felting....

i'm working on my first real ambitious hand felting project. it's pretty entry level, but i'm enjoying it so far.
i've felted a lot of bracelets by hand, but working with my hands with the fibers before they're at a yarn level is pretty new to me. i got up early this morning at started at it, so as to work with a little less interruption, but it was only marginally successful. i have all the colored balls i'm going to make for this project, i think (depending on how big i'm going to make it) and am about to move onto making smaller brown ones. i got new roving this week and am proud to be in the minority of people who are really really excited about getting something like wool roving.

working with it wet is another matter, as most of it is silky, fine merino. it's worse than dealing with wet human hair- sticky, and when i went to fix balls or add contrast color to them i had little fine strands of wool sticking to my hands/wrists more than the ball. add to that also having drips of water running either down my hands or up my forearms (one of my number one unfavorite feelings) and it is super time for a break.

am still working on pictures from the lightbox, i stumbled across a few the other day that better represent the neck pieces i'd made. and in my recycle bin (always check the recycle bin on the computer before emptying, especially if you're prone to temperamental picture deletion!) i found a good one of me modeling the neck piece i gave myself as a little gift. (it was a chilly hiking day and i couldn't resist.)

one of the downsides of the lightbox has revealed itself, which is kind of a fear of shooting "outside the box" - i'm pretty sure this felted ball project will be a hung one, and therefore not lend itself to easy photography in a light box. natural light = scary at this point. it's a good thing that it's not anywhere near finished, so i've got a minute to figure out how to handle that.

another project for the day- working on the custom afghan i'd made for a lovely customer. it'd been a long time in the making and it made its way to its new home, but then needed to be bigger. so there's a whole thing with measuring and growing it. i'm working with a fantastic supplier on this one, who even called brown sheep to ensure we have access to the same dye lot of yarn that the blanket was originally made with. incredible customer service. outstanding. really. i've dealt with yarn shops in person who've been less accommodating, and regarding the same yarn company, no less. this is a benefit of dealing on a really really small scale, this whole chain of uberprofessionalism. if you took a blanket back to macys (etc) and said it needed to be bigger, chances are they'd ask if you had a receipt and if you'd prefer an exchange or a store credit refund. regardless of how much you'd like just that same blanket, only bigger.

but i suppose that's an obvious point, and i'm just procrastinating editing pictures. again.

ojodios/practical magic

i think i realize why i like the new-to-me god's eye motif- it's a good representation of my brain.
it's going five or seven different directions and i'd like very much to do today's blog entry, rather than yesterday's.
it's incomplete and unposted and it's going to require me digging around in my favorites list on etsy. but i'm running this show and everyone seems to prefer it when i'm eased up on that, so i'm moving the share the love until wednesday. that sounds like a good day for it. don't you agree?
i mean, you do agree, right?
(i'm nodding my head here, pulling you on with me).
the story of yesterday is this great burst of energy, a whole lot done, and a whole lot more intended to do. my brain and energy have clicked into a different gear recently, and i realized today, while at work, that visualization is more powerful than i thought previously, and that it has a lot of influence on what manifests.
this is a liberating yet sobering thought. in our actions, we're only treading down grooves/tracks that we've already laid. but that means taking responsibility for daydreams, and when your airy fairy type friends say things about "follow your own bliss" they neglect to mention that actually doing it is a lot of work. it's not about the path of least resistance, passion only flows that way in fiction.
(and here's where i contemplate all that, and one of my role models and send a mental emotional heart to tiff, hope she gets that.)

but so. yesterday and today have both been punctuated with things that it was absolutely clear to me that they needed to be done.
there was cooking and cleaning, and i needlefelted a cardigan:
this is my very safe workspace! really! no really, i can't wait until we get a slightly larger place. the countertop/bar is an okay height to work at, standing, but our table's a little taller still so it will be great for feltwork. it's a dark picture, but i promise, mom, all the lights were on and i wasn't straining my eyes. that pattern is called the god's eye, and i have seen it previously as an embroidery stitch.that's not such a good picture, but you get the general idea. i'm hopeless so far at embroidery, but most of the women in my family have a cross stitch/crewel/needlepoint embroidery project in their life repetoire, so i've been exposed to it and have an appreciation for it. i also have a needlepoint project that i've been working on for nearly a decade. one day, that pillow with frogs and dragonflies on it will be done! and as god is my witness, i'll never do needlepoint again! (sorry, channeling my inner southern belle. it's in there. don't laugh.)
so, needlefelting seems like a good way to explore these stitches i love. it's not exactly the same, but one can take advantage of fiber texture to create movement and interesting detail.
this god's eye is really basic, and i've already got much more ambitious ideas. but it's a fun thing to do with brightly colored yarn.
this pocket is a little more sedate:and i don't necessarily love the colors; i think they pull the design into borderline timidity. or are they keeping the design subtle? i like the shading in the leaf shapes, and enjoyed doing it. the lines around the circles are interesting:
and i'll be exploring that some more. i've been playing with that idea in my head for a while so it was interesting to see it come out.
that's another look at it, and already i see so many things that i'll have the opportunity to do better, soon.

