Amusing Miscellany – Page 3 – MsFledermaus Arts

April 15, 2016

Pirate Peg the Foster Wheel…Yarrr!!

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.

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….

April 1, 2016

If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap!

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…

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…

March 5, 2016

Steampunk made easy…

I finished up the pendants I wanted to play with last week. Here’s what I ended up with:

Purple eye pendant — 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!

Steampunk pendant — 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…

So there you are…

February 26, 2016

The Joys of Puttering…

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…

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…

December 11, 2015

Holiday Knitting DangerZone…

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…

Silver 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…

October 23, 2015

Even in the darkest hour, you can always find me…

…Because I just bought some glow-in-the-dark spinning fiber!

It glows!! How cool is that?

I have always played around with glow-thread and it makes for some really fun Halloween yarns…but this looks pleasingly chunky and wonderful to play with. I can hardly wait to get my mitts on it!!
There’s so much opportunity for fun here.

Meanwhile, I’m almost done with a chemo cap for a friend of a friend…and a little more spinning here and there. I’ve been spinning more on breaks at the Mines, just to relax. It’s fun to watch my coworkers when the spindle goes around and around…sometimes I’ll laugh and whisper, “Sleepy…you are getting sleepy…ALL HAIL THE HYPNO-TOAD!!” and we’ll have a good chortle. This weekend I’d like to put up a nice spinning tutorial for beginners, so I’ll play with the camera a bit this afternoon. The last tutorial was so much fun, I want to do more…

October 9, 2015

Zombie Love…

People ask me all the time what projects I like to knit. Depending on who asks, I will stick to safe answers like, “Socks, sweaters, you know, knitful things.” But sometimes I’ll tell them the truth.”I love knitting weird things. Squooshy monsters with tentacles and guts inside them, tiny shawls for ghost dollies, cosies for things that don’t need them…You know, like you do. And Zombies!” I keep finding cool patterns for things like Sharktopuses, which I *have* to try. I have to! I want a Sharktopus, and I’m betting you do too!

Last year about this time I knitted up a zombie version of my sweetie. He sits on his shelf, with a detachable head, arms and legs, with his guts squishing out of his torso…

Zombie Sweetheart. — This fella’s got a really big heart. It’s just behind all those squishy guts…

It’s actually not a bad likeness, except for the green skin and detachable head and loose intestines. If I made him a tiny fuzzy sweater, he would look an awful lot like Robert Smith with glasses. But would that invoke The Dreaded Sweater Curse? Or maybe, since it would be small, the curse would also be tiny–maybe we’d just have a grumpy morning with burned toast instead. Anybody who’s made tiny sweaters for undead significant others please feel free to give advice…I realize that may be a very small advice pool.

October 2, 2015

My favorite month! At last!!!

It’s cooling off…the sky is darkening…the leaves are falling…and I love every second of it!!
Finally, the month I’ve been waiting for!! Delicious, wonderful October!

So to celebrate I’ve been spinning a cheerful Halloween yarn or two. Look at these happy, happy skulls!

Skully yarn! — A promising start to some happy, happy skully yarn!

While I love my spinning wheels to distraction, sometimes a spindle is ideal when you’re adding on loads of bulky things like beads or cocoons or scraps of silk and whatnot. I’ve also been using a cool trick for adding the beads: Stringing them into small bits of the roving with a needle-threader, then fluffing out the roving so it grabs on to the rest of the yarn. It doesn’t ladder like a thread can do with a heavy bead, and is remarkably stable!

