Osborn Fiber Studio

The end of October this year was just too busy to think about adding another task. But here it is, the Ides of November, and I have a free morning to type to you. So here’s what I’ve been up to.

Weather

October was the month for watching the land transform from tundra to snowcover. We finally got out to the cabin during PD week, in mid-October, and caught one of the few decent-weather days of the month. It was such a gift to be out there and have it be nice enough to enjoy it. I wrapped up the Labrador Tea harvest for the year (I mostly paid others to do it for me, but it was so nice I couldn’t help it). The dogs enjoyed themselves, we all explored like we usually do, and we didn’t see any sign of the polar bear reported to be nearby.

Soon after we got back, the snow began to fly. It didn’t happen all at once. First the weather finally got consistently below freezing, then the snow and wind slowly accumulated. We had some freezing rain, some wet snow that melted and froze, some blowing snow, and finally something that approximated a blizzard. Just enough to cancel flights for the day and close schools for a couple of hours.

I’ve been consistently taking the dogs on long walks at least once or twice a week. It’s always good for me. The last week I’ve been kinda half-sick; the time change being right before the election did a number on my sleep, and I’ve not been well enough to bundle up and hike through the cold. I’ll be back to it soon enough.

I’m not going to talk about the election. If you’re surprised that I’m sad about the election outcome, then… hey, you learned something new about me today. I have a lot of feelings, but it’s not right for me to center them, and I’ve accepted that the internet is not a safe place for me to work them out. I am so thankful to be a Canadian citizen, but I do love the country I came from, and I wish there were more I could do to help those who are being/will be hurt most by everything that’s about to go down. Anyway, I said I wouldn’t talk about it. Moving on.

Family

What is October FOR if not Halloween? We had a lot of fun this year making the girls’ costumes at home. Stringbean went for a highly pragmatic choice. She was a sandwich.

She literally chose this because she figured out how to design it. She doesn’t even like sandwiches. She painted a couple pieces of posterboard for the bread, and attached fabric lettuce, foam tomatoes, and felt cheese. It worked great at school, but unfortunately Halloween night was very windy, and the side ties we made were not strong enough. She came home, put on a pumpkin poncho, then went back to it.

MiniMighty really wanted to dress up to coordinate with a couple of friends who were going as the main characters from Descendants. We settled on Dizzy, a small crafty child with messy clothes, and made her a costume out of an old dress splattered with paint, old sunglasses with lenses punched out, and one of my nice batik aprons that I sadly rarely use. We also took an older barely-functional parka and splattered paint all over it for her outdoor costume.

Dooner decided to be a school bus. How that came about is she was spitting out lots of crazy ideas, and school bus was one I said we could achieve. We had lots of fun painting it together, and who doesn’t love a giant cardboard box costume? She doesn’t ride the bus, but her line about it was “There’s no bullies on this bus, because there’s only room for one person!”

As I said, Halloween weather was not great. (What did we do down south when it rained on Halloween? I don’t even remember.) We were watching for a blizzard that looked like it might delay everything, but it just missed us. School was open, the kids got to wear their costumes there, have their parade, and trick or treat in the evening. The kids were so pleased to be able to go that they didn’t complain about the cold (except when Stringbean’s costume was disabled). The other Descendants friends came over and we all watched Rise of Red (Weirdest ending, but I do love that music…).

Spinning

I’ve been steadily spinning away all fall. I’ve been chunking my spins into amounts that mean a project takes about two weeks and requires about 30-45 minutes of spinning a day. As a result I’ve been spinning at a rate that, for me, is incredibly productive and satisfying.

This is the cabled sock yarn that I finished at the beginning of November. It’s the third in a series of sock yarns I’m doing alongside our study of Ply Structure at Wool n’ Spinning. We started with chain plying in September, and will continue through April, ending with a Breed Blend and Colour study Sock Spin-Along. I didn’t know if I’d be able to keep up with the sock spins; I have worsted-weight spins going on at the same time for demo purposes. But the sock spins have been achievable, and I’ve learned so much more by doing the worsted-weight spin as a sample, then going back for a longer spin using the same technique.

All of these spins so far have been on a blend sometimes called Panda: 60% superwash merino, 30% Bamboo, 10% Nylon. (I’ve been mistakenly saying there’s silk in there as well; it appears there is not). I bought several braids from both Craftyjaks and Sweet Georgia back in 2020 (SG no longer carries this blend), with the idea of doing a comparative sock study like this, so I’m very excited to be moving on it. From left to right are traditional 4-ply on SG’s “Tapestry”, Hawser yarn on Craftyjaks “Graffiti”, and cable ply on SG’s “Spring Flowers.”

With these three out of the way, I’ve given myself permission to take a break from sock spins, and do a spin I’ve been looking forward to for months. That’s spinning up the blended batts I made back in September as a main colour for the Jethro cardigan. Weirdly, this spin is going even faster than the socks, just with the way I chunked it. But my spinning is all fairly scheduled out right now, what with creating content for the podcast and all.

Speaking of which, I’m doing a podcast this month that everyone will be able to watch. Rachel is taking a sabbatical, and she is letting me come on the main feed to guest host for her next week. Patrons at any level get to watch live (Tuesday, November 19th, at 10am PT/1pm ET), or it will be posted publicly soon after – it will be a pre-recorded show, so don’t worry if you can’t get to the live. If you want to hear a lot more about the Jethro spin, tune in! I’ll try to remember to post a link here.

