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…
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Ahhh, today is wonderful…dark, rainy, gloomy! Just the right kind of day to do some spinning! What’s that, you say? Don’t spin? But you’re dying to learn? *rubs hands together* Eeeeeexcellent…
Don’t be frightened–spinning is easy to learn and takes very little money to start. By now you probably have a nice little spindle you’ve made, all by yourself, with instructions from my last tutorial. Or you can buy them online–there’s all kinds of gorgeous spindles out there for beginners for reasonable prices. Wool is also easy to come by on the net–before long you’ll have your favorite suppliers to stock you up on demand, but I started out with the mother-ship of spinning acoutrements, the website at Halcyon Yarn. They have everything you need, and I do mean everything. But for a starter yarn, go easy and cheap–no alpaca or camel or angora or yak, not yet. Blue-faced Leister is a great beginners wool, as is Icelandic and Romney. A simple drop spindle and a handful of fiber, waiting to be transformed into something wonderful.
The first thing you’ll want to do is fluff up your fibers. If you bought roving in long strips or braids, untie the braids and gently tear the roving into nice, manageable strips. If you have a batt, you can tear off chunks as you spin. Or you can just take locks of wool and use your fingers or a dog comb to make a nice fluffy pile. And take a minute to roll a little fiber around in your fingers. How does it feel? Twirl some around with your hands, and see what feels good to you. That’s how you’ll want your yarn to feel. Now, tie some leftover yarn to your spindle, under the whorl, and loop it through the hook on top. (This is called, the ‘leader” yarn.)Put a slip knot in the top, then thread a little fiber through the loop and pull nice and tight. This will anchor your fiber for spinning… A spindle, all ready to spin!
Now, hold the yarn loop with your dominant hand, and let the spindle hang down from the leader yarn. Spin it with your fingers, counterclockwise. Let the twist go up into your fiber. You can stop your spindle anytime and use your fingers to smooth out your yarn. One hand will end up controlling the twist by pinching off the yarn, and the other hand will end up “drafting”; basically pulling at your fiber until it’s the thickness you want. Don’t be too worried about drafting right now–you just want to get the hang of the twisting from the spindle running up into your fiber the way you want. Spinning up the first bit of yarn. Let the twist from your spindle run up into the fiber.
How’s a good way to tell how your yarn is going? You can let it loop back on itself to see if it feels soft and comfortable. If it feels too tight and harsh, it has too much twist, and you can fix it by letting the twist run further up the fibers. If it’s coming apart, twist it a little more. But trust your fingers; they know what they want your yarn to feel like. You can always stop, untwist all the fiber and start over if it’s not the way you want it. This fiber looped onto itself really nicely. it’s not too tight, not too loose.
Running out of fiber? Add a little more! Just take your next bit of fiber and layer it over the end of your yarn. Give your spindle a spin and watch the twist run up into the new addition. Wool wants to hang onto wool, and you can keep adding on and on until your spindle is full or you’re tired of spinning, whichever comes first.New fiber added onto the first bit of fiber. The twist holds everything together!
Now, while you’re spinning and spinning, you’ll make mistakes for sure. Your wool will be lumpy. You’ll drop your spindle a dozen times or more. Your hands won’t know what to do. Just keep at it–eventually your hands will find a rhythm that makes sense, and things will get much easier. My rhythm goes like this: “Spin the spindle, pinch the yarn, pull the fibers”. The pinching is to stop the twist going further than I want it too, the pulling is to even out the next fibers to be spun up. And you can stop whenever you want, start back up whenever you want, and keep going until you can no longer fit anything onto your spindle.A very, very, very full spindle…
So what do you do with your spindle full of yarn? You can wind your new yarn into a ball as it is and knit with it. I usually prefer to set the twist–I wrap it around a niddy-noddy, a wonderful tool used to measure and skein up yarn, then take the yarn off, give it a good gentle soak in lukewarm water, *very* gently wring out the water and hang it in my shower to dry. (I use clothes hangars to weigh down the bottom of the skein so the yarn doesn’t kink.) When it’s dry, it’s nicely balanced and much easier to use. You can use that first yarn to make a funky potholder, or a headband, or a little bag to put in spinning fluff for later. But be proud of that first wonderful, lumpy, blobby yarn, and be proud of yourself!! Not everybody sticks it out with something new, and you just did!!
(If you have any extra questions about spinning, or get stuck and need a little coaching, ask me in the comments section!! I’ll walk you through any fiber kinks you run into. But I think you’ll do better than you expected.)
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…
