Spin Share

I'm so happy to have finished spinning these merino singles. They are not my best, but they show my progress forward as I've gained more use in my left hand. These are special singles- growth and progress wrapped up  in a little bit of fiber.


You can see a lot of flaws if you look close. Some of it is over twisted, some of it is under, but the second bobbin is better than the first, and the third is better than that.

Three plying for the first time was not as difficult as I expected it to be. I did need to go slower, but I'm happy with how it turned out this first time. It is roughly a sport weight as of right now, but it still needs a wash and dry to see how the skein really turns out. I also need to ply the rest of the singles- hopefully sometime this weekend.

Have you been spinning this week? 

Share a link to your spinning progress in comments so that we can come visit your beautiful work!

Binding and Thimbles

This past month has been my busy season for making t-shirt quilts and long arming for customers. In two months I have made 6 t-shirt quilts start to finish-  prepared the shirts, graft the patterns, sew it all together, long arm quilted it and added binding that is hand stitched, then long armed three large quilts and bound three more quilts. All this to say I have not blogged anything for quite awhile. Now I need to sort and clean my sewing areas so I can dive into some of my own projects.

This is a longarm pattern board with a stylus. I also use paper patterns and do custom freehand quilting.

Here is the quilt using the circle pattern that the customer chose.

I don't wear a traditional thimble when I'm binding a quilt. When I try to use a thimble, what ever finger does not have a thimble is the one I use, so the thimble is worthless for me. I also hold my finger with a lot of stress to keep the thimble in place, so I use a "ThimblePad" by Colonial Needle Company. It is that leather dot on my finger. They come in a pack of 12 with a pretty strong re-usable adhesive.

Berry Socks

I'm so excited to have ANOTHER finished pair of socks today- the Berry Socks are complete! I think I can now officially declare this the year of socks for me. I have 2 other pairs on the needles (both for my mom) and yarn and plans for at least 5 more pair. I don't want to make any promises, but I think this will continue to be an exciting sock year for me.


I recently finished reading The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon and moved on to the next in the series, A Breath of Snow and Ashes. The queue of books on my kindle and my nightstand has grown tremendously over the past few months, and of course I'm wading through another 800ish page giant Gabaldon books.

What are you knitting and reading this week?

Midnight Fiber and Fabric Podcast, Episode 11: Inspiration

Two weeks ago we ran away from home for a vacation. I took a lot of yarn and worked on my mom's socks and my berry socks. I took more than that, including some handspun dyed by Nerd Girl Yarns (and purchased at Maker Faire) I also took yarn for the Nutkin sock pattern and the baby hat I've been working on.

I talk a little bit about making project bags and why I didn't take my Citron. I finished my 3rd bobbin of merino and I'm ready to work on plying.

Inspiration is the word of the day and I talk about how it strikes and how creative folks have to work at it daily instead of waiting for inspiration to strike.


We talk about 5 Inspiring Patterns:

Snowflake Fingerless Gloves   ::   Braid Hills   ::   Regenerate   ::   Hiro   ::   Starry Starry Night Socks


We talk about refreshing our art area with new paints, clay and canvas. I'm also exploring embroidery.


I mention a recent Circe podcast abut using your summer hours productively, the Coletterie blog's series The Wardrobe Architect, and The Art of Simple Podcast.


Join us on Team Sasquatch for Tour de Fleece!

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