All of the Christmas knitting is done and wrapped!! Victory is mine!

O man!  Today we saw a sheep shearing!  It was awesome.  It was actually like a mile and a half from my house.  The farm is called Sheepie Dreams Organic Farm.  They were shearing and selling wool, honey, and beeswax salve. They don't seem to have a website.  

On to the shearing. First they would grab a sheep by one of the back legs and pull it towards them.  The sheep struggled a bit as it hopped towards the shearer but once they were in position, they seemed resigned and sat there fairly patiently while being sheared.  They really lost an amazing amount of mass from the shearing.  Hedgerose will post pictures when she gets home.  

Then we went to Luminous Threads, a yarn store in Felton,  at the recommendation of the farm owner, who is friends with the owner.  It was a very nice store.  It wasn't just yarn, there was also cloth and buttons and such.  There were beautiful quilts on the walls and a wonderful display in the window.  The owner was very nice and chatted with us about all the things that we do and were planning to do.  We actually saw her briefly at the sheeping, so we talked about that too.  

On the way home, there was a cop following us with its lights flashing. We pulled over and it passed us and then about a mile later we passed a horse trailer that had veered off of the road.  We thought that a woman stopping traffic was trying to get a ride to the town, so we turn around and ended stuck for about half an hour.  The horses were fine as far as we could see and Hedgerose and I discussed how we could expand our etsy store and eventually getting some sort of physical location or something.  Very far in the future, with me still in school and the economy the way it is, in addition to Code Monkey discussing possibly moving to Seattle in around 5 years.  Hedgerose wants to make sure that we are legally sound, with permits and such as well.  Getting fancy.   However, for the time being, I'm going to work on Christmas knitting and finish all my school work.  

Update of Random

Well, it's back to school for me! Classes started again today after a week of workless bliss, during which I did a lot of paper crafts (portfolio! tiny boxes! books! ...ADVENT CALENDAR OF DOOOM-- see more below), but no fiber. Oh, wait, that's a total lie-- I finished one of the kid socks that I was working on and started the second. Once more, I promise pictures; this time, I actually know where my digital camera is! I'll see if I have time tonight.

A few weeks ago, my friend Laurel semi-commissioned me to spin her a skein of black and green yarn, which should get done soon: I have to dye and spin it, so we'll see how it goes.

(ACoD: my mom had the idea of making a 3-D advent calendar for this year, so we are in the process of making it. We're making it essentially the same way you'd make a jewelry box insert, with lots of small sections forming one big box. It's both insane and awesome; this one will be *sure* to get pictures, as I got my dad to take pictures while we were working. It's about 13x19; the smallest boxes will probably end up being about 1.5x1.5, and the largest about 3x3. I can't *wait* to finish it!)

How cool is this.  http://wollymanor.com/adopt.html  It is like a CSA but for wool!  You adopt a sheep at the beginning of the year and get a picture of it and letters "from" it and all and then at the end of the year, they shear the sheep and wash the fleece and mail it to you.  How awesome!

Sorry it has been so long since we posted anything.  Things have been boring on the Fiber Front because they have picked up in the Real World.  I got an internship at a small parochial school in Azusa, about 350 miles south of Santa Cruz, so I have been both without the time or the fiber to spin or knit.  My semester is winding to a close as well, so there is a lot of homeworking happening.  I did bring some Christmas Knitting with me so there is some inching foreword.  I'm working on Jaywalkers for my cousin.  

I finish this internship after Thanksgiving and then Hedgerose and I plan to get together and take a trip to the Fiber Front.  

Pennies

So, turns out using pennies for dyeing is a bad idea.  The copper coil is coming along very nicely, it is a light shade of blue green.  I think I will let it sit a little longer to get darker.  however, the pennies just made the vinegar really really dirty and then disintegrated.  No, really. Like some of them are just a little hollow circle and some just crumble into little bits upon being touched.  Kinda cool really.  But not very useful for yarn.

Craft Day

Today we had a crafting party!

Hedgerose and some other friends came over and we watched movies and chatted and worked on our crafts.

Hedgerose and I spun in the morning and dyed in the afternoon.  We also had people there sewing, and crocheting, and drawing.


   Kathleen took lots of pictures for us!  Therefore there is also a massive update on our Etsy store.  We now actually sell yarn, imagine that.  

yarn porn

So part of the yarn diet binge got here this morning and yum. The rest should be coming in a week. And then hopefully I can resist temptation.

So I've been doing this thing this year, where I decided that everyone is going to get socks for Christmas, and because the economy stinks and I am paying a lot of money to be able to tell people I am a librarian, I am knitting them all from stash. This is different than normal because a) I decided early what people would be getting, b) I followed through and actually knit at a rate that wouldn't leave me crippled, and c) I didn't buy a whole bunch of supplies for Christmas. This had the effect of leaving me sane and with functioning wrists, allowing me to still pay for January's rent, and reducing my stash into something more manageable.

However, I was struck last night when I combed my stash for sock yarn and finished socks. I have almost enough socks for everyone and an entire Trader Joe's bag full of just sock yarn. This post a 80 day yarn diet. Sheesh. It looks like there will be more yarn dieting. I cracked a few days ago, intending to only get yarn for a pair of socks for a friend (he wanted a particular color I didn't have) and suddenly there was a lot of yarn. It was like when you take a spoon of ice cream and then the carton was gone. I would blame it on the wool fumes, but you can't do that online.

