Osborn Fiber Studio

Honesty: I have had a cold for the last week and a half. I’ve gotten to that point where I feel like I’m going to be sick forever. I do not like it, Sam I Am. But I will try to write about this month, because it’s had a lot of good bits.

October has never been an easy month for me. On the November episode of the Wool n’ Spinning Radio podcast, which drops today, Rachel and I talk about the general malaise that shows up for us in deep fall, and how we are kind to ourselves this time of year. A couple of things set this October apart. 1) My kids are all school-age, and I’m working part-time, doing things I enjoy. 2) The weather turned really late this year, so we had some beautiful weather for over half the month, and 3) I was intentional about talking about the difficulties of October with everyone I thought could relate. From the beginning of the month, I spoke about how October can be hard, not in a complaining way, but to stay aware and state the intention of being kind to myself. So, even though I am sick of being sick and kinda grumpy about it today, my mood is really pretty OK overall.

We got two outings to the cabin, both for a few nights each. Three nights is just about perfect for us. We’re very lazy cabin-dwellers. Many people enjoy working hard when they’re at the cabin, doing chores, going hunting or fishing, and I admire that very much. We are completely spoiled with a very blinged-out cabin, and we go there to get away from our busy lives. We spend a lot of time doing nothing together, and it’s so, so good. I get outside for at least a half hour a day, get some gorgeous pictures when the weather is nice, and that’s enough for me.

Mini-Mighty started hockey this month. Hockey camp is an intense week of on- and off-ice training, usually over PD week (read: a week of no school in the fall), but schedules didn’t line up this time. That meant a long weekend of hockey all day, then squeezing it in after school for three days. Time will tell how much she enjoys it, but I’m confident that this is the right choice for her for this year.

Stringbean baked on and off for weeks to have her own table at the craft sale last weekend. She needed a lot of support from me in the baking, planning, and selling, but she paid me back for ingredients and still made a pile. She made the choice to open her own savings account. Yeah, I’m proud. Toot toot puff puff.

And here’s where my making has been at this month.

Quilting

I’ll work backwards. I just finished Dooner’s quilt, which I posted about yesterday. This brought to a close a years-long vision of making them all coordinating quilts.

What really pushed me over the edge to finish was adding a fleecy layer to Mini-mighty’s quilt. because of how she sleeps, she really didn’t want to use the quilt I made for her, so it sat on the couch for quite some time. But this summer I got some of that nubbly fleece you put on baby quilts, and I attached it with the walking foot around the outside and ties in each hexie. Some of the ties have already pulled out, though, so I might have some more work to do on it.

Having a working sewing machine makes me feel a bit heady with power. So of course, I’m already planning my next quilt top. When I was sick in bed for the last few days, but not sick enough for my brain to stop working, I did a bit of planning. A lady from down south sent up some boxes of her stash to a few of us quilters in Rankin, and my boxes included a huge quantity of scraps cut into 2.5″ strips. I sorted through them all and designed a couple log cabin quilts. I’ve never done log cabin; it’s next on my list. This is my favourite of the two:

There are a couple clothing plans I need to execute as well.

I get a new crafting bug every fall. It’s just a thing with me, a way to deal with the overwhelm… by overwhelming myself more?! It would be awesome if this year it was being re-energized in one of my existing crafts rather than picking up a new one. I certainly have enough to choose from.

Weaving

Are you surprised?

I might do a whole post on this later, but this tapestry actually sprang directly out of making content for The Wool Circle about corespinning, which I’ll be covering more this month. I did a full time-lapse of weaving this tapestry on the latest episode. It was a low-planning, high-play project. I enjoyed the process, and the product is hanging on my fall. I wanted to finish it for Hallowe’en of course, but it’s suitable for all of fall in my opinion!

I even made a second tapestry with the leftovers, but it’s still not blocked, and I’m feeling too sick to get up and take a picture of it, so you’ll just have to wait.

Spinning

I was feeling like I didn’t get much spinning done this month, but I did spin ALL the yarn for the above tapestry.

Yeah. That was so much fun. All done within a couple of weeks. Again, this was for the Wool Circle, springing out of a desire to cover both corespinning and an extended meditation on blending board techniques over two months of episodes. Much of this will be explained further in November’s episodes.

The only other spinning I did was on my new Allen Berry spindles.

I had a batt from Diana Twiss’s class that I spun up into this sweet little skein that currently adorns my windowsill. It’s a great study in a complementary pair of colours that I do not like turning into a blend that I adore.

After spinning on supported spindles daily for almost six months, I’ve really stopped. I haven’t spun at all for a couple weeks. Every day I think I’ll spin, but between other projects and feeling unwell, it doesn’t happen. I feel zero guilt about this, but it’s a practice that really helps me, so I hope I can get back to it soon. It’s kinda just a matter of starting at this point.

Knitting

What I have been doing a ton of is knitting. Knitting is my go-to when I’m feeling overwhelmed, tired, and just don’t have the creative energy to do something more involved. Whether it’s because I’m sick, or my energy is used up on more necessary tasks, knitting is always there for me to pick up and feel productive when all I want to do is sit.

Mostly I’ve been knitting hexies.

I’m using the Skep pattern by Kate Davies as the starting point, then turning the pattern inside out and upside down to use it to showcase my Year of Colour samples. As of this writing, I am FOUR hexies away from completing all of the hexies made from the samples spun from my dyeing experiments. When they’re all finished, look out; you will have more hexie blog posts than you know what to do with.

In between hexies, when I’m just not up to even winding another mini-skein into a tiny ball, I’ve worked on my Attune shawl a little bit. This awful picture is to prove that I’ve reached the halfway point in my yarn, at which time I switched to the garter stitch portion of the shawl pattern.

There’s still an awful long way to go, but it’ll be completely mindless at this point. That’s a good thing.

And that’s October, you guys! November is a brief intake of breath before the Christmas Crazies hit. I hope we can keep our crazies to a minimum. Jared’s traveling a lot in November, so say a prayer for us. My only goal is to stay self-aware and compassionate. I’m really enjoying being in a place of not judging myself, which allows me to not judge others. Stay spicy, my friends.