It’s all snowy and blizzarding here. As it did much of Sunday (while I was driving to and from my Parents’ house). Yay for good truck with good tires.

I finally got to sit down at my baby this weekend. Finished off a skein of Queen Mab. Oy, every time I do one of these I remember again what a huge pain beading is. But it is pretty.

190yds, dk weight with a bit of thick/thin character.
100% Alpaca plied with icey beads befitting the Queen’s ice cold fae heart.

With that done, I got to get to work on the Pink Spinel commissioned yarn, which is now 1.3 bobbins in, two thirds of a bobbin left and that will be ready for dyeing. Whee!

Of course, I also spent quite a bit of time dyeing. Look, Bug Girl, no superwash! And Marcy? Lots of non-merino for you! Don’t say I never did anything for ya.

Fire in the Greenwood:
Self and I collaborated on this one to get a pair of complimentary colors working. I like it. The green isn’t overpowering or christmas-y, it really is the green of new branches. Unfortunately those branches are being consumed by fire, but we can’t have everything now can we? 80% Merino, 20% Alpaca

Rosewood:
A warm red, almost pink wood, with texture and variation of grain. Warm and cozy. 100% Bluefaced Leicester

Then I decided I was enjoying this wood theme.

Hardwood:
Dark, rich, and strong, in a deep grained, heathered brown. 100% Shetland

Then, I decided I liked deep, but needed to get away from the browns and woods a little, and let Self play with his blue.

Midnight Magic:
Deep in midnight shadows magic twists and swirls, lighting the world of imagination and mingling with the deep night. 100% Shetland

Yeah, so apparently I had wood and fire on the brain.

Beyond Embers:
When the fire is almost entirely ash and burned out logs, when only the barest whisps of warmth still radiate from the stones, and the cold begins to encroach. I’ll admit I was close to calling this “Grad School” in the spirit of my energy levels. But I resisted. 100% BFL

And yet another wood. Also, my first actual striped roving.

Japanese Maple:
Warm brown wood and hot rich red leaves that rustle with the winds. 100% Shetland

It was, of course, time to let Self and his cool colors play again. So, we decided to try the suggestion of a friend, and go with complementaries using this method.

Rivers of Gold:
As the river flows, fast and cold down from the mountain before slowing in the shallows, gold glitters in the pan, singing it’s siren song of influence and power and beauty. 100% Shetland

Finally, a new fiber for me.

Garnet Shadows:
Rich, deep, lustrous semi-solid red. 100% Finn, with more shine than the finer fibers, but still sleek and remarkably soft.

Lots done this weekend. Yay. These will be up in the shop shortly.

~The Gnome

Whee! I been dyein’!

My dye pot and I got some quality time this weekend.

10 rovings! Including some fibers I hadn’t dyed before.

You will not, however, see, all 10 beyond this photo. Because 4 of them were promptly snapped up on Sunday when I went to spin with Lynn and Marcy.

Including my personal triumph of the group, and one that’s convinced me I want to mess more with tencel… Amethyst Cystals

Warm and deep shot through with quartz. Mmmm. SW Merino/Tencel. I’m going to have to explore this fiber more.

The front one in that first photo, the dark olive-y green, “Deep Forest Depths” is BFL which I haven’t dyed before either. Also love, also snapped up. Also gone are Rose Dreams and Ecclesia, a soft red semi-solid, and a split gold and purple.

But in ones I do still have to take photos of, another new fiber, Merino/Bamboo. We have a cool color, “Into a Cerulean Sky.” Getting the blue right in the photo is hard. It’s exactly like clear sky with stratus clouds blue. Inspired by the beautiful clear weather we’ve been having as Spring seems to be ramping up for a grand entrance.

Also nice, and very different in blending and texture.

Then I made some semi-solids. I compromised and let myself do one, and Self do one. So, surprisingly, there’s a warm and a cool.

“Winter Sunbeams,” a deep heathered gold. Thinking of warm cozy cats sitting under window sills, soaking up the heat.

and “Mediterranean,” blue/bluegreen fading into eachother

And we again split the difference on mottled/variegated rovings, and each did one of those too.

“Frog and Toad” (inspired by the kids books)

and “Waterfall” cool water sliding over slate stones.

Finally, one in the split style, a 6oz run called “Gems in the Rough”

I also dyed up a little blending silk. “Gold Mine” gold with touches of brown, for carding into fiber for texture and color.

