Nom Nom Noro

Sunday I went out with the Boy's family and his lovely mother bought me two skeins of Noro Silk Garden. it's colorweight 243 which says nothing. Lameness for not naming colors you Noro gods! Its a pretty pink green purple blackish blueish grey ball of yumminess.

Silk Garden is a lot rougher to work with than I expected for being 45% silk so I guess it must be the wool. I don't know if I call really call it an allergy. More of a sensitivity. Wool makes me itch and gives me this wonky rash sometimes. I'm getting so sidetracked there.

Point is I cast on the Entrelac scarf which is a SOB to keep up with. So much counting. I feel like a kindergartener trying to remember what comes after 5. "Is the next one seven? Or is it six?" I guess I need to get one of those counter gadgets that will help me remember. A tiny little brain for the numbers to stay in. I never was any good at keeping track of numbers. It's like hearding cats for me. I've needed a new number-brain my whole life and now I've got an excuse to buy one!

If only I wasn't so broke.

Craft-fair Goodness!

As some of you know, the Monarch Craft Fair at Louden Nelson in Santa Cruz was this past weekend and WildWoodYarn attended in full force! Apparently the only thing that wasn't really full enough was our inventory of felted critters! Brianna had made a whole menagerie and I'd brought a couple of my pieces as well as a mass of felted Christmas ornaments and I sold all but a couple ornaments, and Brianna did even better with her creatures! Ria and Sarah both did well too.

Best of all we made contacts and spread our name to people interested in our crafts.

Beyond just our inventory, we came across several people interested in learning the skills we have and we're interested in teaching a workshop or two! These are fairly informal since none of us are experts however some of us are teachers of one sort or another. We love what we do and want to pass these skills on to others who are curious about bookbinding, felting, spinning and dyeing. For this reason we're taking a tally of who'd like to attend a small class and what subject should be first.

Lets have some feedback guys!

Big Bang Theory

So, I will update about the craft fair shortly, but the hat that Penny is wearing in the opening of today's episode of Big Bang Theory is freaking amazing!  It is a knit Santa hat with two pom poms on the top. I'll post a picture when I find one.

So it's been ages!

I haven't been up to all that much, craft-wise: I knit a sweater in late September, I set up my loom (mostly-- it's missing a few parts, and I spend a few days in August finishing all of my half-completed books.

I started to work on some small dolls for the upcoming craft fair (December 12! Please come, if you're in the area!), and realised that I'd forgotten how *many* different things you need to make them. I mean, knitting: you've got needles, yarn, *maybe* stitch markers/holders. In dollmaking, you need needles, thread, cloth for the skin, sockinet for the head, stuffing, pins, a pencil/marker, scissors... I kept almost being ready, and then figuring out that I'd forgotten about thing X. But if all goes well, there will be at least six small dolls (under 6") available for sale at the fair, along with the books, yarn, and needlefelting.

I'll try and get some pictures of the loom-- I moved in August into a real! house!, in which I finally have space to set up all of my crafts, including the four-harness jack loom that's been living above my parent's garage for the last six years. My mother, art quilter Susan Else, started out as a weaver and a spinner, which is where I got my interest from. However, by the time that I started being interested in anything beyond sewing, she'd forgotten how to spin! I remember the year that I got a spinning wheel for christmas-- she tried to show me how, and didn't tell me to separate out and pull the rolag. This did, of course, lead to some *very* thick yarn. I've been spinning, just a bit, recently. I dyed some merino a very pale pink-- it's not quite the baby-butt pink that SinSpinner did, but it's still pretty pale. I'm going to try and finish that week, I think. Pictures will happen... at some point.

School continues, as it always does. I'm running the Student Council here, and this year, students decided to have a Skate Night. It went very well! We're likely to have one again this spring. I hope that all of you out in blog-space are having a fall (nearly) as full as mine is-- there's certainly never a dull moment!

ORNAMENT PICS WOOHOO!

The holidays are on their way!

It's the last days of October which means Thanksgiving is less than a month away and Christmas is only a month after that. Crazy how time flies. That's why I've been working diligently on a new project: felted Christmas ornaments.

The idea came to me when I was needle-felting a couple days ago and though I ought to make some wintery items. As I was getting close to finishing my second item, I thought they might look nice among the evergreen boughs of a mini-christmas tree like my brother and I used to have in our room growing up. I pulled out some silver wire from my jewelry-making days and Voila! turned a snowglobe and a snowflake into two charming ornaments. I've already made 10 different ornaments but plan to make a ton more before we open our booth at the Holiday Craft Fair in downtown Santa Cruz on December 12.

