Smoked Out

I got back to my sewing machine. It seems like forever (well it has been over a week!) I previously posted that I love to draw pears... when I can't think of anything to draw (most of the time) I draw a pear. Tonight I drew eight... on my sewing machine.

I'm going to connect them all together into with my hand spun wool and they will be a concertina book... like the one I've been talking about for the Straight and Narrow Challenge on the QuiltArt list. In fact this may BE my peice for the S&N challenge, as my childhood memory idea isn't working for me at the moment. I was inspired by June Underwood's burned edge post the other week, so I tried it out on my little pieces. I breathed in a lot of smoke and now my throat is feeling scratchy, so next time I will do it outside. I'm pretty happy with the results but the edges are quite fragile which means they wont make a durable book. On the spinning side of things. I've finished one spool. I tried to spin some merino, but it sucked (as I was told it would), so I'm going to leave it until I'm more experienced, that's if I don't felt it first LOL.

The Journey

I almost didn't blog tonight because as a quilter I'm doing a hell of a lot of spinning and there are only so many photos of a slowly growing spool of yarn that I can post here LOL It's mesmerising and I'm definitely making progress. below you can see three examples of the yarn I've spun so far.

The white one, I did last night after my first lesson with Bev it's the precarded Corridale fleece from the Jumbuk in Bairnsdale. The pink is called Ashford Corridale from a little shop called Benambra Blue in Omeo, I spun it during my lunch break today. The grey one I spun tonight, it's from some lovely fleece Bev gave me to practice on, I don't know what breed of sheep it's from but it is lovely and greasy and slides out nicely. I'm wearing the yarns as bracelets at the moment so I can gaze at them when I'm not spinning LOL And I like to see my progress already from a lumpy yarn to a more even product. I'm calling this the honeymoon phase, it is a general pattern with me (and others I suspect). I do the 'new' thing to the exclusion of other stuff (like sleeping) for the first while until I feel that I have somewhat mastered the basics, then I try to get the balance back... I have to work at getting balance, a continuing life goal for me LOL With that said, I am determined to SEW tommorow. No sketching, no frigging around thinking about stuff, I'm just gonna get that sewing machine pumping! I WILL show something other than yarn tommorow.

First Spinning Lesson

Yay! I just came back from my spinning lesson with Bev. She showed me how to deal with fleece straight off the sheeps back, I learnt to comb the locks and then I got to spin :-) As I expected, I'm not producing a very consistent yarn at this stage, but I'm generally happy about my progress.

My first attempt at spinning wool

There are three wools on the spool, all very nice if you ask me. The red one is a long stranded wool called lester (or something... I'll have to look it up in my book, Bev told me twice, but I promptly forgot). Bev dyes her wools too and she had some lovely examples of naturally dyed yarns, my favourite was a beautiful red dyed with eucalyptus leaves. Next week I learn to ply. So I had better keep busy spinning so I can produce a decent amount of plied yarn. I wonder if I should try to join The Spinning Wheel webring... perhaps, I'll wait to see if I will continue with it first.

Drawing - harder than I want

Things are getting back to normal with my blog (just the About Me page to set up), and also in my normal life (the tennis is now over; Lleyton lost the final, *sniff*). Yesterday arvo I tried to sit down for a couple of hours to do some sketching for my challenge quilt. I drew one thing, then got really sleepy and had to put my head down on my desk for a little shut eye. I'm not happy with my progress even though I have six sketches (I plan to do 10 panels), I just can't help but think I have come up with a very uninteresting idea :-( I like the concertina book idea, it's the cartoon sketching part I'm not sure about, the images aren't right. Should I be diciplined and continue? Should I move on and try some quilted jewellery ideas I had yesterday? (hey, I could make a 5:1 mini quilt pendant!). OK I'll try a sewing session with the idea (perhaps it is just sewing machine withdrawal). If I'm still unhappy, I'll abandon ship. Tonight is my spinning lesson :-)

