More of the same...

Well, ok, not quite but I am busy again today. I promised to continue the craft stories yesterday so here I am.

First though, I've got to show you the view in front of my house. Today, I got up early, fed the pests and was heading down to the elliptical when I was stopped in my tracks. Gorgeous! I can't capture all the colors with my camera but you get the idea. I do live in a beautiful if freakishly snowy and cold place.


On with some more "Spinning Rich's Hat" pix - We left off with me winding the yarn onto a mini niddy noddy (that's that little contraption in the post below). I then "set the twist" of the yarn in hot water and brewed up a blue dyepot -


It came out bluer than blue (about as blue as Rich's eyes) but he said he liked it -


You know, even though the hat is now all knitted up, I don't think I'm going to show it here just yet, because it is a gift after all. I think Rich will have to wait to see it!

Here are some other things I wanted to show you - my BronzClay results. Man, I think I love this stuff! What do you think? Click on the pix to make 'em bigger.

Happy Groundhog Day!

You know, life is really, really good when you just don't even have time to blog. I'm serious! I keep myself so busy sometimes, I don't know which way is up - and that's a very good thing! However, this is me slapping myself for not blogging more because I like sharing my crazy crafting exploits and general life musings with you.

Here's a little of what I've been up to this week -

I've been chatting A LOT with my rediscovered friend, Rich. We were interns in Washington, D.C. when we were in college. It wasn't the right time for us then, but now? Maybe so...

It's been dang cold here - dang cold! I wake up to 7 or 8 degrees regularly. It's Groundhog Day and I don't actually care whether Phil saw his shadow or not, spring cannot come soon enough. This is my view out my front window.



We did get some snow last night but it just piled on top of what we still have from December.

I've been spinning Rich a hat. Here are some photos of the process. I love it that I've learned to spin - I'm trying to make myself more valuable for that deserted island experience, should it ever come to pass.

Thin spun singles from that wool that I saved and told you about in an earlier post -

Plied into a thick and thin worsted weight yarn -

Winding off onto my mini Niddy Noddy -

More photos of the "Spinning a Hat" tomorrow...

Finally, while semi-watching the Super Bowl yesterday (what a game!), I was playing with BronzClay. It's clay, infused with Bronze and when these are totally dry, I'll fire them in my kiln and the clay binder will burn away. I've had one terribly failed experiment with this already but I think I used the wrong carbon material for firing and I dried my pieces too quickly. Cross your fingers for these!