Tour, day 12

This is a picture of 2 oz. of lovely Dyelicious superwash merino from TYF, in singles, on my bobbin as it sits after an afternoon of spinning it up.  (Long draw... that's why it got done so fast!)

It will be some lovely thick and thin yarn to go with my first skein.  Once this one is plied and completely finished, I'll have spun 8 total ounces of the 12 ounces I bought from TYF from Nancy's very first batch of dyeing.  I feel honored to have been part of the inaugural batch of her fiber.  It wasn't the last, and it won't be the last, and everyone keeps loving her stuff.

I've got to start saving money and get to the shop on time the next time she gets a batch of her fiber and yarns over there.

Design

Lately, I've been attempting to come up with cute little bracelet patterns for knit and crochet.  Theoretically, I'll be offering them for free through TYF for people who want to use them to use up a stray button or two since, you know, I sell buttons.

So far so good, I believe.  I love how this one turned out all finished, anyway, even though I haven't sewn a button to it yet because I feel like I have to make a new one that will look perfect.

The irony isn't lost on me that the whole reason I started this was to use up odd buttons I already had and that by making a new button specifically for this project, I'm totally missing the point.

(I don't care.  I'm totally making a new button.)

Tour update: I'm spinning lovely superwash Dyelicious today.  It's four ounces, spun rather thin, and I'm planning on turning it into a three ply when I'm all finished.  That should be keeping me busy for the next week or so.

Vive le Tour

Tour de Fleece is going very well.  So far I've got a little less than 2 oz. of a lovely gray merino, about 166 yards, Navajo plied, to show for it.  Here is the yarn as singles, before they were plied:

There's something about this color gray that just makes me happy.  It's so lovely, like a slightly overcast sky.  Nothing is more beautiful than a gray day.  ^_^

(Keeping in mind, of course, that I live in central Arizona, so for us, an overcast sky, especially in summer, is a wondrous treat, indeed.)

Tour day 3

Another quick picture for Ravelry...

Where there's no smoke...

I've been ridiculously absent of late from the blog.  That doesn't mean, of course, that there isn't a lot of crazy crafting going on in my house.  In fact, it means quite the opposite.

Also, it's summer break, and being that I live in a place that gets so hot that I find myself saying, "It's 110 today, but wait until it actually gets hot..."  You can imagine that I'm not sending my boys out to play very much.  We tend to do here in summer what most people do in winter if they live somewhere that actually gets cold and very snowy only, you know, the opposite.  We hole up inside the air-conditioned house, wearing as little clothing as is appropriate, trying to fend off the boredom for as long as we can.

It gets so hot here that it even gets too hot to swim, for any of you non-locals who just thought that we should live at the pool.  No.  In the mid day of our crazy heat, the pool water feels more like bath water and it evaporates so quickly when you get out that you get barely any time to feel cool in the air.  It's not refreshing at ALL.  The breezes that blow are hot breezes.  The other day, I was walking out of Tempe Yarn and Fiber and a hot, hot wind kicked up and it felt like my little toes were about to pop off of my feet like little pieces of popcorn.  Pop!  Pop!  Pop!

Anyway, so, as I said... We're holed up inside.  A lot.  And that makes for busy days and not much blogging.  But the Tour has started (Tour de Fleece, I mean... no one cares about the Tour de France anymore in this house.  My husband, who loves bicycling with all of his heart, has completely lost interest in that other Tour because of all the doping.  Sad business.) and I'm spinning up a storm.  I'm also getting stuff made for church and keeping up on my clay, so over the next few days, I'm hoping to catch up on all that I've been doing when I've not been here recording it.

One of the really exciting things going on right now is that I'm heading up the project portion of Scrapmania at my church this year.  I'm putting together the project and kits and trying to keep everything inexpensive so that our ticket sales mostly go to our single moms' Christmas party.

Pastor Holly found an amazing project idea online, and I adapted it to make it less expensive to produce.  This exploding box is BEYOND cute.

Above, the box is decorated with a bunch of stuff that won't come in the kit.  But below is the box showing what kind of finished thing will be possible with only the kit contents, although these colors are completely different.  That night, all of the ladies will be learning how to make these roses and the layered flowers and the rosettes.  It's going to be really fun!

Part of lowering the cost is in making all of the items for the kit myself.  So far, I've done 200 polymer clay embellishments (100 kits total... I want each lady to get at least three pieces of clay embellishment, so I have one more set to do) that look like this:

I'm pondering making the third one more like a flower.  Maybe a little rose or something.  I have to see if there's enough clay for that.  Maybe I'll do little cameos instead.  I can't decide!  All in all, I believe it's going to be a great night!

And... yes, the Tour is on, so it's back to the wheel for me!

Pictures for Ravelry

 

New buttons for TYF!  I'm excited about the shank buttons that look like knitting.  ^_~

 

Handspun: Four ounces of superwash from Dyelicious fibers at TYF that was truly amazing.  Nancy called it "Gumbo".  I called it "Nebula Gumbo" because it looked like all of the colors of a nebula to me.  I love how much this turned out like Malabrigo's Pocion colorway, which is my new favorite... It's like a dirty rainbow.  EVERY color, but subdued so that it isn't too much for every day.  (Unless you're Joseph in some church pageant.  There's a place for billions of colors in one outfit, I'm sure.)  This was my first real three ply yarn from three separate bobbins... I LOVE how the colors mingled!

Handspun: Four ounces of a polwarth/silk blend from TYF.  I love the greens and kept them in their repeats by Navajo plying.  This is close to 700 yards and will become awesome socks for my hubby in the month of July.

Handspun: a bit less than 2 ounces of a silk/wool blend from TYF.  It's a two ply and very nice, if I do say so myself!

Handspun: No idea what the weight/yardage is on this... it was my first experiment with hand carders, just a bunch of dyed merino top from TYF.  Two plied from a center pull ball... I love how the purple ends melded so nicely with the yellow ends.  I can't wait to get more carding done.

And, that's it!  These are here so that I can get them to Ravelry.  Tour de Fleece has begun!  Yee!!!

Yarny things...

Nancy P. of Tempe Yarn and Fiber color fame has done a bad, bad thing.

(If, by "bad, bad thing", you understand that I actually mean that she has done something so amazing and incredible and awesome and delicious to my eyeballs that I could never hope to have enough money to satisfy the urges that are produced inside of me by the thing she has done... Thus, the "bad".)

The geniuses over at TYF have hired her to dye 4oz. superwash braids.  I bought three of them even though I wasn't buying anything that day and even though I'm not buying any more fiber right now.  I turned my nose up at DK weight 100% silk single spun yarn in gold and silver that actually LOOKED like gold and silver for their shine because I wasn't buying anything that day.  This is how committed I was.

But I saw the lovely genius that is Nancy, and I was lost.

This is about 2 oz. and 270 yards of a thick and thin yarn spun from the first half of one of these braids.  I'm calling it "Shaded Flowers".

This is the beginnings of the next braid.  Nancy called it "Gumbo".  I think it looks like a Nebula.  I'm calling it "Nebula Gumbo".  I think this is my favorite spinning.  EVER.  I can't wait to have the finished yarn!

She has such a way with color.  No one can deny it.  I hope that she makes boatloads of money so that she can keep making fiber for me.

In other yarny/clayish news, the Huge Button looks amazing on Yumiko Alexander's super fun crochet shawl:

Apparently people are already in the shop asking for these things, so I have to get to work.  If I can stop spinning.

(She did a bad, bad thing.)