Craft Enabled, Domestically Disabled

It's been a good crafting week

I'm spinning some yarn, I'm finishing up the temperature scarves (slowly), the first Christmas sweater has one sleeve to go, and my Hawaiian Santa hat has been sewn for the most part, I'm just thinking of what else to add to it.

Today I took a knitting class that was a general "here's how to fix your knitting problems" sort of deal. I think 3/4 of the people who showed up were just there for beginning knitting lessons, but I had a great time actually being told how the hell to do color knitting. My restarted guitar sweater is going a lot better, and I'm signed up for a three week color knitting class in a few weeks!

Crazy amounts of spinning, part two

This is how it started:

This is how it spun:

Crazy amounts of spinning, part one

This is what the raw stuff looks like:

This is how it comes out in the spinning:

I also have this....

which so far I have been reluctant to spin because it's so cute as it is in a little braid!

I think I need to make a cuff-to-cuff jacket with all of this stripey stuff.

 

A very pretty ball of yarn.

It starts out in the raw like this.

Then you spin it onto two spindles in the raw like this. (The second layer of the top batt was mostly blue and pink, hence the second spindle here.)

Now it's spun.

Made some yarn today

Art Yarn

So, when I spin yarn, it is not smooth and fine. It is varying and chunky and funky. This is why I like the book Intertwined by Lexi Boeger, because as far as she's concerned this is ART YARN and doing weird things to it is just fine by her.

So since I had access to the spinning wheel last weekend, and got some free roving, I decided to try some of this.

Skein #1 is T-shirt scraps left over from the quilt, which is told how to do in the book, with brown (free) alpaca roving. The book says to use 1 inch wide scraps, but I thought that was kind of huge for this, and indeed, one centimeter wide scraps seemed to work better for me. You're supposed to spin the roving first, then stick an edge of fabric between 2 pieces of roving to start it out. The fabric wraps around the roving (ish), and you use random bits of roving as glue to hold the parts together. Mine has more visible roving than the ones in her book, but whatever. I also ended up spinning a second single of just plain roving and then spinning the two together into yarn to hold it together better.

Skein #2 is done similarly, but with gold cording I had around and some random wool I found in a bin.

Skein #3 is done like usual, but I had saved the tiny scraps of my various colorful handspuns and wove them in there randomly.

Other than the last one, it's pretty tricky stuff to do.

You're probably wondering: what am I going to do with this stuff? I HAVE NO IDEA.

My online gallery of my show is finally up.

I swear, I've been Photoshopping this ALL WEEK.

And here you go. It's just like walking through the thing in person!

Vacation shopping

So, while on vacation, I had access to actual yarn stores, something I don't get to do in my real life.

So I got:

1. enough yarn to make the Saturday In The Park Perfect Dress (and Fitted Knits, the book it is in) after I finish the #12 skirt
2. a cuff-to-cuff cardigan pattern and DPN's to do it in
3. a size 3 (god help me) circular needle to finish the top of the #12 when I get there
4. ROVING ROVING ROVING! Both in tiny bits of color to attempt to do some wall murals, and three batches of 4 oz or so for spinning. I was so excited to find a ROVING STORE in Sisters, Oregon, you have no idea. (The "Dime Store.") I also got a replacement needle for felting.
5. I now have two books on designing my own patterns.
6. And a book on freeform knitting and crochet, with patterns, which is very helpful.
7. Not related to yarn, I got a book on making small mosaics too.

So, good shopping... and I am afraid to check my bank account. Especially since I hit a craft fair and the ultimate bookstore, too.

I didn't get much done on the skirt, though, mostly because I screwed up and had to take out like 2 inches. I suspect I am just doing the same section over and over again.

My dyed silk roving

Well, not quite as I intended, but...

I wanted to have the sleeves done (dear lord, that wasn't even happening), but it's enough of a garment to LOOK like I finished something, so there:

I'd still like to add sleeves at some point, but my magical ability to have random stitches disappear keeps on happening on the sleeves and I keep redoing and redoing, so...argh. Well, at least it's wearable like this.

I also got ONE skein of spinning done before the end (well, I should say, done, photographed, and posted, I couldn't manage to post ball #2 late Sunday night because Sunday was insane busy), but apparently Ravelympics didn't approve of it or something. Sigh. 

It's up!

Anyhoo, it's tussah silk:

My silk spinning workshop was actually really cool once we got going in class. I'm working on some white silk and some more colored silk. Did I mention that we got to dye silk in class? EASIEST DYEING PROJECT EVER. Seriously. I was a design major in college and naturally I had to do fabric dyeing. Sure, it's fun AT THE TIME when you are merrily squirting Procion dye around or tie-dyeing or whatever, but then there's the hours and hours of time it takes to wash out the dye, and/or steam the fabric and crap like that. The aftermath of dyeing is why I rarely do it, because that just sucks. Well, with silk? NOT A PROBLEM. Barely had to do any rinsing at all. Sweetness!

Though I must warn you that if you ever dye a silk cap, then try to do Andean plying with your yarn? Don't. That shit is STICKING to itself like mad. Sigh. 

More on this later.