unicornduke: (Default)
December crafting goals
  • finish the color spin I've got and get back to working on the alpaca. spin some other stuff - finished the color spin, spun another 14 oz of yarn and finished a bobbin of the alpaca, plyed some things too
  • finish knitting the hat - finished!
  • crochet a dice bag for my sister - crocheted two!
  • sew the purse for my mom - did it! she loves it!
  • work on coat mockup - got it all cut out, interfacing attached, just about started piecing it
  • weave rug - worked on it!
  • process fleece - worked on it!
  • Other - sewed a bag for my SIL, mostly wrote the waistcoat post, wove three tablet woven bands, two for the bags. Prototyped my Dad's gift of ratchet strap bags and made gift bags out of fabric for all the gifts
Color spin! It was 2 ounces each of six color of roving from Green Goat Ranch in their A Midwinter's Nights Dream colorways, which are grey overdyed to make the colors a bit muted which I loved. I don't know what I'm doing with it yet, I think some kind of weaving project, but I didn't spin it for weaving as a single, so I'd need to ply it if it was to be used as warp and I don't really have a ton of it, so I'd need to add some other yarn which I don't have. So it's taking up bobbin space right now and I need to figure something out.

Six colors of roving, one already spun on the wheel, the rest still in braids. The colors are deep red, light red, orange, green, blue, purple.
this is a ton of stuff and pictures )
Whew, that was a lot.

January Crafting Goals
  • spin alpaca and finish plying the stuff sitting around
  • Figure out what to do with all the samples I've had sitting around forever that I'm not looking at
  • Knit sweater
  • Finish woven rug and warp new project
  • process fleece
  • work on coat mockup
  • sew other projects
unicornduke: (Default)
I'm not doing a year end review but if you're interested in what I worked on in the past year, this tag has all my monthly posts

December goals
  • spin alpaca, skein, wash and label yarns - spun alpaca, getting close to the end, I did skein, wash and label the yarns I had sitting around. I also spun the other 6 oz of merino just as plain singles (no picture), and then spun 8 ounces of dyed braids in like, six days over christmas which is bonkers fast and then chain plyed them in the last two days. Also finished a spindle spinning project, will update in January when I ply
  • knit mittens for gift - my god I've never knit do fast in my life although it helps to have thick yarn or to hold the yarn doubled. three pairs of mittens knitted, two out of the reinforced merino, one pair full, one pair fingerless and one pair out of yarn held double
  • crochet mittens - nope
  • tablet weave gift - nope
  • finish weaving current project and maybe warp on new project - finished weaving it fast and finished it! warping on new project didn't happen since it was a 7 yard warp and my warping board only fit 4.5 yards. I made new sections for the board to be longer
  • mohair garment in a year - currently combing fleece - did a lot of combing in December
  • 100 days of spindle spinning - starting Dec 1st, based on instagram - this is going great! I finished one spindle stick and am halfway on a second, only missed one day
  • work on quilted jacket - done!
  • wash a fleece? - lol no
So many pictures for the wild amount of things I finished! )January goals
  • finish alpaca, skein, wash and label new yarns, ply Masham on spindles
  • finish combing mohair fleece (stretch goal but might happen)
  • crochet mittens
  • get weaving project on the loom
  • work on tablet weaving project
  • continue 100 days of spindle spinning
  • wash a fleece?
  • buy more fabric for muslins and find another project to start
unicornduke: (Default)
July Goals - despite my wrist preventing me from crafting for several weeks, I still got a lot done and I'm very happy it's back to normal. I'd say most of this is just finishing things that were mostly done so it's not as impressive as it looks but progress was made. I wish there was a fun spinning event like Tour de Fleece during the winter, but alas.
  • spinning - work on Pansy Pandemonium. I doubt I'll finish the 6oz in July but that's okay. maybe spin some more samplers on the eel wheel - all spun up! Nothing else spun but I started spinning something last night
  • knitting - finish the sweater and get B to take actual nice photos of me wearing it - sweater finished! Crappy photo below. New sweater started
  • finish the tablet weaving - done! I also did two more small bands and started one more that's almost done
  • warp and weave the wool singles cloth - ugh. warped, beamed and stuck at threading the heddles since I don't have enough heddles yet. I'm halfway through tying more
  • process fleece - now that I typed that all up above, I think I'm going to switch to carding the alpaca and comb a sheep fleece - carded almost all of the remaining super soft section of the fleece, just a little more to go.
  • dye something???? - lol no
  • wash a fleece - I washed a small fleece! An icelandic sheep that I sheared. I think it will be a carded and spun fleece since the undercoat is so short, I did a tiny sample.
Pansy Pandimonium! It is superwash Targhee commercial combed top, dyed by Llady Llama Fiber, a pound of it spun up. I will chain ply it to keep the color repeats intact and it will someday go on the loom for a squishy blanket or something.