Meanwhile, last night I just got back from visiting a friend who has an art studio at the Northrup King building in Northeast. I love those spaces, full of color and light. I kind of covet them, to be truthful. Studio spaces are so great. I never really used one myself, though. Why? Welllll, when you really get down to it; creatively I can be a bit lazy. When inspiration hits, the last thing I want to do is haul myself down through the cold, windry weather to where I put all my tools, paints, wool, etcetera. I’d just rather hop out of bed, have a wash, run downstairs or upstairs to the wool-bins and start mixing the fluff. These days I’m awfully lucky to have enough space at home where this is doable. If I was doing this sort of thing full-time, a space would make more sense,but I’m grateful at the moment I don’t need it. There are times though, when the paying job gets stressful and I think about starting a small yarn shop. There’s a bit of a yarn-shop gap in my neighborhood, and maybe , just maybe…

September 4, 2015

Oddments and Ends…

September already? I’m always so happy to see September roll up. Because October is right behind it. Also, retailers have been pushing loads of Halloween decorating things, so I can get all the skull goblets and and bat tablecloths I can carry. Usually I do a big hit right after Halloween and snap things up on sale, but sometimes I’m just not that patient. Because of my scrabbling around,last year I needed a much bigger Gothmas tree for all my jacked-up, weirdo ornaments. Hopefully this one will last a few years until I need a bigger one still…

Meanwhile, that blue angora hood I made could use some friends, so I’ve been knitting up wristwarmers. I have enough yarn left to make some plain blue ones, perhaps with matching snowflakes, but I couldn’t help making something entirely different with purple and blue fair-isle. I was knitting up a tummy for a gut-monster, and everybody who saw it seemed a little disappointed that it wasn’t a thing they could wear…

Half of a mitt — Fuzzy! Blue! Purple! And also fuzzy!

It’s kind of refreshing to make something that eye-catching out of fun leftover yarns from other projects. The blue and purple yarns were for making zombie dolls, and the blue angora was yarn I had frogged from a sweater a friend found at a thrift store. It was someone’s project that they never quite finished–there was a front and a back, and one-half a sleeve, as well as a little lace in a blue cotton that was too heavy for all that angora. I wonder sometimes what happened with the original owner of that almost-sweater. Did they get frustrated and give up on their project? Or did they die and leave their not-quite-a-sweater behind? I’ll never know. But I’m happy I’ve managed to do some nice recycling and make a few fun things here and there. And maybe when I grudgingly go to my own eventual grave, some fun knitter will go through my own stash and go, “Hey, look at that half-a scarf! I bet I could make something really cool with that!” I’d like to think so. So maybe the first owner won’t mind much.

(I also made a ridiculously fluffy blue nightie with some of the angora. I’m ummmm…not showing it to you. Or possibly anybody. It’s that over-the-top.)

August 21, 2015

Hot and Cold…

The dog days of August are of course the very best days to knit up a winter hood…

Snowflake hood — A blue angora hood with little embroidered snowflakes…

I think all the extra winter knitting is just for comfort. When things get a bit stressed out with my work at the Jade Mines, I knit to redirect my mind to a cosy world full of colors and textures. Though there are days that have compensations. Like the conversation I had with someone over the phone the other day…

Caller:(Incoherent muttering)
Me: “Hello? You’ve reached the Mines of Glorious Jade. What can I do for you?”
Caller: “I wanna, like sign up for the Cordon Bleu classes. I saw your add on tv! Like, I’m good at cooking and I wanna do the Cordon Blue.”
Me: “I’m afraid that’s a different institution–we don’t offer cooking classes. This is a museum.”
Caller:”Well, howabout animation? You, know, (slurs) animation?I’m really interested in your Cordon Bleu classes, but I wanna be an animator too.”
Me. “I’m sorry, we don’t offer anything like that. We’re a museum.
Caller:”Whaaaat? Museum?”
Me:”Yes, that’s right. Museum.”
Caller: “Like, when are you open? I have a 2 year old and he really likes art!” (background yodels of small shrieking child)
Me:*silent facepalm* We’re not open today.
Caller. “Oh. Okay. Bye!!”

It was still not as funny as the guy who wanted to come and hold one of our samurai swords, just because reasons. The world is full of people who have, shall we say, interesting demands…

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