i think i'd like to add these to my shop, consider this my statement of intention: these are my coming attractions. i would have the ability to do different sizes, in completely one-off designs, relatively affordably. i'd be upcycling, as i'd be getting sweaters secondhand. if they didn't come with cool buttons (mine came with black faceted shiny plastic ones- i can't decide how i feel about them)- that's easy to fix.
i have been looking at felt and fiber to try to get a fix on the colors that are out there and am very happy to have done so. now i need to learn the sweaters. i have ideas about embellishing seams, modifying sleeve length.
i'm visualizing one specific cardigna, and i think i'm going to start getting supplies together for it tomorrow. i think i'm liking this spring energy, feeling productive is so cool.

love, late

our household for the past week and two days has been hit simultaneously by an adult incidence of illness, with requisite puny days and schoolfree week. bless those year round schools. a week's a nice long time, and we could have done so much more. in my ideal freelance future, i can visualize a three day field trip (and i mean really, like a field with a trail and some trees in it or a field with some sheep in it) but reality intruded, unpleasantly, but was treated to many cups of hot tea.

therefore with these protestations, i must submit my second shared love installment a little late but with no less love. i don't give myself a break on anything else- i was still working (on things that will be felted and thus washed in really hot water) and cooking, etc, so i cheesed out on uptalking another something cool. but here it is.

song for today: yael naim's "new soul" - really too cute.
which fits in nicely with this week's very cute new friend: gossamer, of portland
i cast the net wide on a day when i felt a little puny and the smallest person in the house needed some out time. we managed to catch a beautiful sunny day in the 50s. i made a list from google maps of several yarn/fiber places i'd yet to visit; needing fiber, a needlefelting pad and a good shove towards just getting started on that already.

gossamer was our first stop, and i'm so glad it was. the window beckoned with fairies and skeins of lamb's pride in shades of green (and i'm a sucker for lamb's pride/lanaloft. confronted with a rainbow of them, i'm apt to grab a skein or two of some unlikely shade partly because it's just so darn useful. even more so now, but i'm getting ahead of myself) and once inside we were greeted with natural/ambient light and the warm sweet scent of beeswax. jewelry afore us, lamb's pride to my left, felting supplies aplenty, not to mention work on the walls and lots of books. and a cheery, chatty, knowledgeable proprietress busy at some work on a central table. cozy, without feeling small and homey without being run-down. all questions were answered amiably as i fumbled through wool fibers of several colors and flipped through sheets of all-wool felt, in fabulous shades. (and made in europe to their stringent children's safety standards!!)
sweater scraps, organized by color, and the lamb's pride too. i adore places that organize by color, my thriftshop trained eye is pleased and enjoys browsing that way. the (local) beeswax was the source of the gorgeous scent and many bars stood proudly on the shelves.
i also got to touch a piece of nuno felt/scarf and touching it immediately made thirty or forty new ideas scan across my brain.
needless to say, this was an enjoyable shop that will no doubt become one of my favorites. i like the neighborhood (e burnside) but don't make it that way very often. as i'll be out and about more due to upcoming employment, i will certainly make a stop to visit. and i see on the gossamer website that there is an open crafting time, which if i ever have a tuesday evening to myself, i would like to visit.
gossamer
also has an etsy outpost, on which she sells her beautiful and colorful dutch merino felt. i love how she's got the color groups assembled, and i do believe that she's one of those darling shop owners that would put together a custom set for a buyer.
however, should one make it to portland, her shop is worth the visit- it's part craft/education supply shop, part boutique, part gallery. beautiful felted paintings line the walls- the shading is incredible.

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and of course my visit finally precipitated a felting flood, which is kind of closing in on the finish to my mad de-stash. i didn't realize de-stashing takes so long, but it's okay. the new stash does call, but this needlefelting thing is so awesome that it's a huge distraction. at this point, i'd rather felt, but there's no more felting to do. only buttons. which don't thrill me, but i have to be very serious about as it's such an important part of the piece. i have some new pouches and purses which will appear in my etsy shop as a trickle over the next several days (after buttons and photos, that is).

great expectations (while felting)

i'm listening to Cat Power- specifically "great expectations" while felting. it's appropriate, and an appropriate phrase to describe the apprehension, the excitement, while work is out of my hands and being agitated.
and by the way, if you've never listened to Cat Power, give her a listen. the playlist i've got going has all my favorites on it- my ears were craving to hear "king rides by" - i know ear cravings must be common, right? it's also got "fool", "rockets", "werewolf" and "free" on it- some of the ones i like to listen to the most by her. Cat Power is good working music to me, pretty and interesting and kind of introspective. i really love having music in the house, and it seems like we're listing to it more as of late. the shorter person of the house is certainly going to have unusual taste in music as her pater and i listen to some weird stuff at times- working music, stuff to pace our brainflows. i have a hard time ignoring sounds at times, particularly music, since a lot of the adults i was around when i was younger were kind of particular about their music. so things like dentist's office music drive me crazy, the sounds must have personality. and having spent no small amount of time around musicians, and my own decade with the trumpet are all compounding factors.
back to cat power though, it's some of that music that i was exposed to a couple of years before getting really into it. a lot of things are like that, so i tend to acquire music and then put it aside for a while. i also get great mileage out of my wardrobe by doing this; unless i donate it or give it to a friend first. the major exception there, is things that i make for myself. i tend to finish the ends and wrap it around my neck or plop it on my head or what have you. i hooked up a pair of those handwarmer things, kind of a test pair in this hemp/wool i bought last summer (and was kind of disappointed with it) last weekend and put the left one on and wore it while i made the right hand one. i also slept in them, and woke up with bluish palms. needless to say the quest for the right hemp yarn continues.

