Continuing...

So, I still haven't quite figured out how to do the whole picture thing. I mean, obviously I learned how to add pictures, but I'd like to be able to figure out how to put them where I WANT them to be. If anyone can help me there, that would be GREAT.



So, in continuing the fiber saga. Thursday evening was the Aurora Colony Handspinner's Guild monthly meeting. It was one of the first meetings that I presided over as President. I just want to go on the record saying that I'm not comfortable leading meetings. I HATE that it's my job to interrupt people and tell them that their time is up, it feels RUDE. And unless I'm really pissed off, I don't do rude well. But, I guess this is what happens when no one else will volunteer to do things.

Our program this Thursday was basically everyone talking about the "White after Labor Day" projects. The White After Labor Day challenge was something that Dianne McKinnon, Jean, Wanda & I came up with. We wanted to DO something with the guild. So, we arranged for the guild to buy 2 oz of plain white roving for everyone. We passed out the roving at the September meeting. The goal was that people would make something (anything) out of that 2 oz and bring it back to the Holiday Party for everyone to see. I think it was fairly successful. And definitely a learning experience.

One of our guild members used the fiber and did a story board. In the story, the fiber was from the Abominable Snowman (Yeti), and it is shown spun and knitted/crocheted on weaving pirls. It was VERY cute and inventive. Other members dyed and spun and knitted or crocheted. There were some very impressive projects brought in. Unfortunately, my memory is so bad that I don't want to talk about them, because I can't remember who did what. In particular, I remember that Diane dyed her roving before spinning, laid the three primary colors out and let them bleed together. There was a lot of white left in the roving, and it looked very colorful. It was neat to see that after it was spun and plied, the colors appeared more dark, somewhat somber. Very, very pretty and unexpected. She knitted her 2 oz into a small lacy shawl. Another new member who is just learning how to spin decided to use her 2 oz of white and crochet the unspun roving. She made the cutest snow-woman!

My own personal project was a cell phone cozy that I made up using Weavette squares. It was definitely a learning experience for me. I learned that you should ALWAYS wash your individual pieces BEFORE assembling them, and definitely wash them before you apply any decorative items. See the pictures. It looks fine, but the buttons on the flap were originally sewn on with space between them, yet when it was washed, it shrunk up enough that the buttons now overlap. Not enough to make it a bad thing, but enough to bother ME. See the pictures below.

Tomorrow my fiber-ish enterprise will be going to the local Stitch-N-Bitch. OK, I don't know if they officially call it that, but it's a knitting group held at the local book store. It's the first time I've went in over a year because I just haven't been comfy there in the past. We'll see how I like it now. My friend, Wanda, and I have been considering making our own Stitch-N-Bitch, but there's no reason to do so if we like this group now.

Oh, I don't have pictures, yet, but I've started on the Fiber Fish Mittens seen here http://issueswithknitting.blogspot.com/2006/08/fresh-fiber-fish-fer-sale.html that I bought the pattern for last week. I'm using some old Trekking that I had, then I had to go out and buy MORE Trekking, so I guess eventually I'll have more than one pair. They are just SO cute I couldn't resist them! Hopefully I get them done in time for next year, haha!

The not-so-famous first post...

Let's just start off by saying that in the past I've been a VERY bad blogger. I've had several blogs, and they just don't seem to "stick". For whatever reason. Probably because I lose interest. Anyway, I'm hoping that by using this blog I will be inspired by and help to inspire other people via fiber arts. First we'll start off with a little about me.

My name is Marcy. I am 33 (34 in Feb) years old. I live in the gorgeous green state of Oregon, in a very small town not too far away from Portland and Salem. My town still has that "small town" feel. I am a stay-at-home mom. I guess I live the "typical" life, I stay at home, my husband, Jason, works to earn enough money for me to be able to do so, and I am SO thankful for that, because I am NOT cut out for a 9-5 job. We have four children. Keegan (m, 12), Brhianna (f, 9), Jennah (f, 8), and Garrick (m, 6). All of our children are homeschooled, which most of us love most of the time. My children are wonderful, exceptional children. I am forever hopeful that they will grow up to be productive individuals. We have two dogs, small Chihuahua mixes, whom I have a love/hate relationship with. Their names are Aura and Terra. We also have two cats. The first one is Noir, a long-haired black/white who is 6 years old. The second is Daniel Tiger Shes-probably-gonna-die-soon Sharkbait Bell, who is about 6 months old. Yes, there IS a story behind the name. She's my lovie, even when she makes me crazy. Oh, and there are also two rats, two Bearded Dragons, and one Ball Python living here.

