Yarn Swifty Gal this Fee-Fi(ber)-F.O. Friday

Watching the paint dry on the parts
of my hand-made yarn swift

So, while I was taking my little technological break, I accomplished something I've wanted to since the beginning of the year - I made my own yarn swift.

Now this might not seem like such a grand and glorious accomplishment - until you realize I made it without screws or traditional carpenter's tools of any kind - just craft-store materials, glue, paint, and my own two hands. It looks something like this:


The design for this awesome little
low-tech yarnie machine can be
found here. I love the Internet. 











Want to see it in action? Get a load of it as I wind Andrea's handspun on it:

Isn't the handspun just gorgeous? Can you believe that's the natural color of Midnight Magic? I might need to go and steal that animal from the barn.

Now, you might be wondering why I'm winding Andrea's handspun. Well, here's what she sent me in order to craft a shawl for her:

This is a whole lotta alpaca love

 I'm making her a Critron; I've already started it, and it's going to be some kind of siren song. It might need it's own zip code.

I hope you are as in love with your fiber as I am with mine at the moment. Definitely check out everybody's fiber art from Andrea's blog - and I'd love to hear what you would name Andrea's shawl. It needs a super name, so I'm all ears.

To 40 Revolutionary Years

The kitchen in my self-renovated apartment during my undergrad
days. I didn't quite realize at the time the magnitude of the wall art
bought for a yard sale song.

There's been much online chatter recently about a certain Huff Post blogger's feminist views, at least in my online reading circle.

I thought it appropriate, therefore, to pay homage to that bad-ass foodie rebel and artist, Alice Waters. Her inspired creation, Chez Panisse, is celebrating 40 years of ground-breaking food vision this weekend. For everyone in the U.S. (myself included) who enjoys the bounty of local farmers' markets, has at least a passing understanding of the concept of buying local, in-season produce, meat and fish, and who celebrates the harvest bounty each year, we really have Alice to thank.

What I didn't realize until I listened to Alice explain it herself, is the ground-breaking way she treats her employees at Chez Panisse.  I suppose it should have come as no surprise that her treatment of the humans with which she comes into contact would be as humane, as well ... as just so darn right as her approach to food.   

Thanks Alice, for taking a vision, a stove, and the local farmers you nurtured, and giving everyone (including The White House) inspiration to do better when it comes to the food we eat and the people who produce it.

Now that's a bad-ass feminist by anyone's definition.

Thrilled to be Back!

Well, some technical issues prevented me from joining in on all the fibery fun these past two weeks. Now that the technical glitches are (mostly) cleared up, I’m excited to be back amongst the Fiber Art living.

As some of you may have read over at Woollove functional fiber art, I sent Heather her swap gifts last week. (She sent me an awesome felted messenger bag which you can see here.) Of course I needed to send her some most excellent gifts, so I started with this shawl:

Made from a wonderful Syl Caron pattern, I got the opportunity to work with some of Andrea’s wonderful suri alpaca and soysilk fiber (you know, that Wonder Why Gal and her super cool alpacas!). This commercially-spun fiber is so soft yet sproingy. I loved the stitch texture and drape of this shawl so much that I didn’t even block it (a first for blocking magic-lover moi). I added some size 3 Japanese seed beads around the final edging row, and their aptly named colorway – Ceylon Cream Soda – was just the right touch, if I do say so myself. Chopstick shawl pin was optional, but included to complete the shawl package.

Additionally, I also knew I wanted to paint something for Heather. Given her love of neutral palettes, it was a fun challenge for me to create something with that particular limitation. With black, white, gray and some greeny-blues, here is the final product:

Ok, not quite the best photo, but ...

This 11 x 14 sized mixed media canvas allowed me to utilize several of my artistic loves – painting, mixed media, and crochet. In fact, the hints of flowers on the upper portion of the canvas (next to and underneath the tulip) were created using a few of my personally designed cotton thread crochet motifs that were pressed into inkpads and then stamped onto the canvas. They created a very delicate, almost ethereal pattern that was perfect for this work.

See the crocheted motifs stamped on
the side and bottom of the tulip.

Can you tell I was just a little excited about giving these gifts to Heather?

Can you also tell that I’m thrilled to be back with all of you this Friday?

Definitely check back with Andrea's blog, and see what everyone else is so excited about this Fiber Arts Friday!