Saturday, September 24, 2016

Childhood memory

I often wonder if I should keep this blog for mostly knitting and crafting stuff... Or should I wonder away into other things...which might even increase the number of posts.
Like reading post on Facebook that brought up... no, it did not brought up memories, because The Little Prince is always in my mind, I learned it so early in my life that is rather ingrained.... but reading that post about a city putting up a statue of a cartoon caracter kicked me enough to pause and look for an actual picture online of the statue of the pince and the fox, that is set up in the garden of a shcool in the city I grew up. I often walked by  it, even if it was a slight detour... and I often whished I'd gone to that elemengtary shcool just to see it more often...

Then, as I was looking for the picture I found a rather interesting article here ...about how this is teh only Little Prince statue in this country... maybe even in the world? How in the socialist regime it could not be called "The Little Prince and the Fox" but  "The boy and the fox" or even the "Foxing boy", and how even though the sculpture was put up in the seventies, there is no evidence exactly in which year... and how this was an early example of a statue that is life sized for one and second set in a park, in a way not disrupting it, but being an organic part of it... people (children) can sit down on the rocks, or get close to the fox, or the boy.
The next time I am in that city I will make sure to go and see it again.

Monday, September 12, 2016

Carding

For who knows how long I wanted a drum carder... Not as much for art batts, but because I love slightly rustic heathery, tweedy yarns, and those are the easiest to do from carded batts. Much like this . For ever so long I borrowed a friend's carder, but I knew that I sooner or later I need my own...
And the time came this spring when sufficien amount of 200 HUF coins collected in the jar :-)  (oh, THAT jar... there might be a separate post coming about it :-)
Having money for fancy thing, like a drumcarder means that I work, I work a LOT these days (no, this is not a complaint, for I love my work these days), but having that much work means that my crafting time is drasticly decreased. I try to swimm with the flood, and work hard to find a balance... but that still needs works. But I am working on it and the result of this work are days like this last Saturday...
Which I set out for... fun, I guess. There was a big organic market event, where the girls and guys of Mare Temporis were playing (oh there is another story to tell), and my friend Tilda (yes, she is the one who is braiding my hair when I have a wooly-hair fit) wanted to try out carding... So we combined the two. Started the day with looking at fabrics, then looking around at the organic market, watching the Temporists and then coming home and took some "travelknitting" pictures (now there is one another thing to write about- the travelknitting picture-story not these pics)

 taking out the carder and have a go with it...
Here is Tilda, with the carder, and below her first tries... she likes crazy bright colors, but the wool she had limited, even though I tried to help out with whatever addition, some bits of extra color, shiny firestar, and whatnot.
Finally managed to try the silk cocoon "waste" another friend brought back from turkey (amazing stuff), and added it to some red and orange fibers. 
And here is her haul for the day...
Then, since the carder was out and I had some red fibers put away for a project, we attacked that, and the end result is a really big pile of batts.

That is carded from six different shades of red, and a purple, giving it a real nice depth, enough for a sweater and then some, hopefully spun by new years, so I can knit the good luck sweater with this. 
Finally there came a weaving friend of mine, who wove a shawl from one of my "everything, but the kitchen sink" type of old yarns (it was carded from handdyed alpaca, merino, angora, silk, and shiny angelina)... so she is having a lavander phase, and I carded this for her...


Now, I only need to find the time to spin, all that :-)

Thursday, September 1, 2016

How to make 410 meters of rainbow?

Its easy :-)
Take a braid of about 100 gramms of handdyed merino top.
 Half it and spin half of it to a nice single..
 Then sipin the other half in the same color direction...
Then ply it...
Then skein it...
And voilá, there it is... some happiness at the beginning of fall...
410 meters, 2 ply.
Mernio, handdyed...by me.