When You've Done Too Much

The year is half over and I have done too much, but I loved every minute of it. I taught at Madrona, Yarn Fest and PLY Away. I wrote several articles for PLY and Spin Off and a bunch of blog posts. I prepped and filmed two videos for Interweave and went to TNNA. I finally sent my book, after the last agonizing edits (do I even know how to spin?) to the printer.

On the family side, we redid our kitchen (that should count for at least three things). We ushered our youngest through the last of the first year of middle school and his first foray into competitive gymnastics. Our oldest made it through her ACT, SAT, Junior year,  a couple of college visits and a lot of diving. My husband started additional responsibilities at his job and I started working full time. For fun our entire family memorized the soundtrack to Hamilton.

All of this happened since January. I loved it all, would do it again in a heartbeat, but I am beat. I am almost to the point where I can take a break. I can see blue sky and it will be only caffeine that gets me through the next couple of weeks. This morning when my alarm went off I didn't know what city I was in.

The next six months will be slower, but with a lot of planning for next year. I want to clear out a lot of things at home, the kids want to redo their rooms, I have new classes to plan and prep and just what will fill all that space now that my book is done? My girl is going to be a senior next year, so she is planning like crazy and sometimes lets us help.

I am bone tired, but it's that type of tired that brings intense satisfaction. I met so many wonderful people, saw so many friends and did things that terrified me. I didn't think I could do it all, but I did.

Video Filming at Interweave!

I've been absent on-line for a bit. There have been lots of deadlines and prepping for two new videos for Interweave. Yay! I can't say the topics yet, but they will be out this summer. I flew into Denver for a quick 2 days of filming. It always seems fast when I'm there. I love getting really prepared so I can just zip through my taping. You can see how many samples and how much fiber and tools I bring. The orange suitcase is big enough to hold a Lendrum wheel and the duffle bag is ginormous, both were pretty full.

I had an incredible crew this time. You can see Lindsay and Andrew in the photos over there, as well as my incredible makeup goddess Keegan. Not pictured are my second cameraman Garrett and the woman who organizes all things filming and keeps me sane, Jill.

Nerves are constant with me anytime I teach, but when I film videos my nerves are crazy. I don't sleep much, fill up on caffeine and am sure that I am making no sense.  But having a great team on site and practicing helps to get me through. Every time I finish filming I'm excited to come back and do another day.

This time I let Keegan convince me to have fake eyelashes. I don't wear much makeup usually, but this time I went all in.  How much fun! I couldn't stop making faces. This one is all about being the Evil Queen in Snow White.

After filming I visited a great little shop in Fort Collins called My Sister Knits and I went to Boulder and visited Shuttles, Spindles and Skeins and toured Schacht. I'll have more on those next week. Now I have a couple of deadlines nipping at me and I have to get ready to leave for TNNA. I am certainly ready for summer and a little break with my kiddos.

How's your week been? Ready for summer?

The Getty: Threads Under a Microscope

Art Under the Microscope: Threads. The Getty, 2016

This post by the The Getty sucked me in for at least an hour. It's a photo taken with a microscope of the background threads in the tapestry Triumph of Bacchus (1518-1520). You can see not only how the piece was woven, but how the threads were spun. I can't stop looking at it.

Conservators use this type of photography to help preserve art.

Spinning Tip: Multiple Singles Samples On One Bobbin

I spin lots of samples. I make samples for writing articles and teaching, but a lot of my samples are spun due to the fact that I love the experimenting.  Before I started writing about or teaching spinning I spun lots of samples just to see what happened when I changed and element or two.

I don't make very big samples, some are an ounce, some are just a big ply-back sample. It depends what changes I'm making and if I will knitted samples are on the docket. 

I try to do as many sample as I can without switching bobbins. I think I've mentioned that I'm a lazy spinner, right?

I'm making singles samples right now and I filled a bobbin with about a dozen different samples. Here's how I did it the quick and lazy way.

I spun in a contrasting fiber between each sample. That's it. In the photos I used a natural grey fiber between a color blended fiber anda color blocked fiber. I spun in 2"-3" of the grey quick and dirty between the two color samples. My joins aren't pretty and they won't last much more than winding the yarn on and off of the bobbin, which makes removing the spacer yarn easier when I wind my samples off individually onto a niddy noddy.

When you try this make sure of just two things: 1) The spacer fiber has to contrast with both of thefibers it spans. When I make many different colored samples I change the color of my spacer fiber as I work through all of my samples.  2) Write down what you are doing! I write it down in detail, what's happening in each sample, so I can tag it after I wind it off. 

And don't forget to note if sample #1 is the first sample on the bobbin or the first sample off of the bobbin, I've made that mistake many times.

Happy sampling!

Getting My House in Order

The kitchen is done and we are putting it back together as we cook. What dishes, pots and countertop appliances do we really use? We're in no hurry and we're weeding out a lot of things that we rarely use.

