Spin Class at The Rookery

Kathy Eagle has been teaching spinning at the Rookery every Saturday for the past 5 weeks. I dropped in for the last spin class to share my yarns and hopefully inspire new spinners to view spinning a little more creatively. They were covering novelty yarn techniques. These two young spinners are already off to an amazing start. I LOVE these yarns!!!You don't get any more free form than this... truely. I almost always have my yarn planned out before hand- so its hard for me to look at that as being free form spinning. This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to knit. I'm not much of a knitter- for me the yarn I spin is more often the end result- but this stuff has my fingers itching to make hats, bags, whatever... I just want to knit it!

Project Overload

Way too many projects on the table right now... I've always got something on the knitting needles to fill in the gaps, this being my current project... Lots of feltwork in progess. This starfish is part of a wall hanging I started awhile back and am finally making a little more headway on it. I'm going to combine felting & fused fibers with elements of quilting and hope to add some freeform beadwork.

I've also nearly finished another felted wall hanging of three salmon- still have some fine details to complete and hope to stitch some beadwork into the background. I have another felted background finished and ready to go(but haven't decided on a subject for the foreground) and a third background nearly finished that I hope to work a small school of herring into. Still have some experimenting to do yet with some of my fibers. All in all thats 4 wall pieces in the works.

I'm really motivated to get these and more done for several up coming art shows in Kodiak and around Alaska- most of which are calling for marine/ocean inspired works. However I'm already thinking about some coastal scenes involving ravens that I'd like to try my hand at.

Punked!

I started spinning this yarn ages ago, but got side tracked with other things... my tribute to the 80's punk scene. I have plans for this yarn when its finished, and will be loading it up with safety pins, add in some chains, studs and other bits with attitude and work it into a scarf.

"Sugar Love"

Happy Valentine's Day!












Sugar Love is a wool/mohair blend spun with fused angelina, fun fur, eyelash yarn, pompoms, recycled lace, tule and sequins. Plied with seed beads threaded on pink color-change thread.
121 yds.

HUGS! xoxoxoxoxoxo

"Nebula"

Nebula measures in at 144 yds. Materials used: Wool, angelina, snippets of novelty yarns, pompom trim and viscose thread.

Weekend in a Whirl

Here's what I'm working on at the moment- a freak inspired jumble of color that came together out of the blue. I love when that happens! I've spun in sparkly bits of turquoise and magenta fun fur, snippets of Abuko from Curious Creek in their Tilting the Gizmo colorway along with neon green pompoms strung on a turquoise cord. Hope to finsh spinning it tonight and start plying.

In the Works

This sweet bit of fluff is a yarn I'm working up for valentine's day. I've carded fused angelina into my wool and threaded tattered hand knit lace on to sparkly fun fur and glittering pompoms on to white eyelash. These were both spun into the wool along with threaded sequins. I plan to ply this with a pale pink color change thread loaded with seed beads. The thread turns dark pink in the sunlight.

Organizing My Stash

I decided to phase out the bulk teas I have for sale in my shop. I bagged and weighed them all up and now I'm using the jars for organizing my fibers- all the threads, trims, pompoms, snippets, odds and ends... I still have another 8 jars left to fill, so I'll be gathering up all the tid-bits around the house. I'm still working on putting this together- the skeins will be moving out soon and carded batts will start taking over as I line up spinning projects.

"Sizzle"

Hand cut woolfelt shapes threaded on to snippets of sparkly fun fur create a flame effect. Loads of ruby flash, sparkly pompoms and bits of fuzzy eyelash are also spun in. Orange viscose thread was used for plying.

Skeins!

I pulled out all of my yarn today and re-photographed everything. This time I actually used the macro setting- something I was oblivious to when I first started taking pictures of my yarn. The other improvement is the lighting. I took these at The Rookery where I have full spectrum textile lights, so no flash was used. I find that the flash distorts the colors. I also un-twisted all of my skeins. The loosely coiled yarn shows the colors and textures far better.

X-treme Spinning

This is from the recent issue of Yarn Market News... Was very pleased to see handspun art yarns finally getting some recognition. About time! Congrats to all who were mentioned in the article. Viva La Revolution!