Progress!

I feel like I have made real progress in the last couple of days, which is more than I can say for Arizona. I was happy for the distraction this past weekend since Friday was so abysmal.

I mentioned that my vision for my spare bedroom was to create a fiber room in this blog post. I have finally done it! Granted, it's a small space, but it's just right for me. Sam and I made a jaunt out to Ikea for an Expedit workstation. This solution has worked even better than we had anticipated. We also bought a kitchen cart, which I absolutely love! Our shopping excursion took Sam and I less than an hour. Impressive, to say the least.

Here are pictures of the "construction" underway:



We were up to our knees in it!


Ben even got into the act!



Ben put my kitchen cart together all by himself, he is so awesome!



So here's an official tour. You walk in and immediately you notice my new-to-me wheel - my Suzie! I have sort of renamed my wheel Suzanne, since she is such a lady.



I stood on the bed (which I would like to get rid of to make way for a bigger loom someday) and took this picture. Hanging over the cart is a photo of a woman winding a skein from a niddy noddy, which seems a little counter productive. Sam bought the picture for me in an antique shop. It was the "finishing touch" on my fiber room and I love it!



I need to hang my warping board up... maybe next weekend.


Notice Stephen Colbert is on TV. I have dish network, DVR and a DVD player in my fiber room! Big Pimpin'!




MacSally (my Macomber loom) came home with me tonight (from TYF) and I got half way through threading her.


There is truly a place for everything now. Thanks to Sam and Ben for all of their help! I am so happy!

It's already April?!?

I can't believe that I haven't posted in April! So what the heck am I up to if I'm not blogging?

I finished my weaving. Here it is on the loom, just before I tied it off.

I also managed to find time to sew the edges once it came off the loom. I tried to overcome my fears and "just do it". It took me a little bit of coaxing and time to realize that I was not going to break anything. The machine handled the woven fabric surprisingly well.

Why am I doing this? I wanted to be able to secure the ends of the fabric and cut. It's more of an experiment than anything. My next step is to find some fabric that coordinates and create a clutch zipper bag. You will notice the two fabrics in the picture above are similar, but different. I used the same warp yarn, but ran out of my handspun (picture on the right) and went to a commercial yarn. The pattern that I used with the commercial yarn is a standard twill and with the handspun I went crazy with the pattern, practicing different treadling options. I really like that the two fabrics ended up similar, but different. Then, I fulled my fabric. I washed it in a water bath with Eucalan - I love this stuff, got it at TYF. Finally, I hung to dry.

With all this weaving, I have to admit that I really missed spinning. Good thing we had planned a Spin Out on April 11th at Kiwanis Park! We had a great showing and even met a few new fiber friends! I started an "Arizona Spinners" group on Ravelry and that's primarily how we got out the word about the Spin Out, which can also be called a Spin In. Spinners, knitters, dogs and husbands all turned out for the fun!

Fiber Friends:

Husband & Husband/Son Friends:

Four-legged Friends:

April is almost over and (as normal) I've over-committed myself for the remainder of the month. I am helping out a local theatre company with the laundering of their costumes. And it's bloody! Check out Stray Cat Theatre's 12th Night of the Living Dead. Because there is so much staining from the various elements used, I've rediscovered my love. It's in the form a yellow bar and it's called Naptha. Every fiber girl should have one on hand. It's miracle soap!

We'll see if I can work in one more blog before April 2010 comes and goes...