wendy

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Utilities are for wimps

Utilities are for wimps

Water, electric, phone, internet access– bah! Who needs em? All I need is tasty handpainted roving. My family disagrees, for some reason they think its more convenient to have food and running water. I’ll never understand them. This a sport weight that I made from spinning Moonlightbaker‘s Blue Steel roving. 40/60 bamboo/merino blend. I was [...]

I love torturing yarn

I love torturing yarn

I just don’t like waiting for it to dry when the torment is done. I’ve shocked it in hot water and cold, thwacked, soaked, and snapped the snot out of this yarn so that it’ll be as tough as the hubs of hell. All the torture has felted and blossomed it just a little, forcing [...]

No Fly-zone

No Fly-zone

I’ve given up on FlyLady. Not without much debate, both internal and external, and not without more than a little guilt. Over the years Flylady helped me get a grip on my messes and taught me some good habits, the email reminders were useful (when I paid attention to them) and the testimonials were rather [...]

Waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting

So much waiting. I ordered more Harmony needles from knitpicks, this time I went for some dpns. I’m in love. I also have a set of cheap 10″ bamboo single points coming from China, I ordered those about 2 weeks ago off of eBay– still waiting. I ordered 2 cones of Peaches n’ Cream in [...]

I need a shot glass

I need a shot glass

Not for me, for my dogs silly. I bought some vitamin and mineral supplement for Greta and Georgia, and because it’s liquid the dosage is doled out in teaspoons. 1 teaspoon per 10 pounds of body weight. Because in my former life I was a bartender I know that one ounce is one shot, and [...]

I love intestines

I love intestines

Yummy yummy yarn guts. Doesn’t this look like fluffy shiny deer guts? The effect is far more realistic in real life than I was able to capture with the camera. I thank goodness that the smell is not that of authentic intestines. One of the things I like about dying silk is that it’s fairly [...]

Day dreams

Day dreams

I decided to take a break from flax spinning and switch to something a little gentler. Bombyx silk fit the bill. I dyed this batch quite a while ago, the technique was really simple. I waited for a warm day, soaked the silk in water and soda ash, added a little ammonia, emptied dye into [...]

Maintenance day!

My new  bobbins and Ashford maintenance kit came in the mail. I can’t remember the last time I was so happy to do fixing up on anything. Why did I wait this long? I can’t believe the difference a new drive and brake bands make. Not to mention that it helps when the footman bit [...]

Linen progress

Linen progress

First, a picture of my spinning progress. Same bobbin as before, but a bit more yarn on it. I generally have the attention span of a hamster, so this progress represents more time than I care to admit investing into it. Life in Craftopia is getting expensive again: Before the weekend I ordered an Ashford [...]

Flax spinning

Flax spinning

When flax is spun, it turns into linen. Flax+twist=linen. Just like that. Flax is a bast fiber, which means it’s grown inside a plant and beaten out– the woody parts of the plant dried, retted (rotted) and removed, so that the long cellulose fibers remain. Ramie, nettle and hemp are also bast fibers. In the [...]