Osborn Fiber Studio

After that big Stash Toss post I did yesterday, I feel like this post should be really easy, right? We’ll see.

The Fam Jam

Assuming nothing else happens today, the kids will have been at school for a grand total of 9.5 days this month. Because we had car troubles, for Dooner, that was 4 afternoons of preschool. It’s been horribly cold, we’ve had trouble keeping our car running, and… yeah. It hasn’t been bad. We’ve just been kind of cooped up. It’s been like being back in the RV. We enjoy a lot of things together, but we do get a little sick of each other.

We’ve been playing a lot of video games together. Jared finished Psychonauts, and he’s cruising through the rest of the levels. I’ve been playing a previous Doublefine production, Broken Age, after obsessively watching the Doublefine Adventure documentary. I just started Psychodyssey. I’m… yeah. Enjoying it a little too much.

Birthday season kicked off last week with Stringbean hitting the big 1-0. Can you believe it, blog? I’ve been writing here since well before she was born, and now my oldest child is ten. I just can’t.

She threw such a great party. She baked her cakes, I crumb coated and final coated, and she decorated. Lots of kids came, from her class and from church. It was just… good.

And it didn’t hurt at all that getting ready for a party led to deep cleaning the house, which was super-refreshing. There was a thick crust after a month of February cabin fever.

Cake

Yeah, cake is back! I took a couple of orders this month, and did a couple of cakes for fun. Those are always less stressful. There will be a couple in March, and April we’ll have our own birthdays to worry about. It’s staying nice and slow. I can deal with it.

I made a Neapolitan of sheet cakes for the church AGM. The pink one is actually strawberry flavored, thanks to a stash of artificial flavoring gifted me by a friend who no longer makes cakes (thanks, Karyna!). It was nasty in the batter, but really tasty in the cake.

There was a little Valentine’s Day cake for MiniMighty’s class, which she’d requested.

And two cake orders for two-year-olds. This racecar-car themed one I wish had turned out a little better, but it’s cute.

This dog-face cake I’m very proud of. It was a lot of work, though.

Knitting

I finished a big design project this month. Here’s a picture of it.

Haha. It’s not really finished; I’m not 100% happy with it, so it needs some surgery. But it’s too big to completely redo, so I’ll figure something out.

I finished the current batch of socks, and started wearing them. They’ve all been worn twice now, and are drying after their first bath. I didn’t even block them, so this is really, really their first bath. So far, remembering to switch feet hasn’t been that difficult, as they tend to retain the shape of whichever foot wore them last! We’ll see if that continues to be true as I break in the fabric.

I dug Weel Riggit out of semi-hibernation. It deserves to be finished, even though swapping three contrast colours is making me unreasonable.

I have kind of a lot of yarn left for it. I hope most of it gets used up.

I restarted the sleeve – fourth time’s a charm – with numbers that have nothing to do with the pattern, but much more to do with what will actually fit on my arm over a shirt. Partly to end the sleeve misery earlier, I’m going to make the yoke longer, for an overall baggier, longer fit. It’s going to be a super-warm cabin sweater.

I also got to start on something new! I realized the other day that I had zero reading-knitting, so I wound up a bunch of 51 yarns samples and purchased the Shakerag Top pattern.

This is one I’ve been wanting to try for a while. I’ve got all these fun natural colours, in fairly sizeable quantities – like 200 yards of lace each, at least. I thought they might be really lovely woven or knit into a light top, for summer or for layering. I’m making this one with the ramie and silk, with the shetland samples at the bottom to round out the numbers. The silk will go through the whole top, from the bottom up, and for all the doubled stripes, I’ll add a strand of Ramie in.

If it goes well, I’ll do a second top in the soysilk and cottons, though that will require some spinning first.

Spinning

The advance work I’m doing on June and July for the Year of Colour has really been keeping me sane through all our hours stuck at home. I finished the dyeing experiments, and even got a little playtime in with the dye leftovers. Here’s a sneaky preview of my 53 1-oz colourways:

I typed up all my notes into truly epic blog posts that will be released when those videos come out. And, just for curiousity’s sake, I spun up little samples from each colourway. I’m not going to tell you anything else for now, but there will be a full rundown coming up. I’m very excited to share. I’m getting all those thoughts in order now.

In between Year of Colour obsessing, I finished the Superfine Merino spin.

Yeah, I’m really proud of that, as I’m sure you’ve gathered by now. It’s pretty cool finally seeing the back of some of these oldest projects. It’ll be even cooler when they’re finished, usable objects!

I also finished another skein of the Qiviut Blending Project. These two blends are both with Icelandic Thel – 50% on the left, 80% on the right (20% qiviut). I have four more blends to go in the current batch. I’m going to try to get another one on the wheel today.

Weaving

I had a dream come true last month when I got a third 12-dent heddle for my Glimakra Susannah. This month, I warped up a 1-2-3-4 twill. And lo and behold, IT WORKED.

I was really worried my whole plan would go to crap. That I wouldn’t be able to get the right angle for good sheds with all three heddles, or that it would be so laborious that I would hate it. But I’ve got a great rhythm going with the 1-2-3-4 thing, and I’m off to the races with this fabric. The warp is a silk (I think) destash from Jonica, forever ago, and the weft (which I’m doubling) is a random singles yarn that I bought at some random yarn shop probably twelve years ago. They’ve tried to be some different things and failed, so it’s ride or die this time.

It’ll take a long time to weave this, but when I sit down to work at it, it’s pretty addictive. I’m hoping I can work on it at least one night a week, with it out in the playroom. We spend so much time in here these days.

Teaching

The Year of Colour is clipping along at a nice pace. The dye sampling above is just extra; on the podcast we started really playing with fiber this month. I did an episode on value, and another on saturation.

I also got asked to help teach a knitting class at the local literacy center. That’s been really awesome. But I’m totally out of time to tell you about it, let alone to get photos uploaded and over here, so I’m going to cut this one short. February was cold, and busy, and I’m thankful I got so much making done. But hoo boy, am I ready for the springtime weather of the -20s.