Mountain beading

I've been making progress on Atropos--but I'm getting down to the wire. I've reached one side and nearly reached two more sides--but still have hours and hours of work ahead of me before I am able to frame, photograph and deliver this piece to my alma mater for an exhibit. The plan is to deliver it this weekend while in Iowa for a race. This means, driving all night Thursday with the racers (my husband, his brother, and his dad) in the big diesel truck pulling the 50 ft trailer containing the race car and our living quarters for the weekend. We'll arrive Friday morning--with luck the piece will be done (no chance of beading in the truck--makes me car sick)--and I'll simply take the truck (no trailer) on Friday after the racers are established at the track, back track to Mt. Vernon, Iowa from Earlville and drop off five pieces. Seems like a reasonable plan. Of course--this plan involves driving 13 hours with a toddler and then asking her to get back into the truck and drive some more. We'll see how that goes. I'm hoping that she'll be able to sleep while we're driving through the night. I could always ship them--but it seems so silly to ship them when we'll be driving right by Mt. Vernon on our way to the track. And maybe I'll be able to drop in and see some of my favorite folks while I'm on campus.
I love how portable my beading is (I guess I'd never get any done if it wasn't, though). I was able to work on the piece while watching Hannah play in the pinecones and dirt up in the mountains this weekend at a very quiet and peaceful location.
Hannah and I took a little hike (she fell asleep shortly after this--I guess there is nothing so soothing as being bobbed along on your mom's back). My sister comments that the back pack isn't very flattering--I have to agree--but I guess I never considered it a fashion accessory.

Am I going to make it?

I have two weeks to finish this piece, get it framed and photographed and delivered to Iowa for this exhibit. What do you think? Any chance I'm going to make it?

This is the last in the series of the Three Fates (and no, I haven't made the middle one yet--waiting, still, for inspiration to strike. The first one is here.). This is "Atropos cut the thread of life." It is a photo of my Grandma Helen's hands--I asked her to pose for the photo at one of our Monday Night Dinners--so it has a lot of the familiar objects from those weekly family dinners in her kitchen--the blue and white checked table cloth, the maroon and cream china with the pastoral scene in the back ground, and Grandma wearing her favorite sweatshirt from Gig Harbor. Grandma Helen is 94 1/2 (She'll be 95 in December). She doesn't like the way her hands look--but I love them.
I've had a number of people ask me about the fabric I bead on--it is black silk noil that I buy from Denver Fabrics. I print my photo on archival paper, then cut it out to the exact shape I want to bead (in this case, a rectangle), and stitch it to the top of my fabric and then follow the photo as a guide. Someone recently commented that it was like paint-by-number, except with beads--and it is true, the cartoon does help in that way--but there are no numbers telling you what color to pick up--that's where the creativity comes in--you look at that color on the paper and decide what combination of beads is going to create the color effect you want when you step away from the piece.

Singing Hannah

Well, my post was going to be about my new etsy shop, but then I saw a new icon on blogger--I can upload videos!--and I just happened to take this video of Hannah singing, "Ding, dong--the witch is dead!" this morning and all else went by the wayside.

Fobbie fun

Here's the beaded fobbie I made for my friend Liz Mrofka--inventor of the fobbie as an example of what you could do with beads and a fobbie. A fobbie a clever little card with holes for ribbons that makes wrapping presents a breeze and lots of fun. I had a red one and decided to cover it with green paper--so here is the before and after. Same purple wrapping paper and green ribbon--I just photographed it in different rooms (this was all done on the fly--running out the door photography). I finished beading the poppy months ago, but never made it into a pin--so I finally finished it up this weekend. I forgot to take a photo of the pin by itself, though.

Speaking of running out the door--yesterday I was in such a hurry to make it to a meeting that required dropping Hannah off at day care at precisely 8 am--that I didn't realize that I had dressed, perhaps, a little too quickly.... my friend Ann leaned over, 3 hours into the 4 hour meeting, and said, "Amy--did you know that your blouse is on inside out?"

It kind of defined the day.

Dyeing in the backyard

A friend from work needed help with a sweater that she wanted to overdye--what a great excuse to pull out the long-languishing dye stuff and dye some fabric. We spent the day (and part of the night) on the back porch figuring out the dyes (yikes it has been over 10 years since I did any serious dyeing!). Hannah took a 3-hour nap at a very convenient time. Thank you Hannah. Kelly watched her while she was awake so I didn't have to worry about boiling water, dyestuff, and toddlers.

While we were waiting for the dyes to set, I taught Erin how to do a bit of bead embroidery and I finished up the beaded pin for Liz the inventor of the fobbie. She wanted an example of what you could do with bead embroidery and her gift wrapping tool. I had a lot of fun with that!

