Crafting the craft show

Every craft booth needs a banner. We're hoping to do a few shows this holiday season, and there's one coming up that's got a "green" theme, in the eco-friendly/sustainable sense. The application form suggested that crafters make their banner or shop sign out of recycled materials to show off their creativity, so since we don't have a banner yet, I thought I'd take their suggestion. A photo from today's bannercrafting:


The letters are cut out of an old towel that we dyed purple in the washer. There's also a big yellow towel-fabric ampersand that will go on the final banner, and all the towel cutouts will be stuck to a background cut out of a linen tablecloth we got from the thrift store. Our actual tablecloth came from the thrift store, too, and if the tablecloth turns out not to cover the tables completely, we have some white thrifted bed-sheet on standby. Recycley enough?

Time management is important

There's a nice blog post on Avlor's Imprints that talks about how people with small businesses can use and track their time better. One of the most important ideas I think some budding small-business owners don't always remember is that their time is valuable. And since a small-business owner's hourly rate is literally set by the amount of work they do in an hour, efficiency is extremely relevant.

That's one of the ideas that drove me to quit my office job. Because at an office job? HA! Efficiency just means you work harder than the people around you, care more, and burn out faster. You don't get paid more to work harder. At least, that's my experience; I'm sure there are office jobs out there that aren't like that. If only I had had one of them. ;)

I wasn't the only one who had trouble using my time efficiently at that company, either. Some people just work fast. Those people officially still had to work exactly 40 hours a week. When there's a limited range of things you're allowed to do, that just means that you either break the rules and do things you aren't tasked to do, or you learn to work more slowly.

If I meant that in a Zen, "slow down the mad rush, learn to relax, and find a natural pace" sort of way, working more slowly would actually be good. But when it's more "read grammar blogs for three hours straight every day and call it job research, then when you run out of blogs, train your brain to work more slowly and don't dare come up with better uses of your time, at risk of getting impatient and fiddly and sneaking non-work activities that could get you in trouble" — that's the opposite of good. That's slowing down your natural pace to force yourself into someone else's schedule.

And that's not a good use of my life. Hey, even if I were to get reincarnated, I still have a limited amount of time in this life, and that means every minute has immediate personal value.

Thankfully, as a small-business owner, efficiency is a positive skill. It's useful to finish faster than expected, then come up with something else that needs to be done in the "bonus" time. Being ahead of schedule means I can actually stay ahead — no getting ahead, then waiting for co-workers to catch up so the project can proceed. No getting ahead and then feeling pressured to take on other people's jobs to get the entire project ahead of schedule. As a small-business owner, all the jobs are already mine, and I'm happy to do them.

That is, if I can get my brain working at full speed again, so I can fit a comfortably crazy amount of work into a short period of time. ;) Send good vibes for my brainpower, 'kay?

In a buying mood

So this may not be the best time to buy, as I just left my office job and could very well be living off savings in a few weeks, but as fate will have it, people keep posting used stuff on Ravelry that just happens to be exactly what I've wanted for years. One way to interpret this would be that something is trying to tempt me to spend all my money so that I fall on my face and have to get another "normal" job to pay the bills.

Another way to take this is that the universe is conveniently providing me with a way to equip my fiber arts studio while I actually have the money.

Equip it, then, I shall.

On the way to me this week is the loom I suspected I'd want when I heard about it, wanted more when I saw it, and have continued to want as I researched it: The Kromski Harp. The gigantic one. 32" weaving width, I dream of thee ... and just imagine the ridiculousness of double-weaving a 64" width! I could weave a ball gown on this thing. If it's compatible with my little half-Asian 5'maybe1" body.

Then there are the used spool rack and blending hackle up for sale. The first is mine unless something goes wrong — cackle; as far as the second, I haven't decided yet. There's a woodworker on Etsy who makes lovely blending hackles that come with clamps and everything, and I do feel the need to encourage people who make lovely things to keep making them. Hmm.

Oops — as I type about buying stuff, my Phat Fiber box has arrived. (What? Me? In a buying mood?) This is my first Phat Fiber box, so I got a mixed box of spinning fiber and yarn:



There are even more yarn and fiber on the way from Blonde Chicken Boutique — and more to come after that as I stock up on recycled yarn for upcoming holiday craft shows.

And now I'm up against one of those things you hear small business owners talk about. It would be extremely satisfying to sit here and continue to abstractly ponder fiber and to browse the endless acquirable fiber stash of the Internets while planning product lines, but I have two dozen other things to do. I need to buy a vendor tent for the aforementioned craft shows. I need to order more business cards, and maybe some postcards or stickers. I need to create more product, and (oy!) do Web site design homework for my online class, which will lead to my building the new starncrossbones.com. A ton of things to do, and I just want to play with fluffies and take photos.

