In Which I Learn ALL the Fiber Crafts

Rob says I've become obsessed.  I prefer to think of it as having found something I enjoy and having fun with it.

Before I decided to learn to spin, I was contemplating learning to weave.  My yarn stash was growing and I thought that weaving would be another way to use up some of it.  I did some weaving on a floor loom when I was a kid at Camp Yonahlossee (now Yonahlossee Resort) and my mother still has the pillow I made, and I think a place mat my sister made as well.  But that was the extent of my experience. I was debating getting a floor loom, but decided I didn't really have the floor space, and then I ultimately decided that learning to spin was what I wanted to do next.

Fast forward about a year, and now that I'm spinning and creating even more yarn, the urge to weave returned.  I decided to go the cheaper and smaller route to begin with, so a couple of weeks ago I bought a 15" Schacht Cricket rigid heddle loom.  I finally got around to warping it and figuring out how to use it, and here's what I've done so far.

I started with a simple scarf project in the book that came with the loom, and using the yarn that came with the loom as well.  It's a good thing, because what you can't see in that picture is how horrible the majority of my edges are and the 4 or 5 places where I missed a thread or two when running the shuttle through the warp.  You might be able to tell where I'm not quite even all the time either, but that's what practice is for I suppose.


 This is a small loom, so I may still want a floor loom eventually, but for now I think I'll have fun making scarves, maybe some coasters, and who knows, maybe even some place mats, a la Camp Yonahlossee.

And there are still more fiber crafts to conquer....bobbin lace anyone?

The Closest I'll Ever Get to the Tour de France

The Tour de France started yesterday, July 5th and goes until July 27th, with only the 15th and 21st as rest days.  That's 21 days of riding a bicycle, in other words, a lot of damn bicycle riding.

In the fiber world however, that means it's time for Tour de Fleece!  Yes, fleece, as in the wool off of a sheep.  The primary goal of Tour de Fleece is to spin every day that the Tour de France rides.

There's no official website, but there are a lot of groups and teams on Ravelry participating.  Each person chooses their own goals for the event, and some of the groups do prizes for meeting your goals, but it's really just about setting a goal for your spinning and trying to achieve it. 

This is my first year participating since it's the first year I've been a spinner.  My goals are pretty modest in my opinion.  My primary goal is to spin at least 10 minutes every day of the event.  This week should be relatively quiet at work, so I should be home at a decent hour every night, but who knows what it will be like after that, so just making time to spin every day might turn out to be a challenge.

My secondary goal is to get as much of this box of fiber spun as possible.  That lovely dreaminess is 40 ounces of Three Waters Farm polwarth/silk.  The plan is to spin it into a 3-ply yarn, dye it an as yet undetermined color, and knit a sweater out of it.  40 ounces is probably way more than I need for a sweater, even for my larger size, but I wanted to have plenty to mess up with in both the spinning and the dyeing.

I started spinning this fiber a little this week before the official start of Tour de Fleece, but I've almost got one bobbin full of singles.  That's not quite 4 ounces on the bobbin at the moment.

Knowing me, 21 days of spinning the exact same thing might get a little boring, so I may spin something with a little color a few of those days (I can already imagine how handy it would be to have a 2nd wheel), but right now I'm motivated to get a lot of this done.  The polwarth/silk blend drafts wonderfully so it's very relaxing to spin.

That's not all I've got going on though, stay tuned tomorrow for a peek at my newest fiber craft.

Random Things on a Saturday

Today was a little bit of everything.

My parents came down around lunch time to bring me a small secretary they had at their house that I planned to make my new writing desk.

Cute isn't it?

The plan was to make my current "desk", which is really a sewing table/cart more of an actually crafting table where I could use my rigid heddle loom, etc.  Unfortunately, I didn't realize how deep the top overhang is on this desk, so when I open my laptop on it about 3 inches is hanging off the desk.  So it's now out in the living room being pretty with pictures on top of it, and I'm using the same desk.  I'll just have to move my laptop when I want to weave I guess.

