Thankfully, after about a week and a half of rest, my back felt much better, and I was able to continue work on some other projects. Here's what I've been up to.

First, I had a custom order from my Etsy Shop, from someone who really liked my "Starlight" yarn, but wanted something in worsted weight.


Then I worked on 2 coordinating yarns from a beautiful batt of Mardi Gras inspired merino, 2 laceweight yarns (handspun merino and commercial mohair), and some metallic threads, and beads.
The first is Carnivale:


And the second is Tryst


In an effort to utilize some of my other crafting skills, I also whipped up this little sketchbook/journal:


And these hair sticks:



Yeah, I really missed crafting when I was injured. :) In other news, I am in the process of moving into some studio workspace, which I will be sharing with geekpixie. I am very excited about it, but will be glad when the moving part is done, and I can just go play in the studio. yay!

Before my back pain put me out of commission for a while, I finished up these two yarns. The first is called "Tempest" and is for the EtsyFAST April challenge: Storms





The second one is unnamed, so I welcome any suggestions you might have.

Just found out that my "Starlight" yarn was featured in a treasury by spawnofflame, who sells some very cool lampwork beads. Pretty, pretty.

Was happily working on some new projects, but am out of commission for a bit, as my back started spasming last night. Throughout the day today, it got progressively worse, so that at this point I am barely mobile. *sigh* Speaking of which, I am going to go rest now. G'night.

When I got home today, I made this:


It's a threading hook for spinners, and the design is inspired by the Grimm's Fairy Tale, "The Goose Girl." (I still have fairy tales on the brain as it is this month's challenge theme for EtsyFAST.

Am I disturbed for thinking of this?

I have been a busy little spinner the last few weeks.


I call this one "Morning Magic", and I am very pleased with the way it came out. It even got featured in a treasury by redmag, which made it to the front page of Etsy and resulted in a huge number of views for my store...though sadly, no sales.


This one is "Dream Come True", and is a little more girly than I usually go for, but I have been trying to expand my color palette. This is more of the faux cashmere, and boy is it soft.

I just finished spinning up some new yarn last night to post in my etsy shop.


"Diamonds and Pearls"

It is white faux cashmere plied with metallic thread which has been strung with swarovski crystals and faux pearls. I was inspired by the fairy tale "Diamonds and Pearls", hence the title.

And it got featured in a treasury by epicurus.

Yay!

This past week has been a very crafty one. On Monday, I went with paper_wings to the Sudbury SnB. Had coffee, did some knitting, and met some fun new people. Seems like a good group, and I expect I will be going back, even if it is a little out of my way.

Have been trying to get my etsy shop in order, as I pretty much neglected it (along with most everything else) for the whole month of December. Have joined a few groups to try and help promote my stuff and do some networking, but I haven't participated much yet, as I feel like my site needs a lot of work. Mainly, I need to come up with a name for it. I mean...I have my username, but most of my fellow etsyian's have a shop name, and I feel like I need one, along with a banner. So there is definitely work to do. But, I have still managed to sell the occasional piece, and am thrilled that someone finally bought the knitting needle case, so that I feel justified in making more. In addition, I sold some yarn to paper_wings, and accepted 2 commissions for fingerless mittens for my co-workers, so I am feeling good about those things.

I have continued to do a lot of spinning the last few weeks, and am very nearly finished with what I hope will be my very first sock weight yarn. I am so excited at the prospect of making socks from yarn that I spun myself. Have also been knitting my fingers to the bone, I need to finish up the fingerless mitts for J, so that I can start on the other pairs. And then, just for fun, I am currently in 3 swaps. The first is Dead Like Me themed, and I am having so much fun with that. The next is the Invite Your Partner swap, where lordavon asked me to be her partner, and made a request for some little stuffies. And the last is a stuffie swap. Haven't done much in the way of stuffed animals for a few months, and am really enjoying it.

So that's what up in my crafting world these days. Sorry there's no pictures, but hopefully I will have some more stuff to show off soon.

Gave paper_wings her Christmas present today. Spun her some yarn from the roving I dyed a few weeks ago:



And made her a set of stitch markers:




And just for fun, here's some other yarn that I spun up recently:

My partner for the Spinners/Knitters/Crocheters swap finally received. Part of the swap requirements was to make or dye yarn, so I spun this up from some hand-dyed multicolor roving.


It has all the colors in it.

I also included this cute knit bag as the small to medium sized item:





I especially like the button closure.

Sent this off in the mail today, for a personal swap (I am getting a cute tote bag with a sun/moon pattern in return).



Also, I ordered some Moo cards, and got notice that they are on their way to me today. Yay!

I don't have pictures yet of the fiber I dyed with geekpixie because I haven't been to her studio to pick them up. However, I woke up at 4 am the other day and couldn't sleep, so of course, I got out the kool-aid, food coloring and vinegar and went to town.


Absinthe


Oceana

And then I also did a little spinning last week, with some mohair I bought at the Fibertwist.


Jack

Mixed Berries


Verdant

Have 2 others, but they are either presents or for swaps, so will have to wait to post them.

