I bought a little spinning wheel. It’s about the size of an SLR camera and weighs a fraction as much. It came from a Kickstarter campaign I backed. I paid about $50 and like my other favourite Kickstarter reward, it
Temari
I’d never heard of them until a couple of weeks ago when a booklet of college extension courses and workshops showed up and mentioned a weekend class teaching this “beautiful Japanese art of decorative embroidered thread balls.” I was curious, so
Shibori
Inspired by the introduction to shibori that Fiona got at her homeschoolers’ art class, I began sewing and tying a couple of dozen squares of cotton fabric to do my own experiment with the technique. I started this in July
Fall bits
Where has October gone? Where has my blogging mojo gone? My additional teaching load, and all the juggling of travel and activities by Noah and Sophie, is taking a toll. Fall was amazing until the rain finally caught up with
Shibori
I’ve decided that the time has come to make a quilt. I made quilts for each of my children, around the time they graduated to big beds of their own. Erin got my first quilt ever: appliquéd jungle animals in
Festivus Owls
Fiona’s sick. Getting better today, but we decided we needed to bail on running the taxi service for all those teenagers going to Corazón rehearsal in Nelson. Instead we had an unexpected day at home together. And thanks to my
Brioche knitting
Simple two-colour brioche (top) and Hosta leaf pattern (bottom) I had never heard of brioche knitting, but the first couple of examples I saw looked so nifty that I had to figure it out. I started trying to learn while
Tie-dye, family reunion edition
Noah’s, Evie’s and my shirts. The sunshine and clear skies have been made to order for our reunion time. Sophie risked using a “dangerous colour combination” on her shirt: dark green, purple and yellow. It looked like a moldy cabbage
Part way to a squillion
Many of the SVI students and parents took up knitting squares for the Knit-a-Squillion project. We ended up with a few dozen, some still needing completion. We’ll continue to work away at this into the fall and then arrange to
Needle bouquet
This makes me happy.
Knit a squillion
We found out about the Knit-a-squillion challenge yesterday and Sophie, Fiona and I are nearing completion of our first three squares. The challenge is to contribute knitted or crocheted 8″ (-ish) squares to as aid for AIDS orphans in South
The dress II
Sophie has set to work with the fabric for her dress. After tracing pattern pieces the other afternoon she had to wait for me to get out of town and purchase thread. Fortunately Erin’s departure for Calgary was well-timed, the
Genesis of a cardinal
Some readers were interested in more details about how we’re making these birds. We’re less than a week into this experiment with needle felting and are totally self-taught, but for what it’s worth, here’s how we’re doing it. We start
More avian friends
Today’s birdies are a red-breasted nuthatch, more than a little on the obese side, and a tree swallow. We didn’t have these colours available to us in wool roving, so we dissected several bits of multicoloured wool yarn to get
Felted birds
Sophie and I have been needle-felting today. We decided these guys might make nice Christmas tree decorations for next year. We still need to buy some little beads or bead-end push pins for eyes, and some pipe cleaners for