my sheep

I’ve been making glass sheep beads for quite a while and while most of them have moved on to greener pastures I do have a few still at home so I thought I would share them with you.

Is it a ZenDoodle or a ZenTangle???

On August 17 2010 I decided that to get my creative juices flowing again I would doodle my way thorough the alphabet.  My plan was to do a letter a day but by the time September 8  rolled around I was up to “F” ; it’s like I dropped off of the face of the earth which isn’t too far from how I was feeling.  Sometime in early November I started looking into Fibonacci and the Golden Mean, now I had used the Fibonacci number sequence; 1-1-2-3-5-8-13  in weaving but that didn’t go too far as weaving really isn’t my thing but now I was looking into his sequencing in what is know as the golden mean more like doodling.  On Dec 27 I got an email linking me to Lori Greenburg’s blog;  http://lorigreenberg.com/blog/  I was signed up to Lori’s blog because she is a lampwork artist and does a really good blog with great pictures which I hoped would inspire me in my lampworking , anyway her blog on Dec 27 was all about Mathematical doodling and she had a link to Vi Hart’s blog  http://vihart.com/doodling/ .  I have spent hours watching Vi’s videos and doodling along but that too passed.  On Jan 13 2011 Lori posted a link to a real time doodle session and mentioned ZenTangle. At about the same time another friend mentioned ZenTangle videos on youtube which I then went hunting for and found oodles of and they are great fun.

I find the timing of this all very interesting because on Jan 12 2011 I had started my alphabet doodling again. So now I’m going to show you some pictures of my latest doodles, if you haven’t already left because this was way to boring for you to follow me in my doodling adventure.

The ones that follow are not part of the Alphabet doodles but just playing with tangles.

playing with doodles

More play time

Now if I haven’t bored you too much go check out Vi’s blog and Lori’s

Hats

My sister-in-law Joan asked about the hat I said I was going to make with the yarn in my last post but as I don’t have that yarn finished  here are 3 hats I have finished.

Shetland Sheep cabled hat

I love the colours in this hat. Side view

I called this one Lizzie and here's the top of hat

I call this one Lovin Winter and it's my favourite so far.

Lovin Winter fron view.

blue faced leicester BFL

The other day my friend Maggie asked me what I was spinning; so here it is Maggie.

It’s Blue Faced Leicester which is a long wool breed with very fine soft fibre. It is one of my favourite fibres to spin and knit with.  This roving has been blended with silk and dyed by my friend Jeanette of Hummingbird Fibre Arts.  I took the skeins of fibre and split them in 2 length wise and rolled them into ball for easy spinning.  I don’t really know what I was thinking when I decided to ply these three together but It will make a cute hat.

blue faced leicester roving

Three bobbins full ready to ply.

blue faced leicester on bobbins

And this is the yarn I ended up with.

blue faced leicester 3 ply yarn

Now I will set the twist by soaking it in warm water and then hanging it to day.

First snow of 2010 Nov. 20

Yesterday we had our first snow fall, way to early to suit me, but here it is.  So here we are on the 21 of the month and the snow is still here and the temp is

0 c or 32 F and it’s snowing.  This is this years photo of the Blue spruce in our yard.

First snow 2010

A Foggy Day

Fred and Duke walking in the fog at Quallicum Beach.

 

Looking back at some Skipping Stone Beads

I was looking through my bead stash and found some that I really like so here they are, both sides of each bead.

Long time no see or back to fibre

I left you wondering if I would ever do anything with all those dye pots full of stuff and I must admit I haven’t done much.  I started out with good intentions:

carding one of the green batches I dyed on my friends Cindy’s drum carder.

So I spun a small skein of very thick yarn and decided I didn’t really like that

So I put it away and went on to other things none of which I have finished but I do have a lot of spinning bobbins filled with unplyed yarn.  I have 2 scarves on the go and a pair of unfinished socks not to mention the piles and piles of lampwork beads I’ve made that are waiting, for what I don’t know and that’s why they are waiting.   Sunny and windy today so maybe the torch is calling instead of the spinning wheel.

My Fibre adventures, where did it all start?

I’m going to interrupt my dyeing adventures with what started it all.

13 years ago I walk into a large hall looking for like minded people, people with glue guns,  but instead of glue guns I found two groups of ladies.  We have just moved to a new town and the Welcome Wagon Lady left me a pamphlet with a list of things happening about town and that led me to the large hall I found myself in.  As I enter ten ladies sitting around a quilt, they barely look up, too intent on their  stitching, their focus is on the quilt.  It doesn’t mater I know I don’t want to join them, my Mom and Dad had quilted and it was way to structured for me.  But then I look at the far end of the hall, 6 ladies sitting in a circle laughing their heads off  and what are they doing?  Well,who would have thought; they all have Spinning Wheels and they are making yarn?