We went to Fairview Dairy Bar for lunch, and then while Rob & Dad piddled around the house, Mom & I went to the yarn store, Hallmark, and Belk.  I actually did not buy a single thing at Find X Design, the local yarn store, so I was very proud of myself. Mom bought some yarn, a pattern book, and some needles, so we still did our part to help the economy.

I made my own economic contributions at Hallmark & Belk though.  Our Hallmark has an attached boutique which sells Danskos and I finally bought the brown tooled leather ones I've been wanting for a while.   I have these same shoes in Black & wear them all the time. At Belk I bought a t-shirt.  They also had Fiesta dinner plates as singles, so I bought a few more colors of plates to add to our every day dishes.  I've been wanting some more plates, but haven't wanted to buy full 4 piece place settings, which was the only thing I'd been able to find before now.

After Mom & Dad left I did some knitting, finished cleaning & sorting the bathroom cabinets I started this morning before they arrived, cooked dinner, then did some more knitting while I watched TV with Rob.

So nothing too exciting today, but all in all a good day.  Now I have a date with my spinning wheel because Tour de Fleece (more about that tomorrow probably) started today and I can't fail on the first day!

Happy Independence Day!

I'm cheating a little today & just sharing with you two of the songs I always think about when I think about July 4th.

First up, my favorite "I love America" song will always be "God Bless the USA" by Lee Greenwood.  This song just always makes me feel glad to have been born in the US.

The second song's setting is the 4th of July, but it's really about achieving freedom of a different sort, Martina McBride's "Independence Day".

If you're in the US, I hope you have a great holiday.

Are there songs that you always think of on the 4th of July?

Throwback Thursday

I love "Throwback Thursday" because it never fails to bring back a memory I usually haven't thought about in a while.

This is one of my favorite pictures of me, my brother & my sister.  I believe we were about 7 (me), 4 (Lee), and 2 (Julie) in this picture.  The picture was taken on the front porch of the single wide trailer my parents owned at Atlantic Beach, NC until I was about 10 years old.

We had some great times in that trailer park.  It was on the sound side, so we swam & fished constantly.  I learned to eat oysters by going down into the sound with the old men at low tide and pulling them off the corrugated steel wall and eating them raw.  We only went to the actual beach occasionally because it involved walking several blocks and water was water to us.

Part of the trailer park is still there, but actual houses  have been built right on the sound.  What used to be a tangled mass of scrub and brush next door is now a chain hotel.  It was a whole different world back then, but it was our world, at least for large portions of each year.

Celebrating the Baby-to-be

My sister's getting ready to have a baby.  She lives just south of San Francisco ("on the peninsula" for those who know what that means) so I only get to see her a couple of times a year and usually because she & her husband come to North Carolina.

My mother & I flew out there a few weeks ago to throw her a baby shower, and we had a great time. Not only was the shower fun, but we got to do a little mother/daughter time as well with a nice lunch and massages at the spa.

Pictures are better than words sometimes....

Julie & Phil opening some gifts that arrived in the mail.

This baby will definitely be raised a Tarheel even if he does live on the left coast!

7 months pregnant, but still gorgeous.

Mom, Julie & Me (and some of the "spread").

Jen & Ava (Phil's sister-in-law and niece) naming the children's stories.

Decorating blocks.

The finished blocks.

Getting some practice in....

All the Hayes & Hartsteins that were there.

Miles the nephew-dog enjoying the ride

I love my nieces (my brother's girls) to death, but we're all very excited that Julie & Phil are having a boy.  I can't wait to meet him!

NaBloPoMo...Mo...Mo...

I decided it's time to commit to NaBloPoMo again.  As Rob pointed out, when I say I'm going to post every single day I come up with something to say, but otherwise I go weeks without posting anything.

As usual, it's not that I don't have things to post about in general, it's just that I think I'll sit down and type up a post at some future time & I never get around to it until it seems like too much time has passed since whatever I was going to write about occurred.  So be forewarned that I've been saving up a couple of weekend recaps, knitting projects, etc. to post about this month.

The BlogHer theme this month is "decade" since they're celebrating 10 years of BlogHer.  I may use some of the prompts, or I may not, it all depends on whether I have other things to talk about already.

