...eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we knit!...

This week is (hold on looking it up so I don't misinform) Craftsy knit in public week. That's the situation. So, I'm a crocheter. And a sewer. I just now realized sewer (Noun: An underground conduit for carrying off drainage water and waste matter) and sewer (A person who sews) are spelled the same way. Let us do away with the first definition for the time being. 

I can knit, but I am not a knitter. Dana came over a couple weeks ago to show me the colonial form of knitting and my 9 year old son is all "oh I get it!"*clackity*clackity*clack*... After about 15 minutes I yelled "QUICK! GIVE ME A CROCHET HOOK!!!" Ahhhhhhhhh.............brain happy. I can only knit very small dishrags, or dishrags that are very very small. I'd really love to know how to knit. Some of the things you can create are difficult to mimic with crochet. But I guess it just isn't my forte for now. 

Every Friday afternoon, some of my peeps and I meet at a local coffee shop and work on a project we have going, or just sit and have a nice cup o' coffee. I love the community. Friendships being built, learning a new stitch, laughing... Friends are a precious commodity ...and I'm thankful for the new ones I have. On the agenda for today....knitting!! (I'll be keeping a crochet hook close at hand...)

My son had an idea using hand knitting to create a turtle shell. So we gave it a try...and it really turned out fabulous. I think I will be working on this today to add to my Etsy shop soon. Just need to finalize the rest of the turtle body.

On a different note...

Just about all ready for our annual trip to the Larkspur Renaissance Festival. A day of eating and merriment ...and coming home looking like we rolled in dirt all day. Girls are going to be pirates, oldest boy a very tall peasant. The other two boys are wearing these acrobat baggy pants and leather shoes, going shirtless, and wearing bandanas. None of the younger ones have showered for days because they insist on being as authentic as possible. I'm not sure what I'm doing. About my costume that is....not about showering.

See, usually the way we like to do things around here (I'm not sure about other families) is that all the kids, at the same approximate time, approach me with comments such as, "I CAN'T FIND ANYTHING TO WEAR!!!", or "this doesn't fit any more", or "MooooooOOOOoooommmmmmmm I can't find the corset!!!" You get the gist of it. So then in my wisdom as a mother who is trying to instill responsibility in my children, respond with "don't make me come down and look through that closet I just told you to look through!" Eventually, I instruct them gently to only approach me one at a time and if I'm not helping them yet then to get outa my face. 

The two or three days prior to the ren fest, or Halloween, or any event really, involves me altering, sewing, bossing and coercing them into the outfits they end up wearing in the end. ...a little face painting, last minute additions, sometimes complete changes in costumes.....And then 5 minutes before we leave I'm throwing together an outfit for myself. 

Works like a charm every time!

felting is dangerous business!

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." - Bilbo Baggins


I'll tell you what else is dangerous...felting. It goes without saying that needle felting can be painful, if your aim isn't quite right. But I'm talking about wet felting. You know, when you take some nice, soft, fluffy roving of beautiful colors in your hand and you add soap and water and you knead it around in your hands.... At this point you might be wondering how this could be dangerous. Well, when you COMBINE it with going out your front door...

I'm working on making some stitch markers for knitting. Cute little felted Corriedale sheep wool pendants. And I'm rolling it around in my hands, and I open my front door to check on the water in the garden, and forgot to step down. *POP* goes the ankle. Those of you that have done this before are cringing, am I right?

If only I had listened to Bilbo.

But felting? Seriously? I mean, if you think of the least dangerous thing imaginable and subtract 100, you're left with wet felting.

Hi ho hi ho, its off to the ER I go.

  

twin sammich

This past weekend was the Estes Park Wool Festival. Dana, Deb and myself went. So much fun! All that yarn was almost too much to process. The colors...textures...smells... There were animals as well. Sheep, goat, llama, alpaca, rabbits. The angora rabbit hair is so soft you can't tell you're touching anything. It's incredibly tempting to raise angora rabbits and spin the wool. I actually found myself considering it for a few moments. As well as llama. The vicuña were adorable. Standing around in the pens making whining sounds, because they were standing around in pens, I imagine. The wool from a vicuña is the most incredibly soft and warm wool. My understanding is that they can only be shorn every 3 years. This makes the yarn quite expensive. This also means none of us came home with any vicuña yarn.

...adorable vicuna...

We stayed up late Saturday night giving a go at felting bars of soap. Tiny bars of soap we mooched off our host at the B&B. They turned out lovely. Deborah made an artistic sunflower and Dana a daisy. I made a pasture with a house on a hill. It looked kindof whompy, and I was sure it would fall apart first time in the shower. But it didn't. Although it DOES look like a tornado blew through the field. Going to have to experiment a bit more with those. Needle felting after wet felting seems to work pretty well.

Estes park is beautiful. Surrounded by mountains like a huge hug. We were visited by a couple elk at breakfast, and on the way out of town we saw maybe 8 of them frolicking in the lake. Already looking forward to going next year.

