Osborn Fiber Studio

You know how they say, when you have little kids, “The days are long, but the years are short”? This month, the days have been short, but the month has been long. Partly because it’s been in the -30s with windchills in the -50s pretty much all month. Partly because most of the month was spent in lockdown. And partly because I got into a groove of crafty productivity that daily reminds me, there are only so many hours in the day!

Knitting

I would estimate that I put in a good 60 hours of knitting time this month. And I’m not going to show you any of it. But I wish to acknowledge to myself that I am working hard on my secret project.

This is the remainder of my knitting. I had some extra time on a VERY slow day. The girls volunteered to help me wind up my next sweater knit: my handspun blend from last spring. I cast on a swatch-hat, knit all of four rows on it, and didn’t have time for it again. But it’s an intention, bagged up and ready for the right season.

Spinning

January is for spinning. In a new year, with a fresh start, I love to go back to spinning and dig deep into it. I spun for at least half an hour every day, and I have some wonderful Gotland singles to show for it.

I only expected to spin half this amount, but I finished the singles last night. I hope to ply it up today, and that will be a sweater quantity done! Is this a January tradition now? At least three of my SQ spins have come from a year’s beginning.

But wait, there’s more! Probably the most exciting, and unexpected, slice of creative energy this month came from planning out a combination sock-spinning and color-handling study, that I’m just calling my Sock Color Study. It seems like some other folks are jumping in too, wherever they are at with their sock spinning, and plenty of others have been spinning socks for ages and are contributing their wisdom. I finished my first of what will hopefully be many sock spins this year. I’ll share about it very soon.

I also did an eensy-weensy bit of dyeing. The results are successfully analogous, but also kind of underwhelming; it’s a big braid, and I might overdye half of it with food coloring…

Even more unexpected was what happened with qiviut this month. I decided to offer some of my collection of raw qiviut in trade, and a bunch of people responded. This lit a fire under me to process all of my qiviut.

This is about three and a half pounds of qiviut, and represents probably 24 hours of picking over the last two weeks. Just sitting at a table, turning this:

Into this:

About half of it will go away, and half of it I have grand plans for. GRAND plans. But first, I have to wash it all. Blegh. But anyway, the picking was the really time-consuming part, and it’s a big deal for me to finally have it done.

Weaving

I had hoped to finish this before the end of the month, but qiviut happened. More on this later, but this is an intentionally pooled warp. It crosses a big item off my bucket list, which is threading with two heddles – getting me about twenty ends per inch. Woohoo! I look forward to finishing this and sharing it with you.

Sewing

I got so close to meeting my sewing goal for the month. Sew close!

My main goal is to finish this by Dooner’s birthday in mid-April. The step I need to finish in February isn’t too too hard, so hopefully I’ll manage it?

Cake

Um, yeah, so cake decorating is kinda a thing for me now. This month started out with a new bundt pan and a colorful king cake for Epiphany:

And ended with a cereal-and-milk cake to share with friends.

I think I can get in one more practice cake before Stringbean’s birthday. This time I’ll make actual ganache for the drizzly-drippies.

Family

You might be thinking, gee whiz Rebecca, did you neglect your family all month to do all this stuff? Not gonna lie, sometimes it seemed that way. But the lockdown that took up most of the month gave us a lot of time. Lots of it we spend together. And for lots of it, the girls played together, making up their own worlds. The big girls are back to school now, just two days a week (for a grand total of three days this month), and they can have friends visit now. That’s changed our dynamic a little. But that, too, has been good for us.

And of course, I’ve been doing my best to train Sisko. We’re halfway through our online puppy training course, and while I’m not as consistent as I should be, he’s doing very well. He’s surprisingly calm during the days, though he’s really struggling with teething at night. Exercise is hard for both of us, but I’m thankful for all the walks he’s motivated me to go on – even when it’s -35, with -52 windchill.

One month of deep winter down. Two to go. Next month starts birthday season, and other excitement. How is your winter going?