I'm also contemplating coming up with some consistent themes for days of the week.  Not sure yet whether it's going to be an every week thing or what, but I'm considering using the Facebook favorite "Throwback Thursday" and I might create "Finished Object Friday" assuming I can actually come up with a finished object every Friday.

Whatever I do, I'm here every day for the month of July, so come back often!

A Weekend in the Mountains - Part 2

If you haven't read the first part of this, you might want to start here.

There isn't a lot open in small towns on Sunday, so Sunday morning we drove up to Grandfather Mountain.  Growing up in North Carolina, I had been there several times, but not in years, and Rob had never been. 

He actually smiled for this one!

They have several types of wild animals who for various reasons can no longer live in the wild.  We timed our visit right because we were able to see "enrichment" activities for several of the animals and that means they came up close where you could really see them.

Bald eagles

Male bear

Female bear

Female cougar

Male cougar

We drove on up to the top of the mountain to the swinging bridge.  The bridge is not nearly the frightening thing that it was when I was a kid.  It seems to me that it's been stabilized a great deal since then, but maybe it's just my imagination.  It was extremely windy on top of the mountain.  I mean push you around the parking lot, hang on to the rails so you don't get blown off, windy, so we decided not to cross the bridge.  We were worried less about the bridge than we were about the open rocks on the other side where there's nothing to hold on to.  So we were cautious adults.  Hey, we live in NC, it's not like we can't ever go back!

Yeah some people were crazy enough to hang out on top of that big rock in the wind, but not me!

After a stop for lunch, we drove out to Penland to check out the school.  Classes had just ended last week, so we just drove around and checked things out.  The school has a little different focus than the John C. Campbell Folk School, which we've been to a couple of times, but it seems like a nice place.

We stopped at Barking Spider Pottery near the school and bought a new piece for our ledge.  I didn't think to take a picture of it before I put it up on the ledge, so sorry for the crappy picture. 

It's the one on the right.

We drove in to Burnsville for an early dinner at a restaurant we like there, which doesn't seem to have a website, but it's called In the Garden. Then we made our way back to the Inn for the night.

Monday morning we got up and headed home.  All in all it was a nice weekend away and I look forward to going back to the area again and hopefully someday calling it home.

A Weekend in the Mountains - Part 1

Rob and I headed to the mountains this weekend.  We've spent the past couple of years checking out small mountain towns, looking for the area we'd like to purchase some property for weekends and eventually live there when we retire.  We really like the Burnsville area, so this weekend we headed to nearby Spruce Pine, just one county over to check out that area as well.

We left Friday morning and took our time driving up.  We went a little out of our way to stop in Black Mountain for lunch and a little wandering around.

I spotted some of Sue Dial's gorgeous buttons in the yarn shop there.

I was very tempted to purchase 4 of these for the members of the Sock Monkey Sisterhood, but I resisted.

We got to Spruce Pine in the afternoon and checked in to the lovely Richmond Inn.  We've discovered that we prefer staying in a Bed and Breakfast when we're spending a weekend away.  It's enjoyable to meet other travelers over breakfast and have a nice place to hang out when we're not out & about.

The Penland School of Crafts is not far from Spruce Pine, so art there is a lot of art and artists.  The Inn's neighbor is apparently somewhat of an artist as well.

We had dinner Friday evening at a great restaurant called The Tropical Grill.  Fabulous food and very friendly people.  Then we wandered around downtown for a while, and saw some more art, that was a little more practical this time. 

Saturday morning we headed back to historic downtown Spruce Pine for a while to investigate the shops that had been closed the night before.  The Toe River Arts Council was having an event with several artists selling their art, and I might have purchased a few things.

After that, we drove out towards Bakersville.  We went by a piece of property that was for sale, that looked somewhat promising online for a very good price, but after looking at it, decided it wasn't really what we were looking for.  We went into Bakersville, which is tiny, but it had a couple of art galleries where we browsed for a bit. 

In Bakersville we saw a sign for a wolf sanctuary.  If you know Rob, you know he has a fascination with wolves, so we started following the signs.  We had great timing because they are only open for tours on Saturdays certain parts of the year and this Saturday was the first time this year they'd been open.  We saw some gorgeous wolves, and even got to pet one of them.