Four bobbins of fiber on a wooden background. The fiber changes from blue to yellow.

more photos! )August Goals
  • spinning - I think I'm formulating a weaving idea to spin, but I'm not 100% sure I'll do that yet right now. So spin something, chain ply Pansy Pandemonium and skein/wash/label everything
  • knit the new sweater
  • crochet the second pair of mittens
  • finish the tablet weaving
  • finish tying heddles and thread the loom and reed and then weave jeez
  • finish the alpaca fleece
  • wash a fleece
  • write one post about fiber arts stuff -  I have at least three things I want to write up, the plaid, the romney singles weaving, using fishing swivels with a backstrap loom

Misc

Jul. 6th, 2023 08:39 am
unicornduke: (Default)
I am working from home today, thankfully. We have a heat advisory since it's going to be 90F with lots of humidity. Yesterday I was in the field weeding things and drenched in sweat. I was sweating faster than it evaporated even with a breeze, so I was just wet. Work meeting last night too, it was a long day so I'm very glad for inside day today.

F was out of town for the long weekend and I was taking care of her cats. They were the normal tiny weirdos they were, running away but also wanting the treats I gave them. Only goof was that I forgot to refill their water for three days. They were down to the dregs once I remembered, so they hadn't run out but I felt bad.

I've been trying to get into the woods more and I'm succeeding. Went for two walks this week by myself, just going along the ridge path. Other than the sheep flies and mosquitos, it's lovely. I dropped the chainsaw off to get serviced on Sunday, so I'll found out if there's an actual problem or it's just user error. Then hopefully sometime soon I can actually start taking trees down, starting with the small ones along the tree line near the house. I will be putting up some fencing around the garden soon hopefully. Due to the trees needing to come down and the straight up rock under a small layer of dirt, trying to figure out how to bury t posts was baffling me. But F suggested concrete buckets and so the buckets have arrived. I'm going to buy concrete and more t posts in the next week or so, and then I can start laying things out. Because the yard is so sloped, I need to cut panels of the fencing anyway to prevent it from having big bows. So it will be a moveable fence. I also want to lay some landscape fabric down in a couple of spots to kill some perennial weeds. My garden this year is going to be pathetic and I don't have the energy to care that much. Oh well.

Next house project will be the balcony lighting since it just doesn't work. I need to buy two lights, then tear out all of the wiring and lights (because they just ran regular wire outside. just exposed. the birds have pecked holes in the covering), re-run all the cabling with actual conduit covered wire and mount the new light switch spot and lights. I ordered the wiring book my dad has since I really like the diagrams but it's currently somewhere in the mail. This is going to take me a couple weeks to actually do because of everything else going on. Plus I need another person around if I'm going to be up on ladders in strange places.

Mara can't do that hill into the woods anymore and she doesn't really want to go in the swamp either. But I think that's more due to the fact that the woodchucks smell really really good and she wants to find and eat them so bad, so she gets distracted.
elderly pet stuff )
I found a brown bat in the kitchen sink this morning and turned the faucet on it before I saw it. It's a baby I think, pretty small and it seemed confused. I picked it up in a towel and took it outside. F has had bats in the upstairs, but this is the first in the downstairs.

I finished my knitted sweater up and another 4oz of spinning fiber. Weaving is on hold until the heddles I ordered arrive, I got that project breamed on and then realized I was 200 heddles short of what I needed. Ordered texsolv heddles, which lots of people swear by, so we'll see. I'm working on casting on a jersey sweater from this book, doing math to get all the patterns right with cabling and things. I also learned how to knit backwards last night while I was working on my swatch, which is technically right handed since I originally taught myself to knit left handed. So now I can knit back and forth on something instead of flipping it to purl or swatching in the round. This isn't that useful but it amuses me.

I keep meaning to do some fleece processing but failing, same with natural dyeing. Ah well. I want to get an outdoor area set up for the dyeing, just need to find a good spot and actually do it.

unicornduke: (Default)
I did so much??? For some reason, November felt wildly busy.

November Goals
  • Spin grey Romney fleece - 4 out of 6 bobbins done and the blobs in the box are getting quite low
  • Finish tablet weaving project? - DONE WOW. turns out when you work on something, it is easier to get it done
  • knit sweater - still working on it, I have a crop top sweater now
  • process fleece - I think I worked on this once
  • finish 4oz test comb for timing - done and did a second one of Teeswater
  • start a crochet project - hat and scarf for gifts? - did a crochet hat and a knit hat, no pictures because they aren't 100% done. I need to put a lining in the crochet hat
Other things: big loom weaving!
Pictures!

Grey Romney! I think I've finally earmarked this fleece for a big snuggly cardigan that I can wear over other layers. I will either do a 3 ply or 4 ply depending on what weight I want. Two more bobbins to go since this is a little over 20 oz, with another 10oz to spin. I shouldn't need extra yarn but if I do, I have 10 oz of carded combing waste from the same fleece.

Four storage bobbins are sitting on a slate floor, they are filled with variable light grey singles yarn

Read more... )

December goals
  • Finish Romney fleece???? - I would need to wait to ply since a friend is borrowing my electric wheel for a while. That's okay, I can at least finish the singles.
  • Start tablet woven band
  • fix and finish weaving on big loom
  • Process alpaca fleece
  • Ball navajo churro yarn for weaving next - to do over holiday break at my parents
  • Crochet something - start building my crochet tolerance back up now that my wrist feels better
  • Knit sweater

unicornduke: (Default)
 I taught myself to knit today because I have long term plans to spin and knit a sweater (knitting produces more durable garments than crochet because knitting is loops, crochet is knots) 

and after one (1) whole day of knitting, I have come to the conclusion that knitting is 50% making loops and 50% shuffling the loops up and down the needles

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