#also i bought some patterns so now i have to buy some wool to spin for that ^^ | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

knittinginfrance · 7 years

Text

Hi there, I’m sorry I did not keep my word and post a second time last week. Time seems to constantly elude me these days. I hope you understand:)

I wanted to show you some of my Birthday gifts because yes it was my Birthday not so long ago. First off, my daughter the artist made me some super fun stitch markers from polymer clay.

I love using these!

And this year is the second time I organize a Birthday swap in my Knitting in France Group on Ravelry. It is a small swap which I think suits us all well as the pressure is limited and we don’t have to send gifts every month of the year. It is however super fun when it is one’s turn to receive those yarny gifts and it just so happens that I’m the last to celebrate my birthday. I’m still waiting for some to arrive but I thought I should share with you those that I have so far.

This was the first gift I got and it arrived the morning of my Birthday! A nice sock size project bag, amazing chocolates and a Finnish specialty. A wonderfully smelling hand cream and a fun needle gauge/key ring from Succaplokki. And two skeins of yarn. The pink one is from Wollmeise and the purple one is from a new to me French dyer called Squirrel’s Yarns. I love the colors and will most likely be using them to knit into socks. The project bag also contained a gift, a hand knit shawl!

Yes that’s me wearing my new shawl:)

The second gift arrived soon there after.

How fun is this Truckin’ project bag? And the yarns are gorgeous! The green yarn is Harry Potter inspired from Just a Girl and her Dog Yarns. The Teal one is actually hand spun and the label says Creek Side Farm. Both are gorgeous and the Honey straws have me intrigued.

The third gift arrived this past weekend.

I love the lamb post card. The monkeys on the right are actually magnets and now reside on my fridge. The Minion tin contains some buttons and the yellow piece you see behind the mignon is a table cloth and I think it may have been woven.

I absolutely LOVE this tag to attach to a hand knit gift. Not sure I’ll ever be willing to part with it though. It’s now hanging on a wall next to my desk.

When I first saw this I thought this was a crochet kit but it’s actually a knitting pattern. You can knit a 3D fish and it comes with the beads and the DMC thread. Amazing. One of my daughter has already requested she keep this once it’s done.

And to finish I got this bag of beautiful teal colored silk to spin into something gorgeous. And 2 skeins of Claudia Handpainted yarns for a future pair of socks.

Amazing right?! I do love a good yarn/knitting swap and as this is birthday related it is even more fun I think. I might organize this for the third consecutive year in 2018 so if you are interested in joining do let me know. I will be asking in my Ravelry Group soon if people are interested in joining again. Actually this year I think I only have one new participant all the others joined the first time around and jumped on the chance to join in again for this second time. We’ll see if we have enough participants for a third edition.

But I did also treat myself to some yarnie goodness using my birthday as an excuse. I know I’m an adult and that I don’t need an excuse to buy yarn BUT seeing as I already have more than I need and that I’m trying to cut down on yarn purchases, I’m using the Birthday excuse anyway!

So I purchased some yarns from a destash on Ravelry. This is the first time I have ever done this and I admit I was a bit apprehensive as I did not know the seller at all. I saw a post from this person on Instagram and the yarns pictured were all gorgeous so I had to jump over to Ravelry and take a look. Well I actually ended up buying not 1, not 2, not 3 no no no! I bought 5!!! Yes that’s right I bought 5 skeins! And they have arrived and they are all as gorgeous as they were on Ravelry.

Both of these dyers are new to me. I had known about the Wool Barn but never seen their yarn in person and I admit I was oblivious to Woolberry Fibre Co. The yarns are gorgeous. 3 out of 5 skeins are singles so they will be knit into shawls or cowls in the future. The others will become socks I think.

I also bought more yarn from Lolo Did It. I of course wanted to indulge myself but I also wanted to help with Lolo’s Hurricane Harvey charity and I received my Harvey yarn this weekend. And it’s gorgeous and Lauren even added a complimentary tape measure! Always useful.

This yarn will become a pair of socks in the future.

So as you can see I have been spoiled lately with yarn. I hope I haven’t made you jealous or caused you to break your “no yarn buying” ban. I don’t often share my purchases but as I was on the subject of gifts and so I thought it would be fun.

On another note, I’m bringing the Maker of the Month feature back. I hadn’t intended on stopping during the summer but things happened. I’m hoping we will be doing the first feature in a week or two and the next maker is a yarn dyer and as always there will be a giveaway associated with the feature so stay tuned!

