A new year

You can't reflect on this past year without talking about Covid. I have been very fortunate to be able to work from home and have the means to have groceries and other items delivered rather than go out to purchase them in person, so my exposure has been limited, and to the best of my knowledge I have not ever contracted the virus. However, a work colleague died from it just two days after Thanksgiving. He was due to retire at the end of the year and had a family. I was looking over some computer code he wrote for me just yesterday (very well written, too), and it saddens me greatly that he passed away too soon from his life. He was a really nice guy. 

Another sadness is that we lost our beloved furry buddy, Felix, in early December. He lived a good, long life and we so enjoyed having him in ours. 

Felix Shag-a-ferocious Tuggle-rumpkin
2003 - Dec 2, 2020

Moving on...

I had a very crafty-filled year, most of which I wrote about in this post, so I won't repeat it here. I splurged on a number of new "toys" - partly out of retail therapy because of feeling cooped up but mostly because I wanted them.

And believe it or not there were things I didn't own yet. This Cricut Maker was a Christmas gift that arrived this week. Not a great picture of the machine, but the picture was more meant to show off the snowflakes I made - my first project after cutting out the sample blue bear. It's fun! I think my next project will be to cut out some lettering to label some drawers that store sewing supplies. It'll dress them up a bit more than boring label-maker tags. I'm also excited to use this to cut small fabric pieces, either for quilting or machine embroidery applique.

The rest of my Christmas gifts were mostly either items to sew with, like bobbins, sewing machine feet, embroidery hoop, or books on knitting. Two books on Norwegian-style knitting!

And speaking of knitting, I finished one sock today:

Last week I finished sewing a Christmas-themed potholder. Another one just needs the binding. Maybe I'll get to it tomorrow.

I've always wanted to crochet snowflakes, so I gave it a go. I don't know that I'll ever make all 100! Haha! 

And on this New Year's Eve, I also spent some time spinning:

So what's in store for 2021? Well, one things for certain, I will do more knitting, sewing, embroidery, spinning, and weaving. And now that I have this new Cricut, I might do a little scrapbooking. I still have plans to do some fiber dying with natural materials - I received an indigo dye kit and some madder plant material at my spinning guild gift exchange. 

Happy New Year!!

Fiber, fiber, and more fiber

I've rediscovered my enjoyment of spinning this year so most of my craft-time has been spent doing that...or buying more fiber to spin. Yeah, there's been...ahem...a lot of buying.

It was on clearance! Lots of colors of wool to play with.

Another sale = more colors to play with

There was a fiber festival. I went. I bought.

Sometimes the braids of hand-dyed fiber are just too irresistible:

Guess I really like this dyer's work

...and this one too!

The first fiber in my collection was a gift from my in-laws after they visited New Zealand, and it was many years before I started spinning. I think the presentation is beautiful and I may never spin it because of that!

Then there's the fiber I bought because it was from interesting breeds of sheep or other animals or plants. My stash contains fiber from sheep, camelids, goats, plants, and other sources. Most weights are 4 ounces, but some are 8 ounces and there are a few larger "bumps" and some very small samples of 1-2 ounces. Some are blends, either two sheep breeds or mixed with something like cashmere, silk or bamboo. Some fiber is in its raw, natural color and some was purchased dyed, either by an independent dyer (like the braids above) or commercially (like the wool and bamboo in the first two pictures). All are prepared fiber, ready for spinning, with the exception of the one fleece in the list.

Here are the sheep breeds:

• Merino (what spinner doesn't have merino?)
• Bluefaced Leicester (known among fiber people simply as BFL)
• Corriedale
• Shetland
• Perendale
• Gotland
• Jacob
• Texel
• Finn
• Icelandic
• Norwegian
• Ramboulliet
• Targhee
• Polwarth
• Teeswater
• Swaledale
• Romney
• Herdwick
• Deboulliet (my first fleece that I'll have to wash and comb first)
• Black Welsh Mountain
• Wensleydale
• Cotswold
• Navajo Churro
• Wallace East Friesian
• Falkland
• Whitefaced Woodland
• Manx Loaghtan
• Gray Masham
• Coopworth

Goats:

• Mohair
• Cashmere
• Pygora

Camelids:

• Llama
• Alpaca
• Camel

From other animals and living or formerly living creatures:

• Angora rabbit
• Yak
• Musk Ox, which is known as Qivut (very soft and very precious)
• Silk
• Seacell
• Milk

Plants:

• Cotton
• Flax
• Bamboo
• Banana
• Corn
• Hemp

Why so many varieties? Well because it's so much fun to use and learn about different fibers! Last year I bought a drum carder, which you use to blend fibers into batts. You can combine different colors, textures and fibers and come out with some really one-of-a-kind blends that can be very arty or whatever you want.

This is the model drum carder I bought last year. 

So yeah, I have a lot of fiber. But it makes me so happy!

I haven't yet played with my carder beyond one very fun day with my spinning guild, but I have been spinning.

Before

After! Now I need to learn how to chain ply so I can keep the colors separate.

Before

Just finished spinning this fiber last week - two full bobbins. Ready to ply!

Some spindle spinning while vacationing in France. Not finished yet!

Here are some of my spindles:

Support spindle used to spin cotton

The spindles in the center are old support spindles from Bulgaria and I don't spin on them, though I suppose I could.

Mostly I spin on my wheel:

Louët Victoria

So there you have it. Lots of fiber!