Saturday I helped another friend, Liz, move--she and her husband bought the cutest cottage with a charming backyard and lots of porches perfect for spinning or beading. She set up the greatest weaving room with a view of her future goats. I was so charmed by the house that moving seemed like a breeze--also, she was really organized about the whole thing--so it was pretty easy.

So it was a fun weekend filled with friends and creativity. Yay.

Unicorn hair core

I probably shouldn't try to edit while my head is so full of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows--I was writing out a description of my spindle and had to resist the urge to insert "unicorn hair core".
Spindle: 1/4 ounce square Steve Paulsen spindle, 10 1/2 inches long. Sigh.

Birthday spinning

I told Hannah last night that today would be my birthday and she sang to me . . . "Happy Birthday to Mom! Happy Birthday to Mom!" This was about as cute and endearing as when she was craddling her foot in her car seat the other day singing, "Happy Birthday to foot!" Also, my lilies waited until today to bloom. Did they know? It has been a great birthday. My dad emailed me and said, I remember this day 28 years ago when you were a squalling, red-faced infant. . . and I had to tell him that it was actually 38 years ago. He was joking, of course. But still it was funny.

I've been spinning all weekend and this week trying to meet a deadline and also spin a balanced yarn. Yep, I must confess it is a challenge for me. But today I skeined it and I think it is actually balanced! Amazing. Friends at work put on a nice party for my birthday with killer brownies (a hint of cinnamon and extra dark chocolate) , ice cream, and a tub of home made coleslaw to die for. Kelly, Hannah and I went out to eat at our favorite Indian food restaurant and Hannah asked the family who owns the place to tell her their names--which was really great because they've told us before, but we didn't quite catch them or remember and we were too embarrassed to ask again. I wrote them down this time.

Frogging

Well, after a conversation with a friend at work, I began to doubt my sock. First she pointed out that my kitchener stitch was inside out.

And it was true.

I knew that, but I had been politely ignoring it.

But then she noted that the fabric of the sock was better suited to a sweater and a sock should be tighter so that you can't feel the stitches under your foot when you're wearing it.

That had been my secret complaint about the sock when I tried it on, but I had also been politely ignoring that problem as well.

Since most of the socks I've made in my life were nonfunctional (really), these are considerations that hadn't really occured to me before.

Most of the spinning and knitting I've done was done for expression and not functionality. In fact when I finished Sock for my fears, sock for my serenity, I realized that I could make a sweater.

So at any rate, frogging ocurred yesterday.


Today, reknitting begins.

Estes Park Wool Market and a 1/2 FO

I had a chance to go to a fiber festival as just a shopper instead of being a worker-bee in a booth since we didn't have a booth at Estes this year. Well, it didn't quite live up to my fantasy--but I still had fun. I went with Hannah and Kelly's mom and aunt--they are fiber folks, too, so we do a lot of fibery excursions together. It was a gorgeous drive up highway 93 to Boulder and then through Lyons and up into the mountains on 36. Everything is so green, green, green (for Colorado--let me qualify). We arrived around 10:30 am and the market was very busy--throngs of people. Hannah did a good job of being patient for the sheepies while we poked around booths and made some purchases. Here she is in front of the Yaks--she was fascinated by them. It was so sunny she couldn't open her eyes--but see the sweet smile! I've been going to this show nearly every year since I was a student at Colorado State University in the Fibers department (yep--that's 15 years). Of course, when I was a student I didn't have two cents to rub together--so it was an exercise in frustration. I remember visiting the Interweave Press booth before I was an employee and browsing through the books trying to decide which one to save my money for. Little did I know what fate had in store for me! And even though I've always had strong maternal longings, I didn't ever imagine what it would be like going to the festival with a 2-year-old. We were all exhausted before long--the crowds, the sun, the two-year-old who wanted to rattle the bars of each alpaca enclosure. Actually, I think in normal circumstances, I would have had a lot more stamina, but I'm on the healing end of a resistant bacterial infection (mastitis--yep, a swift kick in the boobie from a 2-year-old who is throwing a fit on her changing table and threatening to fall off can cause internal bleeding and lead to an infection even if you're no longer nursing--who knew!). 5 trips to the doctor, 1 extremely painful ultrasound, 3 antibiotics, and 6 weeks later, I'm finally getting better, but I'm really fatigued. So that's why my fantasy of being just a shopper and the reality of going to the market didn't quite match up. I did find some knitting needles that I needed and bought some Bonkers fiber. I toyed with the idea of getting a fleece, but decided I better work with the ones I have before I buy more.

