead but I really like how the yarn turned out.  I am also pleased that I have some of the silk blend left.

For the technical side.  I spun the silk blend with the wheel going to the right.  Then I spun all of the merino blue rolags with the wheel going to the left.  Then I put the blues into a center pull ball and plied them with the wheel going to the right.  This means that I had a 2 ply yarn and a silk blend singles all from a wheel going to the right.  Then I plied the 2 ply with the single on the wheel going to the left.  This means that some of the ply twist came undone causing the plied yarn to bubble up a bit.

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The effect wasn’t as extreme as I thought it may have been, but truthfully until I work with it I cannot really judge it.  I am not sure if I am going to just use this as an example for my students and swatch the heck out of it. or try and make it into a project.  It might look cool as a woven purse for example.  Who knows.  I’ll post progress on my ravellenics and spin along later this week or next. ‘Til then, Happy Crafting!

Tour De Fleece

by CZeitler

I am thinking about joining the Tour De Fleece Group on Ravelry this year, 2017.  http://www.ravelry.com/groups/tour-de-fleece

The Tour de Fleece happens at the same time as the famous ride Tour de France.  In this case it runs from July 1st to 23rd with two days of rest, July 10th and 17th.  In theory this means that I would spin and post my results each of these days.  Since I will be obtaining a WooleeWinder as my Birthday Present, I hope that this goal will not only be attainable but enjoyable.  The WooleeWinder that I obtained to go with my Schacht Ladybug spinning wheel is the Bulky version, in order for this to work properly I also had to obtain the Bulky Orifice.  The purpose of the WooleeWinder is so that I will be able to skip switching hooks while I am filling my bobbin.  The bobbin and flyer will work together to fill the bobbin very evenly.  This will have the added benefit of allowing me to fit more on a bobbin, partially because it will be a larger bobbin, but also because the bobbin will fill evenly eliminating the hills and valleys that are naturally created on a bobbin when using hooks.   Since I have obtained the Bulky Plyer Flyer version I will also be able to create more art-yarns that I have been capable of in the past.  I will  have to see how plarn works on this flyer, right now it gets caught in the hooks!

In case you could not tell, I am very excited about this new accessory.  Perhaps I will participate in the Tour De Fleece just so I can show it off, LOL.

Happy Crafting

First Completed Project

by CZeitler

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Remember my first attempts at plying yarn?  Well I decided to crochet them into this bracelet.  The orange thread used to sew on the button was not made by me, but the rest of the yarn was.  I managed to use a ‘flaw’ in my plying to create the clasp.  I have fat wrists so I am not going to show this on a wrist, but it fits beautifully and is so deliciously soft!  I plan on wearing it everywhere!  Yay!