Today I was inspired to make Truffula Trees. I love this story and am sad that it is becoming a movie embellished so much so that I am sure that the message will be lost. Theodore Geisel was an amazing story teller and in his books he reflected all the values and principles of the Unitarian Universalist faith that he followed. Each book had one major theme, but held several issues along with it.
I will watch the movie when it comes out on dvd and hope the messages of the original story will not be lost.
“The Once-ler traded the forest for business opportunities with dire results. Can the environment be saved?…Ponder your own perspective of environmental concerns, local or global.”

Here is my Truffula Trees:

Truffula Tree

I simply needle felted a tuft of wool then felted it to the branches my son brought in from outside for me. Took less than ten minutes. If I wanted to be a perfectionist about it I could even paint the branches yellow/tan. 🙂

Enjoy.

Please refer to http://www.hzmre.com/seuss/sessions.htm for lessons per Dr. Seuss book.

June 28, 2009 by homeofhearts

Fiber Fridays

At Holiday Yarns, folks meet from 4-8ish pm to hang out and work on our projects, whether knitting, spinning, weaving or whatever. Last Friday, when I was able to get out as a Birthday present to myself, I met up with a few friends from my more local Spinning Sunday and Tuesday Knitting Groups, there. This usually leads to much humor and shenanigans. So of course it ended with us doing just that. It was another episode of “Thank god I am not drinking milk atm cuz otherwise it would have spurted out my nose” type of evening. Good time had by all.

Below are pictures of us using Jen’s Pat Greens Super Carder. I love this machine. But, the more fly away fibers are a little, well, flighty. At least in this case. Fibers were whipping off the back of this machine like crazy. It was really funny when Bugaboo and Shawlette tried to catch them and put them back on the carder. One of those moments where I guess you had to be there.

So! Go already!! Every Friday or just any day of the week you are free and Holiday Yarns is open! Beautiful local fiber artists commission there wares through her store and her line of colorways in both yarn and fiber are wonderful. You can even build your own batt! Huge assortment of fun colors and fibers to create your own fiber batt. Jen is super helpful and always a pleasure to talk with. Always worth the drive. If you go on Friday evening you can even win a door prize!! Hope to see you all there!!

http://holidayyarns.com/store.htm

April 1, 2009 by homeofhearts

Another Day

For the last couple of days I have been working on my Three Scarf Ruana and am finally getting to the point within the first piece, that I can call it half way completed. Not the entire project just one third of it, half way complete. I never thought it would take this long to simply knit 35″ of scarf but damn it really does!! I am looking forward to seeing how this will all look when finally completed. It is worth the time and effort if I can just get it right and functional.
Today, I put it aside again, so I could work on Ali K.’s order of three skeins. Almost have one skein spun and ready to ply. Yay! I am now using my smaller ration flyer and am proud of that fact. I hope it means I have become more efficient in my spinning, because on the larger flyer it was just taking to long to twist the fiber for me. I actually received compliments today about my spinning that made me feel good. Not from some one I would have expected nor someone that spins herself, but is observant. I think that is really neat. I am not good at receiving compliments but I am working on it, so instead of buttoning my mouth I tried to just go ahead and talk a little about what I was currently working with. It worked. I didn’t totally choke, even though I feel inner weird and self conscious about it. I have no idea if I said anything remotely intelligible, but I know words were coming out of my mouth. Merino is a bitch to spin. I really like alpaca so much better. I can’t wait to get into my stash of Rambouilet(sp). That looks like a challenge as well to spin but the staple is nice and long.
We went over Bill Thorpe’s house again for a lego playdate, only to find he had gone crazy on ebay purchasing legos and we were actually there to help him thin out what he didnt need. We came away with two boxes full. My poor living room is now covered, again! Sigh.. They had fun, while I got some time to sit and knit more. That was nice.
After our playdate, we had playgroup at Berean church. there is a large gym for the kids to run around in, so it can be fun or chaotic, which ever way you want to look at it. I sat with Jacqui and spun to my hearts content. It was productive and relaxing. I miss spinning with my friends. It makes it so much more fun. The kids were everywhere and there was all sorts of conversations to be had all around. Not a bad playgroup. I left feeling better about my day than I had before. I think I really need to get out more during our days to involve others in our play and study. I need to be accountable and present, but not always be on top of everything. It feel better to my system.
For schooling for 8th/9th grade, I am thinking Keystone National High School for B. It seems to meet our needs and is financially viable.
T. has a birthday this month. I have no plans made for this day and I have to say this is a first for me. Usually, I am well into planning and scheduling by now. I just can’t get myself there, in the mood for it all. I guess I need a little more actually liking my child to feel celebratory about his birth this year. That is a challenge for me at this time. I am trying to work on that. Need to find some compassion and forgiveness and understanding in me to get me through and will hopefully continue to build upon it. We’ll see. He wants the Theme to be: Knights. I have the party favor already chosen, but have no other ideas ready for this theme. I wont let weapons be part of this day, so that puts a slight barrier to some party ideas. I wonder if I could get enough supplies for the kids to all begin making some light weight chain mail?! Hmmm… or something. It’ll come to me.
Now to make some dinner. Been so long to need to make dinner and have not been informed ahead of time that I needed to do this tonight I am winging it. Hope it comes out edible. I think I am going to start taking over dinner again.

December 17, 2008 by homeofhearts

Thank You Twiggi34!!!!!

I got gifted!!! Totally unexpected!! A lovely woman from Ravelry knitting group at B&N, brought gifts for everyone!!

She and her husband made these!!! How splendid! I wish I had my camera last night as each was different and so was each batt of wool. They were all lovely and two folks hadn’t spun before, so it was really nice to see them initiated into spinning.

December 16, 2008 by homeofhearts

Wanna see what I was up to this evening….?

We had a friend butcher our chickens a couple weeks ago and when we picked them up, he notified us that he was butchering two lambs the next weekend and asked us if I wanted the skins that have full fleeces upon them. YEAH!!!!!!

I got them last weekend and salted one skin and saw that the other fleece was unusable for me. I let it sit outside for a week while it was too cold to pull the fleece for long periods of time. Until today!! A miracle heat wave is hitting my area after much freezing rain. This evening whilst S. was cooking dinner, I got to work. My hands are a little sore, but this fleece is beautiful and free!!!! I separated it into lightly dirty and heavily dirty piles. I am so excited to have that finished. Was thinking on tanning it in the spring. It is small so manageable for a first project of tanning. Will take off the last icky stomach crud fleece tomorrow that I couldn’t get off tonight before dinner.

Here are some pictures of me in the process. I can’t wait to see how this cleans up and spins up! I wish I knew what kind of lamb it was. The crimp on the hair is just beautiful!!