Adventures in Spinning: A Tale of Steampunk Yarn

Custom spinning... talk about pressure!  Someone has made a special request and is anxiously awaiting a beautiful, perfect skein of soft yarn spun precisely to their specifications.  Your creative freedom depends upon the extent to which they've decided to relinquish control over the design.  And then there's the giving away part... assuming you do attain perfection, you immediately have to package up your work of soft, fluffy art and ship it off into the great beyond.

I recently had the privilege of spinning for Boston-based jewelry designer and animal activist Claudia Bruno, who has become a great friend and mentor to me when it comes to jewelry design and metal collage.  Claudia and I hit on the idea of a steampunk art yarn while chatting on Etsy, and we both got really excited about the idea.  For me, the idea of spinning a steampunk yarn was fascinating, because it would involve spinning in hardware - Claudia and I discussed gears, watch parts, brass jewelry findings, and even pieces of barbed wire.  While I'd worked with a variety of different spin-ins in the past and thought I could use the same techniques, I knew that it would be a challenge to find exactly the right pieces of hardware that wouldn't be too heavy and that would fit through all of the orifices and hooks on my spinning wheel, but that would still give the yarn the beautiful steampunk look that we were trying to achieve.

I was lucky in that Claudia gave me almost one hundred percent creative freedom over the project.  The only things that we really decided on up front were that the yarn would be some shade of brown, with gold or bronze angelina sparkle, and that she would pick out the spin-ins from her own stash and mail them to me.  The first thing I did was search Etsy for the perfect spinning fiber, and I found it pretty quickly in a batt called "Sepia," from Unwind Yarn Company.  A little while after I received the fiber, a big bag of gears, beads, watch hands, and brass roses arrived in the mail.  Joy!  Only another spinner can imagine the excitement I felt when I looked at that stuff and pictured it in a skein of yarn.  A couple of weeks later, those gears and roses and watch hands and fiber had been transformed into a huge skein of remarkably plush and squishy steampunk yarn!

As for the process...

The first thing I did (after weeding out any pieces that wouldn't fit through the plying head of my spinning wheel) was to pull off small strips of fiber (about 1/2 thick and 3 inches long) and thread them through the metal pieces that had larger holes, such as the gears (you can see one of those in the picture above) and the watch hands (pictured below.)

I then spun a super bulky weight, thick and thin single, feathering in the strips of fiber with the metal pieces attached.  I spun this directly onto the plying head of my Lendrum DT, because the orifice and hooks are considerably bigger than on the regular one.

Once I had my single, I wound it off so that I could use the bobbin a second time, and then I used gold metallic sewing thread and threaded all of the smaller pieces (that is, the brass roses and very small brass beads) onto that.  I thread plied this with the single, allowing the occasional beehive to form, and not worrying too much about uniformity (this is art yarn, after all.)

The result was, in my opinion, spectacular.  Not to praise myself too much, but the results far exceeded my expectations when it came to this yarn.  I have to admit that there was a part of me that was afraid that this project would turn out to be a massacre... that the metal parts would be too heavy, or the thread plying would go haywire, and I would have to Claudia that I had ruined her yarn.  In the end, however, it was a wonderful challenge and a joy to spin.

I am so glad that I took on this project, and that Claudia allowed me the privilege of spinning for her.  I will definitely be working with watch hands again - in fact, I already have some on special order - and I'm still very much intrigued by the idea of that barbed wire...

So, our tale of steampunk yarn ends with success and the yarn's safe arrival in Boston.  Until next time...

Hard to Give Up

This morning I got a fabulous surprise.  I woke up to a shout out from a fellow blogger and Etsian, Michaela of Buttons and Yarn Oh My!  A couple of weeks ago, she'd bought a skein of my handspun yarn (one of my favorite ones, at that!) and she had some very kind words to say about it, and about handspun yarn in general.  Thanks Michaela!  You can check out Michaela's shop at www.buttonsandyarnohmy.etsy.com.

Handspun yarn is very hard to give up.  There's just something about it.  The process of spinning is so tactile and so tangible, not to mention so time consuming, that you really grow to care about the yarn.  There are skeins that are like a beloved pet to me, that I would never give up.  With others, I just want to see the yarn in the hands of someone who loves it.

I'm sure that artists of every type experience the same separation anxiety that I do.  I know firsthand how hard it can be to give away a knitted garment or to sell a piece of handcrafted jewelry.  I can't even imagine what it must be like to sell an original painting or sculpture - even if your living depended upon it.

So I'm wondering... for those of you who create original, one of a kind art or crafted items, how do you deal with giving them away or putting them up for sale?  Does the sale make it worth it, or do you miss your item later on?  Or is it enough, as with my skeins of yarn, to see it in the hands of someone who loves it?