Have spent most of the week working on a mobile because I volunteered to be an angel for a swap. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but you know what? Making mobiles is frustrating. Especially if you are kind of anal retentive and want the damned thing to hang straight. It's been a lot of -add a bead to this side...now add two beads to this side...and hope that at some point it all works out. Stupid math, interfering with my crafting. *sigh*

However, I did have time to finish spinning up some yarn, mostly because I wanted to get it off the bobbins so I could play with my new fibers. :)




I've been very into the autumnal colors, but this one is a bit too orange. I don't know what ever possessed me to buy orange fiber. Unless maybe I was going to needle felt some pumpkins or something? Who knows.

Finally, I wanted to share an action shot of the apron I made for the Day of the Dead swap, cause it looks better on a person.

My partner for the fall themed swap received her package as well.

First I made this little embroidered pillow:


The fabric is some random fleece I had left over from some other project, and the embroidery was done with wool-ease left over from the second scarf I ever made (I knew there was a reason I never throw stuff out!)

Next is some autumn-colored yarn:


The fiber was a romney blend, but I had lost the tag for it, so I don't remember exactly. This single was pretty well balanced, a first for me.

And last, a wreath:


I originally resisted the idea of buying the wreath base, and gathered a bunch of twigs and branches from my yard and spent most of a day entwining them and binding together with floral wire, only to discover that the base I had made was too big to fit in any of the boxes I had, and I tried to get a larger box, but couldn't find one. So, I ended up buying a wreath base. But it was still fun to hot glue stuff all over it, and I will just end up using the base I made for a wreath for me. :)

Ernest, my crocheted bunny reached his new owner yesterday, and she likes him a lot. I wanted to post another pic, because I added a pompom to his hat, which I think looks adorable.




Work on some of my long oustanding knitting projects is nearing completion. I am about halfway through the decrease section on my Clapotis. Exchequered is about 6 rows from being complete, so I should finish that today at work. And I completed one of jadefu's fingerless mittens and started its mate. Hooray for finishing things.

Finally, I have some handspun yarn to show you. I decided to make an attempt at spinning bamboo. I had a lot of trouble with it, actually. It didn't want to wind onto the bobbin and ended up being severely overspun and full of kinks, as well as being inflexible. Though it was very shiny. I had intended to leave it as a single, but to try and make it a little more pleasing to work with, I plied it with some sewing thread and got this:



I ran out of thread, and had some excess yarn, and with that I found that by reskeining it a couple of times, I was able to work out most of the gnarly bits, and it actually looks and feels pretty good:



Well, that's all the crafting I have right now. Hopefully today at work will be a little slow so I can get some stuff done. I don't understand why our customers don't realize that I have knitting to do, they keep calling in and wanting to talk about their problems. Geez.

Haven't posted a lot lately, so I thought I would share some pics to show that I haven't entirely been slacking.

So, here's some yarn I've spun:








Some stuff I've knitted:









And other crafty things:

So I made some more yarn, and again, I am at a loss about what to call it. It is probably going to become fingerless mittens. It's very soft and squishy, and I like it. Also, it's the most even of the yarns that I've spun thus far, though a bit bulkier than I intended.

Well, I had some difficulties in getting the bulky flyer attached to the spinning wheel. It didn't fit on there the way that I expected it to, and it took some fiddling to get it to line up right. I am sure there is an easier way to do it than what I did, but what do I care? It worked.

So the autumnal yarn that I showed off in this post, was plied with some gold braid and now looks like this:



There's about 120 yards, and it's pretty bulky. I don't know what I will make with it, or what I should call it. I feel like it needs a silly name. Maybe some kind of literary reference?

So, yeah, more yarn. Got to play with the wheel a bit on Fri night before my plague overwhelmed me. I learned that trying to make yarn when feeling very tired and ill is not necessarily a good idea, unless you intend to make novelty yarn. That being said, I thought some of you (that aren't geekpixie) might like to know what my wheel looks like.

Here it is in all of it's glory:

Pretty, huh?

So my yarn experience started with this very autumnal bundle of wool:


Which, because I wanted to experiment a bit about how I prepared it, I split into 3 sections, which wound up fitting almost perfectly on a bobbin apiece.
The first one looked pretty good:


The second one, while very different, also looked okay:


The last one, well, it's definitely more of a novelty, lots of overspun/underspun bits, tufty things sticking out and whatnot:

The plague pretty much hit me full force halfway through this one, and I completely lost the ability to do more than one thing at a time.

As a side note, I tried to ply this yarn with some pretty gold stuff, which looked really nice, except when it got all tangly and made the yarn develop buboes, resulting in it being painstakingly unwound by me, and my lucky roomie, who gets to witness most of my crafting disasters in person. =/

Should probably stop playing with the yarn and focus on some of my swap things which need to get done. Heh.

Second attempt at spinning, completed. With some plain wool, that I dyed with kool-aid.


There's still some over-twisty bits, but it's better than my first attempt. The lack of boozahol probably helped some.

Gwydion is ready for his spinning lesson.