fibergarden

As relatively new parents, daily life with this growing, exploring little person continues to amaze us. Little A is wonderful and intense–sometimes her intensity drives us batty, but that’s her job as a kid, right? At 3 years old, she constantly says things that amaze us, as well as some things that are cute and crack us up…it’s just an incredible gift to watch her explore and learn about her world every day. She was a very late talker, and I knew that once she figured it out there would be no stopping her (there’s no silence, either–as I type she is carrying on a huge conversation with her soft dough, and tools…singing, chatting away to herself. Just amazing!)

So I feel the need to write these funny ’supergirl’ quotes down for posterity…while they are fresh in my mind–I’ll be adding to the list over time:

Around 2.5 yo–little A was crying about something (that was really not worth it, in our opinion), and Craig told her she didn’t need to cry. Her response to him was “I have to cry, it’s one of the things I do best!”

We frequently read an old Madeline book before bed time. One of the lines is “..they smiled at the good, and frowned at the bad”. When A ‘reads’ it, she says “…they smiled at the good, and grumped at the bad”

“Daddy, your face is fuzzy, you need to scrabe.” (shave).

Grandma and Papa go to Florida for the winter, so at Christmas my Mom was telling A that she would send her a letter from FL. her response: ” ‘A’ would be a good letter to send, Grandma.” Of course, my dad cut an ‘A’ out of wood, Mom painted it, and they mailed her an A. Silly kid…sillier grandparents!

We say “yes you are ___”…she says “no I amn’t!”

I’ll add more later…gotta run. We’re meeting friends at the movies this afternoon, to see Curious George.

Later…

Just a quick post to show off a big pile of skeins that I finally got wrapped up and labeled last night. It feels good to have so much done and in my hands at once–most of it is on the web site for sale, and some is set aside for a friend to sell elsewhere. It’s funny that when I look at commercial yarn and other people’s handspun, I see projects and think about how I can use it/what I can make with it. When I look at my own yarn, I think of it as already being a finished object, so it’s much more difficult to make plans to use it up. The idea of actually planning a project and specifically spinning yardage for the project is still far off in the distance for me–honestly, I don’t know if I will ever get there or not. Too much fun in the creating part to be much of a planner. Ask our family how hard it is for us to actually plan a visit or make airplane reservations to go see them or do something…like pulling teeth. I’m just creating out of chaos here…anyhow, that’s a long story for another day, so here goes my show off photo:

Quote of the day, courtesy of my darling husband, who just walked through the kitchen while I was dyeing some wool on the stovetop:

“It smells like freaking wet sheep in here”

If you read this dear…next time I complain about the smell of cigar smoke, remember this, OK?

;)

I had to post another quickie today…new yarn that isn’t dry yet, but here’s a photo of “Stormy Night” on my niddy-noddy before I set the twist. It’s blue-black Romney (I think) that I got from Christine at Now and Zen last weekend. It spun up deliciously fast, right off the bump with no splitting or pre-drafting needed. I saved about half as a singles, but the rest, shown here, is plied with a gorgeous thin fuzzy yarn by Rowan called Kidsilk Night (mohair, silk, poly, nylon). I plied it in a loopy, boucle style without adding the 3rd ’stabilizer’ thread usually used in a boucle. So yummy….I’ll probably list it for sale at Handmade, but only because I emailed her to hold the rest of the fiber for me so I can make some for myself later!

I had to share this quote from the Anticraft web site, in their ‘Antifesto’ under philosophy. I just ran across this through sweet Natasha’s blog. It sums it all up, really:

“Creation from chaos is natural. We’ve come to a place where we’ve realized that we have this actual, physical need to create things. We’ve discovered that we hate people en masse, we’re sick of homogenized culture, and these realizations have left holes in our hearts. We create to fill those holes, to be able to sleep at night knowing we’ve done something, even a small something, to confront the manufactured culture that is currently being churned out.”

“Life, all life, has the twin drives to survive and to reproduce. Intelligence is an aimless byproduct except as it serves these basic drives.”

–Robert A. Heinlein, from ‘Tunnel in the Sky’, copyright 1955

AAAAAAH….acid dyes. I finally tried them out and have to say, no more Wilton’s cake dyes for me! This was so much better, fewer hassles. The dyes didn’t break, they set properly, there will be no bleeding. I understand what quantities I need to use to get colors…all in one try. Hooray!

Now, learning how to achieve the colors I want will take some time. Case in point is the roving at left in the photo you see here (and yes, I use a ladder as my drying rack right now–the old rack broke and the ladder is just sitting there waiting for somebody to work on the back room, so I’m making it work for me). Anyhow, I thought I could make two layers of wool in my pyrex for the microwave method, and use red and blue dye with some overlap for a red-blue-purple tie die effect. Unfortunately I didn’t check the bottom layer, which didn’t get saturated enough, and I ended up with half nice, and half ‘patriotic’ colors on this piece of roving. Not my desired effect, but they’ll blend up fine on the drum carder. The reason for this is that the Wilton dyes always sank to the bottom of the dish and then wicked up into the wool during the heating process. The adid dyes bond so much faster that they didn’t ever make it down through the wool.

The orange and red I dyed on the stove top in my enamel dye pot. I LOVE this one! I made a dye of yellow and after the roving was saturated with the yellow, I gently applied bits of red here and there for a nice spotting effect, being careful not to stir the wool around until after it was set. I love it, love it…did I say that I love it! More adventures in dyeing are sure to follow!

I can’t wait to post about an adventure that I hope will work out, for a group of freestyle spinners–myself included–who met at Camp Pluckyfluff East last fall. I can’t say now, but I’ll be posting a link to one of our next group adventures very soon….it’s exciting, and I just hope it’ll work out. Sorry to hint and run….peace.