Evil Eye

We are finally getting ready to unveil the new Evil Eye website, so things might get a little weird for a bit.  The new site will launch on Friday, and there will be a link to the blog on the main page.  You will not be able to use the current url for this blog as of Friday, but http://www.evil-eye-emporium.com/ will get you to the main page as always. If any of you RSS this blog (and if you do, thanks!) you might need to update it a couple of times before it settles down, but I will keep you posted.
I am busy updating inventory which was a collosal pain on my old site, but much improved now.  The look of the page may evolve as I get handier with Zencart, but it’s not too shabby.

The website is not the only thing I have been crafting, I’ve actually been spinning a little bit too, as well as knitting.  I can’t show you the knitting, gifts, you know.  But I can show you the spinning.

I dyed this corriedale at Yarn School in April:

And have spun it into these singles, which I am going to ply:

I am curious to see how it plies up.  The colors are muted, but nicer than I thought they would be when I first started spinning it up.  The corriedale is dreamy to spin, so soft and squishy.  I started spinning the single on that bobbin before Victor was born.  I don’t get much time to spin, but even a few minutes a day is nice.  I set him in his play pen where he can see me, and encourage him to play with his toys while I spin.  He almost rolled over yesterday!  Good times for both of us.

I’m looking forward  to some holiday crafting and decorating too, we’ll see how it goes.

I forgot to mention that I did finished the “Blue Ribbon Scrap Wrap” in time for Yarn School. It was just what I wanted, something warm but not too warm. Just right for those Spring days in which the weather can’t make up its mind.

Ever since I got back from yarn school, I can’t get enough of spinning.  I am thinking differently about my approach to how I spin yarn, how much twist to give the singles and the plies, and how to split up the top to get desired color effects.  I spun up the sample from Maisy Day, and I love the results.  The colors line up for the most part, but with lovely bits of overlap, that make for a very pretty 2-ply yarn.  And it is the most even weight yarn I have spun to date.

Today I started washing my alpaca fleece.  I did just enough to dry on a screen I use to dry sweaters.  I figured if I messed up, I didn’t want to waste the whole fleece.  I am pleased to report no felting at all, and it smells very nice now.  As if I was not already glad to own a washing machine.  As soon as it dries, I will try hand-carding some rolags and see how it spins.

Now to decide, sit outside and knit, or put up a couple of shelves.  It seems a shame to not get those shelves up, but it is an awfully nice day.  Hmmmm…..

I don’t even know where to start. Yarn School was an amazing experience. I left with new knowledge, inspiration, fiber, and friends. I have been more excited than ever to sit at my spinning wheel and try out new techniques (I am really enjoying spinning silk from the fold, and just used up my sample. Need…more…silk…), and can hardly decide which fiber to try next. There is the stuff I dyed in the dying workshop, there are the copious samples we were given from different dyers and spinners when we arrived, plus the batts I made when trying out the drum carders. Plus, once I decide what to spin, I get to think about how I want to spin it! I’m the one who is spinning!

Nikol Lohr, the teachers, and helpers were amazing. I was feeling a little star-struck about getting to take classes from Adrian from Hello Yarn, and Sarah from Maisy Day Handspun. I’ve been admiring their yarn, and reading their blogs for some time now. Not only do they make fabulous yarn and dyed roving, they are really good teachers, which in my opinion is much harder than just being good at something. Yarn School takes place in an old rural high school, with the grade school serving as the dormitory. It’s a great setting, and we had so much space to work and play in. We had access to fiber, and tools all the time, room to just hang out and practice our new skills or just relax and knit. They also did not mess around when it came to meals, the food was great! Every morning started out with good coffee, and a pitcher full of fresh waffle batter next to a waffle iron! How fresh is that? I wish I had taken more pictures in the cafeteria, but I was sleepy and/or hungry upon arrival, and ready to go do the next thing after meals, so I didn’t think of it then.

Here is a small sample of the pictures I did take, plus a picture of me spinning, and the class picture, both taken by John Wise, and I will leave it at that for now. I wish was more articulate about how great a time I had, but too many thoughts are coming to me at once.