I finished the sock! Yay. This is the 1/2 FO since I still need to make the second sock. It is a bit big. Also, I've misplaced my notes and will probably have to reverse engineer the second sock. I'll probably find the notes after I've finished the second sock and can then discover all the differences between the two socks. That is, if I ever get to making the second sock. I'm nearly done spinning the yarn for the second sock. I've been working on it in meetings.


Also, I've been working on a beading challenge issued at work by the Beading Daily editor, Michelle Mach. We were each given a little box full of the same beads and asked to make something with it. I'm making a beaded frame for this picture of my maternal grandparents. The deadline is June 29th and I could finish it real soon if I leave it like it is, or I could get a little out of control and cover every square inch with beads--which is what I'm inclined to do, but probably isn't doable.

Last night my dad brought spaghetti sauce and salad dressing for dinner and asked me to examine the label. It took me a while, but I finally saw that my mom's artwork was the feature art on the label! How exciting! Spinelli's is the neighborhood grocery and they are coming out with a line of natural products that will be at Whole Foods soon. The sauces and salad dressing are very yummy! And of course the artwork is beautiful--a watercolor painting my mom did of their store front in 1996.
Here are the bottles (already consummed) sitting on the potting table that Kelly made for me by recycling one of the old kitchen cabinets and putting a new top on it. I love it so much!

I have a lot of iris to plant! They were saved from the dump--a neighbor tore out their weed infested flower beds and replaced them with new landscaping and all these iris were headed to the trash. One of my neighbors let me know about it and then I got permission from the neighbors who were redoing their landscape to harvest the iris.
Now I just need to find time to plant them! (Here's a better view of my potting table--complete with carrot door pulls!)

Compost surprise!

I was wandering around my garden this morning as the sun was coming up admiring the little seedlings because that is my favorite thing about a garden--watching it grow and change. I noticed that the rose bush by the compost was blooming, so I went over to touch the petals and saw that my compost contained a surprise! I haven't turned it over in a while--though I've been adding yard clippings to it. An iris bulb was sprouting in the compost! It was the most gentle, delicate little iris leaves that I've seen, with roots clinging to a decaying leaf in the compost. What a will to live and grow.
What a perfect way to start the day. I transplanted it to my garden (still in my robe--my hair a rat's nest of tangles).

Happy Birthday Hannah!

Two years old already!
I can't believe it. It's gone by so quickly.
The first three weeks seemed like an eternity because you were in the hospital, but after that--it has whizzed by. What a lot of fun we're having. And I'm so glad that you haven't learned how to climb on top of the fridge.

I did a little documenting--one photo for each one-month birthday--I saw this on someone's blog and had to make a version for you. This blog also inspired me to make you some doll clothes--I got three diapers made and that was it. Obviously the naptime knitter's baby takes longer naps.









Year one--June 1, 2005-May 1, 2006

Year 2: June 1, 2006-May 1, 2007

Maryland Sheep and Wool, Mother's Day and Cochineal

May is just zooming by.

May 4-7: We went to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival--it was wonderful, of course. Some day I'll go just as a normal fiber person and not have to work in the booth and then I'll get to see everything and even buy some stuff. Kelly and Hannah came along on this trip--it was great to have them there. Hannah does a great impression of a sheep. She really likes the sheepies, as she calls them.



So do I!






We visited my Aunt Debby and Uncle Jerzy who live in Delaware on Sunday night (and Monday morning before our flight). It was great to see them even briefly. My aunt is an amazing quilter and her house is so arty and serene. I love visiting. I visited them when I was 14--and Debby was pregnant with her daughter Gena who is now working on her graduate degree at Harvard. I guess that was a long time ago--it sure goes by quickly.

So when I got back from MDS&W we had a visiting artist from Cuzco, Peru in the office--Jenny

Callañaupa Huarhua. She did a cochineal workshop on a Thursday night after work.

May 9th: Wednesday night I stayed up until 11 pm spinning--this is really late for me. I'm often up at 4 or 5 and I really function better on a full night sleep--though I don't often get it.

May 11th: I didn't finish spinning my yarn that I wanted to dye at the Cochineal workshop. So I took my wheel to work and worked on it during meetings and then Andean plied it.