They are mostly very small, but they are all pet-safe and child-safe. I can absolutely, 100% guarantee no dangerous shards of silvered glass on the floor when one of these beauties falls.

Pictures to come as soon as I can find the mini-USB cable to hook up the camera.

Today we had a business meeting and sold yarn! Sinspinner received an email from an interested buyer and we meet her at a local coffee shop and peddled our wares and she bought our dark purple and red yarn.  We came up with an excellent name for it, but have since forgotten it.  She was wonderfully nice and will send us a picture of the finished product.  

Today I looked at the yarn. Then I put it back. We had a moment.

The end.

Dragon's hide yarn

Goodness gracious, there is no end in sight for this pound of roving.  I've got about half a bobbin to ply and another braid to spin, which should be close to done, but it feels like the more I spin the more there is to spin.  One day I will be able to post with a picture.

Fan-girl Squee!

Miss Violet of the Lime and Violet podcast has friended me on twitter. :]

A Victorious Return!

I returned from five days in Ashland, OR today and brought with me new water bottle, a couple rings and of course, some yarn. Really, I only got a single skein!

After wandering around the local textile-whores' paradise last Thursday I had an armful of all sorts of beautiful yarns, everything from merino and alpaca to linen and silk. Considering the damage it would do to my already slim pocketbook I begrudgingly tried to whittle down the stash to a skein or two. I was stuck and couldn't make up my mind when my Boy handed me yet another skein of something soft and beautiful. But this time I didn't just add it to the pile, I put all the rest back and bought my skein of beautiful Linares Sportweight Yarn (colorweigh 508).

The boy and I had been looking at patterns together and I had a sort of vision of what I want to make. I cast on too many stitches the first time becasue I hadn't found a pattern i liked yet and had to frog it all back but now I'm well on my way to knitting a light hat for cool summer and

autumn evenings in California. I'm done with the ribbing but now I need to go get myself stitchmarkers since the ones we bought in Oregon seem to have stayed With the Boy's knitting, not mine.

Of course the trip up was not made amazing by the yarn alone. Thursday night we went to see the Oregon Shakespeare Company's production of Macbeth. It was awesome!!! The seats were front row and it's by chance alone we didn't get spit on by the actors. Peter macon was an amazing Macbeth and his performance was just as good as his performance of Othello which we saw last year. I stand by my statement of the last several years: the 8 hour drive and $50 tickets (now you know why I was strappd for cash) is definitely worth it. Check out OSFAshland.org for more info on this season's shows. I highly suggest going.

And the sweater trudges on...

So my partner got me the amazing Knitting Lingerie Style book for Christmas along with the yarn to make one of the sweaters in it for Christmas.  I knit up the sweater to wear to a friend's birthday party in January, but when I tried it on, it was much too big, and I frogged it and cast on the next size down.  Finally, 7 months later, I have almost all of the pieces knit.  I have one more sleeve to finish and then I can sew it together!

Phase two!

Phase two, the spinning begins.  I sat down and got a 2 ply skein of light fingering weight yarn spun up today.   

 Here is the first bobbin of it spun before plying. 

We have a buttload more of roving to spin.  Freya dyed an entire pound. It is superwash though, so it is spinning up slightly differently. I am really enjoying it.  In addition to the pound of dragon that I am working on that is slowly taking over my life and room, I have a few updates on personal projects.  I went to Maker Faire about a month ago and bought a oz braid of roving that was solar dyed, a process that we are thinking of exploring here at Wildwoodyarn.  I didn't get around to getting Freya to take a picture of it before I spun it, since she is far better about pictures and the blogging, but here is it all spun up.  

  

I am not sure what I want to do with it yet.  I think I want to make something for my friend that took me to Maker Faire, but I'm not sure what.  However, it will have to take the back burner while I get our new color-ways spun up.

A new plan!

Ria and I have been schemeing. Since my spinning-wheel is still in repairs, my spinning is slooooow work. However, I love to dye stuff. On the other hand Ria feels her color sense isn't up to snuff (I think she's come up with some cool stuff but whatever) but she spinns like spider.

WITH OUR POWERS COMBINED... We're going to put out a new line of yarns. Dyed by me and spun by Ria. Inspired by my lover-boy's passion for dragons, I've given this line of yarns a theme! Our first colorway, "Dragon's hide" is a dark mottle of blood reds and midnight blues with greens and browns throughout. The roving is pictured at the right.

I am also going to be putting out a line of hand dyed sock yarns in a faerie theme in the near future. I'll be doing some research into faerie mythology before I get started on this project but I suspect it'll give me a wide range of themes to work with.