Lazy Saturday

I had a fairly lazy Saturday, although I did finish Scarfzilla... which I will wear as a stole I think. The damn thing is about a foot taller than moi LOL

I was watching Terminator 2 when this photo was taken (thanks Riscy XXX). It's a classic, but I can't stomach the violence as easily as I did when I was younger. I still love Pulp Fiction though, so it mustn't apply to all films. I went to Big W today to check out their yarns. There was only one type of 100% wool fabric (which I needed for the felted bag I was thinking about), but the colours didn't grab me so I decided to leave that idea alone for the time being. I have enough projects at the moment anyway. I'm back to quilting tommorow... I promise :-)))

Today's purchase

I had to go to East Gippsland for work today and noticed a shop on the outskirts of Bairnsdale called Jumbuk Wools. There were spinning wheels in the window, I bought some carded Corriedale fleece for practicing my spinning (first lesson is this Monday!!).

Fleece from Jumbuk Wools in Bairnsdale.

I am totally tired tonight. The tennis is wearing me out, I didn't stay up last night to see the end of the Federa vs Safin match, it finished around 1am but Chris told me that Safin won when he came to bed and I was so supprised I couldn't get back to sleep for a while. This weekend I want to make major progress with my challenge quilt. I reckon I'll finish scarfzilla tonight so I'll be free to devote some serious time to the project. I want to make another bag too... but not until I've done a good amount on the quilt.

Books From the Exchange

I recently went through my book shelf and culled out a box full of books to take to the book exchange. I got to refill my box with $70 worth of books to bring home... these are the craft books I got

Look what I found today at the book exchange.

I'm impressed with the fashions in the knitting book (circa 1982), I would even wear some of the stuff in there... I might be able to knit something out of it! I also got the spinning books I had reserved from the library. I've had a quick look through them, but I'm going to study them over the weekend so I'm ready for my spinning lesson on Monday. I didn't tell you how the lesson came about, did I? I was browsing on the net this afternoon, looking for general 'how to' info on spinning. I was thinking about making a drop spindle to try out. I saw a demonstration a number of years ago from the Spinners and Handweavers Guild of Victoria, I decided to look up their website to see what info was there... nothing much but there was a contact number. So I spoke to the President Viviene and she gave me the number of the lady I'm having my lesson with on Monday... Pretty cool :-) Here is a picture of me knitting the huge scarf.

Me hard at work knitting scarfzilla.

Recapping - The knitting blogs are getting to me

I took a day off work today - sick. But I've put my time to good use. I've arranged to meet with a spinner on Monday night so she can show me how to spin my own yarn. "Whoa!" You say... wasn't it only *this* week you were saying that you hadn't picked up knitting needles for 8 years... well I must have an enquiring mind. I just have to know how a spinning wheel works and I need to see what I can do :-) There is a possiblity that I can hire a wheel off the Latrobe Valley Spinners so I can do some spinning at home and see if I like it. If I do then apparently there is an excellent locally made wheel that she know someone is willing to sell for $100. I took the triple irish chain quilt to the longarm quilter yesterday. It's going to cost me $266!!! $266 I must be mad! (although this does include the wadding and the backing) I'm not sending another quilt out to be quilted, I don't think it's a rip off, but, after all I'm sending the out precicely because I don't care about them enough to quilt them myself. I'll bite the bullet and do them at home from now on, I've decided the King Sized quilt I'm making for my friends wedding will be quilted by me in sections. I don't have photoshop installed yet, so no photos of my now enormous scarf until later...

Damn Hard Disk!

Dear Reader, This morning tragedy struck. The hard disk on my computer died (RIP). With it, my blog, all my photos and worst of all my receipe file has disappeared (woe is me, I *will* back up from now on) It will take me a few days to get things really going again, especially since I am going great with the scarf I'm knitting :-) and the tennis is going so well (go Lleyton!!!) So check back in a day or so, I'll be back better than ever. To those who I communicate with through email, I've lost my email address book too, sorry, I'll have this sorted out soon.

Fibermania

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