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…
The roving turned out really nice, good and saturated!
While I was adding the red dyes, the pot looked rather…ominous…
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…
I just have to say, this hallways is just one big Gothic swoooooon…
From time to time I veer away from my other goofy projects to write things. Horrible things. Things that probably don’t need writing. This synopsis for Crimson Peak is one of them, written on a quiet day at the Mines on many smallish scraps of notepaper. Disclaimer: I love this film,in all it’s Gothic glory, and I love Guillermo Del Toro. And yet there is snark. The snarking comes from love. Also, spoilers aplenty!!
~Crimson Peak, a Cautionary Tale for Young Impressionable Victorian Ladies with Hearts of Gold~
*There is whiteness, a field of blowing snow, and a bloodstained Mia Wasikowska stares out with stricken eyes*
“There are ghosts…I have always been able to see them. Usually at awkward moments when I’m having a bath or trying really hard to get some sleep…”
*A tiny Victorian child is grieving for her dead mother in her luxurious Victorian bedroom, when a dark, oozy spectre enters the room and whispers, “Don’t gooooo to Crimson Peak…sorry about the oozing…”*
Several years later~
“Hi, I’m Edith Cushing! I’m well off, beloved by my dad and my smoking hot childhood friend, and I’m an aspiring writer! I’m off to talk to a publisher about my ghost story!”
–Mean Girls of 1882: “Hisssssss”
Publisher: “Well, since you’re a girl and have superb penmanship, you gotta sex this manuscript up. Sorry!”
Edith: Dad, I can’t believe it! They want a love story, ugh. I’m not putting in some swoony male lead just to get people to see my work! I want to write bold, dashing tales of ghosts and tentacles and eldrich horrors beyond imagining!”
Edith’s Dad: “Hey, everybody loves a good star-crossed romance! And look, I made you a nice, sturdy pen! Just look at how sharp that nib is!”
Edith: “No, thanks. I’m going to type this instead. No way will I need this awesome pen in the nearish future!”
Dad: “Aww, but I sharpened the nib special!
(Edith tippy taps some keys in the main office and in looms someone tall, dark and Victorian)
Edith: “Hello! Are you late? My dad hates that. And he hates when you’re early too. And you’re Tom Hiddleston, which he’s really going to dislike. But I don’t. At all. Heh.”
Sir Thomas Sharpe, Baronet of Allerdale: “Is this your writing? It’s completely amazing!”
Edith: “Wow, your speed-reading skills are what’s amazing, I mean you just picked that up a second ago!”
~A Meeting Hall Full of Bearded Gentlemen~
Thomas: “I have excellent clay! Rich, red and oddly sinister! Fund my clever Clay-o-matic, and you’ll all be rich! Like the oozy, blood-like clay!”
Edith’s Dad: “Sir you’ve tried to raise funds in London, Edinborough, and Milan, and failed. And you have soft, soft hands that have never held tools like hammers or knives or large rusty hatchets. And your clay is burbling like a lava-lamp over there. So…no.”
~At the Cushing Home~
Edith’s Dad: “You’re sure you’re not coming to the ball? Your doctorish childhood friend with the unrequited crush is going, and his mother and sisters can’t wait to hiss at you!”
Edith: “I’ll pass. I’m just going to lounge around in my frilliest nightgown, Jane Austen style, with loads of books and paper. Seriously, it’s like there’s a library in this bed.”
Edith’s Ghost-Mom: “My beloved child, don’t go to Crimson Peak! Don’t marry that handsome British fellow! He and his sister are craaaaaaazy! Don’t doooooo it!!”
Edith: “Funny all I hear is, “Don’t go to Crimson Peak, blah blah Tom Hiddleston Hottie hot blah.”
Edith’s Maid: “BTW, Baron Sexypants is downstairs and super-wet. From waiting in the rain. To escort you to the ball.”
(30 seconds of frenzied primping later, and possibly help from talking mice:)
Edith’s Dad and Childhood Friend: “You look wonderful!!!”
Mean Girls of 1882: “Hisssss”
Lady Lucille Sharp of Allendale, sister of Thomas: *Plays the piano in a dragon-gown she looted from “The Cell” and hides huge ring the color of bloooood.*
Thomas: “Edith! Dance with me!”
