Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Back in School with so Little Freetime

What was I thinking? I decided to go back to school and in order to transfer to Humboldt State I had to have completed English 1A. I check the school schedule and saw classes started the following week. Everything just fell into place, I love when that happens. I decided to take a few other pre-requisites for my major. I ended up adding 4 classes, 15 units. It is kicking my ass!! Besides the English class, I'm taking botany, soil science with a lab and finally a drawing and composition class.  As the weeks have gone by I've been totally dedicated to school work and slowing I suppose because of the lack of creativity I'm starting to bounce off the walls.

I've finally made it to spring break and thought I was going to have some time to do some blacksmithing and to play with the fiber I have. It's not turning out that way. I have a botany test when I get back Monday  a 5 page English paper to write and a play to read, "The Taming of the Shrew", and to top it off; the extra week off that the English teacher gave us is now being filled up with more work, that I got by email, of joy.
I ordered some new goodies I can't wait to jump in and start playing. I got 1 pound of recycled sari silk yarn, a bag of silk scrap threads and 1 pound of mohair.

I don't know where to begin sometimes. I'm thinking of getting a spinning wheel, oh the things I could make.
 I spent a few hours playing around with different dyes and came up with some really pretty colors. I'm down to just a couple of pounds of wool and I'm beginning to worry about running out, so silly
 I'm beginning to feel guilty about some of my unfinished projects. I started this lampshade last year. When I originally started the lampshade I had the strands much shorter and I didn't like it, so I modified my pattern and ran out of beads. When I placed my order the red beads were back ordered for 5 months. Needless to say when I finally got my order of beads, I had discovered wool and was deeply immersed in learning all that I could. One of these days I will find some time to get back to my lampshade.

The rain has finally stopped and  I somehow managed to get Samantha to chaperon me on an outing. We drove along the river road that runs along the Sacramento river. 
 This is a parking lot a good, five plus feet underwater.  Way off in the distance is the boat ramp.
 I love this picture, it looks like the same bird in 6 different shots, but really I got 6 birds with one shot.  We drove along this pot-holed levee road and came to this small creek that had lots of birds. Every time I managed to pull over and quietly get out of my car this is what would happen.  The birds kept flying away.

I started to walk down the road, at one point I had gone so far ahead trying to sneak up on the wildlife I look behind me to see how far I had to walk back to the car and I see Samantha driving along a couple hundred feet behind me. I had to laugh, I felt like I was 5 years old on my first walk to school with my parent stalking behind me to make sure I was OK.

I managed to get a few good pictures.


 On Sunday I went to a class at the Yolo Wool Mill, given by my friend Meg, on how to dye with natural color. It was amazing the colors you could get. There was a pot of Star Thistle going, they got a pretty sage green color from that, finally an upside to the star thistle.
 The purplish blue on the left is logwood, the brown is tea, a brew made with tea bags, it has to be black tea leaf tips.  The yellow is made with Tarragon.
Check out some of the colors I dyed the mohair, I have a forest green, a violet with alpine blue mix and a red and magenta mix.
Last night I made this cute little pin cushion. I have this habit of seeing something and saying that would be so easy to make, well it wasn't too difficult.


Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Little Teddy bear

Last night Samantha, my daughter sent me a picture of a little needle felted teddy bear.  I am forever driving Samantha crazy with my, that would be so easy to make all you have to do is......   So check out my little teddy bear, he's only 2 1/2" tall.  He took a small handful of wool and 30 minutes to make.
 Lucy barely opened her eyes when I laid the little bear next to her.

I've been working on a sweater I saw on a blog, It's a really pretty motif wrap jacket. The wrap was so pretty I had to have one for myself. I wrote Mirela an email, and asked if she still had the pattern and could she send me directions, if that wasn't asking too much. A few days later and a couple emails back and forth I have it, the pattern. You can check it out the wrap jacket on her blog, http://mirelap.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/sneak-peek/ 

Mirela makes some really beautiful stuff. I've been inspired to be daring when it comes to crocheting. I've made lots of scarves and even an afghan, but never an article of clothing. I grabbed a really pretty periwinkle yarn I had in my bag of acrylic yarn, it was the lightest weight yarn I could find in my stash. I made Motif A, four times, pulling out  my work till I was happy with the way it looked. Reading the instructions was so confusing, it was like someone with uncontrollable ADHD wrote them. I finally resorted to studying the diagram. I got both arms done and made four of the large motif when I ran out of yarn, no big deal, I'll just get some more in the morning. I should have known nothing is ever easy. First off, I bought so much yarn last June at several different places, I forgot where I bought this stuff. I started with Michael's, some colors were really close, but not it. I sensed this was not going to end well for me, so I bought a couple skeins of yarn, yeah, ha ha, I know! Don't I have enough wool at home? I'm not a good enough spinner yet to jump into spinning constantly thin yarn for a sweater, not for my first real article of clothing. next I ran by Joann's, there was nothing near the color I was looking for.

When I got home I decided to make lemonade, so to speak. The pieces that I already crocheted will be re-purposed  The sleeves are too small for a hat so I'm making a sachel, I need to make a lining but it looks pretty good for an accidental bag.  
 The motifs that I made might make a nice scarf.

I had to run back to Michael's today to exchange the yarn I bought yesterday. I bought medium weight and I need to get a light weight yarn. So I thought I would give the bamboo blend a try, it's really soft.  The jacket will feel really nice when I'm done.
Now to start again. At least now I have a better idea of what I'm doing.