Mishmash of sewing-weaving-knitting-spinning

When last I posted, I said I'd show some of my latest projects and fiber, so here goes. If you're friends with my on Facebook or follow my Instagram, you've probably already seen some of these.

In June, I went to a small fiber festival in Schwabsburg, Germany.

My purchases: fiber for spinning, yarn for knitting and weaving and a ceramic yarn bowl

Lots of fleece!

It's a tiny, old town center with timber frame buildings

Yarn!

The Kwik Sew 2821 nightshirt I whipped up on my serger while my sewing machine was in the shop. The pattern is my old standby for night shirts. I had problems with poor fabric recovery so instead of a separate band for the collar and sleeves, I simply turned the edges under and used a coverstitch. I'm pretty sure the fabric was on the deep sale table (my stash notes say I bought it at G Street Fabric). I originally bought it to make a shirt, but decided the print was better used for something not worn outside of the house (hah!). The graphics and words are a bit much for my style these days and if you look closely, to the lower right of the woman in the center in the blue skirt are the words "beautiful" in mirror image. Huh?? Perhaps this error and the poor recovery of the knit may be why it was on the sale table.

My sewing machine is back! It's cleaned up and sewing nicely but it got back just in time for the July heat to keep me out of my attic sewing room.

I finished weaving some trim on my inkle loom:

My current knitting project is a shawl using some interesting cotton yarn. It's made up of 4 threads, which started as all white and then after a while a blue one replaced one of the white, then another blue replaced a white, and so on. The shawl is a simple triangle, with increases done on every other row so that one side is straight and the other angled. After I've knitted 1/2 the ball and therefore, half the shawl, I switch to decreases on the angled side.

Knitting with a view of the alps!

It's hot and I'm not sewing but I have been traveling.

We've been having extreme, record setting heat in Europe for the last couple of weeks - we had a couple days of cooler, wet weather but now we're back to hot. And we have no a/c, just fans, like most of Europe. My great upstairs studio-with-a-view is an oven, so needless to say, sewing is on hold until cooler weather. Bummer.

But that doesn't explain all of my absence from blogging. Since I last posted in early June, we've traveled to seven countries. Whew! My niece visited from the states for two weeks, so that accounted for some of the travel.

Before the heat and my niece arrived (at the same time, just her luck!), I was working on a top. It's a simple pattern - just two pieces - but I had an idea in my head which has led to it being quite complicated. The most difficult part is done but now I have to figure out how I will do the finishing. I don't want to show it until it's done because I am a little bit excited about how it is turning out.

So the travel. In the last month we went to Latvia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, France, Switzerland, Italy, Monaco, and Luxembourg. Whew!

In this post I'll show you a bit of Riga, Latvia. First, I'll show you the fiber-y related things:



When in Latvia...buy Latvian mitten kits. I couldn't decide between the two.

I loved the color of this wool roving and the price was right, so...

A bound book of gridded paper for weaving notes, a fun, big, wood button just cause it's a fun, big, wood button, and a tea towel that I may turn into a knitting project bag.

I couldn't resist. We went to the local market (which is huge!) and this was 15 Euros a kilo. It looks like the same yarn as in the mitten kits too. 

 

Knitting on "Knitting in Public Day"

Wall of Latvian mittens

...and more

Woven bands - these are used on traditional Latvian dress

Sorry, I didn't get the name of the store. I believe the mittens hanging up are part of an exhibit that is in conjunction with a book about Latvian mittens (only in Latvian). Here's the brochure (click picture to see larger):

You can get the book on Amazon for $49 but it sells for 29 Euros in Latvia ($49 is about $32 right now). I would have bought it, but how many Latvian mittens can one knit...or use?

There are many knitted items for sale in Latvia. There are many souvenir shops selling knitted items as well as vendors on the streets selling fine gauge, machine-made items (probably not made in Latvia) as well as chunkier hand-knitted things (faster to knit in larger gauge).




 

 

Of course I was interested in yarn, which you saw that I bought. I bought the mitten kits and roving from Hobbywool.

 

Located on a small street but you can't miss the "yarn bombing" out front!

 

So what about the non-fiber-y Riga? It was delightful. We had really nice weather, which helps a lot, but I was really pleasantly surprised. The Old Town is compact with a few squares where eating and drinking outside (in the summer) is the main attraction.

 

 

With only the long weekend and gorgeous blue skies most of the time, we chose not to visit museums and instead wandered the medieval streets and nearby parks stopping for a refreshment now and then. 

 

 

 

Every picture of Riga includes the House of Blackheads. Riga was a major trade city in the 13th-16th centuries. The House of Blackheads was built in the 14th century for unmarried German merchants.

 

 

The other often photographed building is the Cat House. It's actually a relatively new building (1909). The cat on the turret is one of two, supposedly put there by a merchant who had an argument with the guild - the cats' rear ends faced the guild building across the street. Cats figure prominently in the souvenirs sold in Riga. I did buy the t-shirt. :-)

 

The other notable landmark in Riga is Freedom Monument. Erected in 1938 to honor soldiers who died during the 1918-1920 Latvian War for Independence. In 1987 Latvians rallied here to commemorate victims of the Soviet regime, which led to a renewed national independence movement and three years later Latvian sovereignty.

 

One morning we took a walk through a neighborhood known for its incredible, well-preserved Art Nouveau buildings.

 

 

I recommend visiting Riga if you have a chance. I think many travelers include it with a visit to Estonia and Lithuania. We've been to Tallinn, Estonia, which has a nice old town also (and yarn!). Lithuania is still on our list to visit.