Thanksgiving in solitary splendor…

Hello, my dears! I’m hoping like crazy that you’re home, and comfortable, and about to be very, very well fed.  This year it’s just going to be me, my sweet husband and the cats for Thanskgiving, just to keep everybody safe. It’s hard to not see friends and loved ones this year, but I wouldn’t be able to bear it if somebody I cared about got sick at some shindig at my place. So instead I’ll pester them on the phone and on Zoom, and share photos of cooking and mayhem, and decorate The Gothmas Tree.  We put it up a bit early, though it’s still very much in the early stages at the moment. (I suspect the Gothmas Tree will need it’s own post this weekend. There’s a lot of ground to cover there…)

I’m also planning to knock out some spinning and knitting this weekend, since I have a commission to play with and some really great fiber to spin up. There’s so much alpaca, people! So much! And now that my knee is recovered from whatever the heck I did to it, I can go back to the spinning wheels (carefully) and make some really fun natural and dyed yarns. Some of the shades of blue and purple I got from one shepherd are so perfectly beautiful, and I can’t wait to play with them all…

Also, I’ve been doing a few sketches for funzies, like the Jackalope I painted recently. It’s been hard to draw rabbits of any kind since Shamu the Bunny passed on; for the longest time I just didn’t have the heart to do it. But now it’s easier to embrace the memory of a sweet rabbit and bring his expressions to  other pieces of art.  And I’m also not sure why I wanted to draw a little bat hugging a tree ornament, but he really did turn out fairly swell…

Stay safe, my dear friends, and stay well, and I hope you’re planning on a tasty dinner and a thankful, quiet moment, and possibly a huge nap. I’m thinking about you all…

The Voices in the Yarn…

It is a fact, universally acknowleged, that spinners that offer their wares do not sell off everything they make, at least not right away. Oh no. They keep a stash of the best stuff for themselves, or they think a yarn works out better as a finished knitting project, and sell that instead. Many of my knitwear offerings started as handspun yarn I wanted to sell, but just couldn’t let go of, at least not at that stage.

For example, I had a scrumptious bit of a yarn all ready to go up in the shop. Pretty pictures. Flowers, even. But just as I was going to list it, I heard a tiny, woolly voice, squeaking at me from where I’d put the skein to admire it. “Noooooo, not yet. I want to be mitts! Warm, fuzzy mitts!’

Seriously, it was all ready to go…*siiiiiigh*

And You know what? Yarn doesn’t lie. If this yarn needs to become it’s best self and become mitts before they go into the shop, then so be it. But when I got out a pair of knitting needles, the skein wasn’t finished with me yet.”How about some black yarn to go with me? I’m lonely, I don’t want to be mitts without some company. Make me a friend!”

All right, fine… But this was turning into some woolly version of, “If You Give A Mouse a Cookie.” I had some Shetland wool that I had spun up into a single. I plied it on itself with a drop spindle, so there was enough thickness to match the other yarn. And that was exactly what was needed.

Okay, so the yarn totally had a point there…

Sometimes you just can’t resist the feel of a brand-new skein of yarn, fresh from a spinning wheel and a soak. Especially when the season’s starting to turn, and autumn starts to insinuate itself into the world.  Sometimes it’s good to change a plan right in the middle of it’s execution, because something works out better.  And sometimes the yarn talks to you. It’s not necessarily Pandemic-induced craziness, but possibly inspiration…

 

Time…

Hello, my dears! I hope things are going well. Here in my pocket of the world, we’re speedily careening toward Halloween, which is the best and brightest spot in my calender. I’m home all the time now, doing my best to make my talents bear some fruit. I’ve been enjoying putting up art on Redbubble, and this week I started a Youtube channel, so I can offer some spinning videos. It turns out spinning is as soothing to watch for others as it is to do it myself.

So now that I’m home, and home all the time, I’m definitely having a reevaluation of what my time is good for. I cook more, and have more time to experiment. I draw more, and have more time to try new things. I spin more, and I’m finding it gratifying  to work my way through the big bales of fluff that are begging for new exciting forms. This yarn below started out as a nice big bundle of alpaca locks, reminding everyone who saw them of a huge litter of calico kittens…

 

I’m always torn between keeping the yarns and knitting them up myself, or sharing them with all of you. I think I need to make a few of these for the shop, just as an excuse to keep one or two for myself.