It seems like I was playing catch up for so long, that I never got into a real work rhythm. I just kept flying through projects, and a lot got neglected, but a lot got done too. Now that I have a little more room to breathe and plan, I feel like my days are so unstructured that I am wasting all kinds of time. Lately I have been making an effort to plan my days better, and to not put off the things I have been talking about doing for so long. Like spinning yarn. I have put that off for so long, and finally I am making some time every morning to get a little spinning done. I feel like I am getting the hang of it enough now, that I am starting to think more about how to plan out how a yarn will look. How plying methods affect the final outcome, ideas about dying yarn and roving to achieve different effects. I am not saying I am pulling all that stuff off yet, but I am confident enough at the wheel to start experimenting a little more.

Here is the yarn I spun and dyed over the weekend. I should say that I finished spinning over the weekend, I started it months ago, and set it aside when other work came along, and never made the time for it.

I dyed it on Saturday at the Color Your Winter with Crafts event at the Chicago Cultural Center. The focus that day was dying, and Sara and I went to volunteer. It was slow in the morning and I had my newly spun yarn with me, and Sam, the dye master, was kind enough to let me dye it, and taught me a new method I had not tried before. It was a really fun day, Sara taught a woman to knit, and got drop spindle lessons, and I had fun helping Sam with the dying, and just hanging out and knitting with Sara and Bonne Marie.

The roving (Cotswold) was given to me as a gift a couple of years ago, along with a drop spindle. I had never even heard of a drop spindle, and didn’t know to call that bag of wool roving yet. I set it aside. About a year later I remembered it, and decided to pull it out, and there was a book on spinning with it too, so I tried, and failed. I went over to Loopy Yarns, and Kirsten showed me how to use the thing, along with introducing me to spinning with a wheel. I went home, tried again and failed and put it away. Kirsten did think it was a heavy spindle to learn on, and liking gadgets, I bought a Louet kit with a lighter spindle and some lovely roving in three natural colors.

After a few tries I got the hang of it, and became enamored with spinning. About 2 months later I ordered my Babe Spinning wheel.

And it’s with the Babe that I am starting my days. I like it. It takes just enough concentration to keep me interested, but not so much I can’t listen to the radio or think about other plans. I’ve had the wheel since last March, but only in the last week have I really dedicated myself to getting good at spinning and making the time for it. The hard part is stopping, I am really enjoying it.I also realize that I can make time for the things I want to accomplish, I just need to be more disciplined about it. I have a tendency to get excited about one thing and neglect other things. I have to learn to balance all these crafty desires out.

Oh, and this week I spun this beauty from ArtGirl:

It’s drying right now, pictures to come soon. I am really pleased with the results, and can’t wait to knit it into something. I think a hat. Oh sure, I just knit myself a hat last weekend:

but, I can always use another hat. Or mittens. I need new mittens.

PS Have I made up for promising pictures for so long?

I’ve been trying to decide what to write about today.  How the holidays went?  New year resolutions?  What I will knit next?  Thoughts on the neighborhood?

The holidays were great.  We had a power outage on December 23rd during the crazy windy weather.  Being without power most of the day really changed our plans.  We had spent the previous 2 days at our dear friends’ wedding rehearsal and then wedding (which was just lovely), so we were going to dedicate ourselves to getting the house ready on the 23rd.  No power really made that a tough one.  I thought at first, hey I can still do the baking since I have a gas oven.  Sigh, yes, I have a gas oven, but with electric controls and ignition.  So, although I could light the stove, I could not start or control the oven, so I could not even bake, and stay warm that way.  Thank goodness my uncles took over for Christmas eve, and we had a lovely evening at their home.  We then had 2 days of Christmas at my In-law’s home, on the 25th, and then officially on the 28th when my brother and sister-in-laws arrived from New York.  We wrapped up the holiday season with a small gathering of friends on New Year’s eve at our place, where we ate tasty finger foods all night, and laughed the night away.

As for new year resolutions, they are the same as usual, be better about getting exercise, be a conscientious consumer, but I also have a new one, to challenge myself more as a crafter.  Try more intricate knitting patterns, master the techniques that need work, and to spend more time at the spinning wheel.  I also want to make new items in metal, that will involve different approaches.  There are a lot of nasty chemicals involved in metal smithing, I want to move away from those methods, and think about making pieces that I can polish in a tumbler, and thereby never break out the tripoli, for example.  It should prove to be a good challenge to design pieces that will look good in the end with minimal finishing.  I do love that little tumbler.  We’ll see how it goes.

