Osborn Fiber Studio

Oh dear, my ducks. Hang on to your butts. It’s been quite a couple of months. I just did not have the spoons at the end of February to round things up, and I still really don’t. But I’ll do my best to give you a sampling, because, selfishly, it’s so good for me when I do.

What you need to know as a background: we’ve been sick a lot the last two months. First Stringbean, then the rest of us, got hit with a nasty flu-like bug that knocked us each out for a week flat, then has been lingering with various symptoms for weeks. Between blizzards and illness, I have had all three girls in school all day for a total of 9 days in March.

Lent

I got really ambitious this Lent. I didn’t post about it, because of the reminder on Ash Wednesday not to be a Pharisee shouting your holiness from a street corner. But now that I’ve failed at nearly every aspect of it so thoroughly, I can reflect on it a bit. (And nearly three weeks to go still. Ugh.)

Fasting-wise, I decided to give up sugar and gluten. Both because I knew it would be rough, and because those are both inflammatory. I had a real carpal tunnel scare in mid-February, so I wanted to see if that helped. Short version: it did help, but I don’t think it’s worth it. With my kids and our family being who we are, I have to cut these out for only myself, and that’s both really logistically hard and a bummer. (We successfully stopped watching baking shows, though, which helped a bit, and subbed it with a read-aloud of The Martian, one of my favourite books. So it hasn’t been all bad.) What I’ve learned about myself: I look to food for comfort, and sometimes because of illness or other emotional drains, I can’t really overcome that.

Lent Fail/Parenting Win: 6yo desperately wanted to make a pavlova. I was the only one who liked it. At least it was gluten free.

Screen-wise, I tried to give up phone games and scrolling. At scrolling I just failed entirely. If anything I’ve gotten worse. With phone games, I have mostly given those up, but I’ve mostly replaced it with reading the news, which is measurably worse. What I’ve learned about myself: I am a phone addict. I had hoped to replace this phone time with work on my book and reading real books. Instead I’ve replaced it with playing Civ V on my PC and reading fluffy dragon fantasy novels on my kindle.

What it feels like listening to/reading the news. We live right under the star.

It hasn’t all been a bummer. Here are some good things I learned about myself: I just don’t carry unnecessary guilt anymore. When I fail, as described above, I accept myself without question. I come to God and say, this is what’s up, and we move on together. I accept that these goals are arbitrary. To be honest, I don’t really feel that much guilt any more for my parenting failures, though parenting is the area that I save up my serious problem solving and creativity spoons for, and definitely most of my apologies.

This just feels like the normal positive side of aging. The FOMO has fallen off: I’m not going to do everything. I’m going to do a very, very few things well, and a lot of things badly. I’m rarely going to feel like I’ve finished something worthwhile. I heard something recently, I forget where, that one of the best indicators for aging healthily is having a positive attitude about aging. Because aging is GREAT, largely because of the mental benefits. That’s my interpretation, anyway, of whatever it was that I heard, and I buy my own logic.

Random cake: Fire Truck for our firefighter-loving little buddy who turned 5. It looks angry but he loved it anyway!

To summarize this reflection: It’s been a challenging month, but I’m doing OK. When I think about where I’d like to be in a month or three or six, I’m not sure how I’m going to get there, and I’m nervous about it. But I know I’m doing my best, and will keep taking it one day at a time.

Aside: I’ve started using the app Habitica, which I enjoy a lot. To-dos get overwhelming, but at least having it all in there makes it easier to prioritize. The RPG theming doesn’t hurt! Any other habit-slayers out there?

Another big positive: we bought a new truck this month. 2018 Toyota Tacoma. Newest car we’ve ever owned. It’s a long story but this is a huge blessing.

Enough bummers. Wanna see my crafting?

Sewing

I finally finished the stinking quilts! Gosh. I wanted to give this trio its own post, but I know I just won’t get to it. They were all backed with a microfleece fiber, at the kids’ request. It’s expensive, and polyester, but it’s also meant that they are actually using them. Here’s a quick run-down of the designs and how quilting them went.