The alternate temptation is to absolutely refuse to let myself even consider playing with fluffies and taking photos, which would be multiply counterproductive; I need to be creative and happy at the same time as I get all my work done. Even the crap I don't want to do right now, that needs to be done right now.

Remember, me: This is still better than sitting in a box and unwillingly trying very hard to think like someone other than yourself for eight hours. (Willingly trying for hours to think like someone other than yourself is called "writing," which I will also be doing sometime soon. But that's a tangent for another day. ;))

Crafters rising: chain mail and handwoven scarves

Brian and I have been busy and not-busy, in a way. Brian has been developing new chain mail products without actually making many new pieces to actually sell. We do have these new glow-in-the-dark chain mail bracelets in the Etsy shop, which would make great Halloween jewelry and are pretty even when the glow stick stops glowing:




But he's also been working on other chain mail accessories, like this cool wrapped bottle (which someone at Dragon*Con called a "poison bottle"):


We don't have any of those in the shop yet, but soon ... soon.

For my part, I've been weaving stash scarves (meaning, I've been trying to use up the random bits and pieces of stuff in my yarn stash). I finished this scarf at the Florida Fiber-In:







The warp is Bernat Handicrafter Cotton Stripes, and the weft is the same plus some Lion Brand Homespun.

Then I started this scarf at the Fiber-In, and finished it today:





The warp is Lion Brand Microspun, and the weft is some worsted-weight cotton/rayon blend that was separated from its ball band, plus shots of two types of eyelash yarns and some more Microspun.

Both scarves were made on my Cricket loom. Weaving is awesome because it's fast and easy to make attractive fabric, but it's actually kinda inefficient for destashing: I still have leftovers of every single one of those yarns. Oh, well. I'll just have to weave some more scarves. ;)

I also have a Cunning Plan in the works. If all goes according to it, I should be crafting a lot more in the coming months, and doing a few craft shows. I'm finally tired of waiting. It's for-real crafter time.

Scarves and Yarn

Just some photos of things I've been doing. More later.

Low-twist singles spun from custom Flying Ewe batts


Better photo of the first scarf I wove on the Cricket loom


Second scarf woven on my Cricket loom

Real-World Crafting

A lesson for today: Living, crafting and creating do not occur in a vacuum.

Intellectually, I've always known that — but there have been times when not having a clean enough work space has kept me from feeling inspired, and I know I'm not the only one who has that problem. But something must be different right now.

Today, I noticed the craft room smelled a little odd. Thinking about it, I realized it had the day before, too, but I had chalked it up to the changing smells that naturally invade rooms right by a kitchen, and by a bathroom that serves both humans and kitties. Some rather unappealing smells occasionally seep into the room, but even the strongest usually go away after a day or two, and they don't stick to my crafting things, so I don't worry about it too much. So I left the door open to air out the room.

Later, I noticed a little damp spot on the knee of my pants. I'd climbed on the kitchen counter earlier to get a bowl from a top shelf ... but the counter wasn't wet. I'd also knelt on the floor of the craft room earlier to take a photo of some new spinning batts. And yes, indeed. The craft room carpet was damp. Had the cats gotten in? No; the room smelled odd, but it would have been more obvious if the kitties had left me a note.

Then I remembered that the bath tub has a leak. Two days ago, the boyfriend had thought it was only leaking into the area between the tub and the wall, but I'd noticed it leaking out the side of the tub.

And the bath tub is on the other side of the craft room closet.

...And yes, indeed. The craft room carpet was damp all the way from the closet to the front of the sewing table.

Now, this isn't the newest condo. It's had problems before. We're currently borrowing someone's backup air conditioning floor unit because our central air stopped cooling anything in October, and while it was repairable as of then, supposedly it won't be for much longer because the parts are getting hard to find. Since we don't have several thousand dollars to replace both the inside and the outside unit, we were air-conditioning-less until B's father rescued us with his borrowed floor unit. (For reference, this is all happening in the amazingly humid and hot land of Florida, home of happy mold spores and ants that ignore traps.)

Another example: Last year, the closet shelves tried to fall on me one morning before work because the upstairs condo had a leaky bath tub. Their leak meant our drywall had gotten not so dry, and when that happens, drywall screws don't like to continue supporting heavy shelving. So we ripped out and replaced the drywall in the closet AND the bathroom and, in fact, we still need to re-tile that shower.

