Wednesday, August 30, 2006

I Think They're Waiting for Me

The "Satur-Dye" girls (Chris, Jeanne and yours truly) got together again this past weekend. We were much more organized and armed with new yarns and new dyes we were down to serious business in no time.


This is Jeanne. She is always serious when she dyes with purple. She always dyes with purple. Therefore .....


Chris looks on. "How?" you might wonder without a head, but I assure you, she has one.




Mister bought us an extra table so that we could all "color together" as he put it which was nice. There were times when it was so quiet out on the porch with everyone working so hard I was beginning to think it was a job.






Yeah - a job where they let you splatter dye all over the place and call it work!! This was my attempt at a Jackson Pollock type yarn but I overdid it a bit. It still turned out nice and I like it which is all that matters.









I think the finished results speak for themselves.




























Sunday, August 20, 2006

Hiding in Plain Sight





Shhhh - I'm in-cognito and hiding from Deb. I'm a brand new skein of sock yarn and she started a pair of toe-up, Jaywalker socks just today. I'm scared though. I've seen what happens to other socks and sock yarn around here and it's beginning to make me nervous. Maybe you've met these three . . .











We are three Matchless Socks. We are never to have mates. No "e-Harmony for socks", or "matchsock.com" will help. We have no shot at ever having a right (or left) foot knit for us. Sadly, the best we can tell, our future may be in sock puppets. You see, the rest of our un-knit selves have gone here.....





...to the seemingly endless collection of what was supposed to be just sock yarn scraps but now seems to be any kind of sock yarn not currently attatched to a needle. In fact some socks were ripped out just to be relegated to this place of honor.

But why, you might ask?







Need I say more?

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Funky Chicken


Not the kind that you do at some third cousin's wedding either. This is "Funky Chicken" and I made her all by myself! I had a wee bit of help from Kathryn and an even wee-er bit of help from Tigger (see here). But for the most part, she's my creation. OK, sure, my mom had to sew the muslin form together because I don't have a sewing machine. But I do know. She happily gave me one of her extras so that these little projects could be done "in-house" - I think she meant in "my" house.

I probably also need to come clean on the fact the FC is not my own original idea but rather that of the good folks at Fanatica Fibers. We started carrying their line of needle felted soft sculpture kits at the shop and I couldn't resist making one. The kits are wonderful. Almost everything you need is included (exceptions being foam batting, glue, sewing machine and mother, paint) which is key for me. I'm not a "craft" person but surprisingly, I had everything. Sewing machine exception already explained. The directions were clear, concise, thorough, easy to understand. She was time consuming to make. Give your self plenty of time for the initial needle felting to get the form covered. And by a lot of time - I mean A LOT of time. Say, the better part of a Sunday and then the next Sunday. And then some more time because you just want it to be so nice and firm on there and you will not accept anything that is not tight and just right and basically you just love poking that roving on there and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and poking and jabbing and jabbing until it's just perfect and here is some popping up over here and this just isn't right over here and poke, poke, jab, jab, stab, .... Oh, was that out loud?

Then you get to paint, and bead, and bake clay, and glue feathers, and sew yarn and it's just ever so much fun to be crafty when you never thought you were. And then you have to give her to the shop where she sits on the front desk and struts her stuff to all the visitors.

I kind of miss her already.