Finally, I made another set of stitch markers.
Fancy Jasper – Amazonite – Garnet

All of these will be in the shop.

Sunday was lovely and my poor thirsty wheel got a wonderful woodbeaming and smells of lemon and wintergreen. She glows. Now I’m gorilla glueing two of my bobbins, and will be doing more shortly. Bah! Don’t know why all the ends (both old and new bobbins) are coming off all at once.

Oh, right, and I added a page to the site. “So you want to buy your friend a yarn?” It’s about yarn, and what you need to know to buy one. It’s focused on the sort of yarn that I do, fiber-wise, but the information is fairly generalizable.

That’s it for now

~The Gnome

Experiments went well last week, so I got the weekend to myself. This was good, both for my mental state and the state of my projects.

Sadly, it didn’t help the state of the mess that is my apartment very much.

Anyway, I did three sets of things this weekend:

Dyeing (Mostly roving, one yarn)
Seaming
Stitch Markers

The seaming will be split off into its own post about the memorial afghan. The rest I will talk about here.

First, stitch markers.

I made two more sets of the stone chip markers, in the short variety. Same stones as before
Lapis – Onyx – Moss Agate – Onyx – Garnet – Onyx

With those done, I put on my creative hat again. I thought maybe I should try some more “delicate” stitch markers. Delicate in the light and refined sense, not the fragile sense. I came up with this, and made a set of six…

Labradourite – Garnet (x4) on a gold pin

Then I decided to go the other direction entirely and make some beefier markers. I really like these, except that the hematite they’re made out of is magnetized. That means you can’t keep them really close to each other on a project. I want to get some more hematite that isn’t magnetized to redo these.

Then I got down and dyeing. Mmm, it’s been too long since I’ve had a day to mess around with the dyepot. I started with two slight variations on something you’ve seen before.

A muted and a dark version of “Gold Road.”

Then I started messing with colors a bit more. Tried some more directly related colors, and got Edge of the Sea (A reference to the song, “Far-Off Shore” by Kate Wolf)

Then a person favorite, red, and got Claret Sunset

Then I thought to myself, “Self, these browns and golds and reds are great, but you haven’t tried anything bright. Some people like bright, you know.” And I responded, “Hrm… maybe you’re right, self, I suppose I should try one of those. Blue and yellow? Green and yellow?” Self happily replied, “Green! You never let me do green. It’s all elfin and planty and you never let me play with it! Hell, you’ve only bought me one premade green to play with! Why are you such a jerk, you should let me do more green you big meanie!” And so I gave in, waving my hands, “Ok, ok, ok! Green it is! Never mind Edge of the Sea which you just did, or Into the Green you did a while ago, green it is… whiner.” Luckily for me, Self didn’t catch that last bit.

So I came out with… Pollen Dust. Pollen scattered across the green leaves. Very spring, even if spring isn’t here yet.

Self had a great time with this one. Which is why the yellow is so vivid. Luckily I managed to keep it heathered or it would have shamed the actual flowers!

Well since Self got to play, I wanted to as well. So I did something I rarely do on roving… a semi-solid. A rich dark purple. Like plum juice on your chin. Like berry jam. Like the deep flaws of the darkest purple amethyst… and thus, Amethyst Depths. I like this one. Self thinks it’s boring. I told him to shut up.

Since both I and Self had been satisfied and it was getting later, we decided to work together on one more roving. Hrmm… “Why not one with more colors?” said Self. “Huh, that’s an idea, and we can do it with 6oz instead of 4oz so there will be more space.” I agreed. “But what colors?” Queried Self. “Now THAT is a very good question. If we do three colors, how about starting with a version of that color I used for Amethyst, and work out from there, see what inspires us?” I responded, not quite sure myself.

So I did. And as I pulled out the first part, Self started jumping up and down, “Flowers! FLOWERS!” “Huh?” I quirked an eyebrow, “Yes, they’re lovely… and?” “Our garden! When we were a kid, remember? They had those pretty flowers, that were gold and brown and exactly that burgundy!” I cocked my head, “Wait, the one Matt picked out? The gaillardia?” “Yeah, yeah! The blanket flower! Why do you always use the prissy stodgy name?” Self bounced. “Oh hush you, it’s an excellent idea though, let’s do it.”

