Fiber in the Hands of an Angry Spinner

Want to get away from the hustle and bustle of Black Friday?
Join us for Black Fiberday, a mellow day of creative work, learning to needlefelt.
Make Handmade, Local Gifts, Custom Created by: You!

Click here for the printable .pdf poster

Where? Argonne Library
When? 25 November 2011
Time? 10am – 2pm
Who? Anyone, ages serious 5 years – playful adults

Here’s how it works:

Every hour, on the hour, Jen will demonstrate how to needle felt.

1) Get a fresh needle
(practice safe needle-felting — don’t share needles!)
2) Make 2D creations
(great for making pins or embellishments).

or

3) Add another dimension with 3D ornaments
(pictured here).

RSVP to: Jen@angryspinner.com

I’ll be at the First Annual Spokane Renaissance Fair this weekend (today and tomorrow) at the Cowgirl Co-Op in Greenbluff. Come out and see me (and jousting!).

Click for directions and entrance information

We might just be rounding the corner on this project . . . the sheathing is close to done, and we’ll start installing windows soon.

At this time of year, when Spokane gets even a little smattering of rain, it’s like the whole natural world breathes a sigh of relief. The leaves stretch out, there’s a lichen hanging from trees that goes from a sad, sooty black to a startling lime green, and everything suddenly looks lush and verdant.

It’s not, however, that great a thing for building. We shoved a bunch of stuff under tarps:

But what do you do with a dome? Farmerteen and I spent a hot and dusty afternoon yesterday dragging two hundred pounds of plastic sheeting back onto the dome, and rolling scaffolding and ladders around to get them out of the way and then to hold the sheets down, but it looked like we’d just end up pooling a lot of water in the folds on the not-quite-but-fairly-level deck.

The Renaissance Guy came home with a big idea: put the whole dome under a tarp . . . but what kind of tarp do you get for a 45′ diameter 5/8 ball? (Answer: a very large one). But we know, from tarping the hay, that really heavy-duty tarps can be too heavy to do anything but hold them. So he arrives with a 40 x 60′ tarp and dozens of bungee cords.

I’d like to say this went perfectly smoothly, like all our projects do. (There’s about 100 lies in that one sentence–I am so full of it, I’m attracting flies). But we did manage to get it up (dropping it from the manlift over top, using guy lines to pull it over, with the help of the O-Parents and a light breeze). I didn’t get a picture last night (though I think Oma did — I might rough her up for hers –) but here’s one from this morning, through the haze on my windshield.

and one I took for the Renaissance Guy from underneath, of the puddles that we got (which are still not the whole thing soaking and drenching the crawl space):

Ourgra took a bunch of pics of things in the booth . . .
The amulet bags:

The “ArtFest2010 Hat” which was knit from the yarn I spun during my spinning demonstration last year:

The saccettos:

The hats:

The owl bags (and the Jayne Hat):

(The guy who got the Jayne Hat is exactly the guy I knit it for: he spotted it from across the aisle, and zeroed right in on it. He knew exactly what it was, and it had his name on it. I’m not sure which of us was more delighted in the moment).
And this year’s new line of mohair blankets:

It’s one week until ArtFest, and things are crazy at the house of the Angry Spinner.

The castle of the loom is piled with scraps:

There’s a TENT in the middle of the living room, that’s been turned into a sweat shop:

And I’m warping MOHAIR. Mohair, people:

But the mohair is making BEAUTIFUL brushed shawls and throws:

Come see me at ArtFest next weekend (June 3, 4, 5) in booth N36 in the NW corner of Coeur’d Alene Park in Browne’s Addition, Spokane, WA.

To finish the end of a woven piece (and using the tail if possible), work from right to left, first inserting your needle two warp threads and 2-3 weft pics into the cloth. (The number of warp threads and pics will vary, based on the size of your threads and cloth. Pictured here is 14 Ply Wool Pack in a 5dpi reed.

Take the needle back to the right, under the first two warp threads, catching the “loop”

Pull snugly, and insert needle again on the diagonal, under the next two warp threads and next 2-3 weft pics

Take the needle behind the second two warp threads, again catching the “loop” of the tail

Pull snugly, and repeat: diagonally under the next two warp threads, and 2-3 weft pics

Pull snugly, weave under the same two warp threads, and catch the loop . . . then repeat across the whole width

When you meet me in a fiber circle, and you ask me a question whose answer would best be answered with a swatch (be it a knitted or a woven swatch), I will most likely answer that you should swatch.
(This is pretty much any question related to changing the pattern, yarn, needle size, or gauge, making up a pattern, changing the sett, or felting). My consistent, faithful, unwavering commitment to recommending swatches has earned me, in certain circles, the dubious moniker: “The Swatch-Nazi.”*

Swatching is particularly important when you’re wet-felting, so that you can ascertain if the piece will felt dimensionally (that is, it will retain its shape, but decrease in size), or will draw in more than shrink (that is, become a long, thin rectangle), or will shrink more than draw in (become a short, fat rectangle).

For the Owl Bag project, I made a small swatch.

This swatch is wildly too small. When I felted it, it shrank more than it drew in (short, fat rectangle). As I didn’t realize that this was an issue, I based my initial numbers on the swatch’s shrinkage, and ended up with a much longer, thinner owl bag than I had planned on.

Enter the full-sized swatch. While you don’t have to weave (or knit, or crochet) an entire project to make a “full sized” swatch, it is considerably easier and consumes far less yarn to make a “full sized” swatch than it is to make a mini swatch, be wrong, make the project, make a full-sized swatch, and then remake the whole project. Here is my second swatch, which is the full width of the project (11 inches on the loom) squared.

(In case you’re wondering why this swatch seems to have sprouted a teeny chest full of hair, it’s because I was playing around with the idea of giving the owl a “feathered” chest, and pulled a lot of individual strands through my plain woven cloth, much like a 70s latch-hook rug. I did not like the mass they felted into — too much like 70s porn star chest hair– and soon gave that up).

This full sized swatch felted dimensionally — that is, it kept the original dimensions, and resulted in the bag I set out to make in the first place — the short, fat owl bag:

On a lemons-into-lemonade front, I kept good notes on both owls, and made the pattern to reflect a choice of sizes.

* I’m certain I would probably prefer “Swatch Evangelist” or “Careful Fiber Artist,” but there’s a certain consonant-heavy assonance to “Swatch Nazi” that harkens back to Jerry Seinfeld’s Soup-Nazi, and I thus choose to think of it as a term of endearment.

I have two scheduled with Paradise Fibers that are coming up shortly:
See:  http://www.paradisefibers.net/Spokane-Knitting-and-Spinning-Classes-s/296226.htm
“Rigid Heddle Class with Jen” on March 12th and April 16th (two separate class dates).

This class will be the very introduction to weaving (we supply the project and use of a loom), but we’ll finish a scarf in that couple of hours.  It’s geared toward folks who “really aren’t sure they’d like weaving” and want to get a little experience before diving in with their own loom.

In the works:

Fiber Arts Camp for Kids (June 20-24th, 2011)

Needle Felting Classes

Rigid Heddle Project classes for folks who own rigid heddle looms and want a hands-on start-to-finish class that culminates in something that isn’t a scarf.   There’s so many cool things you can do with your rigid heddle, and we’ll explore just a few of them.

I did weaving demos at the Spokane Interstate Fair with Paradise Fibers.  If you spun on the new Paradise Fibers spinning wheel at the fair, then your yarn in incorporated into this scarf.  Come by Paradise Fibers to pet the scarf in person.