Stringbean’s quilt: We made the quilt top together in January of 2024 using scraps I had been given and a few fat quarters of Hogwarts-themed fabric. I made the applique patch using fabric markers on muslin and attached it by hand. The quilting was just straight lines, plus (badly) tracing around the patch at the centre. I wasn’t sure there was enough quilting, but I like how it made poofy diamonds; the Minky makes for extra poof, and I didn’t want to break it up too much. I did a flanged binding that mostly used scraps.

MiniMighty’s quilt: She has the most boughten fabric. There are inherited scraps in the circles around each character, but the Star Wars fabric I bought, as well as all the black, which are all subtle prints. MM is obsessed with BB8, despite not being really into the Star Wars movies, and she’s become really into black. This was the design we settled on that made her happy. I really enjoyed quilting this one; I came up with a design that used wavy lines in both directions that come together into concentric circles around each life-saver. I hand-quilted around each centre myself. I also did a flanged binding with scraps.

Dooner’s quilt: This had the simplest design. My first ever log cabin. She really wanted Paw Patrol back when we designed it, and my MIL bought her a yard of pink Paw Patrol fabric that is the only boughten fabric here. There rest is hand-me-down fabric and scraps. Unfortunately she was over Paw Patrol by the time I got around to quilting it. I solved this by making squares out of other scrap fabric, colourful fun prints she picked out, mostly of Care Bears and butterflies. (Why are Care Bears more timeless than Paw Patrol? Because they are less cynically commercial?) I then sewed these squares directly onto the quilt top. For quilting, I went for super-simple straight lines, but made a lot of mistakes in positioning them, and had the most trouble from my machine. As a result, this simple quilting job took me the longest and involved the most picking out stitches. I did a traditional binding with inherited purple fabric she picked out, sewing it on the front and closing it by hand.

I won’t be sewing again for a while; that totally used up my quilting mojo. Which is a bummer because I have some quilt squares to finish for a little swap by the end of April. That should be fun, but I just don’t want to even look at my sewing machine right now.

Addendum: I did hand-sew on a fur to Stringbean’s new coat the other day. She looks so grown up it kills me.

Dyeing and Weaving and Hackling

My reward for finishing these quilts was to get out a few other crafts I’ve been looking forward to for a long time and hadn’t gotten around to!

The first was dyeing. I had basically five half-fleeces to work with, and I wanted to turn them into blended projects. I won’t go into the details right now. There was a lot of math, then a series of small dye baths. One every day, maybe 20 minutes of work each morning, for a little over two weeks. The last one is just finishing up drying. I’m so excited to get blending! Here’s a sampling from a few different batches: Golden Yellow on Tunis, then Cherry Red on CVM/Romeldale, then Turquoise on Wensleydale (all Jacquard acid dyes).

The second was weaving. I hadn’t set my loom up in well over a year. On one of our many sick or blizzard days, Stringbean helped me set it up, and she and Dooner helped me slap a warp on it. One thing I had quite forgotten about was how much the kids like to help me set up a warp, which makes a slightly onerous task downright delightful. They’re also older, to the point that their help makes this task ACTUALLY EASIER AND MORE FUN. All caps because I can’t emphasize enough how happy it makes me that we’re starting to get to this point.

(Side Note: we watched The Wild Robot a couple weeks ago, which surprised me by being largely about mothering. I have never felt more seen by a movie.)

Anyway. I’m nearly through this first warp, which is just a tromp-as-writ plain-weave tartan thing. I don’t know what it’ll be. Probably bags. I have another warp just like it that I will put on with the girls next time we’re bored, though stuck-at-home season may be coming to an end.