And so we did. Gaillardia. Which Self still insists on calling Blanket Flower, which I think is a silly name for a roving, but he insists I point out he disagrees and thinks it sounds too much like a disease and people will think it’s gross.

Guess that’s about all for today. Hopefully, it’s enough! I’ll get these up on the store shortly, except the Gold Road, which someone has dibs on first. If they don’t want them, then they’ll go to the store as well shortly.

So, we’ll leave you with a little seed-headed grass fairy.

~The Gnome

Trying a new method. I think I like it. It should make some nice yarns which fade from one color to another, without completely losing the first.

Having a little trouble photographing true. Both rovings are… a little darker, a bit more muted, and more heathered than they look here. Especially the Gold Road isn’t as… glowy as it is here. It’s rich, but not fluorescent.

Both are 4oz of 80% Merino / 20% Alpaca
A really nice blend, in my opinion. Very soft, and spins easily without the grab of merino or the hairiness of alpaca.

Gold Road

Sunset to Darkness

The seaming on the memorial afghan proceeds apace!

Memorial Afghan Squares recieved from:
USA Kentucky C-Ville
Canada Manitoba Woodlands
USA Utah Logan
USA Texas Katy
USA Arizona Glendale
New Zealand Unknown Wanaka
USA New York New York City
USA Wisconsin Madison
USA Oregon Gearhart
UK Unknown Unknown
USA Florida Crestview
Norway None Bergen
USA New York White Plains
USA New York Endicott
USA Minnesota Columbia Heights
USA Washington Lacey
USA Maryland Columbia
USA California Redlands
USA New York Binghamton
USA Illinois Chicago
USA North Carolina Hendersonville
USA Pennsylvania Conshohocken
USA Washington Tacoma
USA Oklahoma Broken Arrow
USA Alabama Huntsville
USA Maryland Huntingtown
USA Georgia Acworth
USA Idaho Moscow
USA California La Habra
Canada Ontario Oshawa
USA Oregon Portland
USA Massachusetts Somerville
USA Massachusetts Worcester
USA Wisconsin Madison
USA New York Babylon
USA California San Francisco
USA Washington Renton
Canada Ontario Stouffville
USA Nevada Boulder City
UK None Bedford
USA Ohio Northfield
USA California Oak Park
USA Minnesota Chanhassen
Denmark Unknown Kobenhavn
USA Ohio Cleveland
Denmark None Aarhus
USA New Hampshire Belmont
Canada Ontario Oshawa
USA Waretown New Jersey
USA Dallas Texas
USA Washington Kent

Today’s “gnome” is a fairy from my own sketchbook. My sketching is incredibly rusty, so whenever I’m sitting down but can’t be knitting/crocheting, I’ve been using these little guys to slowly build my skills back up. Some are better than others.

~The Gnome

‘Cause it reminds you just how awesome the people are.

Yesterday, no squares came (40 squares, see previous post), but… THREE packages came. Woh!

First, a package all the way from Montevideo, Uruguay! From my dear friend, Veriton . Wow. Isn’t it pretty? It’s a mate, bombilla, and cleaning brush! ::squee!::
Mmmmm. Now to get the right tea for this.
Also in this package…

Yarn! A lovely singles yarn called, Manos del Uruguay. In a deep saturated blue. And soft. Mmm. I wonder what I should make? I think it will be for meeee. Maybe something like knucks? Hmm…

Second, a package all the way from across the pond in the UK! From another wonderful friend, Sarah who just thought I should have a package in January. It made me smile.

Mmmm nom nom nom. Awesome.

Oh, I can finally show this now! Here’s the last of the noiled silk I dyed. It was Sarah’s surprise to herself, but now I can show it.

Finally, was a box that’s not a gift per se, but is definitely a gift in the tremendous amount of thought and care that went into prepping it, and making it available to those of us who wish to expand our horizons. Prepared by the wonderful Beth of the Spinning Loft, a 12 breed fiber sampler. Complete with several pages of description to read about the breeds. I can’t wait to start, as soon as I finish the commissioned yarn I have on the plate… and maybe another skein of Queen Mab.

Yeah, it’s the people. And sometimes the people know just when you need a pick-me-up or smile.

I have the best friends. Which is why today’s sign-off Gnome will be another surprise gift that showed up in my mailbox a bit ago, along with a square, from TheGeorg

~The Gnome