When we did the kitchen we also did the floors on the whole first floor. It was all dark brown 1980's carpeting and we replaced it with oak flooring. To get to the floor we had to move a lot of books and my desk. Now it all has to go back, somewhere. I'm trying to wrap my head about how to organize them.

I moved my desk into our family room and now I have one book case for my nearest and dearest fiber books and any work fiber I want to keep out of the basement. I'm starting with all of my spinning books, books about color and two containers. The containers will hold review things for Knitty and my working fiber, fiber for articles, videos, patterns and blog posts.

I have no idea where the file cabinet is going, it's a necessary working evil, but I don't use it much.

Our living room has many more bookcases now. It used to have three and now it has six, maybe seven, plus two library carts. A whole room of books; it makes me weak in the knees!  I'm a person who organizes books more by type, alphabetical anything is optional. I know that two of the shelves on the red wall will be fiction and one general non-fiction. I know I will have one whole bookcase devoted to big sexy textile books. What I don't know is what knitting, weaving, embroidery and other craft books to keep upstairs. How do I choose? I have about 8 bookcases of fiber arts books in the basement. I've been doing fiber and working in publishing for the same amount of time and have almost never said no to a book.

I'm thinking stitch dictionaries and knitting books that inspire me for knitting. But do I bring up all of my Rowan magazine's? I go all the way back to number one. I have the same issue with other fiber arts. It's a fibery book lover's conundrum. I am having great fun

How do you organize your craft books?

PLY Away

The inaugural PLY Away is over.  It was such an honor to be included in the very first PLY Away, a history making event. Over 300 spinners (spinners, teachers and vendors) gathered in one place to celebrate what we love, for the fist time since the last SOAR. It was remarkable.

Spinners came from all over the world. Teachers came from all over North America. The students ranged from beginners to shouldn't-you-be-teaching? advanced. They all brought the same things, curiosity, skill and joy. I have never encountered such a joyous group of students. We rarely get to be with just spinners, especially in such number. I couldn't stop smiling.

The teachers, well look at the list on the shirt! It was an astonishing collection of spinning knowledge. It's always important to honor your teachers by learning from them. This year it seemed critical to get together and teach. We lost Alden Amos, an amazing teacher, earlier in the year and I felt like we were passing along everything we've learned from him over the years by teaching at PLY Away. If you listened hard with your heart you could hear his booming voice echoing down the halls as we gathered to teach and learn.

PLY Away touched something deep in me. It reminded me how much I love to teach and how deeply important spinning is to me. It was like nothing else to share that with 299 like-minded and like-hearted folks. Thank you Jacey for putting on such a spectacular event!

Spinning a Batt - Direction

I love spinning batts. I really love buying batts they are irresistible, the fiber version of a warm cinnamon roll - all fluffy and rolled up with sweetness. They are fun and easy to spin, depending on what I want from my yarn I spin them in one of two directions, the difference can be big, literally. The batts here are from Essential Fiber, Michelle makes beautiful batts, smooth but with sparkly and shiny surprises.

I spin my batts either with the grain (vertically) or against the grain (horizontally). My quick and easy batt prep is to strip the batt vertically. If I am spinning with the grain I lightly attenuate and spin from the end of each strip or pull it into one long roving. This direction gives fluffy woolly yarn.

When I spin against the grain, I roll each strip into a rolag by hand and attenuate my little fiber cigar into roving. I usually do three passes, slowly pulling so I don't break the fiber. See the difference in the two rovings? Working against the grain (right and bottom in the photos) mixes up the fibers even more and adds more air in the prep. The yarn from this predraft gives super fluffy yarn, lots of air and lots of squish.

Here are my two yarns, vertical predraft on the left and top, horizontal predraft on the right and bottom. You can see the extra air in the horizontally predrafted yarn, I wish you could feel them! It is a little harder for me to get a consistent draft with the extra fluffy roving, but I think it's a fair trade for that extra squish.

How do you spin batts?

I Went to the Yarn Fest Marketplace and All I Got Was........

Maggie Casey, lower right, demonstrating Andean plying.

I'm just back from Yarn Fest, emptying and refilling my suitcases to teach at Ply Away. I'm catching up on work that is late and trying to not get too far behind on other work.

Yarn Fest was fantastic, just like last year. My students were curious, enthusiastic and so very clever. I had a special guest in one of my classes, a spinner you might have heard of named, Maggie Casey. She taught me to spin and to love spining! I was intimidated for about 10 minutes, but then it was just lovely having her in my class.

I went to the marketplace and saw so many lovely things! I hadn't planned on buying anything, but I did fall down, just once, at RedFish DyeWorks. I literally walked by the booth, saw the fiber out of the corner of my eye, kept walking and had to turn around and come back. It's yak/silk. I bought two, can you blame me?