Knitting

Another sweater is finished! I cranked through my Weekender/Metamorphic combo during October, and it’s great. Now we have to wait again until I get around to having Jared take pictures. I don’t really want to be outside without a coat anymore, and natural light is at a premium indoors, so I’ll have to decide how to make it cute. Ah, blog problems.

I immediately cast on my next sweater. I have a kit for Lilia’s Day from KDD that my mom gave me for my birthday a few years back. I never work from kits, so this is something different for me. Just so I didn’t have to think too hard, I did the sleeves first. It felt a little like hopping from sleeve island to sleeve island, but I have really come to count on having some mindless knitting in the evenings while Jared and I chat or watch Marvel television.

I second guessed a lot on the body length, as I think the kit didn’t come with enough of the natural white for me to make the full-length pullover in the size I chose. Possibly my shorter row gauge leads to more yarn usage, or they just guessed wrong when deciding how many skeins are needed for this size. Anyway, I decided to make a cropped version. It’s a little longer at the underarms than my Wervel, so it should be totally wearable. Now I just have to clench my cheeks and hope that two and a half 50g skeins get me through the yoke.

Quilting

There’s actually been a fair bit of cheeky quilting around here! Much to everyone’s surprise, including mine. My friend Kelly started a little quilt hanging swap on Instagram, and I had loads of fun whipping that up. There were some false starts, but we got there. And along the way, I made enough quilt blocks for another quilt, though they are going to sit for a while.

I don’t want to show you the whole thing yet, as I don’t think the recipient has received my offering, but here’s a sneaky look. I really enjoyed playing with walking-foot quilting on such a small canvas.

You might have forgotten, but I’ve now produced three other quilt tops for my three girls. They’re all made from scraps, designed around some key branded fabric they chose.

For Stringbean, finished November 2023

For Dooner, finished February 2024

For MiniMighty, finished September 2024

Unfortunately, they all decided that they want Minky on the backs of their quilts. This stuff isn’t cheap, so we had to save. My goal from the October craft sale (see below) was to save enough for said backing, and we succeeded. The Minky has now arrived.

Stringbean had requested a Hogwarts House quilt, and she helped me with a lot of the piecing. She also wanted a Hogwarts crest in the middle. I had asked for fabric pens for Christmas just for this, and a couple weeks ago I finally made it. I traced a black and white version of the crest by laying the fabric on the screen of our Microsoft Surface, then outlined it in black, and coloured it following a coloured version of the same design. I am SO stunned with how well it came out. I appliqued it to the centre.

Now, to find time for the quilting. It does mean taking over the kitchen table almost entirely for a few days, so I have to find a few days that I have the creative energy and not a lot of other demands on my time. Meaning, a nicely pin- basted quilt has taken up semi-permanent residence in a corner of the room. I might get to it before January.

One more thing: I’ve made a bit of solid progress with my never-ending EPP project! (I finally looked it up: I started this in February of 2021.) Renewed progress started when I brought the red centres of the green flowers to the cabin with me, then I started giving it 15-30 minutes a day in the mornings after my quiet time. To my absolute shock, that was the last set of pieces. I assembled the centre (there’s a stop motion reel of it on my Instagram), and now I get to put the whole thing together. It will take forever, but I try to do one length of thread a day, or at least every day I get around to it. That’s kind of my chunking.

Other

As mentioned above, we did participate in a craft sale at the beginning of October. I tried to sell some handknits and some embroidery wall hangings, and did manage to sell one hat. I love the embroideries and might just hang them up myself.

Dooner decided she wanted to design some embroidery kits. She drew the doodles, and MiniMighty and I made charts. In the end I just had to bust my butt to make samples, put instructions together, etc. It was worth it when two of the ghost kits sold. Minimighty sold all her cupcakes, and Stringbean all her pies, which was great. Rather than making my own stuff to sell, I just made them give me an appropriate cut to compensate me for my time, which covered the fabric they wanted. I think they’re learning about business?

What else has been up? I successfully got the girls’ school pictures ordered and into frames in a reasonable amount of time. First time since Stringbean was in grade 1, I think. Last years’ pictures were really bad; the year before that I ordered them and they SAT until I took them down to give some to my parents and then LEFT THEM. Year before that, covid canceled pictures, and the year before that she was homeschooled. Sheesh.

We’ve gotten into a nice routine with Kombucha. Thursday is Kombucha day. Raspberry kombucha is the girls’ absolute favourite. They get annoyed every time that’s not what I’m making. They will drink it for dessert.

We don’t have any gallon-size jars, so I’ve been making do with 1.5L, which makes two 500ml bottles every week. Over the last month, I’ve successfully grown a second SCOBY, which will double our output. I don’t know why we enjoy this so much.

So here we are, halfway through November, past the time change, approaching the winter solstice with alarming speed. October was surprisingly speedy and fun. So far, November has tough, from an emotional perspective. There’s uncertainty about the future, not just internationally, and lots to figure out. Today I’m excited that season 2 of Silo is out, and that I get to go to a friends’ birthday party on Saturday. It’s a little breather before the holidays really ramp up.

Stay well, my friends.