When I discover my yarns featured in an Etsy Treasury, I get such a rush of excitement, I can’t tell you. And so it was yesterday when I found Sunflowers had been picked for a treasury called “My Sunshine“, put together by ThePlumTree.
Sunflowers sold pretty quickly after that, and I am so excited to send it off to its new home. But if you loved all these golden colours, don’t worry — I’m going to be dyeing a lot more beautiful yellows over the weekend.
This summer, a pair of robins built a nest on top of my back porch light, right outside my backdoor, and consigned me to using only the front porch for the whole month of June. And I (and you) got to watch as the eggs appeared, and the babies hatched and grew. It was magical thing to witness so close.
Also this summer, the family next door moved away. As she was in the middle of the chaos of packing up her house, my neighbour mentioned to me one day that she always collects a bird’s nest from every house that she lives in. But her husband had already started his new job on the other side of the country and she was having to pack up the house and move the (5!) kids all on her own, and I suspected that she never got a chance to collect a bird’s nest.
And I have a beautiful nest sitting empty right outside my back door…
So today, we very carefully took it down.
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It came away without too much difficulty and all in one piece. It was made from sticks and leaves, as you’d expect, but I was intrigued to see string, yarn, and bits of dried grapevines (complete with old grapes!) tucked in there as well.
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We put the nest into a bag to keep it safe.
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And then wrapped it in tissue paper… just because.
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And packed it up with all the love and care that I package my yarn. More, probably — this is precious cargo!
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And, just like that, the little nest that gave three baby robins their happy start in life was ready to travel all the way to the other end of the country.
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Where, I do believe, it will be absolutely cherished.
This yarn was a dyeing disaster. I was aiming for Garden In Spring, one of my favourite colourways, and the colour just went all wrong on me. I pulled it out of the dyepot and… Oh no! The pinks were crazy-bright, the greens were just plain ugly, and the purples totally non-existent. I have a picture of it… I can’t even show it to you, it was that awful. It was embarrassing.
I set it aside and decided not to think about it for a few days.
When I finally went back to it and turned it over in my hands (cringing, cringing the whole time), I realised what I wanted to do with it. I thought I knew the shade that would salvage it. I mixed my colours and in went the yarn. And a little while later, this is what I lifted out…
I had hoped to salvage it — instead, it has been saved. It came out so much better than I could have hoped!
There’s one skein in Astrid DK and one in Celeste Fingering weight. And now I just have to decide if they go in the shop or… if I keep them for myself!!! I may have to think about this for a spell.
This is the bombyx silk I was going to spun for the second half of the Tour de Fleece, but… life intervened and I didn’t manage to get that far. So, running just a wee bit late, I’ve finally got it on my wheel now, and it is a dream to spin.
Not that silk is always a dream to spin… Bombyx silk generally has a very long staple length, and that can make drafting a challenge. The distance that you’re used to holding your hands for drafting wool simply isn’t far enough apart when you’re spinning silk, and it can easily become a struggle as you start tugging at both ends of the same fibers.
A few months ago, I spun pure bombyx silk for the first time in many years and, even though I’ve spun a lot of silk in the past, I realised that my hands had forgotten what to do. It seemed to take forever to retrain my hands (…or more likely, my brain) and until that moment when it finally clicked, I was pulling and tugging on that silk as if I’d never spun in my life. As a result, the yarn came out much thicker than I’d wanted and lumpier too. There’s no doubting it’s beautiful to look at, and the colours ethereal, but because I spun so much thicker than I intended, I just didn’t get the yardage I was hoping for. It’s come out to a measly 143 yards and I’m really not sure what I could make with it.
So now, as I begin spinning this second braid of silk, I am really focusing on spinning as thinly as I possibly can. And, it turns out, I can spin pretty darned thin! Now that my hands (and brain) are back in the groove with spinning silk, this is how it’s coming out…
That is, as long as I don’t get too involved in a scary movie on telly and forget to spin super thin (see the occasional thick bits in the photo below? Yeah… that was when the film hit a tense spot…). But overall, this is coming out exactly the way I want it. And now that I’ve got the hang of it, it is just sooo much fun to spin.
And this time, I hope to come out at the end with a really good length of some truly beautiful, smooth, pure silk yarn.
A couple of weeks ago, I changed the theme of my blog (the “theme”, for anyone who is not familiar, is the template that creates the layout of a blog, the way it looks visually). Previously, I’d been using a theme called Vigilance, which I chose for its clean lines, minimalist style and simple appearance. I liked it a lot, but I was never happy about the sidebar — I always felt it was hard to see where one item ended and the next began.
So a couple of weeks ago, I went hunting for a new theme and found one I just loved — it’s called Under the Influence and I think it looks great! It has the same clean lines and simple style that the blog had before, plus a few really cool features like the nifty footer at the bottom of the page (You hadn’t see the footer? Ooh, quick!… scroll down and have a look! I’ll wait for you here). And I’m really happy with the new sidebar — much, much better.
But then, about four days after I installed the new theme, I realised it had one drawback: it’s really hard to see where to leave a comment. It’s in the small print and it’s just doesn’t stand out that much.
And that’s a huge drawback, because a blog is a two-way conversation, and the comments are the lifeblood of that conversation. I love hearing from you, reading your comments, and getting your feedback. And if it’s hard for you to see where to leave a comment, then all that is going to grind to a halt pretty quickly.
When I first realised, I thought about going back to the old theme …or maybe looking for yet another one. But I really like this theme in every other way besides the comment issue, and I’d really like to stay with it.
And I probably will, but I thought I’d ask you guys as well. Do you think the new theme makes it difficult to leave a comment? To read others’ comments? Do you find it confusing …or did you not even notice the change? Please leave a comment and let me know. Just click where it says “Leave a Comment” (or shows the number of comments) right at the end of this post.
Right there… No, it’s right there. See it? Down a bit, and over. Small type, in red. See it? There you go!
SpaceCadet yarns have been featured in an Etsy Treasury several times now, and each time I have been absolutely delighted to get the news. There is nothing quite like having your work choosen by your fellow Etsians and highlighted right there on the screen to make you feel all warm, right down to you toes.
But the interesting thing is that, so far, every time my yarns have been included in a Treasury, it’s been the Freshly Cut Grass colourway that’s been picked — every single time! And that’s great, because it tells me that the green I created for that colourway is as eye-catching to others as it is to me. But at the same time, I couldn’t help wondering why none of my other colours were ever chosen — or if they ever would be.
So you can imagine my surprise when I clicked on the link in an email today and found that it was not Freshly Cut Grass but instead Cold Waters that had been chosen for the “I Feel Like a Blue…” Etsy Treasury. I believe I actually let out a whoooop, I was that excited!
Ladies and Gentlemen, I proudly present you Cold Waters, the newest Etsy Treasury star in the SpaceCadet lineup…
