Some cool links

I know I usually post about yarn and so forth but I am also a seamstress from waaaaaay back. So I have a few links to share, the first couple of which are sewing related.

This sort of bent my mind, it was so cool: Bias Binding Tool from Bitter Purl

I just read about a show, Fashioning Fashion, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) that, sadly, has already closed. But it looks like it was gorgeous:

Not only is there a monograph available for the show, which I might have to get, but there are sewing patterns available! Download PDFs from here.

And finally, here's a dose of squee:

Juniper Moon Farm's snuggle puddle.

 

Progress, not perfection :)

There was a discussion of goals on Ravelry in January where I posted some stuff along with everybody else and promptly forgot about it. Then today I suddenly remembered that discussion thread and I wanted to know exactly what I'd set out as my goals so I went back to dig it up:

I want to finish my red and cream colored tea-leaves-cardigan, which is stalled (again) on the sleeve, because with the number of sts it says to pick up, the sleeve is much tighter than the rest of the sweater. I want to create three designs and publish them for free on Ravelry. I want to enter one design for consideration at Twist Collective (fear of rejection really holds me back). And I want to spin the pound+ of fiber my mom gave me to knit into a sweater, and then overdye it so it’s not the color of a band-aid. :) And finally, I would like to keep up with the spinning part of the STF [Spirit Trail Fiberworks] combination fiber & yarn club!

So, I hate the red and cream colored tea-leaves-cardigan, and I haven't finished it for the same reason as above even though I tried redoing the sleeve st pick-up. The second time I picked up too many stitches. Ugh, it is so frustrating. I've more or less decided to frog it but I just haven't done so yet.

I have created one design and put it up on Ravelry - the cowl. I've got plenty of time left in the year so I will probably complete that one.

I have an idea for Twist, but haven't worked on it yet.

I have done NO spinning on the fiber from my mom in months, but I hope being reminded by this post will help me get myself going on that again.

I have spun and plied the first installment of the STF club, a lovely sea blue with green notes. I just got another shipment from her - prolific woman! It's a skein of Orihime (fingering weight, my favorite) in a stunning crimson colorway. Not a flat solid, but just the slightest variations across the skein.

The effect is the platonic ideal of red.

And on the project that I really wanted to work on, which I wanted so much that I was afraid to mention it in the post on Ravelry, I've done a LOT of work! Yes, I am talking about Baba's Fiber Dyeing Workshop. I have been really good and consistent about posting once a week, or about that, and I've been putting out interview Q's to people and publishing new ones. I need to reach out to some people, as I have no more pipeline at the moment. That part - the "cold calling," in essence - is definitely the hardest part. I've been very lucky that so far nobody has said no. Sooner or later somebody will, I know. But so far, so good.

And I've been doing a lot more dyeing, been a lot more regular at it. When I read over an interview I suddenly find myself super motivated to get into the studio!

I've been irregular about updating my Etsy shop. It's really hard to be consistent with it.

So that's my status at the moment. Not all A's; a couple C's, even a couple F's. And I'm okay with that. "Seriously," I say to the voice of my dad that is haranguing me in the back of my head - "back off!"

Perfect is the enemy of good enough!
 

Awesome sewing machine tat

via Fuck Yeah, Tattoos!

New post over at Baba's Fiber Dyeing Workshop

"Dyeing yarns vs dyeing unspun fiber" on Baba's Fiber Dyeing Workshop; check it out!

Also, iPad, changing "unspun" to "unseen" - why, baby, why?
 

New Pattern (beta edition): Winter Wildflowers Cowl

My newest pattern, and it's free!



download now



I was all excited because I read yesterday that a blog I follow was having a contest, "What to do with 150 yards of yarn," and I had already been working up this pattern over the past few weeks. So I got all industrious this afternoon and wrote it up. Then today I checked back to see where to post to enter the contest, only to realize that I misread, and in fact the contest was over a week ago and I missed my chance. Ah well. You win some, you lose some. It motivated me to get the pattern written up. My friend Babs is going to knit it in a different colorway for me - sort of my first test knitter!

From sheep to shins

This evening on the drive home (with Adam driving, not me) I finished the leg warmers I made from the yarn I made from the carded wool I made from the pound of the fleece from the sheep known as Little Debbie, owned by a member of our spinning guild, Essex Spinners. (Yeah, I know that's a run-on sentence; it was a run-on experience, too, so that grammar fits.)

A bunch of the guild members bought the fleece together divided the fleece amongst ourselves; I got a pound. After washing it was about 14.5 oz. (Yes, that means about 1.5 oz of lanolin/sheep grease and dirt! And it wasn't very dirty.) Then I carded it by hand over many evenings while watching TV. Then I spun the carded fiber into singles over many additional evenings. Then I plied two singles together, and plied those together again for a 4-ply, this construction also being known as a cable-plied yarn.

Even though I washed the fleece a couple times, I could still feel a lot of lanolin left on the fiber; it's probably the first yarn I've used where my hands have felt softer after working with it! I had about 450 yards of it, I guess. I have it written down, but unfortunately my notes are scattered around.

Here are the finished leg warmers:

I used a free pattern from Classic Elite Yarns, "Waterlily Leg Warmers," by Andi Clark. For once I didn't do any (intentional) modifications, although I found a couple mistakes in my cabling, which is pretty rare for me. Actually, it's not that it's so rare that I make a mistake, but I tend to be a perfectionist and I usually will rip back to the mistake, one way (several whole rows, if it was pretty recent) or another (a few columns of stitches if it's far enough back), and redo it. But this time I just thought, do I really need to rip back SEVEN repeats of the cable pattern in order to be all perfect about it? Nope!!

For fun I wanted to see how they looked with rain boots:

and with cowboy boots:

 

Baba's got a brand new blog!

I've started a new blog that is meant to complement this one, specifically devoted to dyeing yarn and spinning fiber. I've long wanted to spend more energy and focus on dyeing. I have been working on improving my own abilities, and I am fascinated by others' beautiful products too. Probably more than by my own, truth be told. So I decided to branch off a new blog from this one, and it's called Baba's Fiber Dyeing Workshop. I just made the first post (about Hedgehog Fibres on Etsy), so it's truly nascent, but I'm really excited about it. I have a bunch of big ideas I hope to put into it as time goes on.

I hope you'll check it out and give it some love!