Stash Busting

Health, Work, Getting Back to Joy

by CZeitler

If you are just here for the crafting content then skip down to ******************.

My mental health and work are both fine for now. I took the bull by the horns and spoke to my big boss and she assured me that she has seen a difference in my behavior, she appreciates that I have taken steps, and at present I do not feel like my job is immediate risk. I still need to do work to get the trust back, however, this medication is helping me a great deal so I feel that it is in achievable task. My physical health is much better, I am still taking it easy this week and I have taken time off in a couple of weeks, I already had it planned, so that I can have some fun. My primary doctor is moving, however I am not very happy with her anyway so I am not considering that a loss. She ignored my requests instead of simply explaining to me that the Diabetes medicine I wanted will not count against my deductible. So now I am almost out of medication and have not heard from the pharmacy yet, so I have to call them on Monday so they can bug my doctor. Yay.

Yesterday I had my MRI, I do not recommend having a wrist MRI if you can avoid it. The technician was amazing, and I did treat myself to Barnes and Noble afterwards and a lovely Chinese Buffet.

I am doing everything that I can to take plenty of time for myself, reminding myself that I am not an extrovert so judging my activity level against extroverts is not fair to me. I need to protect at least one day a week for me to completely decompress. I enjoy Asian foods that I can just throw into the steamer, if I have to go to Buffalo or Erie for that once a month then that might be what I have to do.

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As I am typing this, though I will not post this until Sunday, I am listening to a wonderful presentation through Lesson Face, provided by MAFA, about weaving chenille for chenille rugs. I am loving this presentation and hope to use up some of the scraps I was gifted with and haven’t known what to do with them.

I am making progress on the Christmas Presents (Yes I know it’s almost March but with a messed up wrist and understanding that I was experiencing depression I think I’m doing alright). I am also working on another secret project, I was sent a kit that I am testing out for a company. If I can post about this in the future I will. I was given a bare two weeks deadline so I hope to make progress on that this weekend.

Oh, I do have a Block of the Month project that I have received all of the kits for and I haven’t even cut one apart yet. I finally pulled them all out of their mailers and I am going to start to cut the pieces that I need for the first set pretty soon.

I still do not have the heddles threaded on my 16 shaft loom, it has been a rotten month so far. March will look up.

The Winter project for Jamestown Weaver’s Guild was to weave a plaid. I did a chart on the website given and warped up for some bookmarks. My first plain weave plaid bookmark is almost finished, then I plan on making some fringe spacing before I start working on a straight twill bookmark. After I have the two samples made I might mess around with an undulating twill.

Okay, health is improving, work is not a panic, I’m regaining interest in projects, I am letting myself find joy in projects again. I have three things going on, only one that I can share pictures of, oops. In March I will be teaching a class on how to make Scissor Fob’s at the Quilt Guild, which should be a fun learning experience for everyone. Then during the summer I will be teaching the Scissor Fobs as well as Needle Tatting to the Jamestown Weaver’s Guild. My other Weaving guild knows what I am capable of, so I do not know what they would like me to teach this year. I am, honestly, hoping for some pay so that I can put it back for future learning opportunities.

Until next time remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract!

Days 3-4 Progress

by CZeitler

Okay so it turns out I probably did not need to have 6+ projects prepared. Admittedly without physical therapy and a minor emergency at work I probably would have had another 6 hours to spin, alas, that did not happen. Physical therapy and work emergency’s trumped spinning, oh well.

I have managed to get almost half-way through my first spin, I keep having to remind myself that these are jumbo bobbins and they take a while to fill up.

You can see the progress I made over 2 days, surprisingly the fiber for my first half of the spin should run out just when the bobbin is full. Then I get to take this off and start on the second half. Since I will get home about 10:30pm I might take my hour winding down time to see if I can finish this. Then I’m up in the morning for physical therapy before work. Perhaps I can get an hour in then. I have just decided, I’m not going to worry too much about it. I’ll get through today and tomorrow, spend whatever time I can spinning tomorrow between meetings, and have a ton of fun with it. Hopefully I win a prize for my art skein, but even if I do not I will have had a ton of fun!