Anyway, time. It’s such an unsettling feeling now. I used to be in a rush all the time, desperately trying to cram as much as I could do into whatever seconds I could do it in. I did a lot of multitasking. Now that I’m working on projects and new art and yarn and whatnot, my work schedule is…flexible. Start spinning at 7am? Why not? Do a quick sketch to expand on later, right before bed? No reason not to, right? Embroider something, take a 2 hour break to eat lunch, clean the living room and play June’s Journey? That seems to work, funny enough. Make something for dinner I haven’t tried? Why in the hell not?

I still have to get the hang of how I work best though. When I’m not working on something specific, I can be all over the map about what to do first.  I guess that will come with practice. But it’s such a different experience from what I’m used to doing for years and years: Set schedules with little or no room for deviation, where lateness was the ultimate taboo and speedy multitasking was the order of the day. The reasons I’m home are horrible, but I gotta say,the freedom can be kind of exhilarating, if I don’t think about the whys too hard.

I hope you get time too, in ways you didn’t have before. I know it’s different for everybody, but I know everybody I’ve talked to is reevaluating their time, and what they value and how to make room for those values now. I hope there’s room for good sleep and a cherished meal, and talks with friends no matter how far away they are.

Be safe, keep knitting, and be well, everyone. And make time for yourself.

 

 

Quarantine…

I’m at home, mostly. By mostly I mean that here and there I’m at the museum where I usually work, keeping the lights on and the doors locked. The rest of the time I’m here, trying to deal with my own brand of Covid-19 anxiety by attacking projects. I’m one sleeve away from finishing a sweater. I’ve been embroidering something for a coworker. and I’ve been making lots and lots and lots and LOTS of yarn. I moved my favorite spinning wheel, Hester Hestia, down to the living room, and I’ve been watching movies, Youtube tutorials, and various friends playing music live while I spin. It’s comforting to still have my friends, even at a distance.

A few pretty, pretty yarns to while away the hours…

Otherwise? Social distancing, baby. Delivered groceries, verrrrry cautious walks around the neighborhood. I’ve been trying my hand at fabric masks, with a bit of frustration.  And I won’t lie; the times I go in to work I have terrible panic attacks before and after I go there. I have asthma, so I have lots of worries about contracting the virus. I’m just really grateful the museum is trying really hard to take care of it’s employees in real, practical ways. And I’m grateful I live in Minnesota, with a lot of people trying really hard to do the right thing, whatever that needs to be.

At the moment we’re under Shelter-in-place, so I’ve put the website on vacation mode until I feel it’s safer for me to mail out yarns. I’m also closing down the Etsy site for a variety of reasons. But if you need yarns soon and want something special from me, just shoot me a message and I’ll see what I can manage for you. Just stay safe, and hang in there, and I will too…

 

A few pretty things…

Opal mist

Moving seems to take forever. And when you’re finished, there’s always More Stuff to Do. You’re never really done moving in. But I do feel like I’m settling in now. The new Craftroom makes spinning very easy, and painting is much easier with a table committed just to that.  So I’ve been making lots and lots of yarns…

 

Opal mist
Sparkly pretty yarn!

Brains? Brains!! Braiiiiiins!!!

Gory wool

It’s been a hectic month, with not much posting from Yours Truly. I have a pretty good excuse, though–I got married! And so far, married life is pretty wonderful, with loads of great surprises. And more than a little paperwork. Eh, whaddaya do?

Anyway, I thought it might be nice to get some normal Maus stuff back on track, and dyed up some roving this morning. A coworker had given me her late mother’s fiber stash, along with several very nice balls of white milled wool. They looked like they would take dye very well, so I mixed up some black and red Jaquard dyes for a nice blended black-cherry sort of thing…

Black Cherry Roving
The roving turned out really nice, good and saturated!

While I was adding the red dyes, the pot looked rather…ominous…

Gory wool
What’s in that pot, Maus? What is it? Wool, you say? You sure? It looks…not good…

Sure enough, the minute I put up the photo on my facebook page, all my friends started weighing in with, “That looks…gory!” “It looks like brains!” “Entrails!” “Don’t lie to us, Ms Maus, you put brains in there, didn’t you?” “Brains!!”

