"Scribble"

Black wool plied with glow in the dark thread.

Anarchy in AK

Mosh it up in STYLE! This yarn is still a work in progress...

The View from Dead Man's Curve

I finally was able to get a photo of town from Dead Man's Curve. Gibson Cove is in the foreground. The Kalakala was parked there for years- a really cool relic from the art deco period. The Kalakala was an upscale ferry that traveled up and down Puget Sound. Looks like a UFO from an old black and white sci-fi movie. Some guy managed to dig the thing out- it was buried in the ground and used as a cannery for years- and somehow he managed to float it back down to Seattle. His vision was to restore it, but it has since changed hands. Hopefully it will be restored and find a permanent home. It's too cool to scrap in my opinion.

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!

"Twinge"

Finished spinning this up LATE last night...finally. Another spin session into the wee hours of the morning. I've been trying to get at it for several days now, but stuff just kept getting in between me and my wheel. I'm happy with it, but wish I had waited until I could get my hands on some sparkly magenta pompoms. I think that would have looked really hot in this skein. I'm in the process of prepping another batch of fiber for spinning. This time I'm waiting for the pompoms- red sparkly ones. I've been cutting out woolfelt shapes and thredding them on sparkly fun fur novelty yarn to create flames that will be spun into the yarn. I plan to thread the pompoms as well on a soft fuzzy eyelash yarn, so am holding off on spinning for now. Purgatory is the theme for the next skein...

Copper River

I know that Copper River is not in Kodiak, but it is in Alaska and its the first thing that came to mind as I was spinning this yarn. It's loaded with copper flash. The photos do not capture the metalic in this yarn at all. It simply glows. I plied in fused angelina fibers in addition to the copper flash that was carded into the wool. If you've seen fused glass, you'll know the metalic sheen this yarn gives off.