So. This condo has had its share of quirks. Another one isn't unexpected. But at times, fixing this sort of quirk has absorbed all my creative energy, leaving me wholly focused on cleaning up at the expense of creating.

This time, though, I checked to make sure nothing was visibly falling down, cracked the closet door to make sure the humidity could escape, made a mental note not to take any more baths until we fix the leak, and continued thinking about spinning yarn. I even took a photograph of some batts I've had stashed for a while, that I was considering resurrecting:


And even though there were five (@#$*!) ants in the kitchen today, after several (extremely welcome) weeks without any, I didn't get discouraged. I just moved one of the magical liquid ant baits that we discovered the ants don't ignore, and went back to putting together the EtsyFEST catalog index.

This seems to part of my brain to verge perilously on apathy about running a shoddy ship, but on reflection, it's a relief not to feel like I need a sterile environment in order to create. Because really, there's no such thing as an utterly sterile living environment. (Some people's houses come off as sterile, but that's a different monster.) There will always be crumbs. There will always be bugs. There will always be dust. I can live in denial about it, and freak out when I get proved wrong ... or I can remember that I'm part of a larger ecosystem, and that nothing I buy, no matter how tightly sealed its plastic wrapping, was created, inspected and delivered by spotless, germ-free robots directly to the point where I encountered and acquired it.

Things are dirty. Things are germy. Things will get dirty. Things will need cleaning.

And the aim isn't to fixate on completely avoiding the dirt. The aim is to minimize the negative impact of life-generated dirt on creating beautiful things — including memories — and to be able to efficiently clean up a mess when it inevitably happens, without letting it keep me from doing things that make me happy.

In celebration of living with and through the mess, I present this lovely photodump of things I have created, and things I have bought from other creative people, since my last blog post here. Ta-da!

Cotton Candy batt from Spazzy Yarns


Blue alpaca/wool yarn spun from Holly Birch Fibers


Organic yarn spun from a SpinSpanSpun on Etsy batt


Purple Schmurple handspun bought from Spazzy Yarns


Beaches handspun bought from Simply Twisted on Etsy


Sea and Sand handspun bought from Spazzy Yarns


Mishmash yarn, from a SpinSpanSpun organic batt


Proud Peacock yarn, spun from Gale's Art Fiber


More organic yarn spun from a SpinSpanSpun batt


Cheers.

Tour de Fleece, Day (Mumble)

Tomorrow's the end of the Tour de Fleece, and while I didn't do as much spinning as I wanted to, it still helped me get some of my spinning-brain in order. I also used up some stash ... even if I acquired new stash along the way. (And hey, I still have one more day.)

This is the latest finished product for my Tour de Fleece:



That's the moorit Corriedale I've been working on forever. It came out to 448 yards of two-ply fingering weight yarn. I'd say that's worth spending a few hours on, although I'm not sure my total is really respectable (Looking at my Knit Wars totals, I spent a total of 13 hours on that yarn, including plying). It's enough yarn to knit a pair of socks or the lovely Endpaper Mitts, but it's not really a profitable amount of time to spend on one skein of yarn, is it? ;)

Next up, I'm working on finishing the second half of the Proud Peacock BFL I picked up from Gale's Art at Convergence here in Tampa (was that this year or last year?). If I'm very very good, I should finish that by the end of the Tour de Fleece.

Three skeins ain't bad, I guess...

Tour de Fleece, Day 11?

This past weekend in the Tour de Fleece I fell out of the Peloton and into the Lantern Rouge, the team for people who can't spin every day. I thought it might happen — it was even likely — but I hoped I'd be able to overcome that through sheer momentum. I spun some more of the Colonial on the drop spindle on Friday, but Saturday I got waylaid by chores, errands, a birthday celebration, and most of all, a melodramatic boyfriend who not only ate Saturday night, but also sucked up most of Sunday and my energy for that day, too. Alas. The power of angsty significant others is greater than the power of the spinning wheel ... at least in the short run.

Today, though, I got back on the wheel and spun some more of the moorit Corriedale. No photos; it looks like yet more brown yarn on a bobbin at the moment.

The first Cricket loom scarf did get worked on over the weekend — finished, in fact. I completed the weaving part and took it off the loom on Sunday to start twisting the fringe, then finished the fringe yesterday and washed the scarf. Today, it's dry, so it's officially done. Cheers.

And my organic batts from SpinSpanSpun arrived last week. Motivators for the remaining portion of the Tour de Fleece?

Tour de Fleece, Day 6; and my new Cricket loom!

My Cricket is finally HERE!

