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#100DaysOfFiberArts
One of the things I’ve noticed about myself is that having external motivation (and sometimes, deadlines) is really important for getting things done. Just having a box to check at some point during the day makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something (even if it’s been one of those days where just getting out of bed, managing my hair, and putting calories and caffeine in myself is a challenge). On those days when I’m on the struggle bus, it’s even more important that the box to be checked is really just about progress. This challenge wasn’t about completing certain projects – it was about doing *something* fiber related for at…
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One Year Later
A lot of folks have written things over the last week(ish) about where we are a year into the Covid-19 pandemic. I can’t really speak to the science, the public health, or societal effects, but I can talk about the effects that it’s had on me over the last 12 months. This may drift around and ramble a bit, but I’d say that’s what the last 12 months have been like in general – bouncing from one random bit of chaos to another, with some things seeming to go on forever. I’m generally pretty good about staying up on the news, so I was watching the emergence of Covid-19 somewhat…
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Dropping a Line
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#Spin15ADay Challenge
Having taken stock of my fiber stash over the holidays, I realized that I needed to start spinning more before I ran out of space for fiber. Or needed to get (even more) creative when it comes to fiber storage. So I decided that my first challenge for the year would be #Spin15ADay – to spin for at least 15 minutes every day during the month of January. Over the course of the month, my spinning time usually happened in the evenings, but time spent on the task varied. Sometimes I was squeezing in 15 minutes with a drop spindle right before bedtime, and sometimes I was spending the afternoon…
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Ashford Traveller
I bought my first spinning wheel only a few months after I learned to spin in the spring of 2008. I had an on campus job throughout the school year, and summer work lined up, so I had a bit of money I could spend. After looking around a bit, I decided on an Ashford Traveller. It looked like a solid wheel, and wasn’t too expensive, especially if I got one unfinished. So off I went to eBay, of all places, to order one. Of course I was telling myself I wasn’t going to put it together right away after it arrived, I’d save it for some point in time…
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Finding a Bit of Motivation
At times, it can be hard to motivate myself to make time to work on the various creative projects that I’ve got floating around when I’ve got competing work and home demands (plus those whole eating healthy, getting to the gym, and sleeping things). I’ve currently got a scarf on the needles, and four spinning projects (two on drop spindles and two on spinning wheels). And of course I’ve got a couple fleeces to process and plenty of other bits of fluff on hand ready to spin. So when someone in one of the spinning groups I’m in on Facebook created a couple of 100 Day Projects (#100DaysOfFiberArt and #100DaysOfSpinning),…
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Dropping a Line
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Gotland
Carolina FiberFest was a couple of weeks ago in Raleigh. I really lucked out this year and was able to find fiber from a number of sheep breeds that I’d never seen before. Gotland was one of these. The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook describes this fiber as “an unusual wool, resembling a fine mohair or an English luster long wool more than the other Northern European Short-Tailed breeds”. This sheep was developed in Sweden in the early twentieth century from the more primitive Goth, Gute, or Gutefår breeds. The fleeces are usually in the grey range (light silvery grey to charcoal to near black), occasionally white or brown, with subtle…
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Spinning a Yarn
At this point, I’ve been spinning for over a decade. I was very lucky to have a local yarn shop, Mad About Ewes, in my college town. In addition to teaching various knitting classes, Libby, the owner, taught spinning. So one spring weekend, I spent the day learning to spin. Totally normal for a college sophomore, right? The first part of the lesson was on a drop spindle, which helped me understand how to draft the fiber and how twist travels through the yarn. The advantage of a drop spindle is that you can spin it, stop the spin, and then pull on the fiber (called drafting) and to let…
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A Short Introduction
Maybe we’ve met in person, maybe we follow each other on social media, or maybe you’ve just stumbled across my site while searching for a place to buy yarn or looking for information about the fiber arts, archaeology, or living history. Regardless of how you found me, an introduction of sorts seems to be in order. I’m the creative type who also enjoys structure, so it’s not surprising that I picked up knitting during my freshman year of college. I wanted a way to make things outside of my art classes, and I’d seen the pretty things on display in the local yarn shop in my college town. After a…