So, for the record, I did not stick brains, entrails, or any other unnatural substance in with my lovely, gory looking wool. Because then it would be terribly sticky and hard to clean. Also hard to spin and knit. Gore is nobody’s friend in the fiber arts, my darlings.  Though what goes into my gumbo recipes? Wellllll…

 

 

Fuchsia shock…

Fuchsia yarn

It’s been a little while since I’ve updated. But it’s also a little easier now, since we made a few changes here to make it more readable. I’ve got a new computer to play with, too. I call it the Dreaded Grey Beastie, because it is.  A useful, helpful beast, too…

Meanwhile, even though it’s the heat of summer, I’ve still been spinning a lot. Mostly to help me relax. Every time I check the news there’s new reasons to unplug and do something else for a while.  I’ve been spinning magenta and fuchsia yarns, with lots of sparkle and fluff.

Fuchsia yarn
Fuchsia merino and angora yarn with sparkles

It seems my hunger for this color is shared by lots of people. When I bring a spindle to work, my coworkers glom onto the bright color. I sold the yarn in the photo, and people asked for more like it. I’ve already had to dye another kettleful of this shade, and now I’m out of magenta dye. (Which means I have to brave the big, gorgeous selections of Halcyon Yarns to get more. *mock sobbing*)

You think I’d get tired of this particular color…but funny enough, I’m not. Not even close. It’s just so hypnotically attractive.

Hypnoyarn
Yesss….good…let the Hypnoyarn fill your mind…

I must be out of my mind, spinning all this wool in July.  But–but–fuchsia!!

Knitting in the workplace…

Danse macabre

See this pretty thing?

Danse macabre
The darkest dark, the reddest red, the sparkliest sparkly!!

It started it’s dark and sparkly life in a basement of a museum, surrounded by coffee and polyester sweaters and noise.  Lots and lots of noise…

Breaktime Knitting
Not pictured: a handheld radio, a cup of tea, gurgling pipes overhead and my frowny little face as I try to concentrate…

I usually bring knitting to my job, to help me unwind between breaks and to sneak a little time into my various projects. More often than not it’s something I spun up myself that demands to be made into something right this minute. Yarn can be pushy like that. So very pushy. This yarn was a dark black, red and white spiral-ply I spun up from one of the beautiful batts at Butterflygirl Designs on Etsy. I’ve bought from her for years, and her goods are always so good. One of the nice things about handspun yarn is that you can keep your stitches pretty simple and let the yarn do all the work of being pretty…

Workplace knitting has it’s own challenges. It’s noisier than home, of course. There’s lots of traffic, and the possibility of spills, crumbs, overcurious coworkers poking at your project, moving it or distracting you enough to drop a stitch or two. I’ve lost count of the times on a break where I answer a workplace question while my hands are moving, and when I look down…I messed up that yarn over. Again. Drat it all. And I mutter quietly to myself when I think nobody can hear me. (But of course my coworkers can totally hear me. I can tell by the snickering)

Then there are the usual jokes.  Requests to knit whole sweaters for 20 bucks, or nothing. Various eyerolls, “only grandmas knit” or “knitting nerd” comments. The occasional vampire-slayer remarks. (I actually like these remarks because I get to brandish a knitting needle in a mildly threatening fashion.) But sometimes there are the people who sidle over and gently pet the yarn, or ask if I have time to crank out some wristwarmers for them, or can I make a goofy gutmonster for a birthday or something. I love these people.They get extra guts in their knitted gutmonsters.

Mostly I just like the peace. After I get into the groove a little bit, I can float right off into a nice soft realm of stitches and fluffy textures and away from the workaday life for a little while. I feel a little more rested on a break where I’m working on something. And when I’m finished, I just glow with a little well-earned pride. A moment in a gloomy basement redolent with the smell of burned coffee and old pizza can be the brightest part of my day when I bind off that last stitch…

 

 

Pirate Peg the Foster Wheel…Yarrr!!

