Suddenly around the middle of December this year, I decided I needed to make presents because sometimes I’m a little crazy/stupid.
No, I couldn’t buy them, I had to make them this year. Pens and socks. That’s what I would do. It mattered not that I am a very new CSM sock knitter and I’d never turned a pen. This is what I was going to do. For Christmas. Less than 2 weeks away.
See, the last few years, we haven’t really been in the holiday mood. Last year was particularly tough when we almost lost Bandit to pancreatitis/severe infection/necrotic tissue at the beginning of December. All of my energy last Christmas was dedicated to getting him eating on his own and recover. A large part of this year was getting him back to normal and Grey to recognize him.
I thought I’d try something a little novel for this blog. A short post.
What? It could happen. Maybe a “shortish” post for now.
Back in July, I started a supported spindle spin that ended up being a far larger project than I imagined. See, I usually spin just to spin. Then the yarn gets put on the wall where it may take me years to use because I spin more than I knit or weave combined.
I talked about this project back in August and showed a bunch of in progress pics. Well, around late September I got it in my head that maybe I could finish it by November 10th and have it blocked and dry in time for the Edmonton Fibre Frolic. I do these things – putting unnecessary pressure on myself. Still it was only a couple of rows a day, as long as nothing went wrong and if I could keep up with the spinning. It also depended on how many repeats of the penultimate chart I decided to do. As written or one repeat, it was doable. The knitting alone though was a huge undertaking. True lace (no rest rows) and shaping I’ve never done before. Some days a row would take me 2 hours – especially if I had to go back and find an error or fix one in the row below. Continue reading An accidentally epic finish→
Along with the Shetland fleece I posted about the other day, a skein winder and a spinning wheel arrived at the house. Both were in dire need of some attention. Based on what I was told, the skein winder may be turn of the century. I suspect it was made in someone’s garage or barn from found wood as it’s a mix of several different species but it’s well made and the mortise and tenons are well executed either way.
Part of July and sometimes August of most years in this house is dedicated to the Tour de Fleece. It’s a 23 day annual event where we spinners sort of mirror the Tour de France. We spin the same days, take the same rest days and have challenge days. It’s a great chance to dedicate some time to spinning and other related crafting. This year, there was the regular race and the women’s race so we spun from July 1 to the 31st. It’s a great opportunity to try to clear a few UFOs.
I also thought I’d post a few of my new “spinning hacks” and my new favourite tool off the lathe in this post.
A cotton sweater about half knitted. Some white, green and purple rolags and some silver and red cotton sliver and punis share a photo with some hand cards and a book charkha.
Here’s what I committed to working on for this year’s TdF.
From the top:
A cotton sweater with yarn I over-dyed last year. The original colorway was “Desert” and I added a Jeans blue to get this much more comfortable for me colour. It changes a lot in various lights. This is outside and relatively true to colour here. It was an unofficial goal but I’d had it on the needles for a year. It was time.
Some Merino/Tencel rolags in white/green/purple. I began calling this one “Grape Vines” somewhere along the way. These are the only rolags I’ve ever bought – usually I make my own but this was a few years ago and a great experience in spinning other people’s preparations.
Some of you may have noticed I have updated Archaic Arcane’s banner at the top of the site. I’ve put it on a rotation with the old banner, so here it is again if you see the old one above.
This came about finally due to a project I’m working on right now but realistically, I’ve been wanting an actual logo for almost 10 years.
I let it marinate in my mind and would periodically think about it but nothing really spoke to me. Then at the beginning of July, I began a collaboration project. I can’t say much about it until later in the month but one of the things they asked for was a copy of my logo in PNG format and a transparent background.
For the second year in a row, I think most of us were pretty happy to see the back end of the past year. It was a challenging year here.
I do like these year in review posts – even if they don’t tend to be that popular. They help me to see that I wasn’t idle after all. It seems like the winter can be a hard time to change years. It’s dark and cold (up here anyway!) and what the heck did I even accomplish anyway?
Well. 2020 is over, to the relief of most of the world, I’d think. In reality, this annual post almost didn’t happen. It wasn’t until I went back through the photos on my phone that I saw I wasn’t quite as idle as I’d thought. I mean, I took almost 4000 pictures… I had to have done some things, right?
Well, I put this post off for a little longer than I should have – but I had what I think is were understandable reasons mixed with a little procrastination.
In mid-December of 2018, Stormi began spending almost all of her time in the bedroom which meant more time for me in the bedroom taking care of her. That put some projects and some of my usual stress relievers on hold because I wouldn’t leave her alone for more than a few hours at a time . Continue reading 2019 Year End Wrap up, part 2 – everything else→
This highlights reel / wrap up is a little later than I planned. It’s also far longer than I’d planned – so I’m breaking it up into parts 1 and 2. Today’s will cover the Sewing Machine related stuff and tomorrow’s will be the rest of the year in review.
Well, I’ve been really quiet on the site this year but I thought I’d do a year in review anyway because it hasn’t been a quiet year in real life! It seems a bit of a roller coaster ride of good things and drama but all in all, it was a calmer year than recently previous years.