About a year after I was married I inherited my Great Grandmothers Spinning wheel, bought out of the first issue of the Eatons Catalogue.

Up until  that day this wheel never had a drive band and I had never seen a spinning wheel in use.  My children grew up playing with this strange thing.  It was a favourite toy for a 2-3 year old.

I found myself in that group of ladies so excited I just knew something wonderful was going to happen in my life.  I was welcomed in and encouraged to come back in 2 weeks with my wheel, at this point they only met every other week.  Two weeks later I walked in with my antique wheel and left with one of their rental wheels, an Ashford Traditional Wheel but not before my mentor Doris has me unplying and plying a ball of commercially spun yarn.  Up until now Fred had said I couldn’t chew gum and walk at the same time and now I could treadle a spinning wheel and manipulate yarn with my hands.  That first year Doris not only supplied me with instruction, fibre to spin but lent me the money to buy a used wheel.  A beautiful Ashford Traditional wheel, I later added the double treadle kit.  This picture is not of my actual wheel  for I find myself with out one, so I snagged it off the internet.

Five years later I sold this wheel and bought my dream wheel a used Louet S90, there is nothing this wheel can not do, it fold for ease of transport, it is so well balanced it stand on it’s own when closed for transport.

To me this is the most aesthetically pleasing wheel, the simplicity of design and the completeness of it make it such a dream to own.

This wheel is so complete, it has a tensioned kate but it also has a skein winder and as you saw in the first photo it all folds up to a compact 6 inches.  As much as I loved this wheel I did try to sell it, 5 yes 5 times and each time I unlisted it for say withing 24 hours.  This wheel is MY wheel and it will always be.  But onward and upward I found myself the proud owner of a James Watson Handmade Victoria Wheel.  Once again I don’t have a picture of the wheel so I snagged one off of the internet. Unlike the one in this picture mine was made out of a dark an luscious walnut. It is a large production wheel.

A friend now owns my Victoria and one day I may get to take a picture of her and replace this one with the real thing.  You can find James and all his wheels here http://www.watsonwheels.com/

A few more years go by and I find that I can no longer spin pain free on a production wheel so once again I sell my wheel and buy a new one.  This New wheel is a Little Gem by Majacraft.  With this wheel I could do all the spinning I wanted without and pain and then I did a very foolish thing and injured my shoulders so badly that I had to give up all of my fibre activities.  As luck would have it I found Lampworking which didn’t hurt my body any way shape or form.  So I sold my Little Gem and bought a kiln and hot head torch.  Four more years go by and my shoulders are up to spinning so out comes my trusty Louet S90 and they dye pots and dye and away I go.  As much as I love my Louet it does cause my body stress when used for long periods of time so I am now the proud owner of a New Little Gem and here she is.  This is what you would see if you sat across from me at Thursday Spinning.

Side view.

So there you have it.   The 3 wheels that live with me and the ones that got away.

Fibre Revisited Day 3 May 10

I you remember the first patch I dyed in the greece (unwashed) was green and it took me many many washes to get all the excess dye out of the fleece.  So today we will look at the second pot which I soaked in cold water to remove some of the dirt.  I drained this and let it sit in the sun just till it got the icy cold water from the outdoor tap.  I then put it into a cool dye bath of a very dark brown and red dye stock.  It took a long time to heat the pot up on my little electric burner.   I thought I might not have got it clean in the dye pot but it feels lovely.

The 3rd pot I actually washed the fleece first too see what the difference in the final produce would be.  This batch took really different from tip to cut end and I got a lighter green than the first pot even though I used more dye of a similar colour.  I am not measuring my wool or my dye so I can’t reproduce anything that I get but that’s the fun of it.

It took much less rinsing with this batch as it was clean before going into the dye pot. So looking at the 3 different ways I dyed these I came to the conclusion that the end result was the same so it all boils down to do I want to use that  much time and hot water to rinse the unwashed fleece after dyeing.

The green in the pillow case is the first one I dyed, the brown was the second and the one closest was the last of that batch.

Next in this fleece will be the picking it apart and then carding in preparation for spinning.  I am determined to get all the fleece washed and dyed while the weather is nice so the carding and spinning will have to wait.

Tomorrow I will tell you about all my ooppes of today.