Now I've got a craft day to get back to! It's going to be a productive day with everyone here.

Yarn Porn!

So I came home today to a package on the stairs.  It was full of yarns!!  I know that I spin, but I have a fondness for sock yarn.  I have enough yarn now to make 4 more pairs of socks.  Very exciting.  The new Spin-off also came as well as the next two disks of Bones.  I sure know what I am doing tomorrow!!

Mailbox Campout

I won a spinning wheel on ebay last week and it's scheduled to arrive tomorrow! I am so exited! I'm seriously thinking about skipping my class so I can camp out by the door and wait for the mailman. I dyed some roving especially so I'd have a project for when it gets here.

AAAH I'm so excited and it so doesn't relay well in text format!

So Hedgerose's dad was a professional woodworker for a while and he is taking a look at Archie(Archimedes).  He told me that he is fixable and can actually come home better than he was before, since he can improve how he was put together!  Squee!  I'm not sure when he is coming home, but he is!

  ~Riastiltskin

I've been reading tarot for about a year and a half. I think of it almost like most people think of a therapist. Interpretations of the cards tell me what I already know in those deep, hidden parts of my mind and lay it out in front of me where I can't ignore it. It's proven really useful and clarifying almost every time I lay a spread.

Last winter my dearest darling deck was sitting on my window sill one weekend when I was out of town and it got rained on. Many of the cards practically melted  and only very few got out of the mess undamaged. All of them were warped by the moisture.

I haven't felt very connected to my deck since then and recently started looking into buying myself a new one. I sifted through all of the decks at aeclectic.net, a site that reviews all available tarot decks and provides images of select cards, but only found a couple that even interested me out of the 1200+ cards on the site. One howerever caught my attention fully. It was worthy of the golem voice. I wants it! It is called the Shadowscapes Tarot created by a woman called Stephanie Pui-Mun Law and is a very earthy and whimsical take on the Rider-Waite symbolism. I'd buy it in a heartbeat! But noooo! It's not available until next spring. The emo emu cries black tears for my pain. 

Le Sigh... I will live. What should I do till next spring though?

So it isn't much of a surprise that I play D&D with my housemates.  One of our current campaigns had us all start at level one as commoners and we had to take on characters that would feasibly be in a small town, so I am a weaver and my weapons are the tools of my trade.  Long tangent to say that I totally killed a zombie by bludgeoning it with a spindle, stabbing it with knitting needles and cutting its head off with shears.   Hell yes.  

   ~Riastiltskin

Spinning Wheel

So I was spinning on my wheel and noticed that it was wobbling a troubling amount. I looked at it and the hub looks split. My partner and his best friend have been fiddling with it, but due to finals, it might not be fixed for a few weeks. They seem to think that it is possible for it to be fixed though, which is encouraging. There are no places to get it fixed that I could find.
~Riastiltskin

Corsets are delicious!

Today I got epic sleep. I tend to be and 'early to bed, early to rise' type but I got distracted by our etsy and by people and ended up staying awake til 2am last night. I woke up at 9 amd thought, no biggie I'll shut my eyes again and wake up at 10:30 or so. But no. No no no. I woke up at 12:30. And I had slept through mail-o-clock!

Oh mail-o-clock! best time of the day! Riastiltskin and I LOVE mail-o-clock. It's the best time of day! 

Today I got a leather corset in the mail. But didn't know til Riastiltskin got home! Oh how it pleases me. I have buttery black deliciousness on mah body! Dress leather is so happy-making.

Hello all! Thanks for having me!

I should introduce myself. I'm SinSpinner, the new addition to WildWoodYarn. I live with Riastiltskin  in Santa Cruz and have known her for several years now. She introduced me to Hedgerose some months back and I love crafting with both of them. Both Riastiltskin and Hedgerose have taught me a lot. 

In fact, Riastiltskin taught to me spin a while back and Hedgerose taught me to needle-felt only a bit more than a week ago. I've gone totally nuts about it. I always get really enthusiastic about new crafts but felting seems to have grabbed my attention even more strongly than usual.  It's so much fun! It might be my favorite craft so far.

I do have other interests. Really! I swear! I love the woods and picnics and hiking. My love for the outdoors is why I'm pursuing environmental studies at the University here. School is always difficult, but coming home and stabbing the ever loving fluff out of some fiber with a small barbed needle and turning it into something substantial it really fulfilling. I can take an hour and make a radish or a slice of fruit. I think that's pretty cool. 

Crazy as it sounds I'm also an early to bed type by comparison. While Riastiltskin is still up dancing to musical soundtracks, I've got to hit the sack. I have class in the morning! Eek!

