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.

Yay! "Diamonds and Pearls" finally sold. After being featured in at least 4 treasuries, and getting more than 215 views.

In other news, I joined the "Big Damn Crafters" Street team on Etsy, so you should expect to see some Firefly related crafts popping up soon.

And now, just because I am bored, I give you the "what knitting needle am I?" quiz:

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.

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.

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. :)

I also received a box full of crafting supplies for the "fill a flat rate box swap"

This is everything: ribbons, yarn, scissors, paper punches, fabric markers, paper, ephemera, fabric, some little boxes, plastic bags (which have already proven useful for storing beads and other odds and ends), and a ton of stickers. All in all, about 7 pounds worth of crafting supplies. Cool, huh? Don't ask me how she got all this stuff in the box, because I couldn't get it to go back in again, once it was all out.


And here are a few of my favorite stickers. I especially like the beer ones for some reason. They make me giggle.

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:

With everything else going on in my life, I realized that I completely forgot to talk about how much fun I had visiting heathertea and everyone for crafting day, back on the 16th. Her new place is really nice, and there was lots of room for me, heathertea, ladygwyn, and sryder to spread out our crafting (and food) supplies. (In case you didn't know, food plays a very important part in crafting day.) So, it was much better than trying to squish us all into my living room. It was really great to see everyone. I've missed heather and am glad she and jon moved back to this general area, and even though they live nearby, I don't see enough of sarah and gerry, so it was cool to hang out with them too. So, thanks guys. You all were pretty much one of my only bright spots in this holiday season. =)

Also, I got a significant amount of knitting done, which enabled me, ultimately, to meet my goal of finishing my stepsister's and niece's presents by Christmas. Too bad I didn't actually get to see them, but that's a story for another time.

For now...enjoy some pictures:

Mmmm...cookies

( more pics! )

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.

Look. Yarn.





I made it myself. =)

I made yarn!

Okay...so it's a little over-twisted, and wonky in bits, and varied in thickness...but still...I made yarn.

Cool, huh?

This weekend we had a crafting day outing - lordavon, ladygwyn and I attended the Webs Knit for Hope event on Sunday. It was loads of fun. I was very good and only bought a little bit of yarn...and 2 knitting pattern books.

Lordavon won pretty laceweight yarn:



More pics can be found here: Knit for Hope Gallery.