June 2015
This new addition is a living breathing fiber making beast.
🙂  Welcome my sweetie, Satin angora rabbit, FLUFFERNUTTER!  She lives in the barn and comes in frequently to be groomed. She has just recently been cut down, so her next fiber harvest will be a in a few months and will hopefully have a little better stability than the new baby fluff from her first cut.
Well, I finally finished this really neat scarf for my dear friend in MA. I started it in December 2010. I was hoping to have it done a lot sooner but I got distracted. Go figure. It came out beautiful and I’m so glad I trusted the pattern. I’m not so good at trusting patterns but this one made me so curious. It was simply a scarf that every stitch was knit into the back of the stitch. Easy! But it all came down to the most unique bind off. Can’t really describe that, but you end up dropping stitches on purpose and having to make sure you pull then out the entire length of the scarf. Several of them. It opens this little scarf into a wide beautiful flowing piece. I was shocked and amazed. I love it and probably do another in a different yarn in the future.
It was sent off with a card and some lovely caramels from my local candy store, Sweetopia. Nom nom nom
I do hope she enjoys it and I hope it gets there before Valentines day.
I took a couple quick photos before sending it off just for record. I really hope she gets a photo of it with it on for me.
Lately I have been creating hats. I’ve yet to follow a pattern, but I’m loving designing them. Here’s two I’ve knitted up.
The green cabled hat was knitted in the flat then seamed up. Found a design on etsy and since ordering it turned into an overseas nightmare I decided to replicate it. I still have yet to figure out how to crochet a flower to applicae to it’s side.
Then I finished my knitting at the local yarn store while hanging out with the girls one day and got restless, so I pitched new needles and three yarns I liked and balled two together and began knitting this fun child like hat. It was challenging to get the brim of the hat so it wasn’t loose but I figured it out and had lots of fun doing it. I have so much more of that yarn left I think I’ll do a couple more hats with it in various designs.
This fall a long time member of the CedarRapidsArea Fiber Artist Guild, Elsie Harris opened her home as a lovely art gallery. This woman is incredibly resilient, creative, brave, and kind. I was fortunate enough to be invited to her opening. As a group from the PaneraBread craft gathering, we all traveled over. I took so many great pictures. Enjoy the tour.
Our Ravelry Knitting Group got together for our first, of hopefully many, Spin-ins. Many of the woman have acquired Spinning Wheels and thought it would be fun to spin together. I am always up for group spin-ins. They are always a blast. Any gathering with group is particularly fun anyway!!
I won’t go into details of the night, but I will post the results of that one night. One full bobbin from start to finish of the Orange Alpaca. I also am posting a few pics of what I finished plying spinning this weekend.
Enjoy Fiber Porn Addicts!!
As you can see my camera was not cooperating with me, so the pics came out dark, but I will probably post better pics as soon as my Camera has had time to charge it’s battery. One full skein of Superwash merino, two full skeins of Orange Alpaca completed.
I just received a spinning a wheel. My first ever! I have been loving my drop spindles. I have been scared of the wheel, since it moves so quickly. I tried one wheel and I really didn’t like it at all. It flopped all over and turned in the wrong direction. I really was turned off at the prospect of using a wheel if it was anything like that.  Well, I had been paying close attention in my fiber meetings to notice that particluar wheel just really sucked and had nothing to do with the reality of quality made wheels. I was particularly fond of the description of the Baynes double Treadle Wheel and research a little about it. I knew that it was certainly not something I could really afford, but it was nice dreaming of it. Well, SNAP! A friend invited me over to go through some boxes of stuff she was getting rid of and dropped the bomb on me. She was selling her wheel. Before she got the rest of her sentence out I told her not to bother telling me about it, cause I have no funds for that kind of purchase. Well, she knew just where to push my buttons. Sympathy factor. “I would really like it to go to someone I know and to someone who could really use it.” Well, that got me to take a look at the type of wheel at least, thinking it was probably something I couldn’t figure out if you paid me, but BLAM right in front of me sits the Baynes I had been looking at. I mean not just the type but the exact one!! I mean she purchased it from the folks I was looking at and everything! I almost fell over. I got very excited and new this was more than I could afford ever, but she said she would do payments for it!!! Again, I almost fell over. So in the car it went and off I drove home with the biggest grin on my face in a long time. I was so overjoyed that I nearly filled a bobbin full of lace weight Icelandic dark brown single ply by the end of the evening. I haven’t really stopped since. I am still overwhelmed by the fact that I owe a friend a large sum of money, but damn I am so excited to own this little beauty! I love it!!!
Home of Hearts 