*waves*

We have a new member!  My housemate and friend SinSpinner has offically joined the madness that is Wildwoodyarn. She has been crafting with us for several months now, distracting me from school very effectively.  Nothing like watching America's Next Top Model while spinning.  She does some beautiful work and will be uploading some of her felted pins to our etsy shortly. Look out for the frog leg to keep the bear head company.

  ~Riastiltskin

Sorry it has been a while.  Grad school has been kicking my butt.  One more year, hopefully!  Today there was a craft day, complete with epic slurpee run.  I'm not sure what we were thinking going out into downtown Santa Cruz at 4 in the afternoon on a Sunday in perfect beach weather.  Not much happening on the knitting front, but a fair bit of spinning.  I can listen to lectures and spin you see.  I have two on our etsy store, Merlin and Lilac.  

The Merlin could be a reference to the Disney movie, but I far prefer it to be a BBC Merlin reference.  If you haven't seen it, go find it now.  Seriously, the slash writes itself.  Well, the slash dragon helps.  

There are two purple merino silk, dark and light, plied together that I will post when I get around to taking pictures.  

Massive etsy update!! Check it out!

Bookmaking Workshop... and other things!

In my other life, I teach middle school.

All of the students at my school are reading various Shakespeare plays in Language Arts right now-- the sixth grade is reading Twelfth Night, the seventh grade Romeo and Juliet, and the eighth grade Taming of the Shrew. To cap this off, we're having essentially a very tiny renfaire in about a week, which is going to be awesomely insane-- I have to finish repairing my costume, help kids make books, finish planning the event, and hope like heck that the singer gets back to us.

In craft-related news:

• I held a bookmaking workshop with the sixth graders! Two of them, actually: the first one was on hardbound books sewn on tapes. I should have remembered how insane that is, having done it with the seventh grade last year, but alas. None of the kids finished their books in the workshop, and I have no had time to show them how to finish the case. The second went much better-- we made perfect bound books, and everyone finished! The books were cute! The kids were happy!
• Knitting, knitting, knitting-- I sat down this weekend with a ball of yarn and ended up with a hat. I'm going to re-knit it in a size that will actually fit humans, and we'll see if we can't get some photos up.
• Cooking: oh man, have I been cooking. I know that it isn't strictly a craft, but I have been having so much fun in the kitchen. Look out for a recipe post at some point soon.

That, I believe, is all!

Wow. www.joykampia.com/fashion/hamburgerdress.html  

I unexpectedly had the day off, so I went to the Yarn Store.  I got my first Malabrigo, isn't it pretty?  I was amazed by how soft it is.  

I also got the Knitting graphic novel that has been popping up all over the internet lately.  I can't wait to start reading it!
I also bought a pound of raw wool!  It was a step towards the dream of a whole fleece for the wildwood team, but still exciting.
I'm washing it as we speak and I'll let you all know how it works out!

Hello, world!

It's totally my turn to update the blog-- I've been quite remiss! To make up for it, I finally have some pictures.

I've been on a bookmaking kick for a while now (although knitting is creeping back in with the rain and the cold), so here are some book images. The one to the left is actually a bit greener than the image makes you think it is.

This was a really fun book to make-- it's multiple signatures, sewn on tapes. I'd do a tutorial on how to make them, but there are many, many tutorials on the web that would be better than mine. Unfortunately, the spine on this book has started wearing through, so I'm thinking about breaking the book down and re-doing the spine. I might use leather, but am unsure how well that would work, since I've never done it and don't quite have the right tools. Ah well, we'll see how it turns out.

Hmmmm.... more pictures!


The above is a Very Useful Book. I am a rabid paper-buyer; I am entirely addicted to PaperSource, that place of Vilest Temptation with their awesome paper. This book is where I keep small samples of almost every sheet of cover paper I buy-- book cloth goes on one side of the accordion, and patterned paper on the other. This book is small enough that I can stick it in a pocket or in my bag when I go shopping, to compare colours and weights, etc. I also really need to update it-- I'm sort of afraid that my paper collection will soon be larger than the book!

Okay, one more project-- this one was *really* fun, and it took me a hellishly long time. You'll see why:

This is the project when it's all put together. There are actually five different components to this piece: the tie, the wrap, the top book, the box, and the interior book.

