Fiber

New life

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A small portion of what I've been making involves using old clothes or scraps of fabric. Oddly it has nothing to do with my interest in preserving our resources or attempting to reduce waste which I try to do as much as possible in the other areas of my life, but more to do with not spending money for virgin fabric. Not to mention I get the biggest thrill out of trying to figure out what to do with an odd piece, and moreover the person on the receiving end gets a one-of-a-kind item. Win-win, really.

 A couple months ago I received this awesome pink with sequins wool tank from a friend. She had it for years, and it was going to the fiber recycler. Unfortunately it had a few moth holes, rendering it unwearable so I decided to take it and turn it into... something. Except I couldn't quite get inspired. Recently - 6 months after receiving the tank - I had a chance to use it! Stay tuned to find out for what... 


Rag Rug Pillows

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Today I was taking inventory of all the things I've made; stuff that I haven't taken pictures of, things that need to be sold, materials yet to be used. It's been a crazy day.

I have these 26" square pillows on the bed that don't have pillow cases yet. I picked up a couple of the rag rugs that haven't sold yet and threw them over the pillows and holy crap they look awesome! Maybe a new line of pillow cases??

Learning Phase

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I am a acid dyer, through and through. I like to dye fiber that comes from animals - protein based fiber - and this is because of the brilliance of color that can be achieved and consistancy of how things are absorbed. I have control. (Issue? What issue?) And I've been doing it for a while, so I get it. I know how the fiber will react.
Recently, I had this crazy idea to get into cellulose dyeing - essentially dyeing plant based fibers like cotton and linen and such. I wanted to make quiltied pillows and even went so far as to model some things in Illustrator:
I know. This is serious. 
Anyway, I dip dyed a bunch of squares in some procion mx dye. Yes, that is a chopstick suspending the squares in the liquid. I couldn't hold them, since it takes a full hour for everything to steep and set properly.
Then when they were all dry and ironed, I sewed them together. None of the squares line up quite right due to the fact that all that water soaking loosened the fibers, the edges frayed a bunch and my neat squares became rectangles. I didn't realize this until mid-sew. Awesome. 

The fabric was left over from a quiling project I had a while ago. The fibers are blue in one direction and pink in the other giving the fabric an overall purple look. Due to this fiber alignment, it can look more blue or more pink depending on how it's oriented. I purposely aligned the fabric in opposite directions so that the color change would come through in quadrants. The effect is pretty amazing:

Blue fibers run horizontally in the upper right and lower left quadrants.
Overall, a great learning project. Need a little more practice on my quilting and cotton dyeing skills!

Crochet Blitz!

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Over Thanksgiving, I asked my mother to teach me how to crochet. I stunk at it. I'm not trying to brag here, but I pick up things relatively easily and this was something that I just could not grasp. Literally. My fingers cramped up, I couldn't figure out which way was the proper way to "yarn over". Clockwise? Counterclockwise? How do I get it through the loop without catching everything else? What part of the stitch do I put it through?!? I don't get it!! And my lovely mother took some well deserved cracks at me and my lack of comprehension. We shared a lot of belly aching laughs. And that was the end of crocheting for me.

Except that I am a stupidly determined person, and when I'm terrible at something it makes me want to learn it more. (Groan. I know. Maybe someone should have told me I would be a terrible investment banker.) Anyway, I sat down with my Teach Yourself Visually book - note: I do not get anything for endorsing these books, they're just great, um, visually - and single crocheted my heart out. Then double crocheted and before long, I had a few example swatches.

It was as if a light had switched on - I just "got it". Before long, I had made a few snowflake ornaments for our non-existant tree.

Okay, not a few. More like a gagillion.

And now I understand why people like this so much. Yes, it is quick (more so than knitting?) but it is much easier to fix mistakes not to mention easy to hide mistakes.

The problem I'm having is how to bring it into the 21st century. I'm not really interested in making hats or tea cozies and all the patterns I've been finding look dated in a not-so-cool way.

Amazon, wha?

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I'm a little obsessed with my Kindle. It has turned me into a voracious reader. Or at least more so than before. My boyfriend likes to joke about how he didn't think I read at all before I got my Kindle.

Either way, I'm excited about the introduction to their new Lending Library. Why, it was only just a month or so ago when the NYPL added Kindle to their list of approved lending/reading devices which turned mine and everyone else's world upside down as could be seen from the amazingly long wait lists. But the addition of this just makes me giddy. Granted you need a prime membership, but I'm pretty sure between my boyfriend and I we either have one or should have one the way we order from Amazon.

With this new introduction, it makes me want to make Kindle cases! I've started a few prototypes, to get the feel for construction and materials....

And in the mean time, check out my Goodreads list!

Organize, organize, organize!!!

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Is there something in the air? Am I just too hyped up on coffee? Why do I feel the need to organize and clean everything in sight? So this weekend, along with the curtains and windows, I felt the need to organize and take stock of my yarn collection. Oy.

In my ridiculous stash of "random things that can't go into the trash" I found an address book. An address book. Do you even remember what one looks like? Yeah, me neither. So if you need a refresher, here it is:

I think I purchased this at a Hallmark store in the mid 90's - thus the ridiculous cover and color scheme.  And the fact it has seen it's way through college and, um like, 6 different moves is baffling to me. I might recover it with some sort of fabric, but we'll see how ambitious I'm feeling....
Anyway, I cut up white card stock that was laying around into quarters, made a quick hole template and punched holes through all of the sheets:

 Then I took all of my yarn, made 6 strand samples of it and wrote down everything I knew about the fiber onto the cards, including random notes like the EPI pre and post scour (yikes!). Since I really didn't want to precisely cut and affix sticky labels, I took the lazy way out and flipped the dividers over, labeling them with basic categories: cellulose, cellulose blends, proteins, protein blends, synthetics, etc:

When I was done, I thought, "When am I ever going to use this? Was I just procrastinating?" But over the course of the weekend, I've actually referenced it several times. And it's been quite helpful. Score one for me!