Dyed in the Wool Handmade

Last night my sister and my friends came over to drink some wine and help celebrate my birthday. I got an adorable sheepy card from Nicci and Aaron and Natalie brought me a bottle of wine. Jeremy got me an awesome cake, chocolate with chocolate and white chocolate truffle filling. I made the mistake of looking at the nutritional information that came on the cake and it clearly stated that no less than 25% was pure fat. Now that’s a cake!

I would have pulled out the tripod to try to get a good, low-light shot of the whole thing, but the rate at which those candles were burning and dripping made it impossible. I loved the candles!

Jeremy also gave me Some Kind of Wonderful on dvd. I used to have this movie on tape (I taped it off the tv) and watched it practically every day. I can’t even remember the last time I saw it, so I’m really excited to watch (and recite) it tonight. Interesting story: When I was in grade seven my class went on a field trip to the Chum City Building down on Queen W. and got a tour of the building as well as watched them tape Toronto Rocks. That day they happened to have Flesh for Lulu in the studio. At this point I hadn’t seen the movie yet and didn’t realize that I should have been really freaking excited. But I got my mug on tv for a few seconds while they panned across my class and we all cheered and waved.

Anyway, my actual birthday is on Tuesday and I will be 33.

D is for dyeing, which is now such a huge part of my life.

D is for drum carder, almost permanently attached to my kitchen table.

D is also for Downtown Knit Collective, which is Toronto’s knitting guild and they’re hosting an annual event at the end of April called the Knitter’s Frolic. Tons of vendors will gather at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre on Saturday, April 26th, selling their wonderful wares, and this year, that vendor lineup includes ME! I’m so excited to be there. This will be my first sales event and I’m very nervous and kind of scared. I hope if you’re local or planning to be in Toronto that weekend, that you’ll come and say hi! Admission is $5 and well worth it…there’s just so much going on – take a look.

So that’s the reason I haven’t had a shop update in a little while…I’ve been building up some stock but I didn’t want to say anything until I knew for sure I was accepted to participate in the event. Crazy!

Is it possible for me to not be a day late with these? I’ve got 23 more chances ahead, I’m going to try. One thing this photo meme has accomplished is speeding up my perception of the passage of time. Six weeks have already gone by in the year.

In the meantime, let’s look at my latest obsession, spinning yarn with coils. The singles were spun thick-and-thin, and I was very careful to keep the thick parts at regular intervals, and somewhat uniform in size. Then I plied the yarn with a strand of mercerized cotton, and coiled the thick parts around the core.

I’m only half done since I can only get 2 oz. of singles spun this way on a regular Lendrum bobbin. What you see above is the big plying head, and since the whole thing comes off together I can put it aside without severing the cotton strand and get back to work spinning the next 2 oz. of singles. Then I can splice the singles from the second bobbin to those of the first while plying, without a break or knot in the yarn, the cotton strand holding it all together. The goal is to get the entire 4 oz. in one continuous skein. So, I guess C is also for Continuous.

My submission for the ABC-Along is a day late. I wish I could say this is not typical of me, but I can’t. Realizing late yesterday evening that two weeks had gone by already was kind of like a slap in the face…I honestly have no idea where time is going and it seems like weeks are passing in what feels like only days. As I age, this phenomenon occurs with increasing frequency. Disturbing! Remember the days when summer vacation from school felt like it lasted forever?

Anyway, Bobbins. I can’t wax poetically about bobbins, really. They start with B and no matter how many you have, there are never enough of them around. If you click on the photo, you’ll wind up at my Flickr where you can see a much bigger version of my bowlful of bobbins.