You can take everything apart into separate pieces, and it's fairly easy to put everything back together. This is essentially a mock-up of the toolbox that I'm working on; I only have the bottom half of that box completed, as it's 9"x12", and has multiple compartments. This box was an exercise, essentially. I wanted to see if I could make a top-and-bottom box that fit together well-- these really, really do. I am incredibly pleased. :)

This is what the components of the box look like when everything's been taken apart. To give you an idea of scale, the small green book (on the lower left) is about half an inch tall. Interestingly, both of the books that go with the box were accidental. I had made the box and the wrap when I realize that I had about half an inch extra vertically built into the wrap. Never one to pass up an opportunity to make a book, I decided to make a small perfect-bound book to go on top of the book. The image on the cover I did with watercolors; the interior of the book is blank. The small green book actually comes from the trimmings of the larger book-- it was originally one long strip that I cut down and covered with book cloth.

So, there you have it! That's what I've been up to in the last... while. Feel free to ask me any questions that you have.

In the works

There is a major update to the etsy store in the works. I've got several new skeins to post and am standardizing the weights of the other ones. Hedgerose also made really pretty hanging tags. We are also considering expanding the stuff we offer. Hedgerose has been offered a place in town to sell her books. We are also working on preparing for a craft fair in town. There will be more updates as all of this comes to fruition.

Happy Groundhog Day!

Happy Groundhog Day! Lookit! It has a little top hat!

Freaky Friday

Ok. Today's Freaky Friday is not freaky in the scary way, but freaky in the how cool is that way. It is a knit heart. http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEwinter08/PATTheart.php. It was the Knitty surprise this issue. How cool is that? You could even put little cocktail swords in it and make an immaculate heart!

Hump day

I'm sorry that I spaced on last Freaky Friday. I've got some stuff saved for the upcoming one. However, today is Hump day. Here is today's yarn porn. http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=6157442.

So today I did something amazing-- I knit from a pattern!

I did, in fact, make these gloves! Those of you who know me know that I'm pretty good at looking at a finished product and figuring out how it's made, but am absolute crap at following patterns.

These gloves turned out really really well-- I knit them using one and a half balls of this gorgeous merino/microfiber/cashmere blend. I also learned how to cable; yay me! It's something I've been meaning to learn to do for a while. The pattern was mostly clear on how to cable; I think it's more my lack of knowledge of knitting pattern terminology than their lack of clarity.

The gloves took all afternoon and evening to finish-- I started them around 4:30 and finished them around 2 a.m. (they're a good project for working on while re-watching a T.V. show), with dinner happening somewhere during that time.

In OTHER EXCITING NEWS, one of our Local Yarn Stores, The Golden Fleece is going to participate in a Sheep-to-Sweater competition at some point soon, and I've volunteered to be one of the spinners. It should be really interesting, because there's no time to wash the fleece, and carders are not allowed, which is really bizarre. At any rate, it'll be lots of fun!!

Hump Day

The craft day went well. We managed to craft for 12 hours straight! Anyways, on to our first Hump Day. This etsy store is by Tipofilato. http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5731577. The vast majority of what he sells is hand dyed sock yarn. Besides the gorgeous colors, is that all of the colors are named after Harry Potter! Check it out, it is awesome!

Craft party

We are having a craft party tomorrow, Monday the 19th from 11 am through the evening. There will be snacks but people can bring movies and snacks as they feel like it. If you need directions, please call or message me and I'll send you them. Come and craft with us!

Freaky Friday

So we are started to try to do at least two updates a week: Freaky Friday, when we post strange knitting things and Hump Day, when we post yarn porn. Our first Freaky Friday is courtesy of one of my housemates.  A psychiatrist knit an anatomically correct brain.  How cool is that?

On a non-related note, one of our friends offered to make us business cards! Thank you Laurel!

Well, Sarah and I had a productive day this week.  We went out to San Jose because Commuknitty was going out of business.  It is a shame, it seemed like a really nice knitting store.  However, everything was 50% off.  I got some really nice linen, something I've wanted to work with for ages.  It is hand-painted and fun to pet.  It has a very different feel than wool.  Then among other errands and fooding, we got stuff to make business cards.  Very fancy.  Well, right now they are a stamp and a nice colored pen, but Hedgerose's brother might make us a stamp or my partner might computerize them.  Woo hoo!

Now that all the christmas knitting is done, I've been focusing on spinning. Well, there was a brief foray back into Knitting County for a hat for me out of necessity and one glove for my partner.  However, that one glove took three attempts that were fully pulled out and two more ripped back part-way.  He has bizarre alien hands.  While I recover enough to finish the other glove, I spin.

So far I have spun two bobbins of the merino wool that Hedgerose and I like and am now just starting on the fiber I bought from the sheep shearing.  It is Romney wool. I like it so far.  It is spinning up fairly easily and thinly. It is a little rougher than merino, but then there isn't much that isn't.  And it has the added benefit of being bought directly from the people who owned and sheared the sheep.