I received a Blog Award.

I have received my very first blog award from Shimmermeblue. You should totally check out her blog!



Here are the rules

List 7 things that you love and then pass the award on to 7 people...tagging them and letting them know they won! You can copy the picture of the award and put it on your sideboard letting the whole wide world know you are KReATIV!

7 Things I love

1. I love family, including both the beeba's, and their daddy, who when he isn't busy playing computer games, is a wonderful husband and father.

2. I love Raising awareness. Did you know how many chemicals, some poisonous and highly carcinogenic, are in that disposable diaper you just put on your baby? Read up on it, you might never want to touch a disposable again.

3. I love making things that are both functional and Art. Diapers that make mommies and babies alike smile when the put them on. Training pants no child wants to pee in. Yarns that can be knit into the cutest articles of clothing.

4. I love spring days, when its warm enough to just grab a sweater for the kids and go out, walking, playing in the yard, anywhere but in the house.

5. I love Spinning and dyeing yarn. Such a great excercise both in creativity and in serendipity. Learning that it doesn't matter always if it is what I had in my mind, but that it is beautiful on its own volition.

6. I love waking up in the morning with the sun Shining on me, and everyone else in the house still sleeping. Sneaking away for a moment of quiet before the storm of the day.

7. Last on the list, I love every person who reads my blog, whether you have read it once or every day, I love that you have. Because without you, why write it at all?

My 7 nominees are:

Smariek

Ironneedles

Miscyours

Photo.knit.dog

Knitsomniac

BerlinBetty

TheLumpySweater

Check them out sometime!

The Art of the Rolag

As a newcomer to the fiber world, I have done my share of research. I read about worsted spinning and woolen, semi-worsted and semi-woolen. I taught myself longdraw/from the fold with top (not by any means the best way to learn long draw, by the way).

I saw the term rolag more than once. I even saw pictures of them in books and websites. But nowhere did I see them for sale. I knew I had to try them, to satisfy my need for knowledge.

My first rolags were a mess. they looked nothing like the pretty handfuls of fiber I'd seen in pictures. But they spun. and they spun well. So I tried again. They were better.

Rolags are the number 1 BEST way to spin a true woolen yarn. I hear some people say that they can only spin thread in woolen way. I'm not sure why that is, but for me, I don't find it true at all. On the contrary, I find myself able to spin much thicker singles when I spin woolen from rolags, and much faster, too.

so, for those who are now saying, "I wanna spin from a rolag, but how?" First you need your rolags to do it with. You can either buy them, if you can find them to buy (hint, I will have some stocked at the Grand Opening of the Indie Dyers Coop) or you can make them.

To make a rolag, step one:

Charge your hand carder. I used some washed but unprocessed perendale wool. you could also use that commercial top you can get everywhere. just draw the top across the carder gently, leaving fibers caught in the teeth. My Perendale was in lock formation, and I just laid the locks out on the carders side by side. they were so nice and clean I didn't even have to pick them. (Thank you Beth of WhorlingTides for this beautiful fiber.)

Step two:

Draw your second carder across the first, straightening the fibers, and blending them together. Be sure you don't mash the teeth together, you'll damage your carders. You just want to move the fiber from one card to the other. I do this till all my fiber is on my second card, (it helps to have a bit of an upward draw as you pull the card across) and then I switch cards. My Perendale is now all nice and fluffy on one side, but still somewhat in lock formation on the other.

So, to get the other side, you'll switch hands now. start brushing your now empty card across the full one. When you have emptied that, then you need to make a decision. Are your fibers neatly aligned? do they look nice and fluffy, top and bottom? Mine did, and I chose to say they were carded plenty, and move on to rolling them. If you think you need to go over them again, go ahead. I don't usually card more than 3 passes, though... more than that can start to cause broken fibers and tangles.


Step three, Rolling your rolag:

The final step in making your rolag is to roll it. there are lots of ways to do it. For me, I take my empty card, and using the flat back of it, I fold over all the fibers hanging off the edge of the full card onto themselves. then I start gently rolling them back, keeping them as even as possible. When they are all rolled, roll them right off the card. I even like to roll them across again, if I think they aren't staying neat enough.

Then, you will have these:

Yummy, aren't they?

Now, spinning rolags, another fun and rewarding activity, will have to come another day. I hope you enjoyed this journey of rolags, I know I did.

Can't Have Pretty Yarn Pics Every Day...

I just am not quite that prolific, lol. Today's Pics have a subject of a much cuter variety.

The weather was great today, sunny, and Warm (in the 50's, imagine that) and the Beebas and I went out for a nice long walk after lunch.

Beeba 1 was feeling photogenic, so here he is, in all his cuteness. He was very tired by the time we were done walking, which worked out fine, cause by then it was naptime.








And so with that, I leave you for today, to think of tommorrow, and what it might bring.

I had High Aspirations...

to write some really great blog posts. And they'll come. But, Alas, Life keeps me busy, as do my 2 Beebas. But here are a few more previews for the New Congo.

"Joshua" on Cascade:


And "On the Sweet Side", a handspun wool/mohair blend:

Oh Happy Day...

In the scheme of things, a new computer doesn't always seem like much. Unless you have been trying to justify the buying of it for over a year. and unless you finally chose and paid for it over 3 weeks past. and unless when you finally got it, it got its drivers confused and chose not to function (really, this did happen. We took it back to the guy who built it for us, as it turned out, the computer was looking for HIS mouse and keyboard, and decided not to recognize ours)

But, all is well today. The new computer is up and functioning. And I can tell you, I never realized just how slow my old computer was until I started to use this new one. Everything runs faster. From Word to Photoshop to my embroidery software, it all flies. (and even DH's games which he insists must be on the computer, lol... he's been waiting to play Neverwinter Nights 2 for literally years, but the old computers could not handle it.)

So now, instead of first waiting 5 minutes for the programs to load, only being able to load one file at a time and praying it will function properly, and just grimacing praying that the computer would stay turned on long enough to save (yup, it had the mysterious problem of random shut downs, lol), I can switch on the programs in a few seconds, load multiple images at a time to choose the best of them, and not worry about losing work. I am blessed in having this new computer to work at. Hurrah!