First Day at the Beach=First Sunburn of the Season

Well, I am having a wonderful weekend so far.  How bout you?  Today is a great day to live in Florida: It's 90 degrees and beautifully sunny with just enough wind to make sitting outside a good time.  So, Thomas and I spent our morning at the beach (we didn't really get in the water because it was freezing), and what would a trip to the beach be without a little sunburn?  Well, for me, it would be a miracle.  So here I am, March 3rd, and I have semi-painful sunburn from an hour and a half at the beach.  Yeah.  But, sunburn and all, it was a wonderful time, and I am so blessed to live in Florida with a husband who will do just about anything to make me happy!  Then, we went to our favorite hot dog stand for lunch.  Yummy!  (Oh yeah, and I forgot to take my camera to the beach, so I have no photos of our first real day at the beach this year... fail.)

AND... tomorrow, we are semi-officially joining the church we've been going to since we moved here, so I get to stand up in front of the whole church to be introduced with a bright red sunburn... awesome.

And... last night, I spent the evening spinning the scrumptious fiber that my hubby got me for Christmas.  So, my spindle went from looking like this...

 To this...

Yes, I realize that it does not look like much difference, but there is surprisingly a lot of yarn on there.  I just wish I could tell how much.  I keep spinning and spinning and spinning and I feel like there's never anymore yarn on the spindle.  However, that is good, because it means that apparently the spindle holds a ton of yarn.  So, there are pros and cons.

Also, I'm hoping to start a new weaving project tonight or tomorrow (for real this time), so hopefully you'll see a pic or two of that in the next five years!  ;)

Happy Cat Saturday!!!

Pshaw... Who really needs to breathe?

Busy, busy, busy... And not the good kind of busy either.  I'm busy with junk... work... boo...

Anyway, here's another of my Christmas presents!  Can you tell what it is???

It's a double heddle kit for my loom!  So now I can do double-weave stuff... Honestly, I have no idea how you do anything related to double-weave, but I've got a great book, and hopefully, I'll have some time in the next 50 years to figure it out!

Also, here's a little update!

A teensy bit of yarn on the spindle!  The other 95% of the roving is mounded up on my craft table waiting for me to pay it a little bit of attention... fat chance this week!

Anyway, not much else crafty going on at my house.  I would LOVE to get a sampler woven... I've got it all patterned out for the different designs I want to try, but I keep putting off warping it hoping that it will magically warp itself!  Lol.  Anyway... back to work!

Inspiration... A Curse Sometimes

 Here is one of the highlights of my weekends.  Along with spending unlimited quantities of time with my husband, baking breakfast before church every Sunday, and sleeping in, I absolutely love the quiet afternoons when the sun shines in the windows illuminating the room with the pure light that can only come from one source.  However... the light in my brain is not so peaceful.  :)

Right now, I feel like my inspiration is a curse.  I have so many projects on my mind, and so little time on my hands.  Now that Christmas break is over, its back to my normal, crazy schedule.  But, I still haven't gotten to enjoy most of my Christmas gifts.  So, what's a girl to do?  I know that the situation is usually reversed with too much time, and not enough inspiration and materials, but the opposite is almost just as bad.  I have all these great ideas bouncing around and a plethora of materials to use, but no time!  So, as I am greatly enjoying this three day weekend, I'm trying to get my thoughts in order.  Maybe I will share some of my ideas with you in the near future, but today, I have pictures of some of the aforementioned Christmas gifts!!!

 

Behold, my brand new Turkish Drop Spindle!!!  I didn't buy a Turkish spindle for my first one mostly because I really had no idea what they actually were.  But now that I know what they are and have played around with mine, I am super excited!  The two things that I haven't really liked about the spinning process is that my spindle doesn't hold very much yarn and that I have to unwind it into a skein or something when I'm done.  And this spindle will solve both of those problems!!!  I've experimented with it a little by spinning two yarns together (I wanted to get the hang of it a little before I tried some roving.), but now I'm really excited to start spinning one of my other Christmas gifts!

 Voila, next gift!!!  This is some gorgeous electric blue roving that my husband picked out ALL BY HIMSELF for me!  Isn't he amazing?!  It's super soft, and I can't wait to see what it looks like as yarn!

And lastly for today, this is some beautiful roving that my parents-in-law got me!  So, I have some great projects to start spinning... so little time!  :(

Happy long weekend!

My First Treasury

Hello blog world!  Just wanted to drop by and let you all know that I created my first Etsy treasury tonight!!!  Yay!  And, for those of you who may not be Etsians, a treasury is a collection of items that is made, and it can have a theme or not.  It's just a way to group beautiful items that you like for any reason.  So, for any of you who read the blog regularly or who know me personally, you will not be surprised that my treasury is summer themed!  So, head on over to Etsy and check out "Summer Blues"!  I hope you like it!

AND.....  Yesterday, my mom and I went shopping (I LOVE shopping with my mom), and we went to two wonderful yarn stores in St. Louis.  First stop was Kirkwood Knittery, where the women were very helpful and friendly, and the selection was amazing!  Here's what I bought:

These are some beautifully colored, high quality yarns from Habu Textiles.  I can not wait to start weaving with them!  Second stop was Knit and Caboodle on historic Main St. in St. Charles.  They had an amazing selection of yarns of all sizes and colors.  I bought some beautiful roving there, but of course, I forgot to take a picture of it before I spun it up!  So, it's hanging up to dry right now, and I will blog about it tomorrow or Monday!