Edith:”But the mean girl on my left is aching to and she’s been chasing you for weeks!”
Mean Girl: *Horrid side-eye*
Edith: “I’m in. Throw down your fancy Baron dance moves, tiger!”
*The candle in their conjoined hands bursts into flames from the glares coming from all sides–dad, childhood pal, mean girls and Lucille.*
~A Romantic Walk in a Park~
*Edith and Thomas walk in the buttery, buttery sunshine. Thomas scurries off with Edith’s new “love story added” manuscript while Lucille keeps Edith company…*
Lucille, stroking dying butterflies: “We don’t have butterflies at home. All we have are moths. Big, scary moths that thrive in the cold and damp.”
Edith: “What do they eat?”
Lucille: *strokes Edith’s face with butterfly corpse* “Butterflies. And sweaters. You should see the holes they’ve eaten in mine. No wool is safe!”
~A Dinner with Dad~
Edith’s Dad: “Alright, Sharpe Sibs, listen up. I did some digging, and I expected something shady, but this is way beyond the pale! Holy crap, you guys! What the HELL is WRONG with you people?!”
Thomas: “You won’t tell Edith, will you? Or the audience?”
Dad: “No. But you’re both leaving, tomorrow. Here’s a check. And you, Baron Hotstuff, will break Edith’s heart. Hard, so she won’t go running after you even if something horrible happens to me!”
(Naturally, after the heart-breaking and the quick “your dad made me do it” post-it Thomas added to Edith’s returned manuscript, something horrible did indeed happen to Edith’s dad…)
~The Funeral~
Edith: *Weeps*
Childhood friend: *Cautious Head nod*
Thomas: *Sinister head nod*
Edith: *Has giant red ring on her hand*
Goth Girls Across the Land: “I don’t see why Lucille made such a big deal about that ring; you can get those off Etsy for $20 a pop.”
~Welcome Home, Edith!~
Thomas: “We’re home! Welcome to you spooky, dilapidated mansion! It has all the conveniences, like picturesque holes in the ceiling! And leaves falling in artful ways, even though there are zero trees for miles! And oozy, blood-red clay coming out anywhere it can, and bathwater that runs red! Also, the house moans, groans, sighs, clanks and shrieks! There’s sharp, spikey decorative touches everywhere, and well, I hope you have your tetanus shots…”
Edith: “Oh look! An abandoned Papillion puppy! Such sweet, innocent symbolism! Can we keep it?”
Lucille: “Ohhhhh…it’s you. Welcome, I guess. See these clanky house keys? You’re so not getting any. But you will be getting lots and lots of tea!” *Hugs Thomas. A lot. Really, quite a lot.*
~Later, in the Sinister Bloodbath~
Edith: “What the…who the hell is playing fetch with the dog?”
Spooky Red Ghost: “I miss my doooooog. Little snoogums…”
Edith: “What?!?”
Ghost:”Get ouuuut….Seriously, more special effects are coming if you don’t leave. Oozy, grody special effects. Get ouuuuuuut…
~Next Morning~
Lu: “Hi there! Here’s some more tea! Lovely tea! And a naughty book! But I’m sure it’s no shock to you because you DID IT ALREADY, DIDN’T YOU? DIDN’T YOU? DID YOU?!?!”
Edith: “Um, no…Thomas respected my mourning and no. Sadly, regretfully, no.”
The Entire Internet; *pouts*
Lu:”GOOD! I mean, good. Yes. Everything is going to be fine. Enjoy your tea!”
~In the Gorgeous, Gorgeous Moth-riddled Workshop~
*After a hot makeout session with the wife, Thomas freezes in panic as Lu comes up the elevator with a full tray of cups, saucers, tongs, kettle, strainer, but no sugar, lemon or those little petit fours I like.*
Lucille: “WHO WANTS TEA?! EDITH, DRINK IT, DRINK THE TEA! TEA IS HAPPENING, PEOPLE!”
Thomas: *Secret Facepalm*
~Meanwhile in Buffalo, NY, at the Cushing house~
Childhood Friend: *Looking at copies of a newspaper headline and a suspicious document* “Holy crap!!”