Happy Spinning and remember to live life A Little More Abstract!

Spin In Day 1

by CZeitler

Good Morning, I’m posting this well before the Spin In Begins. Today the spin in starts at noon, I will be home at 2:30pm until about 5pm. I hope to spin my first project today, which is my wild skein. For this skein I purchased two ounces of curls, the vendor had some emergency vet bills I wanted to help with, and will use these couple of ounces in addition to the other fiber I had already prepped.

Left: Two plastic bags of autumnal colored wool locks. Right: Two plastic boxes labelled Mohair, several bags of various wool curls, cloud fiber, flicked open locks, and rolags.

For my first regular spin I plan on using my two bags/baskets of fiber bits to spin up randomly on two bobbins.

Various bits of fibers with a green bobbin in an African Bolga Basket.

I think right now, except for the art yarn, I hope to do all of my spinning beforehand and plying on the last day (Maybe Friday just to ensure everything is counted.) For my second spin I hope to spin up my pound of Unicorn in the Library from HipStrings.

Purple, pink, black, grey, white mixed roving labelled The Unicorn in the Library.

If I get around to a fourth spin, third for credit, I have two batts I would love to see spun up and center plied. One is mostly purple while the other is mostly black and sparkly. The sparkly one has been split into three parts, and both have been kept in plastic boxes.

Next would be a winter gradient set I obtained from paradise fibers fiber of the month club some time back, I’m not sure if I would split each section in half to spin them onto separate bobbins, or just spin and do a center pull ball in the end.

Four balls of roving clockwise from top right: Black and purple; white and light blue; light blue and gray; medium blue and black.

If I finish spinning that up then I can work on the highland package I received from Paradise Fibers not too long ago.

Roving balls from left to right; Dusty blue; Green above beige; Red; White on a piece of cloth.

Should I manage to finish all six of these spins, including the wild skein, then I still have a variety of fibers to choose from. 3-4 sock packs that I can later dye, several exotic fibers, still a few more Paradise Fibers Boxes that I have not managed yet. I hope to get through at least three of my spins, especially since I loaded up long spins in the first three (well really the two that count for yardage) allowing myself some freedom within the last three.

I am very excited to get started, I’m not sure how I am going to last through work today! I might have to see if I can sneak one of my drop spindles in with me so I can spin a bit during my lunch break. Live Life a Little More Abstract!

Preparing for the Spin Together October 3-10th

by CZeitler

I decided to join team Paradise Fibers, as I mentioned last post. Due to this, I have spend the past weekend preparing my fibers to start spinning on the 3rd.

I spent September 20th preparing the locks, flicking open ends, carding a few rolags, creating some cloud fiber. The spin should be tons of fun, I even found some white and black mohair locks to add even more texture. I’m debating if I want to ply this with a sequined thread I have or just leave it as a wild singles. I’ll see how it looks on the 3rd after I spin it. Right now I plan on spinning this on the 3rd so that I have the rest of the week to get as much mileage as I can.

I also took each piece of roving that I planned on using for this spin and split them in half so that I could have an approximately equal spin on two different bobbins. Using a basket and a bag I kept the two halves of the spin separated, but I also pulled off pieces of each main roving into 4-10 inch segments. After I had the fiber divided, I also added in some different colors that went with the theme, I rolled each section of roving into a little nugget. This will make it easier for me to pick out a random nugget of fiber to spin from. I also put a bobbin in each container, these combined with the one on the wheel give me two to ply from and one to ply onto.

I am super excited for this spin, it has actually given me to motivation to ply up some singles I have had resting on my weaving bobbins, but that is a spin for a different post.

Until next time remember to live life A Little More Abstract!