So, I'm just hanging out, being boring on yet another Saturday night!  Now, I think I will go play some "Every Word" on my Kindle.  I've got a pretty awesome game going right now!  Random Note:  I went to Red Robin for dinner tonight with my husband and in-laws, and I had the most delicious chicken caesar wrap I have ever eaten!  It was incredible!  I want to eat it all over again.  Lol.

Nighty night!

New on Etsy and Other Random Thoughts

Hey all!  Just listed this new scarf on Etsy.  Run on over to my shop and check it out!

Hot Pink Skinny Infinity Scarf

In other news, I started my project with my purple hand-spun yarn!  Yay!  I still haven't decided what I'm going to use for the weft yet, because I really want to warp to be the focus, but I'll get there.  Oh, and I forgot to mention that I stayed up until midnight last night (which is really, REALLY late for me) to finish the yarn, just because I HAD to know how many yards I got.  And the total is... 28 yards!!!  Yaaaaayyyy!  So, I planned this new project around using it!  Here's a pic:

Well, I'm leaving for the night.  But, before I go, head on over to my facebook page and check it out.  (It's still a little boring, I know, but I'm working on it.)  "Like" it if you like what you see!  Project31 Fiber Arts on Facebook

Ok, well, I'm going to go eat some willy worm.  (Not an insect, its a family dessert recipe involving homemade pie dough, lots of butter, lots of sugar, and lots of cinnamon.  Can you say YUM?!)

Random note of the day:  Last night, I had a dream about Pirates of the Caribbean (yes, the movie).  Only it wasn't a real part of one of the movies, it was made up... and I woke up this morning with the piratey song that they sing at the beginning of the third movie stuck in my head.  And of course, I only know like two lines, so I have been singing/humming/whistling/thinking those lines ALL DAY LONG!  Weirdo!

Purple Passion

Woohoo!  I have had a great night tonight!!!  The hubby and I had a good afternoon and dinner, then I spent the rest of the night finishing up a new scarf (pics to come tomorrow, it's hanging up to dry right now) and spinning the beautiful purple roving that I got with my spinning kit.

But, first of all, to follow up from last night's post, here is a photo of my very first hand spun skein of yarn!

I know, soooo impressive, right?  Just kidding.  It's super tiny, too small to weave anything with, but I'm proud of it nonetheless!  The purple, however... I am IN LOVE with!  Here's a pic of that all wound on the spindle.

Doesn't it look so shiny and pretty?!  It's part merino and part silk, so I'm sure I'm going to love it!  I can't wait to unwind it off the spindle to see how many yards I got.  Also, it definitely turned into a thick/thin yarn because it's probably going to take me a while to figure out how to get the roving really smooth and even.  But this stuff was a dream to work with.  I seriously want more!!!

Well, that's all for tonight.  I've got to figure out what new project I'm going to start tomorrow and play with the cat some more.  She gets really bossy and loud when she doesn't get played with at night.  Silly girl.

Random note of the day:  She has this spot where she sits looking out the window, and sometimes when I walk into the room she swivels her head around.  And when she does that, she looks just like a skein of coal black yarn with a head on top.  But, every time I try to get a picture of her like that, she moves before the camera is ready.  No fear though, someday I will get a photo and post it on here for all of you to marvel at.  Lol.  (I think it's bed time, i"m getting a little more loony than usual!)

There's a First Time for Everything

As promised, my spinning kit arrived today!!!!!  When I got home from work, it was sitting on the porch!  Yay!!!  So the kit came with my top whorl drop spindle, great instructions, and these two beautiful sets of roving!  Once again, the kit was from La Tea Da Designs on Etsy.  So if you are interested in learning how to spin, need roving or beautiful yarns, or anything, go check out her shop.  She's got a lot of other great items available too!  The service was great, and the shipping was unbelievably fast!

So, of course, I spun up the first (off white) set of roving tonight!  And it was awesome!!!  Here's a picture walk through of everything I did!

So, you spin the roving onto the spindle by twisting and dropping the spindle so it spins really fast, then you feed to roving in to make sure that the yarn winds evenly.  The above photo is in the middle of the process.

This photo is of the whole thing of roving spun onto the spindle.  Yay!  I did it!

Next you have to unwind it into a loop to wash it and eventually make it into a skein.  So, this is my makeshift method for unwinding things (as you've seen before if you read on a regular basis).

And then, after I washed it (soaked it really), I hung it up to dry, and I should be able to make it into a skein tomorrow!  It was awesome!  I'm so excited to try the purple!  (Did you notice that I saved the best color for last?!)

Among my other tasks tonight were making gooey butter cookies (my husband's favorite) and eating these delicious raspberries!  Is there anything better than this color?!  I think not.

Well, I would like to get a little weaving done tonight, so here's goodbye.

Random:  When I got the spindle out of it's packaging, Lo went nuts!  She just could not get enough of that thing!  I really think she would have licked it and sniffed all night long if I would have let her near it.  On the other hand, she didn't find the roving too interesting which surprised me since cats seem to like fuzzy things...

Spinning Excitement

Ok, so I have to leave for work like now.  But I just checked the tracking information on my spinning kit and... it's supposed to be delivered TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I literally just got out of my chair, jumped up and down, and did one of those silent scream things (because my hubby is still sleeping).  I'm so excited!  I just had to share this overwhelmingly awesome news with all of you!  Lol.  I'm crazy, I know.

I'm pretty sure that whole thing was random enough to make an ending random note unnecessary.  :)