~Night at Allerdale Hall~
*Edith is coughing up blood, alone in her bed. She wanders out to one of the hallways, with some helpful hints and a quick jump-scare or two from the ghost.*
Edith:”Wax cannisters hidden in a closet? And a hidden locked suitcase with “Enola” embossed on it? Am I in a Scooby Doo episode or something?”
Ghost #2 *staggers through the hall towards Edith* “Get Ouuuut, you silly girl! How many hints do you need, anyway? You see how stabbed I am? Stabbing will totally happen if you don’t! Get! Ouuuuut!”
Edith: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH”
~The Sexy Post Office~
Edith: “Thanks for getting me out of that house for a day. I really needed to get away from the ghostiness. And the dead insects. And the live insects. And the tea. I’m really starting to hate tea…”
Postie:”Mail call! Some letters from America, and Milan!”
Edith: “Milan? Didn’t Thomas go to–oh, yeah, sure, I can take that letter. Milan, yeah.”
Postie: “Hey, look, it’s a big cosy snow storm! Why don’t you crazy kids stay in our charmingly rustic room overnight? Because, you know, sexytimes…”*Cough cough*
The Entire Internet: “Yay, finally! WHOOOO!”
*Coming Home*
Thomas: “It’s good to be back home, sweet darling!”
Edith: “I’m so happy!”
The Entire Internet: *Sighs happily*
Lucille: “I MADE US BREAKFAST! ME! I DO EVERYTHING AROUND HERE! EVERYTHING!!” *eggs go flying with crazy skillet-slamming action*
(Between crazy shrieking and breakfast carnage, Edith slips a key off the keyring, for the seeeecret suitcase in the basement. She sneaks it back in a mock fainting fit, but nobody’s fooling anybody at this point. Later, Edith listens to the cylinders…)
Cylinder Recording: “Thomas, say you love me!”
Recorded Thomas: “Ummmm…”
*Edith goes through the meticulous envelopes full of damning evidence of murders. 3 murders, of Thomas’s wives. And a baby?*
Cylinder Recording: “They’re murdering me with tea-poison! If anybody finds this, get the hell out of the house!”
*Edith dashes out the doors and into the snow, but soon gets horribly stuck in the snowstorm and passes out on the stairs…*
Meanwhile–Edith’s Very Best Friend is at the Allendale Post Office, also delayed by the snowstorm…
BFF: “I have to get to Allendale!”
Postie: “We’re snowed in! If you wait a few hours, we can get this giant robot ready to go! I got a kid about your age, I’m betting he’s drift-compatible!”
BFF: “Sorry, can’t wait, gotta go!!”
(Edith wakes up to Lucille scraaaaaaaaaping her spoon across some sinister porridge…and horrible story-time ensues. )
Lucille: “My father was horrible, and broke my horrible mother’s horrible leg under his horrible boot. I made her all better. And you’ll be out of this bet really soon. You want some tea? No? Porridge?” *Scraaaaaaape*
Later, Edith stumbles out of bed and sees the first ghost, now with a poor, malformed ghost baby, who points down the hall to…Thomas and Lucille in flagrante delicto while Lucille is humming a GODDAMN LULLABYE, holy effin’ crap!!
Thomas: “Oh SHIT!”
Edith: “Oh SHIT!”
Lucille “AHAHAHAHA!!
The Entire Internet: “Oh noooooo…Not like this….not like this…”
Lucille keeps the monster train going by pushing Edith off a railing, into a pile of convenient foyer-snow, just as there’s a knock on the door…
BFF: “I’m really glad I got here in time to save Edith! I know about you both. You killed your mom, and all the wives, and Edith’s father! We’re leaving!
(Lucille and Thomas take turns shanking our poor would be hero–Lucille gleefully, Thomas compassionately, while Lucille kills the little dog tooooooo…)
BFF: “Owwwwww, dammit! Should have taken the Jaeger after all…”
(Lucille drags Edith upstairs to do haircuts and have girl talk, while Thomas hides BFF in the blood-clay basement.)
Lucille: “Sign the papers so I can keeeeell you at last! And your manuscript? It’s very warming! Ahahah! ” *Tosses it in the fireplace*
Edith: “You killed them! You killed them all! Even the baby! Enola’s baby, you killed it!!”
