The 'adventure' begins

Today, the crazy super-crafting officially starts. It's less than two weeks now until the Homespun Yarn Party:



Yesterday was probably my last day off until then...we bought equipment to bottle our homebrewed beer and went to a local thrift shop that has an excellent pottery & book selection. We bought a bunch of books & records, plus a pretty brown earthenware crock:



And when we were checking out, a lady who was standing nearby asked what we were going to use the crock for. I was kind of nervous, because the last time we bought a crock at this same thrift store, the lady at the checkout was like, "Do you KNOW what this IS?!" and gave us a short lecture about how it was this rare brand of vintage crock and we shouldn't profane it by actually using it to store utensils in or anything crazy like that. L and I are very practical people, and I don't ever buy things for 'decor', I buy things that I'm actually going to use, and we use crocks to make fermented foods like sauerkraut and kimchi. So after a brief terrified pause, I told her I was going to use it to make sauerkraut, and to my relief she was delighted and started telling me how her mother used to make sauerkraut in giant crocks when she was growing up, and they used to have to climb into the crock and mash the cabbage with their feet! She was german, and we ended up talking to her for like 20 minutes about how when she moved to the US she was appalled at the food selection, especially the bread and the beer, so she had to learn to make her own. She was super animated and fun, and I wish I had gotten her contact info or invited her to come make sauerkraut with us!

Today, I'm starting work on dyeing my first batch of naturally dyed handspun yarn for the show. Here is the pile of mordanted skeins I'll be dyeing:



The bottom skeins are yellowy from the mordant I used on them - I'm experimenting with using plant-based mordants rather than the toxic metals usually used. Even though I won't be listing these skeins for sale on etsy unless there are any left over from the show, I'll be taking 'after' pictures of the dyed yarns to show you all. Wish me luck - natural dyeing is always an adventure (at least for me!).

Spinnin'

It's taken me a while, but I feel like I'm finally back in the swing of things. All my December custom orders are being packed up & shipped out, and today I pulled my wheel out into the living room and worked on spinning up a big basket of fiber while listening to oldies on the radio:



My plans right now are to work on a new batch of custom orders, while still trying to list yarns in the etsy shop regularly as well as saving them up for a show in mid-March. I may have found a new local source for wool, so if that works out I'm going to test out offering batts for sale as well!

I'm also working on a line of naturally-dyed yarns, dyed and mordanted with plants...I'm hoping to debut them at the show in March, and then list them on etsy after that. I'm excited about the warmer weather and the new year ahead!

Home again home again

I didn't mean to almost completely shut down my etsy shop for a month, but I ended up having a real vacation because of computer troubles while I was away visiting family. But I did still spin up lots of singles, so starting sometime this weekend I'm going to be re-opening my etsy shop and listing a big pile of yarn. Here's a preview - this is a haphazard yarnpile currently waiting to be individually photographed:



The rest of the yarns are still in various stages of drying. I have enough yarns to list consistently every day for at least a week, plus a big initial update. Yay! I'll be glad to finally have a non-empty shop again. And I'll be contacting people about their custom orders - most are either finished or nearly finished, but I have a lot of custom orders so it'll take me a while to organize & photograph them.

Even though I have a ton of stuff to do, it's good to be back!

Holiday Schedule

First off, I wanted to announce my next craft show:



It's going to be a small, fun show, the last one I'm planning on doing for a few months! I won't be listing very much in my etsy shop until the show is over. Right after the show, I'm going to be leaving to visit family in WI for about a month. I'll be taking my yarns & a bunch of fiber with me, so I'll still have my shop open. Since I only have a Ashford Traditional with smallish bobbins up there, I'm planning on spinning up TONS of singles for patchwork yarns, and then when I get back to my Lendrum I'll ply them all. So sometime in early to mid-january, I plan on unleashing a barrage of patchwork yarns (both wooly and vegan) into my etsy shop. And I'm making an effort to come up with new colorways! I've been getting lots and lots of custom patchwork requests, but I don't have the time to spin them all before my show, so right now what I'm telling people is that if you have a specific patchwork colorway in mind, you can let me know and if I end up working it into my spinning schedule, I'll convo or email you to give you first dibs on the yarn before I list it. That's the best I can do for now - my custom patchwork yarn listing won't be going back up in the shop until mid-January at the earliest.

I'm really looking forward to seeing friends & family & spinning somewhere other than my tiny apartment, but I have a mountain of work to do before that happens, so I'm off to multitask like crazy in the hopes of getting lots done today!

Best cake ever!

It's been a while, eh, folks? This past weekend was Lucius' birthday, so I baked him a nice homemade cake. A few days beforehand, I asked him what kind of cake he wanted:

L: A pumpkin cake.
Me: What's that?
L: I dunno.

