Happy 2017!

I can't believe how long it's been since I've posted. It's a whole new year already! I have been busy traveling and crafting for the holidays. Also, our home sale finally closed so my husband and I will now be able to put our creative energy toward fixing up the house! Here is a barage of images to show what I have been up to for the past month. I hope to resume my regularly blogging schedule starting next week. Apologies for the image quality, many of them were taken during our holiday road trip and all without the aid of my light box.

Before we left on our trip I knitted this dress for my niece for Christmas. She is about 1 1/2 years old now!

These crocheted stacking animals are also for my niece. The leaves on the palm tree took me forever! I was working on that tree for a big part of our journey north.

While visiting my husband's aunts and uncles in Sacramento we came across a shop called Rumplestiltskin. Since I love everything to do with fairytales and yarn, I just had to go inside and pick up some gorgeous wool for spinning!

While in Portland I made this baby mermaid costume as a custom order for a friend who is expecting in February!

I received a Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer amigurumi kit for Christmas.  Here's Rudolph in a hotel in Redding, on the way back to SoCal. 

Now I am working with my Sheepicorn yarn from Electric Sheep.  This is how much I had knitted at our last stop in Santa Cruz.

I hope your year is off to a wonderful and crafty start!

-Assunta

Handspun Yarn for My Mom!

My mom is one of my very best friends, and she's also the one who taught me to sew and crochet! Ever since I started learning to spin, I have had an idea in my head to make beautiful yarn for her. Of course, it took me a few test skeins to get to gift-worthy yarn, but I think I finally did it. My mom's birthday was yesterday, November 22nd, and this is what I gave her:

I even made my own custom label, but I must give credit to Blarney Yarn for her super-soft wool blend and gorgeous hand-painted autumn colors.

You may recognize this wool from my past post on the Vista Fiber Fiesta!

I spun and plied the yarn on my trusty Ashford spindle.

Stretching the yarn out on my noddy-noddy showed the colors to their best advantage and got it ready to soak. 

Yarn soup! Soaking the yarn helped clean it and set it.

Last, I hung it to dry on a hook that was left in front of what will soon be my craft room. (I can't wait to repaint or replace that door, though!)

What do you think? I want to try dyeing my own yarn next!

-Assunta

PS- I had a great time at Hearts & Hands on Saturday. I brought a friend and we each made a few spool knit hats for refugees. Making the hats was fun, but the best part was being around people from different backgrounds all working together and using their creativity to help others! It was wonderful to see!

Gem Faire and the Vista Fiber Fiesta

A few weeks ago a friend and I went to Gem Faire to look at pretty sparkly things! I got lots of nice green beads to make my beautiful mom-in-law this bracelet for her birthday. I had to wait a couple weeks to post it so I wouldn't spoil the surprise:

Then last week I went with a group of friends to the Vista Fiber Fiesta. There was so much beautiful yarn and fiber that it was hard not to buy way too much! I managed to keep my purchases down to three things.

The first is this hand-painted wool by Blarney Yarn. I bought some purple and gold wool from her last year and I just love her colors, don't you?

I also got this sock yarn by Laser Sheep. I have been looking for some rainbow yarn that isn't too loud and I think this is just perfect. The color is called Sheepicorn and it's made of wool and nylon. Laser Sheep also has lots of yarn inspired superheros and nerd culture. Very cool! 

I saved this purchase for last because it's the least brightly colored...for the moment. It's acala cotton from Brookmoore Creations and I'm going to try dyeing it with plant-based dyes like I saw in Guatemala. I don't know what colors I'm going to use yet, but I'm looking forward to trying it!

Well, that's probably all the new stuff I should buy for awhile, but at least it will keep me happy with spinning, knitting, and dyeing!

-Assunta

Tour de Fleece Finish Line

The Tour de Fleece officially ended on Sunday,  and I finished spinning all my blue Alpaca wool just in time! I still have to ply and wash it, so I wouldn't call it yarn quite yet, but I'm still happy with the progress I made during the Tour.

I've got a couple of other craft projects going as well. Hopefully I wil have one of them done to show you next week. Happy crafting!

-Assunta

Tour de Fleece

Did you know even crafters have sporting events? I just found out myself. This year, a couple of my friends told me about the Tour de Fleece. It's a spinning event that takes place during the Tour de France, only instead of spinning on a bicycle, you work toward yarn spinning goals.

I have already made some progress spinning the beautiful wool that I recieved for Christmas. My goal is to have it all spun, plied, washed, and ready to knit by July 24th, when the Tour ends. The challenge for me will be plying, because so far the only two skeins I have spun have been single-ply. It will be fun to learn a new spinning skill as part of this experience.

