Gifts to ME!!!

Picture from Caliope's Fibre

I've been really good recently with my budgeting and with saving up for my hopeful vacation in October. I say hopeful because I still have to snag a spot when registration opens. You will know more if I get to go...But a while back I was really wanting to spin a batt. Now, this isn't something I have ever done before and there is no local place for me to get one. So I decided to splurge a little. Enter Etsy. I found some beautiful batts even one including crab fiber!

Picture from Caliope's Fibre. The white is crab fiber!!!!

But I wasn't sure I could justify it, until two days later a coupon for Tour de Fleece goes up. It was meant to be and now I have somewhere close to 10 oz headed my way from Caliope's Fibre. I have two of each of these beauties headed my way and I can't wait! See I told you this was gifts to me. I also got myself a May Beach Bum sample box from Sampler Village. I mean I'm half way to my vacation savings goal so I needed a little something for me. I promise there will be tons more pictures when both arrive!

Have a wonderful Memorial Day!

Late night projects

I’m part of the Spindler’s group on Ravelry and May’s spinning challenge prompt is: my precious. The great thing is that we can interpret the prompt in any way we choose, though most of us are leaning towards the Lord of the Rings interpretation. Last month I dyed up some wool in a yellow/green/blue color way and also dyed up some silk hankies with the left over Easter egg orange dye tablet. It didn't turn out exactly how I wanted so I over dyed it to tone the neon orange down.

I also finished the pink singles from the last post and am working on plying them. I'll post pictures of it once it has been washed, whacked and dried.

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