Haha, so I googled it, and of course such a thing does exist! And I just roasted, mashed, and froze a bunch of locally grown pumpkin a few weekends ago, so this was a good excuse to cook with some of it. I cobbled together a recipe and it actually turned out to be the best cake I've ever had, so I thought I'd share it with you all. Now, I avoid refined sugar like the plague, so this might not be what most people think of when they think of 'cake', but I found it to be plenty sweet. And also the measurements are approximate because I'm not very strict about measuring and I tend to just wing it ;)

PUMPKIN CAKE

NOTE: this made TWO 9" round cakes.

3 organic eggs
1 stick organic butter
2 c pumpkin puree
dash of vanilla extract
2 1/2 c whole wheat flour
1/4 c molasses
chunk of evaporated cane juice, dissolved in a small amount of water (you can substitute honey or sugar to taste)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp each cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and allspice
1/4 tsp sea salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix butter, eggs, pumpkin, vanilla, molasses, and cane juice or sugar. In a separate bowl, sift flour, baking soda, spices, and salt, then mix into wet ingredients. Pour into 9" round cake pans and bake for one hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

ICING:
-organic cream cheese (you'll probably need at least 1 package per cake, so get 2 if you're making the full recipe) or homemade yogurt cheese
-honey

Blend cream cheese with honey to taste, chill and then ice cake. I like to use yogurt cheese - to make it, take a quart of organic yogurt and place in a muslin-lined strainer inside another pot and let drain for about 8 hours or until the yogurt is about the consistency of cream cheese. You can save the whey that drains off and use it for cooking (Nourishing Traditions, the cookbook I use the most, calls for whey a lot for soaking beans and lacto-fermenting vegetables).

Mmm. This cake came out perfect, moist and springy, and the cream cheese honey icing was the perfect compliment to the pumpkin.

On the fiber front: I'm spinning my way slowly but surely through custom orders, and will be listing yarns very soon! Most likely there will be a shop update early next week. I'm going to spin spin spin all this month because I'm taking a much-needed month vacation to visit family in December.

Handspun scarves = love

So, I haven't done any 'customer appreciation' type posts in a long while, but I was inspired to do one by the lovely handspun scarves made from my yarns by Molly and Amber, two of my favorite crafters. Here are the yarns and what these two lovely ladies made from them - you can click on any of the scarf pictures to be taken to its etsy listing.

These yarns:





Became this scarf, crocheted by Amber:



(The leafies!! How I love them...)

This yarn:



Became this scarf, knit by Molly:



These yarns:





Became part of this scarf, crocheted by Amber:



This yarn:



Became this scarf, knit by Molly:



(I love the colors & textures in this one! It's got organic cotton, bamboo, tencel, carbonized bamboo/"black diamond", and sparkle)

This yarn:



Became part of this scarf, crocheted by Amber:



This yarn:



Became this scarf, knit by Molly:



I love the drapey elegance of Molly's scarves, and the thick snugglyness + awesome yarn-combining in Amber's scarves. I especially like the handspun tussah silk in the last scarf of hers (spun by snowberrylime. There's also some knittydirtygirl yarn in that one.

These two have me craving some handspun scarves! I have a feeling there'll be some scarf-making in my near future. Make sure to check out both of their etsy shops for tons more amazing handspun & handknit goodies (Molly) and gorgeous felted headbands (Amber).

A quick photo credit - the pictures of Molly's scarves were done by Dorean Photography.

Crafty Bastards fall '08

I did it! Whew, it feels so good to have all that stress and crazy craftin' over with. I managed to spin more yarn than I brought last time, and I think I improved my booth. I sold more too ;) I brought home about 4 skeins, 4 batts, and a few knits. I didn't get as many pictures as I hoped, since I was so busy at the fair...I really wanted to take picture of my corespun kid mohair yarns, but I didn't manage to get any and they all sold. I hung up a sort of "yarn curtain" of corespun skeins along one side of my booth, which I thought showed the yarns off nicely - plus it attracted more people, since they stopped to pet the enticingly fuzzy yarns. Here are the few pictures I managed to snap of my wares:









I also had pick-your-own felty baubles again, and I have a lot left over, which makes me happy! So I'll probably be spinning up some bauble-y yarns in the near future.

Some of the yarns that didn't sell surprised me, cause I thought they were good ones! I just finished listing them in my etsy shop, so you can see more pics there. It feels good to have more than one thing listed on etsy again!



I also came home with a few other goodies - handdyed falkland wool sock yarn from Woolarina for teaching Lucius how to knit socks, and about 6 bars of soap. I picked out the sock yarn, Lucius is the one who went crazy with the soap. It's all really nice stuff, from Oliba and Biggs & Featherbelle. The only thing I'm sad about is that I missed checking out the awesome wooly hats at Rocks & Salt. I really wanted to get myself a hat from them, but the one time I managed to get away from my booth for a moment, their booth was completely full and I didn't have time to wait.

I'm back to spinning for etsy now, so I should be updating regularly again! Hurray! Did you miss me? I missed you.

EDIT: I can't believe I almost forgot! There was a huge B-boy battle at Crafty Bastards, right by my booth. Lucius sat and watched it for 2 hours! The guy in the rainbow shirt in the link above was his favorite.