Late Night Studio Fabulosity

Holy crap it just got hugely windy outside. We’ve had a Chinook wind  blowing for the past 24 hours but this is like SOOPER CHINOOK RAWR! Seriously, the house just shook and I didn’t know this house would do that. I’m a trifle concerned. Also, a Chinook is a warm wind that eats snow. No, really.

Just a mo’.

Yep, windy as hell. And now it’s raining. Hard. It sounds like handfuls of pea gravel are being thrown at the windows. This does not bode well should it get cold again. Blargh.

Hm.

Anyway.

Whilst at my mom and dad’s for the holiday I was working on a bit of knitting that was supposed to eventually turn into a felted bowl. Only I took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and before I knew it It was no longer a bowl. One thing you should know about me is this: If I mess up knitting I either tear it all out, right down to the very first stitch. Or I cry and stuff it in a drawer and forget about it. Until now, I’ve never just soldiered on and worked with what I have.

So the bowl became this weird gathered at the bottom…thing. I threw it into the washing machine and felted the crap out of it. When it came out I kind of laughed and then walked away, utterly disgusted.

About an hour later I came back and poked at it. When it didn’t bite me I thought maybe I could work with it. I formed a plan in my head that I fully expected to forget all about on the way home but I didn’t. When I came home I made some more things to go with my plan and those things became straps for a bag. Then I found some sturdy clear nylon thread and doinked (it’s a word I said so) in the edges and sewed some straps on and suddenly voila, where there had been a miserable failure of a felted bowl there was a bag. And maybe I’ve been playing with too much novelty yarn but I’m oddly proud of this cobbled together creation.

Behold:

Oh yes I did so mix all sorts of wool with novelty yarn. Be afraid all ye who loathe of the Fur that is Fun. I may make a button closure with some of the remaining gray I used for the bottom and the straps, I’m not sure yet.

Paired with a dead sexy sweatshirt, mmhmm, oh yeah.

And, AND, I had the brains to write down what I did in case I ever decide to make another one. And I just might because I have a lot of yarn that I really wasn’t aware of and, yikes.

This weekend we rearranged the living room and in the process I was able to get my desk where I wanted it all along, which was in my studio/workspace at the end of the room. It looks cramped but I assure you it suits my needs perfectly. Anyway, in the massive cleaning and organizing project that ensued, I found a lot of yarn that isn’t for sale and somehow, somewhere, found it’s way into my house. *cough* That big bag on the left? All yarn that needs to be made into something. O.k. and so does the bag on the right. The bag underneath that is roving that I’ve hoarded like a filthy little yarn junkie for the past couple years and the bag of white stuff on the left is my latest fix, er, shipment.

O.k. fine. And if you turn around all those Rubbermaid totes are full of yarn too.

Oh come on, you totally want to come over and play at my house. At the very least if fiber doesn’t do it for you, you can play Guitar Hero if we can coax my husband into sharing.

Poof! I return!

Did it really take me a month to recover from the show?

Pretty much.

I totally ghosted on this place, I do apologize!

The show in Sheridan was wonderful. I did well, I can’t complain. I also met a lot of wonderful new people including a brand new wool mill that just opened in that area. I will post a full review about them soon as I gave them the two huge bags of Jacob fleece I got in July to process. Yay! Jacob fleece roving that I don’t have to clean! I suspect they will do amazing work and look forward to telling you all about them.

I’ve only started spinning and dyeing yarns and roving again in the last week or so, I’ve just been so slammed with the upcoming holidays, my day job and trying to keep up with my kid that there hasn’t been room for much else.

One good thing about nearly burning myself out in early November during the stocking for the show process was that I went way, way above what I took the year before and therefore had lots of extra stuff to post in my Etsy store when I came out of my coma a few days after I came back home. So my store has been well stocked and for that I can be truly thankful.

I’m taking a few days off around Christmas, I hope to reorganize my workspace, it’s truly bad.

What, you don’t believe me?

Workspace, meet yarn bomb:

Told you.

In my defense I have already remedied the situation. I have company coming this weekend for my birthday so I had to tidy up. That and I was starting to worry my husband was going to stage an intervention.

Anyway, still here, still doing my thing. If I don’t write again before the end of the year, everyone have a lovely and happy holiday and a festive new year!