Star making

My father is the executive director of a research library/museum. During the holiday season they expand their gift shop to a little “Christmas Marketplace”. Last week I received an email asking if I would be willing to teach people to make Moravian Stars on one of the days the Marketplace was open.

The funny thing about the whole proposition is that my Father is actually the first one in the family to start folding the little stars and even since I learned them myself he is easily the record holder for the number of stars produced. But apparently he’ll still be making them plenty through the season so he cleverly plotted to rope me in.

I was hesitant at first because it’s 3 hours of driving to get home and back, and I hate driving and gas isn’t cheap. Plus it’s the weekend after thanksgiving, so right after I will be home. And the following weekend I’ll have to work all weekend. Which would leave me with only one free weekend in December.

What to do?

By the time I had the opportunity to talk about it with Bran, my sometimes resident sounding board, I had pretty made up my decision. And he didn’t think it was a bad idea or argue against it so I committed to it. It helps that Thanksgiving is on Thursday so I can still come home Friday and have the weekend. And then when I go back the following weekend it will be late Saturday as I have a band gig. Plus on Sunday I suspect I’ll be able to work with the organist to play my flute in church that day. I love killing birds with one stone.

Now the final bit of this here Christmas Market is that I can make stuff that they take and sell on consignment. Whoa. My head is now swimming with all of these possibilities and ideas. As always my favorite place to go for ideas is Ravelry. The pattern finder there is however crazy dangerous. Total overload. Wish me luck.

Fiber Arts Friday: The Things I'm Doing

I wanted to try for the first time to participate in Fiber Art's Friday's. And I thought it would be a great opportunity to introduce all of my current Fiber Works in Progress. Well to be more specific it's all of my current WIP's that I am actively, or well generally mostly-sorta-kinda, working on:

Max Sweater:

It was my epic (for me) goal during this years Tour de France/Fleece to spin up enough yarn for a Featherweight Sweater and I was totally successful. I cast on back mid/late August. And the project has ebbed and flowed but last week I finished the body and got this huge surge of must-finish-this-project-ness going on. Last night I cast off the 2nd sleeve and picked up 2/3 of the stitches for the band! I ought to be able to finish before next week. Woohoo! 

And I really am loving it all. Being knit top down I've been trying it on since it was time to split off the sleeves. The thing really fits me like a glove. I had it out last night at band and one of my fellow flute members (a casual knitter I think) commented it looked child size. I commented back that it was fitted and had she noticed that I pretty much am child sized. It amused me. I could say more about this project but I think I'll leave it for a full report once it's finished.

Argyle Alpaca Mittens:

Sudden thought: I really ought to call these the Argyle Alpaca Appendage warmers. I really have a thing for alteration. Anyone know of an A word for warmers?

This is the other bit of yarn that was spun up during the TDF. Purchased from Dunn Spun Alpaca's at 2010's Knitters Day Out the stuff is absolutely so amazingly soft and pretty much the best thing ever. It practically spun itself. The knitting of these gloves however is a bit more of a challenge. 

Color work is probably one of my lowest knitting skillz levels. Really I've just not done that much of it at all. So I'm doing my darndest to keep the stranding tension even and not too tight. It's also difficult because I really don't do all that much knitting on double pointed needles. I prefer to magic loop. So holding everything even and keeping the stitches has become part of the challenge (or fun when I'm being postive).

We have however had a crazy cold snap here in South Central PA (actually it's become phenomenally nice again, but last weekend was miserable). And the weather makes me quite anxious to get working on these mittens to keep my hands nice and toasty warm.

Ellie & Rosie Spinning:

On Ravelry some people have been offering "Spin a bag get bag". The idea being they are likely the owners of some fiber bearing animals who have more fleece than they can keep up with. So they send a willing spinner, like me, fiber. We spin it up and return half of it back.

I was lucky enough to make such an arrangement with Tracey of Koehlers 4 Star Alpacas. She sent me 2 bags, 1 lb each, of fiber. Ellie is white and Rosie is rose grey. I absolutely love love love each of the colors.

Alas I must have been crazy when I contacted her about this because seriously I have so many other things that I am working on and so much fiber to spin already. But whenever I'm doing something for anyone else I really do try to bump it up near to the top of the WiP priority list.

I've been carefully sorting and washing the fleece so far. Previously I've just spun all of my raw alpaca dirty. However I recently got up the courage to try washing raw fiber and I absolutely love it. It is certainly not the most speedy process as I am being extra crazy and keep everything in lock formation but I like it this way. The only problem so far is that some of the fiber isn't exactly ideal. I've found a some second cuts, but also patches of corse locks and some just generally quite short bits. I'm not quite sure what to do about it all as I really wanted to return a full pound to Tracy, but I also don't want to stick myself with all of the yucky bits.