As for now, I'm confined to a boot cast, crutches, and my house. And like the vicuña, perhaps a little bit of whining...

How to make a felted wool ball:

You'll need 3 ingredients:
Wool roving
Soap (any dish soap or hand soap will do)

Water

Begin by separating out the roving, if its roving yarn (image A). If it's already been separated out (see image B), you can get right to it. Decide how large you want the finished ball to be. For roughly a 1" pendant, I use enough roving to make a loose fist around (image C).

Add as much soap to your hands as you would use to wash them. Then wet the roving with hot water, and allow the soap and water to saturate the wool. It will feel like you're kneading it to death (and be sure to not walk out your front door on this step). The agitation and soapy water will begin the felting process. The tiny fibers start to open up and grab onto each other. Rub around in the palm of your hand for about 5 minutes.

Turn the water to cold and while rolling the wool in your hands, begin to apply more pressure. If you're having difficulty getting it to hold together enough to actually ROLL between your hands, there is most likely too much soap preventing the friction to form a ball. Now alternate between rinsing with hot and cold water, all the while rolling between palms and applying more and more pressure.

If you find that there is a spot, or spots, where the wool isn't felting together, you can pick a little at the fibers and stretch them across the gap (image D).

Add a tinge of soap here and there as needed to lubricate the agitation process. At the end, you should be left with a ball of tight, wet wool. There shouldn't be much, if any, soap left in the wool. I gently squeeze out the excess water in a dish towel, and then set somewhere to dry. It will firm up and shrink a bit during the drying process.

Once it's dry, you can sew a small loop on to make a pendant, embroidery a design on it, and you've got a lovely necklace. They also make nice buttons...

Well done!

winging it

One of the things I love about Colorado weather is that it changes...often. A few days ago it was hot and sunny...clear skies. Yesterday brought with it thick clouds and thunderstorms. Today is gloomy and cool. 

I planted some vegetables in the small garden out front. Trying to squeeze as much as possible into the space. It looks like a plant mosaic. Some things are growing quite well. The rose bush appears to be have been given a spot ideal for it to flourish. The lavender, not so much. 

Which is fine. I'm an experimental wing-it type of gardener. A whole section of my yard got overrun with Yarrow so I decided to let it have its way. In the fall I'll just harvest it all and become experimental wing-it herbal lady.

When I'm trying something new I generally dive on in. Some months back, a friend and I were discussing how to make those felted dryer balls. Mine never actually got used as dryer balls. I think she might still be using hers. First I made one with a flower and then I considered making all the planets. It sounded fun to toss them all into the black hole that is my dryer. I haven't completely abandoned the idea yet...but it evolved, and I decided to go miniature. I made a variable ton of the little guys. I have an odd addiction to pulling them out of the dryer to see them all soft and cozy and felted. So now what? Smallest dryer balls ever...or...



Fuschua Mushroom Pendant Necklace
by Lady Lorien Designs on Etsy



They became my pendants. Voila! It's fun embroidering on them. 

It just occurred to me why I love gardening. Not because it makes my heart happy (although I'm discovering that happens naturally). It's something creative to do that sort of has a life of its own. Something I can invest in but watch it do its own thing. I feel no stress at all. And when it's thundering and starting to rain...well that's just plain heaven.

the message of self-expression

     This morning my 9 year old son gave me a hand written note, as he very often does. Usually it's a short story of some kind, or to tell me how much he loves me. Today it read,

"I love you so much mom. You are the best mom even if you kidnapped me from my real mom but I believe you are my real mom."

So basically, to sum things up, I'm the best mom ever according to my son, who sounds mostly certain I didn't kidnap him. Come to think about it..........ha, just kidding. All you have to do is look at my kids. They're like mini mes. Except my 15 year old. I'm more like his mini me since he's pushing 6'2". 

     Each of them have a unique way of expressing themselves, be it the way they dress, the notes they write, or the stories they tell around the table. The art of living. What comes to the surface from what's going on within. I suppose this could be taken literally with my son's note. What's really going on there is that most of my children have a very playful, and one could argue dark, sense of humor. (I have been threatening them from a young age that I would sell them to pirates if they misbehaved. Which they quickly embraced as the most adventurous concept ever. Now I joke that I'm going to sell MYSELF to pirates and who would cook their meals and be the best mom ever if that happened?)

      My forms of expression quite possibly change on an hourly basis. Now I'm writing, now I'm sewing, now I'm crying, now I'm painting on a tattoo to cover up a blemish, now I'm playing my djembe, now I'm dancing, now I'm selling myself to pirates. See what I mean? All those things we do to express what's going on on the inside...is art. When it comes to making things to sell, it's really just an extension of who I am. One can see hints of an adventurous spirit here or there...maybe some melancholy or humor... I love seeing the artist in the art. I think we all do. I see it every time I look at the stars at night, and at a mushroom. Grandeur, and whimsy. 

     I love my son's note. He told me he said it because he wanted to make me laugh. Mission accomplished. Well done little artist.