This weekend was mostly devoted to Julie and her awesome 27-year-old self. I made sheep cookies
All weekend people kept asking "why sheep?!" I thought it would be obvious ("why not?") but instead provided the explanation that I thought the role of the sheep in the Christmas manger scene was always under-valued. This was my tribute to those important creatures that would one day inspire The One to become a shepherd. Quizzical looks...Thanks for the cookie cutter, Johanna!
put on my pjs
From Cupcake Extravaganza 2009 when my mom gave me nothing but cupcake themed gifts for Christmas. Thrilled to find out what the theme is for 2010!!!
Also did a little spinning on the spindle. I am making really thin singles out of goodness-knows-what kind of wool and will hopefully end up with enough of a two-ply to knit something with. Here is me spinning in photos:
Attaching some wool to the hook
Drafting: pulling out little tufts of wool until they are the right thickness. Then I let go with the right hand to allow the twist to come up into the tuft I just created. Repeat.
Letting the wool get too thin so it breaks...I drop the spindle on the floor and have to chase it as it rolls away...
More drafting...keep going...
I keep adding more fiber, and the piece I am spinning gets longer and longer.
When the piece I am working on gets too long, I unhook it from the hook end and wind it around the stick end.
Eventually I end up with a whole bunch of yarn on the bottom side of my spindle. When I have enough I will roll it up, make a second length of yarn, and then ply the two together. I am pretty proud at how thin and even this is...
I made a hat! My first hat I ever made! And the first hat I have worn in years, actually. I usually just pull a scarf up over my head, but I look a wee bit crazy. The pattern in Shroom by Lee Wood Juvan. The yarn is Berroco Peruvia. It's just the right amount of slouchy to fit my pony tail under.
I look CRAAAAZZEEEEE!! (and pale...)
The embarrassing thing? I bought the yarn Friday night after work and finished it before I went to bed. Meaning that I did NOTHING Friday night other than knitting and watching Brothers and Sister. Blah.
I guess I also blocked a couple of things, including reblocking the Travelling woman shawl I made in September.
My dad got be blocking wires which makes blocking lace A MILLION times easier.
From last weekend, I should let you know that I got to go to the White House Holiday Open House. There were trees:
A shrine to Bo the dog:
And cool handmade trees and wreaths:
See?!?! That tree is made of newspaper!!
And carolers:
Sneaky Carolers...hiding behind the tree...
A 350 pound ginger bread house (that I failed to get a picture of...sigh...) and Truman, hiding in a stair well (I think I take a picture of him every time I go on a White House tour):
In other news, I might have gotten my first commissioned piece of work. Mittens! Picked out beautiful baby alpaca/merino blend for them...so soft and warm.
Last weekend I did something I have been waiting to do for months now: I learned to spin! If you are one of my friends who ride their bicycle to work on a daily basis (no matter the nasty cold weather out) and rarely play with wool, NO I DID NOT SPEND ALL WEEKEND LEARNING TO RIDE A STATIONARY BIKE!!!
Now that we got that out of the way, yes, I learned to use both a spindle and a spinning wheel to make fiber into yarn. Let me repeat: I can make yarn from scratch!!! How badass is that?
I headed down to The Art League in Alexadria for a two day class they ominously called “Crash Course in Spinning,” (http://www.theartleague.org/). I did manage to figure out the public transportation to get to Virginia, and I managed not to make rude comments to passersby about how I never can figure out why people live in NOVA (I obviously harbor resentment toward this place).
My teacher was a lovely lady known as SpinStick on Ravelry. She knows everything there is to know about spinning and has spun everything there is that could possibly be spun (including hair from all her pets, rayon spider webbing from Halloween and grass clippings, which she said did not work particularly well). I heart people like her, because most people are like “knitting is weird. Why would you want to do that?” She is like “why the hell would knit when you could spend your time on way cooler activities like spinning…duh!!”
As I was the only person in the class (intense, right?) she immediately got me started on the spindle. Spindles come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but they basically all work in the same way. They have a weight on them that helps them spin. You hook a piece of fiber to them and then start spinning them in a clockwise fashion. The spinning causes the fiber to twist as you feed the thickness you want through your fingers to make yarn. This makes no sense unless you see it (minute 6 is where she actually starts spinning, but the beginning part is a really good explanation of what I had to learn to be able to do this):
Here’s her Part II if you need more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAVYmG9zeK8&feature=related
Then I learned to spin with the wheel. Spinning wheels come in a variety of styles.
This is the Ashford wheel that I liked the best
I spun on two different spinning wheels, actually just like the two that they use in this video:
Here’s how you actually spin it:
And another cute lady spinning…good background:
Once you have spun on either your spindle or wheel, you have what is called “energized” yarn, meaning that it has a whole bunch of twist. You have to put it in some hot water to let it set the twist and relax a little bit.
You let it hang to dry like this:
Then once it is dried, I had this:
Cool, right? Then I learned how to ply the yarn. Wikipedia tells me that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plying):
In the textile arts, plying is a process used to create a strong, balanced yarn. It is done by taking two or more strands of yarn that each have a twist to them and putting them together. The strands are twisted together, in the opposite direction than that in which they were spun. When just the right amount of twist is added, this creates a balanced yarn, which is a yarn with no tendency to twist upon itself. Almost all store bought yarns are balanced, plied yarns.
The turquoise and the light gray one next to it are plied yarns. The ugly one on the left was the one I did on the spindle. The others were done on the wheel.
Not enough of one yarn to really make anything, but still, I MADE YARN. See why I feel like such a badass?
It says: "Distracted Driving Summit Team: For your exceptional contribution to advancing the strategic goals of RITA and the U.S. Department of Transportation." Green folder behind it so you can actually see the writing.
"Environmental Sustainability Award: In recognition of your ongoing efforts to reduce waste and work in an environmentally sustainable manner in RITA and your community."
Sorry for the terrible pictures (my cubicle lights/cell phone camera are not a good combination). And yes, I turned in grad school applications before knowing I was going to receive these...oops...
Awesomeness abounds when you find a link to a Dirty Jobs episode where the lovable Mike Rowe heads to a woolen mill to figure out how fleece is made into yarn. This doesn't seem all that dirty to me, but maybe I have low/high/weird standards.
Heads up: I am headed to The Art League this weekend to learn how to do this, too (in a class called, terrifyingly, The Crash Course to Spinning), but my experience is going to be a lot more frustrating as I will be skipping the machines and doing it by hand. Also, I just checked in with the school and they tell me that I am the only person who signed up for the class and that the teacher is still willing to hold the class....which means I get a two-day private intensive lesson. It thrills me that I will be able to learn my own pace and ask as many questions as I want without annoying the crap out of other people. But it also makes me super sad for this poor lady when she finds out that her only student knows ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about spinning (and is a horrible student...I hate being not-good at things and taking instructions from other people, two skills required for learning...) I promise to report back on that endeavor.