Getting Phat

Check out my new fish tank ---------------->

I think that is so cool.

So one of the things I've been wanting to do for the past couple of years is contribute to the Phat Fiber Sampler box.  Those of you who are on Ravelry and who are serious knitters or spinners know what Phat Fiber is.  For everyone else, it's basically a sample box of yarn and spinning fiber that comes out every month.  It's gotten extremely popular, so it's gotten very hard to snag a box... necessitating timed "box drops," a secret email list, and detailed instructions on the home page of the Phat website on how to score a box once it drops (seriously, they literally disappear within seconds.)

Anyway, I remember when the Phat Fiber box was first introduced, about three or four years ago.  Back in those days (let's call them the "days of old"), you had between ten and twenty minutes to get a box before they all sold out, so I managed to get my hands on the first few boxes.  It was pretty fab.  A big over-sized shoe box type package would come in the mail, and when you opened it up it would be packed full of beautiful spinning fiber and handspun and hand dyed yarn from all different Etsy, Artfire, and other kinds of shops.  I swore that if I ever decided to open up shop, I'd contribute to the box, thus becoming a "Phattie."

Cut to this year... if you've looked in my shop, you know that it's full of jewelry.  Nonetheless, I am also very serious about the Spinning of Yarn (much like the Naming of Cats, it isn't just one of your holiday games.)  I fully intended to stock some yarn at some point and eventually follow through with my goal of getting Phat.  But I figured I had time... maybe I'd contribute in September or October, when my schedule wasn't quite so full.

Then they announced the theme for July.  It was... wait for it... Art Nouveau.  I know.  Right?  How could I not contribute to an Art Nouveau box when I go on and on about Joris-Karl Huysman and market myself under the name Decadent Delusion???  So, toward the end of June (pretty late in the game, actually), I signed right on up, and here's what I did:

“In A Silver Charger”

Based on Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrations
for the play “Salome,” by Oscar Wilde

Merino, Suri Silk Threads, Wool Locks, Angelina, Silver Thread

"It is for mine own pleasure that I ask the head of Jokanaan in a silver charger."

 “Salome”

Based on Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrations
for the play “Salome,” by Oscar Wilde

Alpaca, Merino, Silk, Angora, Silver Thread

"How pale the Princess is!  Never have I seen her so pale.  She is like the shadow of a white rose in a mirror of silver."

Here's the gruesome illustration on which "In A Silver Charger" is based:

BWAHAHAHAHA!  I couldn't resist.  I just love Beardsley... he's so twisted.

Anyway, here are all my little samples before they went out:

The box "dropped" on Sunday, and people are starting to receive them and post pictures on Ravelry.  I've glimpsed my samples in one or two pictures already, and it's kind of a rush.  This has been such a fun project!  I'll definitely be contributing again next month... see you in Bollywood!  ;)

Introduction...?

Well, here I am... blogging.  As far as I know, I have no followers... hence the title of this post.  I have to be honest, I've never really like the idea of blogging.  It's time consuming, I have nothing to say, blah blah blah.

Recently, however, I've come to realize that I may have more to say than I thought I did.  See, I recently opened an Etsy shop.  I'm not going to pretend that I'm some "great artist" - I just do what I enjoy.  I have been making jewelry, knitting, and spinning yarn for years now, and my space finally got so overwhelmed with finished projects and stashed supplies that I had to start selling it off.

When you start up an Etsy shop, you get inundated with newsletters full of marketing tips.  Most of them are filled with gorgeous photos and featured artists and pretty much just make you feel inadequate.  However, one of the many tips that they offer over and over (along with great pictures, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account) is to start a blog and talk about your shop.

Again I say, "blah blah blah."  Still I resisted.  The whole idea seemed self-indulgent, and frankly, I wasn't convinced that my shop would last for more than a couple of weeks.  I did, however, set up a Facebook page for my shop, and finally got with the program and learned how to Tweet.

And that's when I noticed something surprising... after awhile, my Facebook posts started getting longer.  I wanted to share everyday stuff with my shop followers in the same way that I do with my friends.  What song am I listening to today?  What fabulous new Chanel nail polish has caught my eye?  What does everyone think of that new translation of Anna Karenina? Who else watches Pretty Little Liars, and are you as obsessed with Aria's wardrobe as I am?

So this is the result.  Me, sitting here in bed with my laptop in the middle of the night... blogging to myself.  I suppose I'll have to publicize my blog at some point... blah blah blah.  In the meantime, if there's anyone out there... enjoy.