Warping it was way, way easier than warping the cheap but bigger rigid heddle I bought a while ago. Meridith of SweetKnits even sent me some nicely-matching yarn to replace the handspun she was going to send along originally (it was an angora blend, so I had to turn it down), and it's on the loom right now. I thought it would take me at least an hour to warp this thing, since it took an appallingly long time (four or more hours?) to warp the monster rigid heddle even with Brian's help ... but I think this took me way less than an hour. Yay, Schacht, for sending good warping directions!

I am, alas, too lazy to take a good photo of the loom itself right now, but here's what's on it at the moment:



And — all right — if I must share my crappy first photo of the Cricket, here it is:



The Cricket and I were bonding, and I didn't want to leave it to spin for Tour de Fleece, but Le Tour is Le Tour. Somehow, using my drop spindle seemed like it would be less intensive than sitting at the wheel, so my poor, abandoned possibly-Greensleeves spins again:



If I remember correctly, that's some Colonial wool I got from Uncommon Threads.

And in case anyone was wondering, last night's test knitting was cursed. First, I couldn't find the pattern, even though I thought I had specifically put it into the bag with the knitting so I wouldn't lose it — it turned out that I had put a different piece of paper in there, that I just thought was the pattern. Sigh. Then when I tried to print a new copy of the pattern, the printer jammed about four times. There must be a tiny piece of paper stuck in there that I won't be able to get out without taking the thing apart. Sigh, I say, again. Then I had to go to bed, since there's still that pesky office job thing going on. The test knitting was just not fated for success yesterday.

Still, that and today's unhinged day at work set me up to receive the Cricket loom tonight, and my first Super-Awesome Bag of Crap swap from the Ravelry Spin or Dye Swapping group:



Those little balls of pencil roving are so very soft, and the chocolates are so very good (and I'm pretty picky about chocolate) ... This is a most awesome bag of crap. It was almost worth having a crappy day to get that and the loom and my new Harmony needles and blocking boards from Knit Picks all on the same day.

Oh. And. I gave in and bought some books from Interweave's Hurt Book Sale. I should really stop buying random things ... but ... but...

But they're useful...?

Tour de Fleece, Day 5

Not much visible progress in today's Tour de Fleece spinning: I got to the other end of the bobbin! Yay! But I only spun for half an hour, as I want to play with the Weave-It and work on the Phoenix Bess test some more.



But I did make a sparkly green square on the Weave-It last night. It took me about half an hour to do this one, but it was my first time using a small loom in a while.



My second square, made of white bamboo yarn, took a little more than 20 minutes. If practice makes faster, maybe someday I'll be able to do four in an hour. Ha!

Tour de Fleece, Day 4

Spent way too much time taking photographs today and far less time spinning — but spin, I did! Inspired by another TdFer's yarn, I dug out some moorit Corriedale I got from a swap:





(Does anyone know what "Wiljamie Victoria" might mean? It sounds mysterious — or like a romance novel character — but that's what it says on the label right below "Moorit Corriedale.")

There's only a little on the bobbin after today's spinning session, but going back to this fiber tomorrow should be a treat more than torture; that is, it'll be the opposite of what I expect the red Rambouillet to be when I get back to it ... This stuff isn't as sproingy as the Crazy Corriedale, since it's commercially processed (or it looks and feels like it), but it's amazingly, blissfully nepp-free. It was even happily cooperative when I tried the long draw technique on it.



Some of those photos I spent too much time taking were of the now-dry Crazy Corriedale yarn I plied yesterday.



The others were of some hand-dyed wool roving in "Glen Eden" from Neauveau, since I thought I might convince myself to spin it today.



Instead, I'm trying to decide what form of semi-artistic-style yarn might best show off the roving's serene colors. Maybe I'll add some extra bits to the yarn to accent the colors without changing the texture of the yarn itself. But what to add? That's a question for another day...

Tour de Fleece, end of Day 2 plus Day 3

My spinning wheel, a Kromski Sonata, had its maiden voyage to the porch on Day 2 of the Tour de Fleece.



It was a hot and muggy day for it — 87 degrees in the shade and 66 percent humidity — but we spun on valiantly.



Not the best day for an unexpected battle with the Rambouillet of Doom, though. That fluffy, innocent-seeming fiber was neppier than it looked (I should have figured something was up when I saw that my test skein was so small) so I gave up on the "fairly thin yarn" idea and spun it long-draw, pitting my will against its, trying to find a happy medium between where it wanted to go and what I wanted to spin. The result: nearly 2 ounces of hard-won thick and thin singles.



Whew. I restored a little of my sanity by buying an organic batt from SpinSpanSpun. And another. (But they were on sale, and a fellow Tour de Fleecer tempted me with her finished organic yarn!)

