Pssst! Hey, Buddy, Wanna Puppet?

Although Catherine's blog isn't on my blogroll, I have read quite a few of her posts over the last year or so because of links from other parenting blogs that I read. Catherine's nephew has a form of MD which will eventually prove fatal. Kristen, from Motherhood Uncensored which **IS** on my blogroll, decided to put together an online auction to benefit MD research in honor of Catherine and her nephew. The bidding starts tomorrow and when I went this morning to look around, there didn't seem to be many toys. I decided to donate the puppet I finished after my last puppet class since Miss Sprout hasn't had a chance to become attached and name it Tony yet. The large pink tongue is usually a guaranteed hit with the kids.

If you have a little extra in your paypal account at this holiday season, please consider participating in this Chinese Auction style raffle auction. There are some great prizes. I'm thinking that I may even submit a bid or two on my own puppet with instructions that if my ticket wins, maybe it could be sent to Tanner.

You may have missed the auction (which raised just over $3,000.00 for MD research) but it's not too late to participate in the letter writing campaign for Tanner. Details are on Catherine's blog and on the Her Bad Auction website.

Etsy Love

As I'm sure you already know, Etsy launched v2 in mid-November. The process was not without some problems. At least one of my images has never shown up. I love the new Etsy and have been busily listing stuff in the MysticSpiral Etsy Shop for the last two weeks.

For those who are interested, there are new Raku Spindle Whorl Pins listed. I've also listed a couple of sets of the scribble pins. Keep the set together and wear them as a group, or break them up and give them as stocking stuffers. I'm loving the scribble pins. I have a couple pinned to my knitted/felted/fulled purse to use as emergency safety pins as well. I've also listed a few of the Facing Forward pins (as I've decided to call the pins with the faces on them) and will be listing more over the next week.

I'm starting to get a little nervous about the holiday. But it is a happy kind of nervous. The best kind to be.

I love the internet

Plant life pendant
Originally uploaded by flowergurl4eva.

I just finished watching a slide show of artisan ceramic beads in the Beads-of-Clay Flickr pool. (The image shown is just one of the amazing examples of handmade ceramic beads in the group pool.) I can already tell that the BoC Flickr group is going to be a source of much inspiration for me. (I hope that others find it to be as well.)

I spent a quiet evening watching television in my bedroom while spinning. (I got roughly 2 ounces of space dyed roving spun into a very pretty single. I have about 2 ounces more of this roving to spin up.) This is newsworthy because we've had a television in our bedroom for roughly 4 years that we've never plugged in. As Sprout gets older, her daddy increasingly interrupts my television viewing with statements like, "I don't think that this is noodle appropriate viewing material." When I decided to put the spinning wheel upstairs in the bedroom, I thought that I would mostly be using it while Sprout napped. Instead, it would appear that my spinning time will be spent watching crime dramas (think CSI or SVU) while my husband and daughter watch pre-school appropriate DVDs or play downstairs... Whatever gets the spinning done will work for me.

9 Goddesses

Working on Thanksgiving

'Round here, a holiday often means the opportunity to get some extra time in the studio. I've been working like crazy on pins for the MysticSpiral Etsy Shop, shows, and a couple of trade deals that I'm working on. Yesterday and today, the focus was on Raku Spindle Whorl Pins. I did the torch work yesterday afternoon and spent the evening in front of the television wiring the mica disks onto the bronze pins. This afternoon, I finshed the pins by wiring the raku fired spindle whorl beads onto the fronts. I'm really pleased with the results.

I'll be working on Stoneware Spindle Whorl Pins in the next week or two and then it will be time to start the whole process over again.

One of the things that I love about making these pins is that I am intimately involved with every step of the process. From shaping the mud to make the beads to shaping the bronze rod in the flame of the torch, each pin has a lot of me in it. Each pin is a synthesis of my interests and my love for 3 media, clay, metal and fiber.

I feel such a personal attachment to each and every one of these pins. I had a picture in my head of what I wanted the pins to look like as I carved the clay to make the original spindle whorl beads. I love what I do and I feel so blessed that others, seeing my work, love it well enough to make it part of their lives or to give it as gifts to people that they care about. I could not continue to work the way that I do without the support of the people who take an interest in what I make.

After I finished the spindle whorl pins, I wandered back out to the studio to spend some more time at the torch. I had so much fun making my two face pins that I just couldn't wait to make more. I have the pins done for another half a dozen or so and will probably choose faces from my bead box and start wiring them together tomorrow during the day. It feels nice to be using the faces since I'm not sure when I'll have the time, patience, and energy for the dolls again. Between studio work and puppets, I'm feeling a little like I'm neglecting the Sprout. Fortunately, she seems to enjoy the results of my labors.

New Goodies

I've been reading the One Hour Craft blog for quite some time and decided to take some time this morning to respond to the One Hour Craft Challenge. I've had these faces in my bead box since before I made Oya and Innna.

I also got some studio time in yesterday and got new spindle whorl pins made and some new stuff listed in the MysticSpiral Etsy shop. I finally got around to listing some of the scribble pins in the shop and posted shawl pins. I have 4 more scanned and ready to post sometime in the next few days.

I had so much fun making the mask pins that I think I'll probably be making quite a few more of them in the next couple of weeks as well.

My next show is an indie craft faire held at a local night club. I'm not sure what to expect from the show but it should be a fun way to spend a couple of hours.

Happy Thanksgiving 2006

It's been a crazy couple of weeks and I've been offline as much as possible. I have new pins to upload to the MysticSpiral Studio Etsy Shop and a couple of wonderful swaps in the works that I've not forgotten. I've just been overwhelmed trying to get ready for holiday shows and puppet classes. (Speaking of which, the first puppet class was such a hit that I have one scheduled next week and another the week after... If you're in the Dayton area, and would like to get in on the puppet play, you can contact Arlene Graham's Fiberworks for information about the classes.)