Well. Maybe that wasn't such a great decision. Let me tell you a bit about this yarn. It is the Shetland fleece that I received as a gift last spring from Carol Rhoades--I had washed locks in the sink and hand carded them and filled about half a bobbin before other things intervened and it sat on my bobbin for a year. Yikes. I had also taken a small portion of this fleece to try out the instructions in Spin to Knit for washing a fleece in the washing machine. I have to admit that I didn't think it would work. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be--though it isn't my prefered way to wash a fleece--it does have advantages for speed. I carded that fiber on the Patrick Green carder that I received for Christmas from Kelly. A wonderful gift. I had that batt just waiting to be spun up--so that's what I spun on Wednesday night. It was not as clean as the fiber I had scoured lock by lock in the sink. I spun the two batches of fiber on the same bobbin--that's why I chose to Andean ply them....can you see the slippery slope of bad decisions? So I wound off my Andean plied yarn onto my niddy noddy and was dismayed that it looked so bad. Well, Maggie Casey was in the basement at work shooting photos for her upcoming book (it's going to be great!). I went back and forth--do I take my terrible yarn downstairs? Will she laugh at me? Will she look at me in disbelief? There is an expectation that the editor of Spin-Off is an excellent spinner even though the reality is that the editor doesn't get as much time as she'd like to actually spin...do I shatter that image?

I read my horoscope. It was very helpful--the gist was to be brave, face fears. So I took my pathetic skein to the basement and confessed my sins to Maggie. Not only was she totally wonderful, gracious, and kind--all the things that Maggie alway is! But she was also delighted. I had arrived at just the right moment--she was about to spin a yarn just like mine to demonstrate how to repair a mistake and instead she was able to use my sad yarn to demonstrate that all is not lost.

So Ann Swanson photographed my yarn and Maggie diagnosed it as needing more twist in the ply. I found a swift and a ballwinder in the Knits office and wound my yarn into a ball, then fetched my wheel from the fourth floor (no elevator=good excercise) and added more twist to my yarn (a little too much, ah well). And then Ann shot the after shot and I was set. Profoundly thankful, I rushed off to the Cochineal workshop to dye my yarn.






Jenny speaks English really well--she's working on a project for the Centro de Textiles Traditionales del Cusco and is in the U.S. gathering information for a series of books the center wants to publish to preserve the traditional textiles of the Andes. She spent a week in Loveland learning about book publishing.

I brought fiber to dye as well. We stood around on Linda Ligon's amazing back porch watching pelicans (yep, pelicans) fly by against a backdrop of Colorado mountains and learned about Cochineal and how it is used in the Andes to dye yarns.
We also drank beers and ate peanuts.


I took my yarn and fiber home and rinsed it over the next couple of days (it needed a lot of rinsing). The fiber was a Merino top that I had purchased at the Recycled Lamb. It is pretty felted--not completely, but pretty darn close. The process used for dyeing with cochineal was better suited to yarn than fiber. I was able to card the fiber and spin it, but the fiber is getting torn up in the process--so it is a lot shorter fiber lengths. I may do something else with it.


The yarn turned out beautifully for all the trauma it went through.












And in the morning, I'm making waffles!

We had a mother's day celebration on May 13th. We made waffles, eggs, and bacon in the morning for my family who came over for brunch and then in the evening, Kelly's family came over for dinner and we had kabobs. The celebration included a trip to a local nursery for flowers--Hannah found some that had fallen from plants to play with.

Stephanie came to Denver!

Hannah is better and was better by Thursday, April 5th. I managed to get some work done the day that Stephanie came to town. Amazing, I know. But it has more to do with the relentless nature of deadlines than anything else. I did head back to Denver from Loveland at about 3 pm ( I was planning on participating in a conference call on the way down, but I couldn't connect to the conference call). I arrived at the Lodo Tattered Cover 4 pm, found a spot to park in the Union Station parking lot, bought an extra copy of the book (to send to a friend) and found the line upstairs. The Tattered Cover is the best book store. I've loved it ever since I was little--so just being in the store was enough to make me happy--but to find it filled with people I know and like--it was wonderful!


I was about 20th in line and had a great time talking to people in line. Right next to me in line was Cheryl from Colorado Springs who took my class in Convergence and is a friend of Amanda's from the Pikes Peak guild. I had a great time talking to Cindy Lair of Schacht and Connie Kephart--some how giant and poisonous insects became the topic that had us rolling on the ground.



I met a very enthusiastic young spinner who loves her fiber--Katie Russell.









Deb Robson was spinning, too!







I caught up with Kristi who was there with others from the Fort Collins knitting group. Her socks (on the cover of the Spring 07 Spin-Off) were also present. I got to spin! I had started some of the rolags from Designs by Diane at the photo shoot a couple weeks ago and I was dying to get back to it. All my free time has been consumed with getting ready for Bead Expo.