I think this will be all for today. I was going to show you my progress on the mystery kals but I have changed my mind and I’m not going to share until they are officially over. For the first time ever I have not shared pictures of my progress on these on social media and I have even avoided seeing other peoples pictures as well so this time it really is a true mystery knit a long for me.

I hope you have a wonderful week with lots of knitting time! Speak to you soon:)

My Birthday yarnie gifts Hi there, I'm sorry I did not keep my word and post a second time last week.

#Etsy shop #hand dyed yarn #indie dyed yarn #knitting #knitting in france #knitting swap #lolo did it #ravelry #the wool barn #woolberry fibre co #yarn dyer #yarn swap

5 notes · View notes

dcnativegal · 7 years

Text

Maybe I am an artist

Zora Neale Hurston once said, “I love myself when I am laughing, and again when I’m looking mean and impressive.” I could safely say, “I love myself when I am playing with yarn, and again when I’ve finished a project and taken a picture of it to post on Facebook.”

Moving to the Oregon Outback, and Valerie’s adorable loft house, has loosed whatever constraints I’d had in DC on yarn binging. Or am I stocking up for my new career as a fiber artist? Perhaps my yarn buying behavior is yet another one of my compulsions. The Cambridge English Dictionary defines compulsion as a very strong feeling of wanting to do something repeatedly that is difficult to control. So why control it? I see an ad for yarn, I get an email from Webs.com, I get a notification that someone has posted “a yarn for sale” picture in Yarn Hoarders Anonymous on Facebook. If its bulky yarn, or very reasonably priced… I’ve hit up paypal before I know it. Or I do know it and I do it anyway.

But is it a bad thing? Why must I pathologize my yarn buying? I love my yarn. It gives me great joy to order it, anticipate it coming, then open the package (that Paisley’s patient and kind postmistress has hauled to her counter). I deeply enjoy planning what I’ll make with it. Occasionally I’ll open it and go, bleh, not what I had hoped for, but that stuff will find a place and a purpose, too. Yarnbombing with many strands of yarn at once will reduce my supply…

I dream of projects. When I want to stop obsessing about a client, or about my most recent blood sugar, or whatever really stupid thing I said that day (Open mouth, Insert foot), then I plan a project as I drift off to sleep. Something in purple, the color I have the most of. What kind of baby blanket will I make for the Holy Brother’s daughter’s love child? What kind of stitch will best cover the irrigation half wheel that Valerie salvaged? I plan to make a half sun full of oranges, yellows, and white, with a little purple and green thrown in. It will be 3 feet in diameter, and hung from the fence. It will be my second outdoor decoration, after the July 4th crocheted flag I tacked to a folding rectangular trellis and hung on the side of the house.

Why should we all use our creative power? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money. Brenda Ueland

Perhaps I am subconsciously planning for my next career, although I learning and growing in my current one. This ‘behavioral therapist’ business is hard work. Lake County is the redheaded stepchild of Klamath County, which is supposed to share resources with its sister county to the east. It’s also the mostly ignored second cousin of Deschutes County which is just to the north and full of resources, people, stores… it’s where most north Lake County residents go for banking, pharmacy and grocery shopping. Anyway, the impoverishment of Lake County is only one of the reasons this old social worker finds the work challenging. I think most therapists struggle with at least some cases. The multiple early traumas that my clients had to cope with, on top of the challenges of modern life and the dearth of jobs and housing, combine to lay waste the most resilient psyche. Not to mention the recidivism of “substance use disorder”, the newest official term for what was once called addiction. I do get a surge of joy when one of the clients graduates from their 12 weeks of sobriety and I can report to the probation officer that they are CLEAN. They were clean before I knew them, however; I take no credit.

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

Goethe

I have no business plan for my next career as a fiber artist. I had an Etsy store once, and spent a lot of money on photography equipment (a huge white sheet and nice lights with umbrellas attached) to take pictures of my accomplishments. Didn’t really work. Maybe I didn’t promote it? I thought my prices were reasonable. I sold more by just mentioning something on facebook than I ever did on Etsy.