Today's Tour de Fleece spinning goal was to clear up a bobbin or two for the other half of the evil red Rambouillet (or possibly to make room for politer fiber), so I dug out the jumbo bobbin and plied the Crazy Corriedale from the long-draw experiment.



Hurrah! I'll see for sure after I wash and block it, but it looks softer and artsier than the short-draw-spun Crazy Corriedale that took me what felt like about the same amount of time to spin. Does this count as art yarn? Does it mean I've met my Breakaway team goal?

My other reward for getting through today was that my vintage Weave-It loom arrived:



The woven square in the photo came with the loom. I haven't played with it yet, except to paw it, but after my initial test square, I'll probably be trying to weave a variant on the Triangle or Rectangle? shawl from WeaveZine.
Tomorrow, if I'm feeling brave, I'll spin some more of the red Rambouillet. If I'm not feeling so brave ... well, we'll see.

Tour de Fleece, Day 1 and morning of Day 2

Day 1 of the Tour de Fleece was mostly a bust, but I did spin a small amount of yarn. An extremely small amount. I finger-spun a tiny bit of hand-dyed Tussah silk I grabbed for comfort factor while moping that I should probably go to bed rather than stay up and spin, since it was after midnight when we got home from 4th of July festivities. Still, I did spin something, no matter how small:



This morning, likewise, was full of putz. I suffered from a bout of "fiber fright," meaning that I was stymied by the usual unwillingness to use up/mess up precious pretty stash fiber — and the knowledge of my own unwillingness made me all the more aware that if I forced myself, I could end up not enjoying myself as much as I should. And what's the point of that?

But I finally got off my butt, pushed aside the fiber fright, and decided to tackle the four ounces of red Rambouillet and blue mohair that I won in a blog contest a while ago:





It should make a pretty decent shawl-type object, so I'll be spinning it fairly fine. (One good thing about lighter-weight yarns is that they can be doubled to make a heavier knit, if I want to go that way. So I have more options if I spin more finely.) I don't think I've ever spun four ounces of yarn in one day, so this should keep me busy for a bit.

Spin, spin and away...!

Summer of Spinning and the Tour de Fleece

The spin-a-thon continues apace! Today's featured fibers that will (hopefully) be spun up in the next three weeks:



Why in the next three weeks? I'm participating in the Ravelry Tour de Fleece (that's a link to Ravelry, so it won't work if you aren't signed in), which means I'll try to spin some yarn every day of the Tour de France. As the description on the group says, "The concept is simple: They spin, we spin — a real spinning-themed spin-along." The Tour runs July 4 through July 26, with days of rest on July 13 and July 20.

Tour de Fleece participants can join a variety of different teams. I'm in:

• Rookies — For first-year participants.


• Climbers — For spinners taking on big personal challenges.


• Breakaway — For spinners of art yarn.


• Peloton — The main group, which everyone is in.


• Stash Busters - For tamers of the stash.


• And, of course, Team Hopelessly Overcommitted — A "wild card" (participant-created) team for those of us who just can't help ourselves.

My personal goals for the Tour de Fleece:

• Spin at least a pound (16 ounces) of fiber during the Tour. (Overall/Climbers/Stash Busters)


• Spin at least one skein of recognizably arty yarn, not relying solely on thread-plying for its artsiness. (Breakaway)


• Spin at least three of my special stash fibers. This is a Climbers team challenge for me because I tend to hoard certain fiberbits. (Climbers)


• Coinciding with the Tour de France's toughest leg on July 22, spin something challenging.


• Prep and spin at least one bag of washed fleece. (Stash Busters/Climbers)

So the 2 ounces of Peace of Yarn (30% baby alpaca/50% Merino wool/20% Tussah silk) from Bahr Creek Studio will count toward the Climbers goal(s)....



The 8 oz "bleached Irish linen" white flax (from Little Barn) will probably get spun on Challenge Day...



...and the 5 oz hand-dyed wool locks ("Summer Garden" from Neauveau) is destined to turn into art yarn for the Breakaway team.



Also, the roster for David Daniels' Summer of Spinning now contains me and this blog, which means I'm going to spin something, anything, between now and Labor Day. The first event should make the second event a gimme, no?

Finished Object: Branching Out scarf

Behold! The Branching Out scarf I started two years ago is done!





The Phoenix Bess secret test knit has been received and cast on. It looks like it's going to be an enjoyable and quick knit, especially since my new Knit Picks Harmony wood circular needles were magically the correct size for the pattern AND I magically got gauge with them. That seems like a good sign.