The Never Ending Project

This pink merino is haunting me. Really it is. I think It has been on my wheel for about a month and I'm still not done spinning up the singles. Makes me wonder if it is taking so long because I can only stand pink in small doses. I am determined to get the singles done by the end of the month so I see some major spinning in the next few hours.

I also realized that I haven't shown off my Spunky Eclectic club fibers since I showed the spun up Peace on Earth fiber. So here is January, February, March and April! I ordered an extra of the January because I loved it so much. Each month comes with a slip telling us the month, color way name, fiber content, what inspired the colors and some tips on spinning it up.

Clockwise from top right: January "Birds 'n' Berries" Targhee; February "Abstract" Corriedale with sheep sticker; March "Little Fishes" Merino; April "Robin Red Breast" Gotland

One thing I'm loving about club is that the colors aren't always ones that I would choose on my own, but Amy does such an amazing job with her dye jobs that I love them all. I'm also getting to see, feel and (eventually) spin up new fibers I haven't tried before! Also with the forum on Ravelry, I love seeing how everyone spins their fiber up.

Crafting Spaces

I've decided that instead of one big long boring post on my new place I'm going to break it down into smaller posts. The first one I share is going to be the crafty spaces because, in all honesty, they were the first spaces completely set up. I have two major areas, the first being the sewing closet.

Comes complete with a cat

It sounds kind of silly, but when you live in an efficiency apartment and have a pantry, a small closet, a medium closet and a huge walk-in closet in combination with not having that many clothes to need 3 closets and no space to put the sewing stuff. Closet it is then. Right now my fabric is stored in the cabinet of my bookcase. I might move it up to the closet shelf.

The other crafty area is my desk. I found this at the Salvation Army and was debating if I wanted to spend that much on a desk when a guy waiting for his wife pointed out that it had been there for over 14 days. Well, 14 days means 25% off and I was sold. As you can see there is already a project taking over the desk. I'm trying a new way of scaling up patterns-radial projection. I think it might be my new go-to when scaling up patterns.

So there are my crafty spaces.

Spinning

A quick post on what I've been up to aside from moving to my own little apartment (tour to come in the next post). Sadly there hasn't been much going on but I joined the Spunky Eclectic fiber club in December and spun up the club fiber last week. And let me just say that the club is amazing! I am already spinning up January's club and can't wait for February's.

And I might have had a little too much fun with the photo edit feature...

I've also spun up a bit of some silk hankies on the wheel and was amazed at how quick it was to spin up. Since I needed the bobbin that it was on I made a tiny little hank of the silk. It is spinning up slightly thinner than the columns on the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the penny.

Happy Hanukkah!

Last night was the first night of Hanukkah and of course I forgot to take a picture of my menorah before turning it off (it's electric). So I'll have to take one tonight to show you, but in the meantime...

Happy Hanukkah!!!

Superfine spinning

Recently I treated myself to a new tiny spindle from Threads thru Time on Etsy and the best way to describe it is amazing! It is a tiny Turkish Spindle that weighs in at .7 ounces and has beautiful coloring. They also sent along a little sample of BFL/silk blend fiber so that I could try out my new spindle and it spins beautifully. The yarn is so skinny right now that even if I do a 3 ply I still don't know if it will be lace weight! And for a size reference

It is 4.5 inches tall and 2.5 inches across. Seems that it will be a nice little travel spindle. I just have to make a little project bag for it. So far I have spun for about 2 hours on it and with the yarn being so thin it looks like nothing. Most of the spinning was done last night, but I did do a tiny bit on Friday.

Also on Friday I tried to 'ply-on-the-fly' with one of my other drop spindles and it was a rather successful experiment though not a technique I think I enjoy. Though it might just be because it is new. I'll have to play around with it some other time. But I did make a mini skein of the test yarn.

I spun thick and thin and love the way it looks plied up

Goodies! And the master plan for the goodies

As a treat to myself for completing the 3 Day I got myself a box full of goodies. Now what goodies are in the box you may be asking. And what are you planning to do with whatever is hiding in the box? Never fear all shall be revealed!

Have you seen the felted rugs that look like rocks? Like this one from VivaTerra

I absolutely love it, but there is no way that I can afford it. The 3' by 5' one is almost $500! As I said I love it and it would make an awesome little rug for in my kitchen area or even in the bathroom, but not as a bath mat. So why not make my own? And while I'm at it I would love for it to have a more organic shape to it. Which as I kept searching I came along some by Ronel Jordaan. You can see them by looking under the products link and then the floor link. It appear to have the more organic feel that I'm wanting! And all of this leads me to the box. And the giggles I got from opening it.

Still all squished in the box, but not for long...

And yep, I've already started this project. It is going to be a more tedious project, but I am determined to finish it. The bases of the stones are made from wool yarn from my stash wrapped in layers of wool roving from The Sheep Shed Studio. The mix I got was the black tones mill ends and I blended some of the mill ends using Tangie's cat brush to get varied shades of blacks/greys/off whites. And if anyone is ever thinking of doing something similar, you can felt the balls in the washing machine! Which is what I am planning for a majority of the rest of my felt rocks. A few of them I will hand to get the shape that I want, but doing it that way takes some time.

After taking it out of the bags it took up a good portion of the bed.

And the assortment of dyesoppers to do an easy kid friendly project with

Some of the mill ends might end up as dye experiment projects, but that will be a story for another day.

Headbands and barrettes

I just realized that I never showed you the finished hair things I wore to the walk. I ended up not wearing the striped bows, but I used some of the extra ribbon in my hair clip.

The hair clip used 7 different ribbons: 7/8" pink and white stripe, 3/8" pink, 3/8" tutti frutti, 3/8" baby pink, 3/8" old rose, 3/8"white and 7/8" white. I wore it the first and last day. I also added some little rhinestones I had in my scrapbook supplies to give it a bit of sparkle.

I had two headband and wore the flowers for part of the first day and part of the second. It was a very simple project with two fabric flowers from my stash sewn onto a pice of 1.5" ribbon. And I wore the woven headband the rest of the second day. The ribbons on it were white, tutti frutti and I think old rose

All of the ribbon (except the 1.5") came from The Ribbon Retreat.

A little peak at an upcoming project