Holy Handbags, Honey!

Check these out! These are the bags my friend made for me following the tutorial at Pink Penguin. The tutorial makes the small bag, but my friend modified it and made me the bigger one too! See her posts at Baby Steps.

The bags were part of an exchange--my friend "needed" new, cool, handspun yarn and I "desperately wanted but didn't have the time make" these bags. I had fun spinning the yarn I sent (back in February because I was so excited to have an excuse to spin!) and I am just thrilled with my new bags! The absolute best part of this exchange was the chance to work together as friends. Friends are wonderful!

Sling!

This is another one of the baby things I have been busy with. It's handwoven fabric--the yarns were all odd-lots that I think are rayon and polyesters. The rings were purchased on-line at SlingRings. The pleated sling design is from a friend of mine at Stand and Deliver.

I'm going to take this over to my friend's house and let her try it with her new little baby. I'm concerned that it is too long, but if it is I can fix that! I'm really pleased with how this turned out!

Wool--Can there ever be too much?

This is my current spinning stack. My dyed roving aren't selling very well on etsy right now...and that's ok because I like most of the things I have dyed and am (ahem) dying for the chance to spin them. The brown tub is full, top to bottom of rovings. The lid (off to the left) is only 4 or 5 inches deep, but it is full too! As I was spinning the first roving today I was contemplating the most appropriate weave structure to use to highlight it's colors. :)




"Baa, Baa Babydoll sheep
Have you any wool?"
"Yes, friend. Yes, friend.
Five bags full."

Five feed bags of babydoll fleeces arrived at my house today. The first bag has already been opened, skirted, soaked, and scoured. It's drying on my patio as I type. I'm hoping that I can play with it some more tomorrow.

Handwoven Fabric in Cards

The young women at church are having a fund raiser auction to raise money for camp. I put together these two cards for them to auction.

The twill is a new fabric (just off the loom this week!), but the green I had to dig for--deep into the depths of my sample/scrap box. In fact I had to dig so deep I ended up cleaning my craft room!

The cards are tri-fold, with the window panel in the middle. The fabrics were sewn onto a cream colored piece of card stock, then glued with rubber cement to the frame of the window panel. I'm extremely biased, but I like how they look!


I also finished spinning my East Freisan roving that I got at The Fiber Event last month. It's soft and springy, and this photo doesn't do the deep, dark brown (with tiny reddish highlights) any justice!

Toys

I made two animals from a pattern in "Twill Thrills" (Blue Tick Hound, p.8).

The blue one was a test with commercial fabric to see how the pattern went together. Unfortunately, I cut the body too big and my "hound" turned into a "rabbit".

The pink ticking fabric went on the loom Monday morning and came off Tuesday evening. It was a narrow warp (10") and short (3 yards), but it provided enough fabric to make the toy and a burp cloth and have plenty of fabric left over. The warp and weft are 10/2 cotton, unmercerized, sett at 24 epi.