The third thing was hackling. I put a shout out on Slack that I was thinking of buying a hackle, and my friend Diana came through in spades. She sold me a Forsythe hackle, made by a now-retired Canadian craftsman, that has very sharp tines with a unique bent-tine feature. So far I’ve used it to blend some colourful merino top that will be featured in next month’s first Wool Circle, and this blend that will be featured in an upcoming livestream. I can’t say much more about it except that it’s very process. I have it set up in a dedicated spot in the living room where my fingers itch to work on it every day. With the added company of my lock pop, I am at peak fibre prep nerd, and it brings me a lot of joy.

Spinning

The spinning continues. My daily practice fluctuates, but hovers around 30 minutes a day. That’s about right to not aggravate my hand, and limiting gluten intake may be helping somewhat as well.

I’ve finished my first skein of the current Wool n’ Spinning Breed Blend and Colour Study. This is Fireside. I mixed up the colours intentionally, not really fractally, and aimed for a not-too-thin sock weight. I overshot a bit, and ended up with 200 yards of 16 WPI yarn. I’ll be lucky to get two complete feet out of that. Thankfully I have an extensive swatch of the bare fiber to steal for cuffs.

It’s a 4-ply yarn with one opposing ply. Thanks to experimenting lots on the Wool Circle in February, my attitude toward opposing ply yarns went from yuck to Oooo. There are real possibilities here. The 4th ply doubtless affected my yardage problem, but that’s OK.

I’m halfway through my second Breed Blend and Colour Study spin now. I am taking the singles thinner, though really trying to avoid Freakishly Thin (which was my aim for the 6-ply panda socks). It’s a matter of finding a third setting for my hands for this particular fiber. I find that a real challenge.

I also went a bit nuts for the last episode of the Wool Circle, where I experimented with spiral ply yarns. I have to thank Diana again, because she packaged the hackle in fiber! How adorable is that? I had this generous collection of batts to play with, and I used it to go wild. These were fun fun fun, and I think I might make some little woven swatches as well as knitted swatches to see how they work up.

Knitting

I have been knitting? I think? But somehow the only finished object I have to show you from the last two months is a pair of socks.

This is the first pair of Panda socks, of a batch of eight. I am using a toe-up recipe from Kate Atherley, because it’s the closest I could find to replicating the exact structure of the top-down socks that fit me best, in a toe-up pattern. I tweaked it with the fit changes I know work for me on top-down: more and earlier gusset increases and a taller heel flap. I also added slip stitching to the heel turn and flap. I ripped and reknit parts of the first sock several times, but I was determined to get it fitting well enough so I could knit the rest of these pairs exactly the same.

I love the gradation of colour. This is a crepe yarn in the Lava Love colourway by Crafty JAKs, with the yellow and orange separated into the single ply and made into a gradient that goes up the sock. The other two plies are just all the blue and purple. I love how they came out, and I love that I got that much sock out of 280 yards (I chose to start with this one because I had the lowest yardage). I’m onto the second pair with confidence.

What’s Next?

April is going to be a doozy. We have four birthdays, and I’ve already started baking for MM’s, which is on Saturday. She wants an enormous Hogwarts party featuring lots of recipes from the Harry Potter cookbooks I collected for them. Oh dear. My birthday is Sunday, and I don’t have any plans yet. Dooner is having a Barbie birthday party in 2.5 weeks, for which I have nothing but decorations and vague cake ideas. The Wednesday after that is Jared’s birthday, for which I have a cake order, but have to figure out presents. Also in there are Easter, an extra podcast episode, my Real Job ramping up, and hopefully a photo shoot for my hibernating book project.

Yesterday we made Room of RequireMINTS. Get it?

As hard as February and March have been, they have had a lot of space in them. Space to breathe, space to tune out, space to just be cold and cozy and sick, space to play video games and do lots of making around the edges of things. As much as we complain sometimes about our long winters, I really love the freedom to be quiet. Hopefully we leave the season recharged enough to be excited for the busier times, which start RIGHT NOW. Looking back, I’m thankful for that season. And, whether or not I’m Puddleglummy about it any given moment, I’m excited for the purpose that the busy flutterings of spring provide.