New Hobby

So I've picked up a new hobby (since I needed another one) and I have been trying my hand at wire jewelry making. I blame pinterest and my friend Anna on there who keeps pinning beautiful stuff. I had tried to make shawl pins before, but they didn't work very well. Until I learned that key piece of information about hammering or annealing the piece. Yeah, it works much better. 

I started off simple.  A little stick pin style.

But I've been working my way through some more complicated designs.  

 

 Mine are a bit unique in that the "pin" part is actually connected to the design so that it won't pull out.  I've lost a few shawl pins that way and I think this helps. 

Then I decided to get really complicated thanks to the design of my friend, Jess.  It is actually the Seal of Rassilon from Doctor Who.

 I need to make more shawls to keep up with all of the shawl pins I am making.

Tour De Fleece 2012



So I totally did participate in the Tour De Fleece this year.  Unfortunately, my camera's memory card ate all of the pictures before I could upload them here.  They are all over on Facebook.  I would save them and upload them here, but the quality is horrible.  So just pretend there were more bobbins of the stupid brown romney fleece (I literally have one more bobbin's worth of fleece left to spin, I will get to it before next year's tour) and a random skein of yarn and a skein of yarn spun for a swap partner.

 

 Instead of all of those wonderful pictures, I will leave you with a cute picture of Itchy and Heidi.  They really do like each other.

Mountain State Arts and Crafts Fair

 Another year, another 4th of July and another Mountain State Arts and Crafts Fair.  We had a different booth set up this year and I really liked it.  But I really could have stood for it to be a little bit less hot.  

First up, our booth.

 And there was a lovely vendor there who had just enough drop spindles to sell to the 4 of us working the booth.  It will make a very nice plying spindle.  It is a bit heavy for most of what I spin.

 Holy Crap!  I learned to shuttle tatt!!!

I also finally rounded out my completion of all of the hands on crafts available by playing in the wood turning booth. This one is a bit harder than the others.

Visited the stained glass booth again.  I really liked the project for this year.  The candle holder would have been nice to have for the giant power outage that happened before the fair this year. 

In all, a very good fair this year.

Stuff I've made since the last time I did a post like this

God Lord it has been a while since I've done this. 

Are these snow cones?  No, cupcakes!  I made these for our guild picnic in May.  Stole the idea from Bakerella. 

My first attempt at using the Ruffle yarn of doom.  I wasn't a huge fan of the result so it went home with Tiffany. 

I wanted to use up the remnant of a skein of Malabrigo Rios.  What better way than to turn it into a necklace.  Mmmm...Malabrigo.

I made a skirt. 

My mom's birthday shawl.  Made with Claudia's Handpainted fingering weight yarn.  It is the Traveling Companion Shawl pattern

And this one is one of my favorites.  It is the Pax shawl by Aoibhe Ni.  It is constructed using tunisian crocheted lace.  I love it. 

New Wheel

Much thanks to my Aunt and Dad for this post.  I had gotten some pieces of spinning wheels from my Grandpa in the past, but not enough to make a functioning spinning wheel.  What I didn't know was that there was another wheel hiding out at his house.  And thanks to my aunt and dad, they convinced him to give it to them to they could give it to me for Christmas (we won't mention it is June).  So new Wheel!!!! I have no idea of the make of it.  Grandpa said it was made by someone up in Harrisville (or Harrisburg, I don't recall now).  But he didn't say Ohio or West Virginia and both are pretty close.  But now some pictures!

 Now with more puppy.

 good picture of the flyer setup

 Look at that lovely mother of pearl detail on the ends

 This part comes off, I don't know why.

 It looks like the treadle has been replaced.  I might be staining this at some point in the future.

 From the back with some Heidi nose.

The only mark I could find on the whole thing was on the leather holding on the flyer.  And I don't even know if the mark is on purpose or just an impression it got at some point.

Her name is Peggy.  It just jumped in my head and I can't get it out.  Which is funny because my Fricke has never gotten a name.  It just hasn't needed one.

A weekend at Mom's

I spent the weekend at my mom's and had a great time.  Of course we did a bit of shopping.

A few skeins of Malabrigo Rasta.  Such a scrumptious yarn.

Some Malabrigo silky merino.  I see a trend.  Actually this is my second skein in this colorway.  So maybe now I'll make something with them.

Some Claudia's Handpainted yarn.  Silk lace in copper penny.  The last time we went to this yarn store, I highly regretted not getting a skein of this yarn.  I no longer have that regret.

Two things for my mom.  Kits that knit up into the Gilda Scarf.  The stringing of all the beads seems to be the hardest part so far. 

And OMG!  We found this set at Goodwill.  I love it so much.  The mushrooms...  It is from Arnel's pottery.  They sold ceramics molds and pieces.  So the best part is that the pieces I will find will be painted very differently.  This set is from the 70's, thanks to the lovely people who gave this as a Christmas gift one year.

And nail polish!

Sheep to Shawl

Myself and several members of the knitting and spinning groups I belong to took part in Heritage Farm's Sheep to Shawl event on June 2nd.  Not like the competitions, but we were showing how the wool goes from sheep to something wearable.  We had stations for washing, natural dyeing, different fibers, carding, weaving, spinning and knitting.  It was a lot of fun.  I didn't get a lot of good pictures of the actual event.  I stole the picture of the sheep from Haley.  There are a lot of good pictures in our newspaper the Herald-Dispatch.

  

This is a picture of Mary.  She is a dorset sheep.  She was our mascot for the day and hung out at our tent until it was her turn to get sheared at the end of the day.  She was a lot of fun and liked to get her head scratched.

 

Mary was just one of the sheep that was sheared that day.  There was some lovely Jacob fleece that got to come home with me.

And some Southdown fleect.  Which is great because I haven't spun either of these breeds before. 

We also had a few natural dye pots going.  I brought a few skeins of yarn to toss in.  This is some Patons Wool in  Osage Orange that was in an iron pot. 

A random skein of a grey yarn that went into the madder root pot.

And some random yarn that also went into the madder root pot.  In all, it was a really fun day.  It was great to be able to educate the public on what we do and pick up a little bit of fiber along the way.