Pirate Peg

Recently a friend of mine had given me the remains of her yarn stash. She’s had some serious medical issues, so she doesn’t really crochet or spin anymore, which is a crying shame. She also gave me her old Kromski wheel to fix up. It used to belong to another friend who wanted to be a spinner but lost interest, and it had been in boxes for a good long while. Of course I felt protective of it the red-hot minute it came into the house…

Pirate Peg the spinning wheel
Nothing like a spinning wheel in a box, whispering, “Please love meeee!”

The poor thing came to my house with a broken bobbin, several pegs missing, a part of a metal cable tying her treadle to her driveshaft, no flywheel…and no legs. No legs?! Zero legs!!

Happily, the flywheel and two of the legs turned up in another box. The flywheel has a big chip out of the side, like somebody dropped something heavy on it. As for that third leg Matt was sweet enough to cut down a dowel to the right size.  At first we thought it would be a temporary leg until I could get a new one from Kromski. (I’ve heard glowing tales about their customer service; getting new parts shouldn’t be a problem.) But the more I looked at it, the more I became enamored of that goofy wooden leg…and named her Pirate Peg.  And immediately started thinking of modifications for her–a new tension knob with a skull on it, copper around the bottom of the peg leg and a garter around the top to hold her orifice hook, black and walnut and cream and possibly gold leaf in a paint job that would wow anybody who saw her.

Pirate Peg
One of these things is not like the other…

 

At first I had doubts. Would this be too silly, even for me? So I talked to various fiber artists of my aquaintance who unanimously responded with gleeful enthusiasm. “Yes! Oh God, yes! Holy crap, this must be a thing! Where will you put the eyepatch?! Will there be a flag? Yarrrrr!!” and so on and so forth.  Nothing makes a weird idea better than more happy weirdos who like it too.

So I spun up a little yarn on Pirate Peg to see how she did. Even without her tension knob and that flywheel chip, she made some lovely, lovely yarn.  And lots of it, 110 yards of fluffy orange fun!

Orange yarn
Really nice, even yarn…Not bad at all for a wheel that just needs some love…

So this weekend between other things, I’ll give Peg a little lick of paint and sculpt some wood putty into the flywheel chip. And think piratey thoughts…Yarrrrr….

 

If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap!

Scottish fluff!

It’s been a little while since I posted here. Life just got a little more hectic recently, with projects and and whatnot. I also…heh…got engaged. I’m very happy about it all. Of course, now I’m thinking about things I’d never really considered before. Are there registries that aren’t specifically full of beige-colored towels? (Apparently there are. I still have to go digging around for them, though.) What will I do about a dress?  How much cake? What kind of cake? And how many Gothly decorations can I bust out at the reception? (Quite a few, actually.) Do I change my name, and to what? Sadly, even though it would be perfectly legal, my sweetie put his foot down at being called Mr. and Mrs. Dracula.  *sigh* Another dream shot down…

Meanwhile, a dear friend of mine brought me a very interesting bag. Cornelia had been traveling through Scotland recently, and spent some time happily wandering around the sheep-filled heather, plucking bits of wool off the fences here and there. People used to do this sort of thing all the time to get a little wool to spin up; it’s the original meaning of the term, “woolgathering.”  When she came home, she presented me with a nice fully Ziplock full of soft plushy wool…

Scottish fluff!
A wonderful bag full of Scottish fluff!

The wool smelled wonderful, all heathery and peaty. I kept inhaling the scent while Cornelia told me with a grin, “That, my dear, is what Scotland smells like!” Scotland smells this good? Wowwwww… I gleefully showed off my bag to my boss at work, who is very pro-Scotland. After happily squishing the wool and huffing it, he asked if he could keep a pinch, for the innate Scottishness. Of course I let him.  How often do you get to snort another country at work and have it be legal?

So now I’ve been spinning it all up. I hand-carded the wool that very night, and chose my nice heavy Ashford spindle to do my spinning. For some reason spindle spinning just seemed right with something like this. The sort of thing someone would do while walking a hedgerow, woolgathering…

Scottish yarn
A spindle full of Scotland! Well, maybe not full, not yet…

What will I do with the yarn once I’m done spinning? Hard to say. I’m guessing once plied up there will be enough for maybe a couple of sachet bags or some cool cabled bracelets. If I need more, I’ll have to talk Cornelia into going back to Scotland to gather some more wool for me. I may have to go with her, for ummm…quality control. Yeah. That’s it…