After the wolves we drove around a bit and drove over to Little Switzerland just to see it.  We went back to the Inn to relax a bit before dinner, then had another wonderful dinner, this time at Knife & Fork.  They have some very unique items on their menu.  Rob had braised rabbit, which was very good.  I opted for a more traditional steak and potatoes, but the blueberry tart with lemon curd that I had for dessert was different and delicious.

Back at the Inn, one of the resident animals took a liking to Rob's lap.  Actually, she wasn't really particular about whose lap she was in, but I was knitting, so I guess she found his more relaxing at the time.

*In the interest of not going on too long, I'm going to chop this up in to two posts, so more tomorrow.

Spinning a Yarn

I've really been enjoying spinning lately.  Practice makes you a better spinner and being better at it makes me enjoy it more I guess.

I finished some Three Waters Farm Bluefaced Leicester (BFL) right before I went to Carolina Fiber Frolic, and I chain plied it while I was at the event.  I still put a little too much twist in the single and in the ply, but it's a usable yarn.  I washed it today finally and it helped relax the twist a bit.

Skeined up, but before washing

After washing

Friday night I finished spinning the second bobbin of a braid of Polwarth/Silk from Gale's Art  and didn't even think about the fact that I should have let that bobbin "rest" overnight before plying because I was too excited.  This is probably my best skein so far as far as twist goes.  The singles were probably a little over twisted, but it all seemed to even out in the plying because the yarn is very balanced.  I did this as a two ply fractal spin and I like the way it turned out.

Right after plying

After a bath

Last night I pulled out some more Three Waters Farm BFL that are dyed in special colorways for a Ravelry group I'm in. 

The multi-colored one is called Blue Sunset, and the other is just Burnt Orange.  My original plan was to spin each braid into a single and then ply them together in a two-ply.  I did a sample spin last night and I liked the resulting yarn. 

Bad picture, but you get the general idea

But I started spinning the Blue Sunset first, and the more I spin, the more I just can't see diluting these colors by plying with the orange all the way through.  So I think I've decided that I'm going to chain ply both braids and that way I'll have a multi-colored yarn and a coordinating orange yarn that I can use in a project together somehow.

You can't see the orange underneath, but this shows most of the rest of the colors.

I'm spinning this braid a lot slower this time and working on making my singles more consistent in thickness.  I still have so much to learn about spinning that sometimes I feel like I don't have a clue what I'm doing, but then I remember there was a time when I felt that way about knitting (not that I know everything there is to know about knitting).

Now I just need to figure out what to knit with the new yarn I'm making!

Do Chickens Dance?

My middle niece's first communion was EARLY this morning, so we drove up to Cary to spend the day with my family.  As I did for her older sister, I knit her veil.  She's 8 years old, so I'm not sure how impressed she was by it, but I think all the adults liked it at least.

She enjoyed being the center of attention for the first half of the day, but was glad when all the picture taking was over.

Can you see the "I'm so tired of smiling" smile?

With her father (my brother)

My sister & her husband came in from California for the weekend.  This was the first time I'd seen her since she got pregnant, so it was fun to "meet" my future nephew for the first time.

My sister in law's parents came up from Florida as well.

We went to lunch at Lucky 32 and it was a gorgeous day to sit outside and eat.  All three nieces were excited to see "Prince Phillip" so he kept them entertained.

Learning how to take a selfie

It's rare that my parents get to see all 3 of us at once, so before we took off the dress clothes we took a family pic.

After that we got comfortable...well, some of us.  My brother lost a bet on an NFL playoff game to my sister & her husband, so he had to wear something else for a while....

Dancing Chicken

We take our bet payoffs seriously

Just in case you're curious, if my brother had won the bet, then my brother in law would have been wearing a Duck Dynasty costume instead.

After hanging around for a couple of hours, the late afternoon was spent at the spring carnival held by my nieces' school, but I'd lost my picture taking mojo by that point.  They still have cake walks, and that made my day even though I didn't win.

All in all, a fun day with family.