I hope all of my US readers have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. (For those outside the US, the annual food orgy is a big deal around here...) I'm looking forward to a wonderful holiday meal with Sprout and all of her grandparents and other loved ones.

Just Playing Around

For much of the last month, I've spent most of my spare time making puppets for Sprout using recycled wool sweaters. Once the basic puppet is stitched, I needle felt features onto the puppets to finish them. Ms. Sprout now has quite the growing collection.

I've left several of the puppets at my local fiber shop so that the owner could show them off to her needle felting customers when they come in. To make a long story short, interest in the puppets has been such that I will be teaching a puppet making class at the shop in mid-November. I'm also researching the notion of putting several of the puppets into my Etsy shop. I'm having so much fun making them and Sprout just loves them. She carries on complete conversations with them and gives them hugs and kisses. I love the needle felted eyes because it is so wonderful to have a puppet with no plastic parts. Because the eyes and noses are felted on with a felting needle, they're more difficult to pull free than even the "childproof" eyes recommended for young children.

I'm never quite sure what a puppet is going to be until I've stitched the muzzle shut and played with it for a minute or two. Once I know what kind of animal the puppet wants to be, then I can cut ears, which serve to underscore the identity of the animal. With the ears cut out, I can stitch them into shape and pin them onto the puppet to try to capture the personality.

With the ears stitched on, then it's just a matter of selecting the wool for their eyes and felting on the finishing details. My favorites, so far, are the dogs. There is so much variety available. Whether the sweater that I'm working with is brown, purple, or red, if I can get the ears right, and the muzzle shaped the way that I want it, Sprout has a puppy to play with that doesn't need to be walked or fed.

Birthday Update

My frantic search for spinable fibers in the deapths of my needle felting box yeilded a small section of Arlene's space dyed roving, precicely one ounce. I've been afraid to touch the handpainted roving I bought on Etsy until I was sure what I wanted to do with it. I figured that a lace weight, 2-ply yarn would be ideal but I'm still not sure whether I want to ply it back on itself or if I want to ply it with a solid contrast single.

In either event, I knew that I wanted the final result to be somewhere in the 18 wpi range. The space dyed roving from my needle felting stash proved to be the perfect practice medium. Based on a little trial and error, it drafted very similarly to the handpainted roving. So, I pulled the space dyed roving apart , figured out how I wanted the color repetitions to work for me, and began spinning onto two separate bobbins.

When I plyed the two bobbins, I had succeeded in spinning the two sections of the roving to within 6 inches of each other. (I love it when a plan comes together...) The result, shown above, is approx. 105 yards of 2-ply yarn. I wrapped the yarn 18 times around a size 10 knitting needle and it measured just a hair under an inch.

I'm actually really pleased with the results. All in all, I feel like it was a really great exercise and an excellent use of some fiber that I bought to add to the felting stash with no clue how I wanted to use it.

What can I do with...

I just finished plying approximately 183.75 yards (3.4 ounces) of handspun yarn. It started as a beautiful brushed sliver with blue, purple, green and fushia. I'm still trying to get the tensioning right on the wheel so my singles were pretty tightly spun. A tight twist in the opposite direction during the plying actually resulted in a pretty balanced yarn. I'm guestimating (I lifted about an inch worth of fibers from the skein and measured/counted it...) it at roughly 17wpi which would make it a fingering weight yarn. It may, however, bloom some when I soak it in hot water to set the twist so I'll probably re-measure the length and actually wrap some along a pencil or dowel to get a more accurate wpi measurement.

My friend H. is coming into town on Friday so I can pick her brain for ideas about what to make when I see her this weekend. (Consider yourself warned, H.)

It should be an interesting weekend. I'm having a birthday party on Saturday which I seem to have gone out of my way to sabotage. I don't remember when the last time I had a birthday party was. It's easy for me to blame K. for my reluctance to have parties because he's not the most social creature. The truth is, however, that if I wanted to have parties he'd indulge me in that as he does in almost every other way. (He won't let me start smoking again, but really who could blame him and I guess that I'd rather spend the money on spinnable fibers since I really only miss it when I want something to do with my hands.) I don't have parties because I become paralyzed by anxiety at the thought of preparing for a party and no one showing up. On some deep level I'm absolutely certain that no one really likes me or wants to spend time with me. Rather than face the rejection, I don't have parties, or (as I did this time around) I do something stupid to sabotage them like procrastinating on the invitations until everyone has already made other plans. I'm sick... I need help... Maybe I should find something to do with my hands other than letting them loose on a keyboard to dump the unfiltered contents of my brain into my blog.

What's distressing me at the moment is that my spinning options right now are pretty thin... I didn't think to grab the fiber that I bought from Arlene after my drop spinning lessons so I can't spin that. Of the fiber I bought at Wool Gathering, I've spun everything but the natural black corriedale that I still need to wash the chocolate milk out of. (My beloved put the bag containing the roving on the floor under the car seat. Somehow - we won't point fingers or anything - a bottle of chocolate milk ended up being dropped into it nipple pointing down...) the other options are some beautiful handpainted roving that I bought on Etsy and recieved last week or a fiber sampler that I listed in my Etsy shop and now am really wishing that I had kept it for myself so that I could play with it...

For now, I think that I'll try to distract myself by needle felting features onto a hand puppet that I need to get out in the mail. Who knows, maybe I'll find something spinnable in my needle felting fiber case. I'm afraid that I may have a bit of a problem here... I just love the rhythm of spinning.