Besides the joy of making my own yarn, part of the fun is joining a team. This is mostly because it's nice to have people with whom to share your work while you also admire theirs and you all support each other. In addition to my regular craft group, which fits all these categories, I have joined Team Tale Spinners on Ravelry. They have a fairy tale and fable theme, which is right up my alley!

The tour started on July 2nd, and I actually missed the first day. Here is my progress from the next two:

Ready to spin! Counterclockwise we have: the yarn I have spun from this batt so far, the wool I have left to spin, and my Ashford spindle, all ready to go!

Day 2: I spun for about 1 hour. It doesn't look like I did that much, but I'm hoping that's because I'm getting better at keeping my yarn from getting too bulky.

Day 3: 2 hours of spinning on top of  the one from the previous day. It's looking a little more impressive.

Stay tuned to see my progress, I'll need all your support when I get to plying!

-Assunta

Wonderful Gifts for Creating!

Now that January is almost over, I'm finally getting around to showing off some of the wonderful gifts I received this Christmas.

Everything I got was awesome but since this is a crafting blog I'm going to focus on the crafting gifts. My mom made me this crafting bag, complete with pockets and matching holders for knitting needles, crochet hooks, scissors, sunglasses, gift cards, tissues, and even a coffee cup sleeve. Now I can organize all my stuff in style!

My best friend got me this adorable Star Wars Amigurmi book. I can't wait to make all the characters!

My mom-in-law got me this gorgeous wool when she found out I that I was getting into spinning. This will make such beautiful yarn! She also got me a lotion bar that is very nice for  keeping my hands from drying out and snagging my yarn. 

And last but not least, I got about 16 skeins of this lovely, cozy yarn. This is what I am using for my current project, which you will see soon!

So that's a pretty good sneak peak at what my next few projects might entail. I hope you are all avoiding the bugs that are going around and that it's not too cold where you are!

-Assunta

My First Homespun Yarn

Remember the little drop spindle I showed you back in early October? I've actually been using it to make yarn! I started practicing with some blue, green, and purple wool I bought in Eugene, Oregon, a long time ago.

This is the yarn store, it's called Soft Horizons Fiber. Isn't it cute? There aren't many places I would rather be than a pretty house full of yarn! I miss it!

This is the little drop spindle I bought on Etsy, with my very first little bit of homespun yarn on it:

I watched a couple of good tutorials on Youtube to help me learn how to spin, and some of my crafting friends were able to lend me their advice as well. One of my friends even gave me an extra spindle that she had, which is much bigger and heavier, and therefore can hold more yarn and make thinner strands! 

This is what my finished yarn looked like after cleaning and "fulling," a felting process that helps the fibers of the yarn bind together. You are supposed to hit it against a table until the thickness is even and all of the twists are gone, then hang it to dry. Maybe I need more direction, but it seemed like no matter how many times I hit the yarn against the table it just got more twisted! Eventually I tied it around this chair tightly enough to get the twists out so that it would dry straight. That's probably cheating, I know.

Here is what my finished ball of yarn looks like. You can see the green and blue, with just a tiny bit of purple peaking through at the center. Now I just have to decide what to make with it!

It will have to be a small project and something that will show off the color changes nicely and not get too messed up by the (unintentional) changes in thickness. It's hard to get the thickness even when you are learning to spin. I asked a lady at the Vista Fiber Festival if there was a trick to it and she said "When you find out, you tell me." But to me her yarn looked perfectly even! I guess it takes practice like anything else. Anyway, the only thing I can think of to make with it right now is a scarf, but please let me know if you have any other ideas, I would love to try something different! 

-Assunta

PS- Did you know the word "spinster" is used to refer to an unmarried woman because at a time when most career paths were unavailable to women, spinning was a job that allowed a single woman to make a living for herself. Pretty cool, huh? 

New Toys and the Vista Fiber Arts Festival

A few weeks ago I bought this cute little drop spindle of Etsy to try my hand at making my own yarn!  I've practiced a little bit with it and it's a lot of fun, although it's very tricky to try and keep the weight of the yarn even. I remember when I first learned to crochet, though. It took me a long time to get my stitches even back then, so after enough practice I should be able to get my yarn even too.

This weekend I went to the Vista Fiber Arts Festival with a couple friends. I saw many wonderful things, including this beautiful spinning wheel which I had to resist buying:

...and these adorable baby alpacas:

I ended up buying some gorgeous hand-dyed wool. The booth was called Blarney Yarn, and it was so hard to choose between all of the amazing colors, but this is the one I bought. I love this blend of rich purples and sunny yellow.

My other new toy is this tiny scale. It's meant for weighing small amounts of yarn to see if you have enough to finish your project. It's also perfect for calculating shipping prices for tiny Etsy items. My previous method of holding something in my hand and thinking "Yep, that's definitely less than a pound." wasn't quite cutting it. 

Well, that was my weekend, how was yours? 

-Assunta