Awesome Batts!

Today I'm spinning some fabulous batts from Uniquely Yours Design on Etsy. They're pink, purple, and white, with lots of glitz. They make me think of Barbie, cupcakes, and fairy princesses. They're made of domestic wool, mill ends, bamboo, and glitz. They're SO soft! They make me very happy. I'm spinning them on a Kiwi I rented from my LYS. I still have a lot to learn about wheel spinning, so they're coming out very overspun. But they're lots of fun to learn on. I think I'm going to ply them, not sure yet. Take a look!

Straight out of the bag


Pre-drafted pile of sparkly fluff!

I should have pictures of the finished yarn by tomorrow. Yay for sparkly fluff!

random fiber update

Recent events in my fiber world:

I talked about taxes and small business finances with my super-awesome tax guy. Now the next step is to head down to Town Hall and register my business and do lots of paperwork. It's hard to find a good time to do that, I think I may do it next week. Scary!

I've explored Ravelry some more, and dicovered lots of great new things.

I felted a couple paperweights. I have a good technique down, now I just need to make the time to sit down and do more of them. I made a black and hot peach one that looks exactly like the paperweight you would use if you were a fiber-addicted rocker chick with an office job that involved lots of paper that needed weighting. That's not too narrow of a customer base, right? Right? Haven't priced them yet, as I have managed to misplace one of the receipts for the materials. I suspect my shopping buddy may have made off with it -- must interrogate shopping buddy.

I found a pattern for my first shawl. I've talked to a couple dyers on Etsy, who were kind enough to send me samples of yarn to swatch before taking the plunge and buying a million yards of purple laceweight yarn. Now I'm eagerly awaiting their arrival.

I'm going to a shearing this weekend! It's going to be super exciting! Now I will know how to skirt and scour the two fleeces I got from a friend last week. Which is good, because they smell like sheep poo! I may buy some wool at the shearing. I really probably shouldn't, but if prices are good and the colors go well with the colors I already have, it will be hard to resist. I'm setting aside a little money in case of temptation resistance failure.

I'm almost done with my first My So Called Scarf. I'm going to need more yarn, so it will be on hold for a little while. I'm also almost done with a crocheted scarf in lots of blues and browns and tans. I may actually finish something this week! Gasp! I'm also almost done with a little Fun Fur scarf. I hate using cheap yarn, but I want to have a wide variety of price points at the gallery. And in my Etsy shop, as soon as that's up!

Right now my Etsy shop is only waiting for me to become an official business, and for me to find the blinking cord for my digital camera! My digicamera hasn't been able to talk to my computer for quite some time now, I have got to find that little cord! I wish it wasn't so small, and my apartment wasn't such a mess... I really want this to be a picture-rich blog, so I can show photos of works in progress and potentially tutorials. Where ARE you, little black cord???

I think I'm going to go actually finish something now. It's about time!

Commence Fiber Blog!

I'm starting a blog to record my adventures in fiber arts. I want to write about projects I'm working on, new techniques I'm learning, and pass along great resources I find along the way that may be helpful to my readers. So I guess I'm also going to have to find some readers.

I suck at introductory posts. I'm really not sure what to say about myself. I have always loved color, especially bright colors and lots of colors swirled together, and soft things. It has recently occured to me that via fiber arts, I can turn bright colors *into* soft things. The more colorful soft things there are in the world, the better a place the world is for me to live in. And the more I play in the soft, beautiful fibers, the happier I am. So my fiber adventures are mostly about making me happy. If I could figure out a way to make some money doing the things that make me happy, I could afford to spend more time being happy. And I genuinely believe that everyone should do whatever makes them happiest right at that moment, and that if everyone did this the world would be a more beautiful and joyous place.

A lot of people worry that if this strategy were adopted, no one would ever do boring, serious, important things. But the more I observe different kinds of people, the more I think that for any thing that needs doing, no matter how odd or yucky or tedious, there really is someone out there who actually likes doing it. Also, I think if something goes undone long enough, doing that thing will suddenly become the thing that would make someone happiest right at that particular moment. I'm sure a few people in the world like being garbage men, but the world needs a LOT of garbage men. 5 people in the world who like doing it is not enough. Every single place people live needs several garbage men on any given day. But they don't have to be the same people every day/week, and if the garbage piles up long enough, eventually taking it where it belongs and being rid of it will make us happier than any other way we could use that time. I'm a big believer in natural consequences. Sooner or later, there will come a time when taking out the trash, or doing the laundry, or dong the dishes, or whatever, is what would make you happiest at that moment. This will probably roughly coincide with when the garbage can is 110% full, you have no clean clothes, or you have no clean dishes. This has become rather long and is a bit of a tangent, but I guess what I want to say is that I really do believe that I and everyone else should, at any given moment, be doing what makes us the most happy right then and there. And to this end, I think I should be a fiber artist when I grow up. (Except that instead of growing up, I intend to remain a gleeful child in an increasingly mature, responsible-looking body.)

I think introductory posts should end with a declaration of goals. This allows you to look back later and see how far you've come, and how ridiculous you used to be. So! My long-term goal is to be a fiber artist for real, as the main source of my income. My short-term goal is to sell fibery things through Etsy, a brick & mortar gallery, and possibly some local boutiques, just enough to make enough money to support my fiber habit. If I could make enough money to buy lots of beautiful fibers to play with, and have all my fiber money come from my sale money instead of my paycheck from my real job, I would be wildly happy. My medium-term goal (what do you call that? an intermediate goal?) is to make enough money to use my sale money to buy tools and equipment for my fiber adventures. If I could manage that, I would be deliriously happy. I would love to someday have a drum carder, a spinning wheel, and a pair of hound combs. I currently have an upright charkha and a pair of hand cards. I think all five of those pieces of equipment together would be all I need to do anything I want with fiber. It would be a complete set of big-ticket Fiber Tools of Awesomeness!

Excellent. /introductory post.

Test Post

Test post. Font: Arial size normal. Bold. Italic.

1. numbered
2. lists
1. use an odd font, why?

• bulleted lists
• also seem to use an odd font
• but I can change them back to Arial, and the default font is just Georgia!

Pictures drag around like they do in Word. This is good.

Everything here seems intuitive and looks good on the page. Now we shall see how it looks posted.