Lucille: “Nooooo, it was *my* baby, and he was born wrong, and I should have let it die, but I wanted it, and Enola thought she could save it, and it died, and she died, and love is a sick, twisted maimed thing that makes monsters of us all…”
Edith: “No, I’m pretty sure that’s just you.”
Lucille: “And your dad? I killed him too! Nice pen you have there!”
Edith: *Stabs Lucille with pen, escapes to the elevator, where she runs into Thomas.*
Edith: *flails with pen* “Get away from me! You lied to me! You poisoned me! You said that you loved me!”
Thomas: “I did, and I did, and I do! Here, trust me one more time–I’ll go in and deal with my crazy sister-girlfriend and you can wait right here for me where it’s not safe. Okay?…”
*Thomas confronts Lucille and burns the estate papers in the same fireplace where the manuscript is merrily burning*
Lucille: “What the hell, Thomas? I got stabbed in the chest with a pen for these papers!!”
Thomas: “Listen to me, Lu; we don’t have to live in the creepy house anymore with the ghosts of all the people we murdered; we can go somewhere nice, sunny, topical even! All of us!”
Lucille: “What do you mean, “All?” You, me and Edith? Maybe Stabbed McStabberson in the basement can come with, too! You promised you wouldn’t fall in love with any of them!”
Thomas: “I did. But I did. And I do.”
*Lucille vents her frustrations and stabs Thomas in the chest like a pincushion, then the face, where he weeps tears of blood and dies. After wailing and shrieking at what she’d just done, she flies after Edith like a fury. Edith fights back, but is no match for Lucille, who gets out her very favorite Mom-chopping blade. Edith escapes into the snow again, limping, and sets off thomas’s digging machine for cover…*
Lucille: “I will come until you kill me…or I kill you!! Which really means me killing you! A lot! Quite a lot!”
Edith: “Help me!!”
Lucille: “Who’s left to help you? Not Stabbed Bestest Friend!”
Edith: “No, look behind you!”
(Lucille does, and in shock sees Thomas as a ghost, and while she stands there in horror Edith clobbers her with a shovel.)
Lucille: *mumble mumble* “Still coming to kill you…or you kill me…”
Edith: “DOUBLETAP!”
(And as Edith reaches for Thomas, he lingers for a moment, then blows away gently in the wind)
Edith: “So. Widow it is, then.”
(As Edith and her Stabbed Bestest Friend stumble off toward hordes of rescuers, there is one last voiceover…)
Edith: “Ghosts exist. Where there’s fear, or love, or blood spilled, or where people are killed with aggressive tea-drinking, wherever Guillermo Del Toro hangs his hat, where there’s regret, and loss, and maybe a whole lot of crazy…”
Lucille: *Plays piano* “Shut up already, willya? And Mom, can you shut up too, or I’ll axe you in the head again. It all would have worked, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids…
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 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.
Yesss….good…let the Hypnoyarn fill your mind…
I must be out of my mind, spinning all this wool in July. But–but–fuchsia!!
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…
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…
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…
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.
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!
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….
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…
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…
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…
I finished up the pendants I wanted to play with last week. Here’s what I ended up with:
I have a few leftover taxidermy eyes from a haul I made at Axeman, years ago. I hoard them like treasure. But this turned out nicely!Polymer clay plus watch gears equals rainy-day fun!
It’s been great goofing off this way. It kind of helped me get back into knitting things again after a short break. I thought of this pendant, and then though how cool stitch markers with gears would be, then thought about various projects that needed stitch markers…and before you know it, bam! A scarflette finished!