So far I've washed prepped and spun up little test samples of each. I had a very easy time spinning Ellie right from the flicked locks but I also tried and was fairly successful and creating a long roving strip using my hackle. After finishing washing about 8 ounces of Ellie I started to spin last night. I seemed to be much more consistent using the roving strip so I think I'll probably prep the rest in that fashion.

Rosie, having all different colors and shades in her fleece offered much more in the way of possibilities. Unfortunately her fleece is also the prime culprit of short pieces. After deciding I wanted to blend her colors I tried the hackle but it wasn't very successful, I suspect the blame could be the short bits. Luckily using hand carders the blending worked rather well.

The plan for this next week is to get the 8 oz of Ellie prepped into roving and keep spinning then get 8oz of Rosie washed.

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Thanks for visiting and I hope you'll come back and read about more of my goings-on. Be sure and check out WISDOM BEGINS IN WONDER! to see more Fiber Arts Friday Blog Amazingness!

Farm Show Research

Last year when I drug Bran to the PA State Farm Show I was fascinated to find at the very back of the building a whole section that was just filled with all sorts of, pretty random looking, hand crafts. Some of them even had ribbons indicating some kind of contest or prize. I'm not sure if I commented then that I ought to make something and enter it then, but it seems like I should have at least been thinking it.

Although really I had no idea how to go about anything or if it was even open to the public and as I was caught up in all of the other things that are going on I mostly forgot about it. Then recently YarniMarni, an awesome local blogger who puts together amazing liveblogs of the Farm Show's Sheep to Shawl contest, posted about Farm Show preparations. And my dreams and aspirations (ok maybe thats a bit overkill, but nevertheless) were rekindled.

The problem was then finding any kind of information on entering hand crafts. The epic website search began. Now I fully respect that the PA Farm Show really is an epic undertaking and so the website is probably not one of their biggest concerns. But really there must be a better way to have some of this information available. Eventually in the midst of a giant 200ish page PDF document I found the information I was looking for under the link "2012 Premium List". I suspect that if I'd been more involved or grown up around such things maybe some of this terminology would make more sense.

From what I've been able to find it seems like anyone is welcome to submit an "exhibit". Fun fact, all of the various livestock are exhibits, just like a knitted scarf. This amuses me. I thought I remembered reading something about Pennsylvania residencey being a requirement but I can't even find that now. So really all you need do is find these crazy forms and deliver your stuff. Sweet deal. The premiums, or prizes are as much as $500 but that's for some of the popular baking contests and such. For most of the arts and crafts they award $3-$12. This is also a fact which I find to be highly amusing. There are entry fees for some exhibits but not for anything I'm interested in.

My area of interest is Department 24, Family Living. This department covers a TON of stuff. Firstly there are all kinds of food stuffs. Including what I understand are some pretty serious baking contests. There are all kind of canned and preserved food entries as well. I actually considered maybe entering my Pickled Watermelon Rind or Watermelon Jelly. But in the end I don't think that my canning skillz are really up to par. The goods shall continue to just go to friends and family.

Where things really start to get interesting to me is the later bits of Home Living. There are all kinds of different crafts, not just knitting either. There's tons of things I could totally do. It's almost overwhelming and I've already written a bunch so I think I'll have to come back with more of my thoughts on what I want to create and submit later!

Inspiration

I have been inspired to blog again. Wish me luck.

Other than that I really do have what feels like a half a million inspirations swirling around in my head. Here are some of the more concrete ideas:

Dragon Mittens:

I purchased these delightfully fun bits of roving from the MD Sheep and Wool Fest way back in May. I knew I wanted to spin up as a variegated color changing yarn, but I wasn't sure what project. Then I found these absolutely amazing Dragon Mittens. Love it. 

Although I am a bit on the fence if I should knit the mittens with the whole rainbow or just use half more similar to the original design.

All in all this will be an epic project/challenge when (not if) I actually do it.

Kiwi:

After reading an article in the local paper about a nearby sheep farm I started following the farm on facebook. Sure enough when they posted that they had just sheared the sheep and were selling the fleeces I had to take a visit. I came home with the fleece of this delightful little sheep named Kiwi. The fleece is multiple colors of brown and grey. But I couldn't resist working up a little sample. I wanted to take advantage of the multiple colors to knit up a scarf like this one using the linen stitch. And interesting in the end the project came out very grey and not much brown at all. But still beautiful. I can't wait to make the whole thing.