and i'm distracting myself from my original point; the tenterhooks of waiting. this is another step in the week of destash, and unlike a lot of previous projects, i know that it's not that close to the end for some of them. for example, the washers i use do not have adjustable cycles, so i know right off that most of them will have to go through again. i like sturdy felt; that takes agitation and time. all the things going (8 pieces!) will need buttons- and i'm going to head to a recommended button mecca hopefully tomorrow and will have details about that! i'm going through a button phase at the moment, loving the combination of aesthetics and functionality. and a couple of the bags in there are intentional test pieces, that will have embelleshment- pretty much my first foray into that. i think i wanted to have the structure down, and will still do unadorned bags, but i really want to explore some new techniques.
i'm happy with the shapes i did in this go 'round, some chubby little pouches and some cool bags. i really like the handle attachment i did on one of the bags, i think it's going to look snappy finished up. hopefully.

of course, not content to work on one set of projects at a time, i'll be finishing this awesome, cupcake sprinkle inspired set of bangles. and starting to brainstorm projects for the new stash. i think i'm not going to allow myself to work from the new stash until i've finished with these in progress and am starting to list them. that should keep me motivated and encourage me to be sure and give these pieces the best attention than i can. they deserve it.

thoughts on progress, yarns

projects set calmly aside in annoyance:
1
by 9:30 this a.m.
but let's not go there.
let's go instead to the ball of louet's "clyde" sitting on my shelf, twinkling at me. got it in vancouver at stitchcraft- i agree with whomever said it's near impossible to go into a yarn shop without buying something, especially a new one or one you'll only be visiting once. (i have vacation sprees at fantastic fibers every time i go to alaska, and hit up nancy's knits pretty hardcore in houston- though julia took me into one that was also pretty cool in the heights.)

so. this stuff. boucle. wool with 5% silk, boucle. i approach this yarn with trepidation and limited expectations, as i've never felted a blend with silk in it before.
wait, scratch that, i've used plymouth boku, which gets really soft but is difficult in my experience to felt. let me google that for you: oh no. it's the same silk content. rats.
(oh and folks, let's quit comparing boku and nuro's kureyon. i have a girl-crush on noro, and my thoughts on another noro yarn follow shortly. to compare the two might lead someone to believe that noro is thin, which it's not. i spent some time last summer working with both at the same time and the boku is thinner. it doesn't have the sometimes psychotically wild color variations, though it has some very pleasing ones- i'm thinking fondly of a boku that reminded me of watermelon tourmaline (do yourself a favor and open that link in another tab- it's pretty there! nice work karengilbertdesigns!) okay. so boku's good, and i have an admitted bias towards noro kureyon (which is also all wool, no silk) but they're not interchangeable. nor really comparable- apples and oranges.

additionally, i have a poor track record with boucle yarns. i can't stand the lack of stitch definition (which i'm thinking will be good for felting) and dislike how difficult it makes counting. i'm too detail oriented - the devil on my shoulder says "too anal" for boucle. i made a small pouch with it and we'll see how it felts before moving forward.

so. lastly we come to the noro. it's the noro niji. fiber wise, it's almost the same as blossom, only with less nylon- which i would imagine contributes the core thread (correct me, spinners?) and the really flashy bits of color in blossom. niji is still 5% nylon, which does not excite me about yarn, but as established, i'm a sucker for noro. i snagged color 86, which to me means golds violet, a little green and a dark pink peeking at me on one skein beneath strands of the turquiose i'm crazy about right now. three skeins, and they're all saying something slightly different.
moving through the skeins- they're soft. they're fuzzy. they are all in agreement on the point "spring scarf."
i was attracted by an etsy forum thread on the topic the other day. and i see a piece that's flexible enough to wear day afternoon night. how some lifestyle-y/fashion-y spread would say something about wearing it with a "blouse and khakis or cute boot cut jeans to meet mom for brunch then transition to with a sweater while walking your golden retriever, then over your shoulders with a little cardigan over a dress over tights for a date with a hunk." or something.
but cyndi lauper's "time after time" on my internet radio and the yarn appears to be giving me meaningful looks. more as it comes.

the stats:
louet "clyde" labeled by stitchcraft as "green summer" color 06, lot 17642
chunky wt/bulky 5
95% wool, 5% silk
boucle 50 g/82 yds

noro niji, color 86 lot a
i'm not sure about weight. it's fluffy like a boucle, but not as dense as the louet clyde. comparable to noro's blossom
45% wool, 25% kid mohair, 25% silk, 5% nylon