Really Busy Week

by CZeitler

Non-Crafting Content, skip to second set of asterisks to skip this part. **Sorry I have not gotten around to posting anything last week, the world seemed to explode around me. A colleague found out that she needs surgery because her IUD impaled her uterine wall, I had 2 staff meetings, 2 major projects, a transgendered person answered my “What do you want for Christmas?” with “A Vagina” (this is the first time bottom surgery has been brought up as even a consideration in conversation with this individual), and I’m trying to balance paying the guy painting my house with paying my school taxes and other bills. It’s been a bit stressful. Of course, I am still a very lucky individual. I’m going to have a conversation with my transgendered individual this afternoon, my colleague is getting her surgery and the shifts will be covered easily, I have one project complete and a handle on the other, my federal stimulus came through so I have the beginning of October’s Bills covered, I made a deposit payment on the painting, and I can concentrate on saving for the taxes. **

The painting of my house is going amazingly well. Some basic repairs and filling in of cracks, left by prior contractors, had to be done but now the paint is going on smoothly. There had been no prior discussion of painting my railings, which once I saw them against the new paint, had to be accomplished. I looked up painting color schemes and settled on a coral that would look amazing against the new color. I purchased the spray paint and started working on this new aspect to the project.

House painted a beachcomber blue with coral railing. Please ignore dead weeds and dryer vent.

In addition to my adventures in painting, this makes me want to re-paint my entire interior which is not realistic at this point, I’ve got two bathroom vents that need replaced and my external garage still needs to be turned into a workspace. Ah Well.

I’ve found some time to spin this week, I managed to finish spinning and plying a dark sparkly set of fibers. I cannot believe that after plying I had 500 yards of yarn. I believe after washing I can safely assume that I still have over 400 yards of black sparkly yarn.

From left to right: Mixed fiber in blacks, blues, purples, with sparkles throughout nestled in a basket. Close up of a 2 Ply yarn using the black and blue fiber on a red bobbin. Close up of black and blue singles on a blue bobbin before plying.

I look forward to figuring out what I want to do with this yarn when it is finished drying. This is not the only spin I have been working on, I have also been experimenting with the September Fiber of the Month Club Box/Bag I received from Paradise Fibers and the autumn spin I already had planned. I did a spin with the autumn fibers included and a spin with out the autumn fibers, already I think I am going to add in the autumn fibers. I then started knitting a test swatch for a garter tab cast on triangle shawl.

From Left to Right: Garter tab cast on shawl with combined autumn spin 2ply yarn sitting on a grey armchair. Test spin on Schacht ladybug wooleewinder bobbin in red. Mixed autumn colored fibers, tiny samples, for autumn test spin.

I love how this spin turned out so much I went stash diving and decided to pull out all of the fiber I can find that will fit into this criteria, I also added in some yellow for a bit of a bright splash. I have not started this spin quite yet however. There is an event called Spin Together 2020 that I have signed up to participate in on Team Paradise Fibers. This event runs from October 3-10, so short lived, and is based on yardage, beautiful skeins, or wild spins. I look forward to participating in this event, I’ll try almost anything once!

Still Spinning

by CZeitler

Okay, so the 2 pounds of Shetland Moorit arrived so I am working on carding it into rolags to spin up for my Hap.  I was feeling under the weather a bit so in between my knitting, crocheting, laundry and dishwasher loads, I curled up in bed to look over past issues of Spin-Off Magazine.  While paging through I happened across a pattern for little wrist cuffs as well as ankle cuffs.  Each of these take a bit over 100 yards of fiber, well I have all sorts of little scraps so I decided to go for it.  In December I purchased the international box from Camaj Fiber Arts Spinning Boxes, she was selling off past boxes.  There were some very pretty fibers based on Korea and Norway/Finland that I decided to spin into a little skein.

IMG_2178  I absolutely LOVE how it turned out.  However, it is only 78 yards.  Yes, not even enough for one of the patterns.  Oh well, I have more little samples (I have already started) so I will be incorporating two mini batts, and three more random colored combed tops that look like they will fit the bill.  I am already almost half way through spinning this batch, it already looks like more singles than the last attempt.

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The patterns are from Spin Off Winter 2007 pages 46-47 titled “Anklettos and Wristlettos: Fringe Benefits” by Phreadde Davis.

Hopefully once I have this yarn spun, plied, set, and dried, I will not be either bored with this idea, working on the hap, or ready for more installments from Jimmy Beans Wool.  I will admit to a small amount of introspection, I am aware that I have been keeping myself too busy to really take the time to miss my Mom.  February tends to stink since we lost Dad near the end, I have already found myself crying for no apparent reason simply because it hit me hard that she isn’t around.  Oh well, back to distractions!