Of course, a lot of my knitting has been on breaks at my work. I also do a little sketching here and there to help with stress. I’ve had this look on my face pretty much the entire week…
Just a tiny little dollop of side-eye and annoyance…
It’s my personal Saturday today. Which isn’t actually a Saturday. But that’s all right. And because of it, I can relax and get some well-deserved puttering in. I carded up some wonderful wools, and I intend to spend the afternoon spinning it all up while watching horrible tv or equally horrible movies. And this morning, I plan to goof off with polymer clays and old watch parts a friend donated to my artistic whims. Think of how cool a new drop spindle would be with watchparts embedded in the clay…
You see polymer clays and funky watch parts. I see…potential…*evil cackle*
It’s always such pure joy when I have a few moments away from work and busyness generally to just play with something cool for a while. I’ll take photos a little later of the fun, but I have to go and have the fun first…
Over the years of going from happy experimenter to serious spinner, I’ve collected a few things here and there…3 wheels, loads of fiber and more spindles than you can shake a stick at. (And I can. Because they’re made of sticks. Heh.) But my first and most abiding love is my first spinning wheel, dubbed Hester Hestia…
Hester Hestia, my first spinning wheel. She’s a Seventies beauty, new when bellbottoms, Boogie Fever and Macrame were still a thing…
My friends on Nicollet Island discovered her in the basement of one of the old Victorian houses in the neighborhood. They knew I had just started teaching myself how to spin, so they gave her to me to play with. Hestia was beautiful, but daunting, and badly battered. She was missing parts, her only bobbin was broken, her wheel had started to separate, some rotten kid had drawn on her with a ballpoint pen, and some anonymous thing or things had chewed on her treadle. She was in rough shape.
Over time, I fixed her up. It wasn’t easy…in fact, I nearly gave up on her more than once. Maybe she was too broken. Maybe I was just too stupid about this sort of thing. I had only the vaguest knowledge about how a spinning wheel worked. There were all kinds of funky looking hooks and knobs and such. Terrifying for a very, very VERY new spinner…
The business end of Hester…complete with spinny thing, scary hooks, weird bungee thing, bobbiny-dealio, weirdo hooky support thingies, and the Knob of Mystery…
But Halcyon Yarns had all kinds of great information, and I quickly learned about my new prize. She was an Ashford Traditional from the Seventies, made about the same time I was born. I could still get parts, and bobbins–lots and lots of bobbins! One of her support hooks was missing, so I crafted a new one out of an old metal hanger. My dad helped me reglue her wheel, and I lubed her up, waxed her drive band,figured out how her tension worked, and eventually…I could spin with her. She spun wonderfully! The wheel was nice and heavy enough that you didn’t really have to treadle hard to keep her going. It was particularly fun with some nice loud Ministry or KMFDM, treadling fast and spinning nice thin singles in black and red. I was a spinner! A real spinner with a real wheel, like a demented fairy-tale person! And it was amazing!
Over the years, she’s still my best girl. I would say most of the yarns in my Etsy shop come straight from Hester. From time to time, I think about giving her a new coat of varnish, possibly sanding off those cruel pen squiggles and chew marks. But for some reason I just couldn’t bring myself to. Good or bad, they were part of Hester’s mysterious history, and it felt wrong to remove them. Instead I try to give her what she needs–more oil, a little dusting, an hour’s fun with some merino I just bought. She’s a sweet, crabby beauty and I’d be lost without her…
Ah, the holiday season…where everybody, including me, starts to panic about presents for the loved ones in their life. Like anybody who knits, I get loads of requests for last minute speed-knitting of pretty, warming things. Some of them are very doable. Many are too time-crunching. A few are jaw-droppingly ludicrous. Sweaters. Elaborate socks. Entire blankets. Union suits. Alien face-hugger masks with bendable leggies. Huge Dwarf helmet-hats with horns and braided beards. While it’s extremely flattering to hear that people think I have magical knitterly skills, I have to turn the big projects down. I also start getting that hunted look on my face, where I’m expecting to sprint down the corridors at work with my coworkers chasing me, yelling, “No, wait, it’s just a last-minute thing, I know you can do it by Christmas!! Come Baaaack!”
But that said, I’ve cranked out a few pretty things, here and there…
Mochi Marshmallow wristwarmers, with mohair,merino and handspun angora…A skein of silver angora I plied with a soft silk thread for extra strength and shine…
Both of these lovely things have already been claimed. I should make more. When can I make more? So many things to make!! So many! Do I have enough yarn? The right kind? Do I have to make some? Why did I make this fussy, time-consuming thing that everybody wants now? I Must Make Many Many THIIIIIIIINGS!!
And then possibly ask Santa for a Time-Turner, or manybe a Margarita machine. It’s medicinal, I tellya…
