Osborn Fiber Studio

Holidayed is a word. Holiday can be a verb, therefore it can have a past tense: “we holidayed in France.” I’m only slightly extending the semantic range by using it as a past participle, as in “I have been holidayed.”

Homemaking

I’ve told you about our celebrations. And I’ve already written about the way Advent and Christmas have been bleeding into each other this year. The candles at church made a nice illustration of this on Christmas morning.

So you won’t be surprised to learn that much of my creative energy went into merry-making.

Our cookies still look like something on “Nailed It,” but believe me, this is a big step up from previous years.

There was some rearranging of furniture to make room for our tree. Then, when I finished weaving Christmas gifts, I took down the loom so we could finally put up our inherited keyboard. Jared has high hopes of teaching our girls to play, and I’d like to learn too.

The last random thing I’ve been working on is sorting the kids LEGO. We’d built an enormous house last month which used all the bricks and roof tiles. I wanted to take it apart to make room for new toys, and I couldn’t let all that good sorting go to waste. So I stayed up really late one night doing a big initial sort, and I’ve been pecking away at refining it.

Yesterday Dooner and I went to the local hardware store and found a couple nice containers to finish the job. There’s still some refining to do, but we’re getting there. The kids are getting into it too. My goal is to get them sorted enough that to it’s actually fun to build from instructions.

Weaving

When the tree comes down on Epiphany, the loom will have a spot again. I’m keen to warp up something new. You’re learning about my recent weaving exploits in my current blog series, which will resume on Tuesday.

Sewing

I haven’t actually done any sewing this month, aside from picking away at Stringbean’s placemat project, but something very interesting happened in the sewing department.

The town dump is notorious for having good stuff for the brave hunter, so much so that the dump is nicknamed “Canadian Tire.” (Americans: this is also the name of a major Canadian department store down south. Canadians: sorry for ruining the joke by explaining it.) A friend of mine invited me to Canadian Tire this week, and we did find a surprising amount of useful stuff. In fact, I am at this moment wearing a cozy sweater I got there.

In case you’re weirded out, my friend also taught us how to properly sanitize our treasures.

One thing I picked up was a sewing machine that looked like it only had a couple parts missing. My friend had found a similar one another day, wth a few different parts missing. So I’ve been pecking away at getting one of them working. This is sweet because Stringbean had asked Santa for a sewing machine for Christmas, and he didn’t bring one, but Jesus did!

This one is pretty cleaned up now. I gave it the spool pin and power cord from the other machine, and it just needs a reverse lever and a presser foot, which I should be able to get pretty cheap. We’ll see what happens with it.

Knitting

Not much to say here; I’m plugging away at Oran do Chaora during the rare bit of knitting time. But I’m only just through the first ball of yarn. At this rate I’ll have a sweater in six months.

Spinning

Finally I have something to show for myself at the wheel.

This is the 2-ply, 3-ply, and 5-ply, and the cable ply is on the wheel. I still have the finishing, measuring, swatching, and blogging to do, but I’ll get into the swing of it. I’m determined to catch up on 51 Yarns. It’s motivating that the actual spinning part goes so fast!

As I’ve said many times this year, I’ve found these monthly round-up posts very helpful. I’m excited to reflect on the year’s making as 2019 comes to a close. I hope your making has been merry this week!