Eunny Jang and Katie Himmelberg were also there from Interweave. Since Eunny works from her home in Maryland, this was a chance for me to get to know her better. Though I felt kind of bad afterwards--I should have warned her how loudly I laugh before she sat next to me during Stephanie's talk. She was very gracious though and said that my laughter was infectious! My sister won't believe it. My family knows to sit far away from me in movies (not just the funny ones, either).


Sylvia from Posh and the Denver Stitchn'bitch had a great sign and was collecting hats for charity. I meant to make one and haven't done it yet. I'm bad. I also talked to Kat who I had met at a Red Scarf event last year--we figured out where we knew each other from. I wish we could do this every month--just hang out in the stacks at the Tattered Cover knitting and spinning and catching up.



All this happened even before Stephanie showed up. And then there was Stephanie! She totally deserved the standing ovation and feet stomping. Not just because she's so funny, not just because she captures the essence of knitters (and beyond), not just because she brings us together and helps us laugh at our quirkiness and how we must look from the outside--but because she's able to address serious things at the same time--important things. Such as women's business endeavours not being taken seriously with examples of the financial and career impact these attitudes have. She also addressed the ability of knitters to pool their resources to make a difference in the world--through their knitting (hats for charity, for example) and through their monetary donations--she has raised more than $300,000 for Doctors without Borders through Knitters without Borders.
We're so lucky that she uses her power to motivate and inspire for good. And gosh, I really don't know how she keeps the schedule she has. She arrived in Denver at 9 am--so that means she left Minneapolis at some very early hour. She had interviews all day, then the gig at the Tattered Cover where she was signing books until after 10 pm--and then a bunch of us took her out to eat afterwards--and didn't get her back to her hotel until after 1 am. I was shocked it was so late--I'm normally in bed by 9:30 or 10--especially now that Hannah is on the scene because you never know when you'll be up with the baby during the night. And morning comes early in our house. And I like sleep. I really do. To sleep perchance to dream. Say--I had a Stephanie dream last night--I dreamed that she was floating in the clouds and pretending to spin and simultaneously knit a gorgeous Orenburg shawl--but she wasn't really spinning--she had wound the shawl into a skein and was unchaining it to make it look like she was spinning it (don't ask how--it was a dream!)--and then when she was done it billowed into a huge parachute and she was floating over the city of Toronto (it was night time--so all was dark, except for city lights and the hint of the sun coming up) giving us (we were watching her on video) a tour of the city from the sky. We landed on the top floor of the Art Institute and she was showing us around.

I spun three rolags from Designs by Diane that I bought at SOAR during the whole event--and over the weekend plied them into a skein. It is some of the most gorgeous yarn I've ever made--can I say that? I want to make socks--I've started them.

Haircut

Around Christmas, my mom urged me to cut Hannah's bangs. But I was insistent that I didn't want to because I wanted it to grow out so that we could tuck it behind her ears, and I was afraid of going near her face with scissors. Here is a before shot just a couple weeks before. While her hair is getting longer and could be tucked behind her ears, it doesn't stay. But the reason why I finallyI gave Hannah a haircut was because she woke up Sunday morning and was whining and pushing her hair out of her eyes, and then said exasperatedly, "Hair!". It seemed like it was time.
The haircut itself was very quick--I sat her on her little stool on the counter in the bathroom and gave her two toothbrushes (both hers) to play with--one for each hand. Then before she noticed I snipped, snipped and it was done. She said "iee bee!" when she saw little bits of hair falling around her (that means "spider!"). Kelly got it on video--but we didn't get any still shots of the process. The hardest part was getting it straight when she was moving around so much--but her hair is so straight, that it made it easier.

So here is the after shot. She also chose her clothes for the day. She saw this dress that Grandma Jane made for Bri and insisted on wearing it. It will probably actually fit her when she's four. She also wanted to wear the red rain boots that were my sister's when she was a baby. Those are 35+ year-old boots!

We're getting over a virus--well, Hannah is. I think she got it from Will--though it seems like a long incubation period. Will got sick on Tuesday last week and was throwing up for a week. It was scary. Until Tuesday night, I was thinking that we had dodged the bullet since Hannah didn't get sick right away. I took Hannah to the doctor yesterday as soon as I could get her in--she threw up at midnight but then went back to sleep. They said to take her off all dairy until she's recovered. In the morning she had diarrhea, but no fever. She seems to be better already. I'm hoping today it is all gone. No vomiting last night.

Provided that Hannah is better, I'm going to the Stephanie Pearl McPhee booksigning and talk tonight at the Lodo Tattered Cover! I hope that I can get there early enough to get tickets--they only have room for 200 people. I'm packing my knitting and spinning--maybe I'll actually have time to do some while I'm waiting in line! Oh joy!