Alpaca's of York:

At Knitters Day Out this year I was delighted to find the Alpaca's of York booth. She had these delightful piles of raw, but dyed, alpaca. With the help of my knitting friend I picked out these four colors with the idea of making some fall-ish type of something.

Also while out browsing all of the amazing booths I had noticed, and fallen in love with, these amazing multi-colored scarves that looked woven. Later I realized that they were actually knit using the linen stitch. I've decided to put two and two together and make myself, another, awesome scarf. Again, I couldn't resist working up a sample, pictured above. For the final project I think I'll just work each row with only one color so that they are constantly mixing, like these examples, or as they do where the colors meet in my sample. I'm also thinking about blending some of the fiber colors together.

Yikes I've already nearly written another novel chapter, so I'll stop there. Inevitably there are definately more project ideas swirling around in my head. But at least one of these three is likely to be the next thing started on the needles (or spindle as it were).

What am I up to?

Well many things really, and at the same time not that many. But for simplicities sake I think I'll talk today about my most favorite current activity: TDF!

TDF is both the Tour de France and the Tour de Fleece.

The Tour de France is pretty self explanatory. I like biking and having taken to watching races. It's a great companion to crafting although gets tricky to watch and work during especially exciting places and or sometimes I miss stuff happening. But I like to cheer on pretty much anyone who isn't Alberto Contador (go Schleck and Kloden!). And secondarily to that I have a preference for anyone who speaks English (Allez Team Radio Shack, Horner, Leivheimer, Wiggins, Evans, and more that don't come immediately to mind!)

As for the Tour de Fleece I'm spinning lots o' yarn this year! On ravelry I ended up on a good number of teams: Trindle, Team of Wonder, Sweater Spin, Spindlers, and Sprinters. I think all of that explanation will have to be a post in and of itself. I set a goal of 1500 yards of lace weight alpaca (Max) hand processed by me from Carolyn's pets and 300 yards of fingering weight alpaca purchased from Dunn Spun Yarn at the Knitters Day Out last year. All of my tour preparation really should get a post of its own as well.

The tour started last Saturday and here's been my daily accomplishments:


Stage 1: 0.6oz laceweight Max
I started the day in beautiful Ocean City MD watching the cyclists on my laptop while starting my spinning. I had already planed and prepped my fiber so that I had my day one ‘goal’ baggie ready to go. All too soon however I had to pack up to drive back home :-/ However I had great fun doing some spinning in the car. And then it was a simple matter of finishing off the rest of the fiber that was my goal.

Then I even ended up taking a spindle and some fiber out to the ballpark as the Symphony was performing one of our outdoor concerts and I figured I should attend at least one. The setting really was quite awesome and I had a good time although I didn't get through that much spinning there. The whole working/looking half professional gets in the way.


Stage 2: 1 oz Dunn Alpaca + bonus Max
Spun up the 1 oz in that bag using my fun Spinatude TDF spindle (yarn destined to become mittens) and added more to the trindle (my sweater yarn) as well above and beyond my initial goal.
Before:

After:

Stage 3: 0.75 laceweight Max + some extra
My cumulative tour spinning by Day 3:

Doesn’t look like all that much but I’m quite happy with it. I decided that I’ll wind off onto my “bobbins” after each ounce-ish. That way when I ply the cops/weight will never get too ridiculous. All the stuff on the trindle and some of the stuff on the brown bobbin were today’s progress.
Also rock on Farrar for today’s sprint finish victory in France!


Stage 4:
I think I’m getting faster. I already had a light day of only .6 oz planned and it went by in no time.

It was also super helpful that I got my targeted ounce on one trindle then I could easily just take off the beads and pack up them with my second shaft and remaining fleece to take out to knitting group to spin while there. At least two little girls were watching me for quite a bit. Hooray for easy transport.

Stage 5: .5
I had a (planned) easy day today of only .5 oz of lace singles.

Not the most exciting but it made me definitely realize that I am much faster as I completed everything in less than 1.5 hours. W00t

I was feeling entirely tired of my very bland colors so after I had completed my daily goal I grabbed a bit of Sheep Shed Studio roving, white with some brown streaks, and decided to play around. I dunked it in some water and sprinkled on some pink lemonade kool aid. Microwaved for a bit. And hung it out to dry while I went to rehearsal. When I got home it was try and I spun it all up. I wasn’t sure how I would like it based on the roving form, but I like it quite a bit as it is spun up.