I don’t really care, although I suppose I should, whether I make money from my creations. It would be nice to recoup some of the expense of the yarn, which is really pricey, even when I buy from other yarn hoarders. (Maybe I should have sheep in the side yard, sheer them, prepare their wool, spin it, dye it… yeah? No.) I enjoy seeing my work wrapped around a friend’s shoulders in winter. I missed seeing the smile of delight when Valerie’s niece opened up the box and saw two, washable, gorgeous if I do say so myself, baby blankets at her twin baby debut. That delight is my payment. I did get a nice thank you note.

What I really love is making the stuff. I love selecting the yarns, picking the hook or needle size, and going at it. I don’t follow patterns, although I do learn stitches from youtube. I make shit up. I know how to fit a hat, and even fit a sweater, without a pattern, although mostly I make scarves and afghans. People don’t wear nice handmade sweaters anymore. They are too hot indoors, and too much of a pain to take on and off. Hats and scarves make more sense, and in winter, a beautiful lap blanket totally helps when the fire is beginning to go out. I think so anyway. My family members, and Valerie’s, get knit stuff for Christmas and so far, no one has taken me aside and said, Jane, “We have enough hats to last the rest of our lives… maybe a gift card??” I think they are too polite to tell me; I just hope they’ve passed the hat along to another cold noggin.

When I ask myself, what do I have to do each day? One answer is I must crochet or knit. My hands itch to be making something, to follow a rhythm with a piece of wood and soft fur of sheep, rabbit, llama. Or the product of silk worm and bamboo. I’ve discovered to my delight a substance called Upscale Acrylic. I sit having a conversation with anyone, and if I am not also crocheting, a part of my brain is aching. I have two projects I’m knitting[jl1] at work which I labor to finish during staff meetings, which are an odd affair, taking place over a large screen where most of the staff is sitting around a table 2 hours’ drive away and three of us in Christmas Valley are straining to hear. It is an exercise in frustration, but perhaps it is practice for when I’m hard of hearing and I miss most of the content and a whole lot of nonverbal verbal cues. I’ll be knitting then, too.

I have projects that are perfect for church, or for a movie, since I can knit in the round without looking. I get a lot done, especially during the sermon, or the previews, when I’m just not really engaged. If you are preaching, just know that you knocked it out of the park if I stopped knitting.

In a college seminar, we sat in a circle and talked and listened. I knit and talked and listened. One day, everyone turned to me and I asked why everyone was looking at me? One of the students said, because you put your knitting down. I always put it down when I had something to say. Ah.

My biggest projects are in the house, in large piles or baskets or boxes, and they require a lot of lap, and a cooperative cat. I’m working on a rug that will be something like 6 by 4 feet. I also have a number of lap blankets that are in process. I have two small purses half finished: purses the size of smart phones sold really well at the Paisley Bazaar last November. Sometimes I stare at my yarn and I get a flash of inspiration and I just up and start something entirely new. So what if I have 12 projects in various stages of completion. I finish my projects. Then I put them in a plastic trunk for gift/bazaar/me for later. And keep going. Yarn is joy.

It is also taking over the guest bedroom and the living room. You can’t see the surface of my desk for the piles of yarn. It’s rather like kudzu in the Southern states, hanging over everything and creeping around. Rather like a fungus. Rather like the clutter in a teenage boy’s room, there is a debris tide. I neaten and organize, and more yarn comes into the mix.

I think this is where the compulsion comes in. I do not need more yarn. I have a ‘stash beyond life expectancy.’ But new yarn, new colors and textures, they call to me.

Like wine calls to the alcoholic. Like meth calls to the meth user. Like chocolate calls to me. Like Blue Bunny chocolate covered ice cream bars call to me all the way from the Summer Lake gas station store. The one that says ‘Ice! You need Ice!’ on its big sign. The owner is the cranky pumper of gas who hales me when he sees me: So! What treason have you committed lately, you pinko? (Pinkos of the world, unite.)

I can’t afford the yarn, any more yarn ever, until I am out of debt. I asked Valerie if she minded the slow creep of yarn, and she said she will mind it come winter when she’s living in the house most of the time. With her peripatetic work schedule, she gets to stay a bunch of different places, none of which are as cluttered as our Paisley home. Cluttered with yarn.

Okay so I should stop buying yarn.

I was always a spendthrift, but my then-husband’s monthly explosion in response to the credit card bill was a bit of a deterrent. When we divorced, I blew through some serious money that came out of my retirement, and oh, I bought a house. Which I then had to sell toot suite when I took a severance package to get out of a very well paying but crazy-making workplace. (In 4 years, I lived through 3 bosses and 3 reorganizations. By the buyout, I was working so far away from my skill set that I would sit in my office and cry.)