I tend to be somewhat "alternative" in my thinking. Generally very liberal, and often described as a hippie, though I was born long after the hippie movement. I make a habit of going to the http://www.oregoncountryfair.org/ every year. This past August I fulfilled a lifelong dream and bought an old VW Bus. It is a work-in-progress, but I'm hoping to have it running well enough that I can drive it to the Country Fair this year, and sleep in it. Hope is eternal, haha. I am an eclectic Pagan, with Wiccan tendencies. I don't like bureaucracy and government officials interfering in how I run my life. I want to live in the country, with no-one around for miles, and LIVE OFF THE LAND. My way. I want to be able to build a house and NOT have to pay a ton of money for permits, and be able to build it the way I WANT to build it...not how the government says it should be built. I would kind of like to live in a commune...is there anyone around who even knows what that is anymore? Anyway, on to the fiber content.

I have been a crocheter forever. I learned how to finger-crochet when I was probably 5 or so, and have kept on playing with yarn since then. I started spinning 3 years ago at http://www.flockandfiberfestival.com/. I bought a beginning drop spindle kit from a vendor (I sure wish I could remember who it was). It came with about 4 oz of fiber and a simple heavy toy wheel spindle. She gave me a 5 minute spinning lesson. Looking back, I can ALMOST remember what sanity felt (haha, I said FELT) like, before the fiber took over. I remember sitting on a bench at that festival, and one of my friends asked if I wanted to go to a certain booth (It was Robin & Russ Handweavers...how I MISS them!) to look at their back issues of Spin Off. I was all "What is that?" and she said it was a spinning magazine. My reply echoes eerily down the corridors of my memory..."A spinning magazine? How can there be so many articles about spinning that they need to publish a quarterly magazine about it?!" The shame. Now I WISH that they were published every month. So began the insanity.

When I returned home with my drop spindle kit, I sat on my couch, amid the confusion caused by 4 active children, and spun. For hours. I spun up about half of the fiber. I wanted to spin until I was sure that the next time I picked up the spindle, I would remember how to do it. When I woke up the next morning, my arm was sore from holding it in the air (while standing on the couch), and when I went into the living room, my dog (I only had one, then, and she was a "teenager" in dog years) had chewed up all the wool. Oh, the woe. Then I found out that Woodland Woolworks is only 7 miles away from me. I hightailed over there and bought more wool.

The next week (or maybe the one after that), I went to my first spinning meeting, the Mac Spinners, which was held at Robin & Russ. I sat there amongst these wonderful, friendly spinners, all who were happily treadling away on their gorgeous wheels, and I spun and spun on my little drop spindle. After a while, Carol says something along the lines of "this girl really wants to spin, lets get a wheel over here, so she can spin" and they brought over this Schacht wheel, a double treadle, and taught me how to spin on a wheel. The next day, I got a call from Carol, who said that someone had brought a used Ashford Traditional into R&R, and did I want it. Did I ever!!! R&R was nice enough to let me make payments on that wheel, and by the end of October, I owned my own spinning wheel.

Well, it wasn't too long after that when I decided that I needed to learn how to knit. I knew how to crochet, and I had played with needle felting, but I needed to knit. So, my son, Keegan, who was probably 10 at the time, taught me how to knit. It took me a while, but now I LOVE to knit. I'm still not a very great knitter. I can do all kinds of basic things. I can work in Fair Isle, intarsia, simple lace, cables and etc. But I don't do large projects, and extensive lace scares me. I do sock out the wazoo, though. I love socks enough, and I'm a slow enough knitter, that I had to buy an antique sock knitting machine, commonly referred to a CSM (circular sock machine). It's also a love/hate relationship. It's kind of mechanical and fiddly, but I crank out tons of socks on it.

Well, there's my short (yet, oddly long!) history of fiber. I'm sure I'll add to it more as time goes by. Somehow, I need to figure out how I went from beginning spinner to President of the Aurora Colony Handspinner's Guild. Ugh! I hope lots of people read my blog and give me tips on how to make my blog better, and how to improve my fiber-ing.

Oh, and this cute sock is part of a mini sock blocker keychain that is available at http://store.carlsonwoollies.com/kesobl.html. It came with fiber that I spun up on my Moosie spindle, then 2 plied and knitted on size 1 needles. The fiber was a Crosspatch Creations colorway called Gwen and her Daughters. I thought it turned out very nice, though this particular section of yarn doesn't show any of the pretty green that is in that colorway. I highly recommend buying from The Bellwether, as I have only had good experiences with Amelia.