Happy Crafting!

Roving Reporter: The 3 Things you Need to Knit with Handspun by Kate Larson

by CZeitler

https://www.interweave.com/article/spinning/roving-reporter-3-things-need-knit-handspun-yarn/

This is a great article, though I found the title a little misleading.  I read it as “3 things you HAVE to knit with handspun” what the title really means is “Three things that enable you to knit with handspun”.  Instead of project suggestions as I thought it is tips to allow you to use your handspun in patterns by discovering how much you have as it relates to the amount needed for a given project.  I am very glad that I read it, though now I want suggestions, LOL.

Happy Crafting!

Tweed-Ish

by CZeitler

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I have some batts that I carded up with some slightly sticky wool.  I had originally thought to sell these sticky batts, but have since decided that I would wash these batts and see how they spin up.  Right now they are spinning up almost like a tweed yarn, which is what I thought they might do.  There are too many Nepps (little broken pieces of wool) in the yarn for me to get a smooth product.  I am not great at getting a consistently thicker yarn, especially with an uneven batt like this, but I think I am doing an alright job.  I will confess to enjoying the speed at which this batt spun up, and I look forward to seeing how it will look plied with something.  I think that the actual singles are brighter than this picture is giving them credit for, I might have to ply them with a white to get the effect I want, or maybe find another of these batts that this will look good plied with.  At this moment I think I will try to create a 3 ply yarn of a thicker weight that might make a nice crocheted shawl or lap afghan.  Depending on how thick the yarn is and how many yards I manage to get from it.

Happy Crafting!

 

Using Up Stash

by CZeitler

Mom found a couple of patterns in one of her Plastic Canvas Books and wanted to see how they would turn out!  Without buying anything new, these are the patterns she found and they are made up to be magnets.  If you excuse the shadows of my hands trying to aim the camera, these are just beautiful.  The Celtic Knot on the left and top right is made out of two shades of green with a white background using long stitches.  The heart on the right and bottom right is made from pink, red, and gold using a combination of long and regular stitches on a heart shaped piece of canvas.

They both turned out great, Go Mom!

Happy Crafting!

Progress, or not

by CZeitler

So spinning every day was a great idea.  Unfortunately it did not take into account my being sick enough that dragging myself to work was about all I could do.  Therefore my spinning has fallen off track a bit, not irreparable though.  While I will not actually get 365 days of spinning this year, my goal was to take each month as it comes and deal with it that way.  January is sort of shot, I missed about 3 days, but I will finish strong and start up with February.

Speaking of starting up, Mom is almost fully recovered from her previous illness.  She has decided to see how many crafts she can finish with the supplies we already have laid in.  Essentially she has declared this her year of Stash Busting Crafts!  So far this month she has crocheted up 2 cowls from yarn she had on hand, I will put up pictures of those in my next post.

I have decided to accompany her on this quest, though for my major tapestry project I will need to purchase more wool in periwinkle, though I will admit to a desire to see how much of that project I can get done with the supplies I had already laid in.  (Warp threads, white weft, and some singles spun in periwinkle, with an addition of gold silk I hope to use to accent a particular portion).

I must freely confess I fear I am already making excuses for not following through, since my next thought is that I wanted to purchase some white wool to test dying techniques.  I suppose the best way of doing that would be to dig out what white wool I already have (alpaca, sheep, etc) and plan on using that to dye with until I have figured out which, if any, of the natural dyes get me the colors I want.  If the natural dyes don’t work the way I want then I will have just used some of my wool-stash anyway.  My next experiment is probably going to be centered around washing the batts that I carded containing ‘sticky wool’.  I am hoping that there is some lanolin or other processing oils contained in the batts that is making them sticky.  If that is the case then a good hot soak should loosen up the oils enough for me to wind up with a fluffy batt.  If not then washing with Dawn, if they start to felt then I might try to spread it thin and experiment with felting.

I am sort of excited to let the wool speak for itself and decide what it will become.  I am still spinning thin with the blues, now that I am feeling better.  So many exciting things going on!

Happy Crafting!