Living in small spaces or other people’s spaces after the divorce kept a slight lid on my yarn obsession. And now in the lovely loft house, when I’ve down sized my furniture to the amount I could move cross country, I have lots of room. Oops. Yarn explosion. The generous tax refund this spring did not help.

What’s this about being an artist? Delusions of grandeur, probably.

Once upon a time, I took an environmental sculpture class at Oberlin. By my junior year, as a religion major and women’s studies minor I was writing a bazillion papers every semester. I wished to escape another paper and branched out to take folk dancing, print making and drawing, and even horseback riding, which, for this city kid, was really fun. A friend of mine, Monica, talked me into this class on Environmental Sculpture.

Our assignment was to plan a sculpture, and take care of all of the steps necessary to get permission to make it and install it. Finally, you build it. I wandered around the Oberlin neighborhood we lived in and found several shells of houses that had burned down. One shell had all four corners intact, and everything else was a stinky mass of melted plastic and trash. I had my site. I don’t recall getting permission from anyone to build a sculpture there. So it was a squatter site. I do remember finding an old wooden fireplace mantel, a bunch of wooden chair legs, some pallets. Pretty soon, I had the outline of a little hut. About 8 feet by 8 feet. I looked up Shinto Shrines, and back then there was no google. A shrine could be a home to a spirit who lived in that place. A living thing was needed, and a philodendron did the job. My classmates helped me raise the roof, which was a wooden shed structure just perfect for the top. I had my sculpture and I loved it very much. I still have the photos taken by another Obie, Bernice. Looking at them, I recall what a magical process this was.

To this day, I collect found objects and plan to make more sculptures. I might just be able to do that in Paisley. I have the space, and live in a town with a complete lack of judgment for saving odd things that look like junk. (Have you seen our side yard???) (Have you seen our neighbor to the immediate south???)

Why can’t I be an artist?

Why can’t art flow out of me and be manifested in some form, and then be shown to the public?

What is art? I have a broad definition. Anything made from my hands that is not food, is art. It does not have to be a job, but instead, a way of being in the world. A way of seeing something that does not exist yet and bringing it into this reality, rather like the sculptor who sees a large block of stone and envisions a human figure hidden inside. Chip away the stone and the human emerges. I see a physical space, or a blank fence wall, and I envision something there. Mobiles made of found objects, including cow bones, are taking up residence in my imagination. The afore-mentioned setting sun, made of half of an irrigation wheel and a whole lot of yarn. There are a lot of weathered pieces of wood, including twisting branches, that I’d love to build into something…

Creativity is seeing something that doesn’t exist already. You need to find out how you can bring it into being and that way be a playmate with God. Michele Shea

As I settle into life in Lake County, I anticipated I’d have more free time to do things like volunteer, and make art. I’m beginning to make some art, as my fourth of July American flag takes its place on the side of the house. It has many other colors besides red white and blue, which I’d hoped would make a point about multi-cultural diversity, but they are too subtle. You have to go right up to the thing to see the greens, golds and purples. That’s okay. It was a first effort. It is a reassuringly familiar American Flag for the conservative county I live in. It was Valerie’s idea. She said, you know what the cowboys would love? A crocheted American flag. And so it is.

The sun will be multi-colored.

The outside of the house will begin to look like the inside: colorful and full of art.

I am an artist.

I recently stayed in a house that had a small wooden sign in it that said: I can be anything, but I can’t do everything.

I will be an artist. And a therapist. I will be a volunteer in small ways, like when I go to Lakeview or Bend, I can tell my neighbors that I’m there, so I can pick up a prescription or a rotisserie chicken, or hair dye. I will try to treat my pancreas better, and maybe ride my tricycle around town.

I will try to buy less yarn. Hmf. I call bullshit. Yoda said, there is no try, there is only do. So, I guess that means, I will stop buying yarn. Until… the kudzu has been trimmed and the native plants can breathe. Um, or maybe until we can walk through the living room without tripping over a bag or basket of yarn. That’s a fair goal. The more specific the goal, the easier to reach, right?

All the arts we practice are apprenticeship. The big art is our life. M.C.Richards

[jl1]

#knitting crochet art artist

0 notes