I may very well end up adding in another TDF goal :-)

Stage 6: 0.6 oz of Max and 0.6oz of Dunn



Today it was back to my regularly scheduled programming. In honor of the longest stage on the road (140 miles) I had my largest volume of spinning .6 oz of Max and .6oz of Dunn Alpaca (It’s not the most difficult however as I’m saving that for a mountain stage).

Everything went quite smoothly. Although there was a bit of a pause when someone decided that he needed to nap in my lap in the midst of the spinning.

Swap Part II

As seems to always happen I was getting down to the deadline and needed to crank out my post cards. I discovered that one of my side tables works rather well in front of the couch, score, and I set up my work station.

After sending Mother’s card I knew I wanted to add in a sky of some sort. The white was just too white. I tried some bright blue tissue paper that I had first, but it was much too dark of a color. So instead I broke out the water colors and painted on a very watered down blue. Inevitably I’m working with not such heavy card stock so the cards were rather warped but I loved the paint color. Seriously watercolors are just such fun.

Next up was the grass. I spent a good bit of the evening cutting layering and gluing my stalks. Now I knew from the pro-type that they really wouldn’t survive the mail so well. At first I thought about extra glue or even covering the whole thing in maybe a watered down modge-podge. But that was a very messy idea. And I’m sure the tissue paper and water colors would not have played well with watered down glue. So I went rather utilitarian and used packing tape  It worked remarkably well and almost make my cards look downright fancy….or something.

After putting everything where I wanted it and sewing everything on I cut out each card. In order to keep the crochet from unraveling rather than cut the bottom edge I just folded the bottom under. When I mailed my prototype I knew that I would need a back of some form because of the knots on the other side of the card. Glue is always an option but I (unfortunately) know that glue does not always survive the mail. So instead I opted to just quickly sew a second card onto the back. It was simple, easy, and I love how it came out. And as an added bonus if the recipient wants they can totally just snip the white threads from either side and use the flower for something else.

Now my sewing machine is pretty crazy retro. It can be quite finicky so I wasn’t sure how it would handle it. But it seems to have much more problems sewing anything lightweight (it’ll barely sew quilting cottons) and rocked the card stock stitching with no problems when I sewed mother’s card. Unfortunately with the addition of the packing tape things got a bit more squirrely. It still worked but the feeder feet were struggling at times and so the stitching is rather un-even.

It should also be mentioned that I have a mild fascination with stamps. The post office just has so many fun ones that you can buy. So I love to calculate the postage online then use a good variety of stamps to mail fun things – yup I’m slightly crazy.

All in all a fun project and I hope the recipients enjoy them. Similarly to last year it was a bit intimidating because really I’m not much of an artist. I’m much more crafty. I’m looking forward to seeing what creations I’ll be receiving!

Post Card Swap

I decided that I wanted to again participate in iHanna’s postcard swap. But how to top last years awesome knitted postcards? Knitting another set of cards seemed too obvious, I wanted to be different.

What about crochet? Well crochet is a good bit thicker than knitting so that might be a bit extreme. Hmm…what about thread crochet? That could work. I was envisioning something along the lines of a crochet doily but rectangular post card size. That would be awesome.

So I looked up a bunch of doily patterns on ravelry and at home one night and started testing things out. It was going to take approximately forever and as most all doilies are crochet in the round I was rather doubtful about my ability to get a rectangular shape.

During the search I had found a doily-esque project that was five little flowers connected together almost in a hexagon shape. Hmm….what about just covering the postcard with multi-colored flowers like that? So I started on that flower pattern but it was coming up rather larger than I wanted. At that point I decided to wing it and make a solitary flower from the inner rounds of the pattern. Then I gave it a stem and some leaves.

I liked it.

From there I experimented with a few different flower shapes and colors. At some point I found a favorite and finished out my 10 flowers using that design.

While this mass flower hooking was happening I decided that I had better test a proto-type by sending something across the state to my Mother.

Now I didn’t just want to attach the little flower to a blank card. That would be boring. So I planned on adding some green grass. At first I thought it would work well to use a stamp. But store-bought stamps are crazy expensive! I couldn’t believe it. Instead I purchased two erasers with the intent of carving my own grass stamps. But then when the evening came that I was putting everything together I decided to go a different direction and use layered tissue paper.

I put this card in the mail on Friday:

And on Saturday (the mail is super-speedy here, I love it) Mother sent me the following picture:

Woohoo the flower made it. But the card obviously still needs a bit of help.

I’ll finish up the rest of my story tomorrow!