Craft/No Craft?

I haven't been doing a lot of spinning recently-- I think that summer really doesn't lend itself well to spinning, at least for me. Fall has been absolutely insane; I'm teaching a class that is entirely new to me, picking up another one on Tuesday (7th grade grammar and vocab! Whee!), and still trying to find the time to do an after-school craft course. I think I'll probably try to get it started in late November or December-- in time for the holidays, but not by a lot. :)

I *have* been working on socks: I have about three socks in various stages of completion scattered around my room. I forgot to bring them with me to LA this weekend (I was at a linguistics conference-- yes, the mild-mannered teacher is Just a Disguise), so they're not as done as I'd like them do be, but hey! socks! There's no bad there. I'll try and post some pictures soonish.

While I was in LA this weekend, however, I did go to PaperSource, that Store of Vile Temptation. I picked up an awesome awesome swingtag kit, which I then proceeded to hammer together on my brother's table. I also picked up some book blocks and some really nifty paper for making some more hardbound books. Again, pictures will be up when I, er, magically gain a camera. My plans for House Christmas this year involve making lots and lots of books, so we'll see how that goes.

And now, I go to make dinner. Mmmmmmmm, pasta.

Happy Halloween!

I've been doing a lot more knitting than spinning in the last few days.  I was trying to spin more finely and try and make sock yarn, since everyone knows sock yarn is crack and somehow ended up in a total sock knitting kick.  Seriously, everyone and their mom is going to get socks for the Holidays.  Just as well, as the yarn was threatening to take over.  And as if the regular socks weren't enough, I've discovered the joy of baby socks. They are even more cracktastic than regular socks as you can whip out a pair in a fraction of the time.  

The copper project is going nicely.  The vinegar is noticeably blue and I think that Hedgerose and I will try out some dyeing on Monday, as we both have the day off and will be geeking out doing serious crafting research.   I'm really excited to see how it will turn out.

In other news, I had to reset my "days since bought yarn" count back to zero. It was all the way up to 90 days. Because I bought the yarn to make socks for a friend, I briefly debated letting it keep counting, since it was so close to 100, but felt that the joy and glory would feel ill gotten at that glorious moment. O well, it will make the real 100 day feel all the more exciting when it does get here.

So I have an idea...

So I had an idea. I read somewhere that by soaking copper in vinegar, you get an interesting blue dye.  Needless to say, I had to try it. It will b a while before I can actually add the yarn, as I am still spinning and the copper is still vinegaring, but for now there is a jug of slowly blueing vinegar on my deck, confusing my room mates. I am trying a bunch of pennies in one jar and a copper coil in the other.  I'll be interested to see what the difference in color between the two jars is. I actually do a lot of craft shopping the hardware store.  My weights are fishing weights, the copper wire, etc.  They must think that I am either doing something really cool or that I am crazy.   

It has been a week of dyeing!  Over the last 5 days I managed to get 11 skeins dyed!  And I dyed all of them with kool aid and food dye!  Ok, enough with the exclamiation points.  I experimented with a few new ways of dyeing this time around.  I am a fan of the dunk and boil way of dyeing.  You mix up the color of Kool Aid that you like, put the yarn into it, and boil it until the color is out of the water and into the yarn.  Seriously, it is enough to make you never want to drink Kool Aid again.  You can use the same water over and over again.  That is just wrong.  (I actually drank some Kool Aid last night anyways.  I bought several packets of Mexican Kool Aid, which for some reason has sugar in the mix, in addition to having to mix in like a cup of sugar, it's weird.  So I have about 12 packets of this drink mix to drink or pawn off on people. Digression). 

This time however, I experimented with food coloring, and it came out really well.  Well, except for the black.  I'm not sure what I was thinking.(That's not true, I was thinking ladybugs, but I was delusional, it was one of the few times that I have dyed without Hedgerose and her common sense and look where it got me)

More yarn will be put on our Etsy story as soon as I get some good pictures of it!  

--Riastiltskin

Welcome all!

Hi, all.... one of you (well, at the moment)! As the lovely Ria mentioned, I am Hedgerose-- I teach eighth grade English and, in my mythical free time, do everything I can related to fiber arts. I started with spinning, then learned to weave, make Waldorf dolls, crochet, felt, knit, and, most recently, make felt hats.

My current fiber project is to make a bunch of single, coordinating socks-- I am one of those rather unfortunate people who get sidetracked waaaaay too easily, but hopefully knitting one sock at a time will help cure that. I've also been making crocheted lace trim; I need to dye it before I put pictures up, but it's pretty awesome.

I do other crafts as well; most recently, I've been doing a lot of bookbinding (I finally learned casing in!) and spend time in front of the T.V. mindlessly making paper flowers.

Let's get this blog started!  Hedgerose and I have been friends for several years.  In fact, she is the person who taught me how to spin, which in turn deepened the fiber addiction.  I've now gone from buying in bulk at Jo-Anns, to cruising local yarn stores to touch the walls of yarn, to spinning my own mountain of yarn, to dyeing said mountain.  My new idea is to sell my partner on a sheep to "mow the lawn." As of yet, he isn't going for it.  For some reason, every time I bring it up, I get a flat "No livestock" response.  Despite the fact that we could get a mini sheep conveniently small and purple.  Anyways, welcome to our blog!