I also need to start thinking about the garden, apply last year’s lessons, and get a plan in order.  I can’t wait for Spring!  These short, cold days are the pits.
As for the neighborhood, I plan to pay much more attention to community meetings, websites like Hyde Park Progress, and so forth.  This month Hyde Park loses the Co-Op, and will get a new grocery store.  You can already see it being dismantled.   Thank goodness the Hyde Park Produce is expanding into the old Mr. G’s.  And Hyde Park still has Village Foods.  But what about Woodlawn?  When will we see something other than a new McDonald’s open when the old one stood?  When will the old power struggle with the U of C be resolved?  I would love to see other investment as well, but let’s face it, The U of C is next door, and a willing investor if the neighborhood would allow it.  And although there are certainly folks in Woodlawn who do not want to see the University involved, there are many more who would welcome any positive change.  And a little help from them might interest other outside investors to take interest in a neighborhood that is already changing.  There is construction all over, although there are still too many empty lots.  I see homes being rehabbed, but I also see the house on the corner shuttered because of a foreclosure.  Right now the city is laying new sewers on our block, but the corner that was torn up in the fall for an ADA compliant curb is still torn up and far from safe to walk on, especially covered in snow.  Hyde Park has new Metra stations, while Woodlawn has two stations, one is flag stop, and the other completely abandoned.  People here need to commute too.

Lately I’ve had to go downtown at least once or twice a week.  It really cuts into my time working at home, but it’s part of the job since I can’t do every part of the process sometimes.  I just don’t, and can’t own all of the tools, and master them.  But, I’ve turned that back and forth commute into holiday knitting time, and this pace I might even get more than one or two gifts done this year.  Having to go downtown also gets me out of the house, otherwise I might just become a hermit, except for on Monday nights when I go to the local SnB.

We’ve had more people attending the Stitch n’ Bitch, or SnB lately.  I was sitting next to a member of the Windy City Knitting Guild, and Hype Park Knitting Guild, plus the Crochet Guild.  Anyway, she has only come to knit with us a couple of times, and she leaned over and asked me if there were membership dues, and what the group was called.  I explained no, we just hang out and knit, we don’t have formal meetings or anything like that.  And, that the group is called the South Side Stitch n’ Bitch.  She just about died.  She had to call her friend over, because she just couldn’t yell the name of the group across the room.  Then her friend started laughing too.  Each of these ladies has been knitting since well before I was born, and were just tickled at our rude name (and greatly impressed that we don’t charge dues).  Once we were all giggling, we got to talking some more (and got over having to say bitch, I don’t think I have ever seen so much entertainment from that word in my life) and I got to hear stories of knitting in Chicago, back in the day.  The lady sitting next to me was knitting a hat with yarn she bought at Marshall Field’s.  What I asked?  Yes, back, before I was even born (or at least very young it was conceded), Marshall Field’s was the place to buy nice yarn, and when they stopped, they had a huge sale, and I guess she bought so much of it, she is still knitting from that stash.  And it was some nice yarn she was working with, still in its green bag.   She then pointed out that she is a slow knitting.  No, I think she just has that much yarn.  And people think I get nostalgic about buying cheap acrylic at Woolworth’s- back in the day.

I love working both with metal, and with yarn.  And, I know there are metalworking guilds, I even belong to one, but the social aspect of knitting and the impact it has had in my life surprises me every now and then.  I have, or at least used to have, a hard time joining a group.  I used to try to attend meetings at the original SnB, but it was far from home, and I never really gave myself the chance to get to know people because I so rarely attended.  But having this group close to home, and finally deciding to go more often has really made me feel more comfortable in a group setting.  Plus, I have a whole bunch of new friends to hang out and knit with once a week.  My knitting and spinning have improved thanks to the conversations we have and the advice I get.  Whereas with metal, even though I used to be a regular at Lillstreet, and I really liked the people I interacted with over there, I want to do my metal work in solitude.  I get less done when chatting with people, and of course having to set up and put things away each time I got to work over there became a nuisance.  I love being alone in my studio, listening the the radio, and realizing suddenly that I have been working on a piece for 3 hours.  The time just flies.  And, I can leave my tools on my bench if I want to.

Right now the most fun is the meeting of the crafts, making pretty items for knitter with metal and beads has been a real treat, and there is no end in sight.  Just a few more trips downtown.

So, I already missed a day of blogging. Oh well. I got busy working on stitch markers, and a few other projects, and then we went out to have dinner with friends and the day got away from me. I did finish my hand warmers yesterday morning, so now I have to decide to what to cast on next. Hmm….. I did just spin some yarn, perhaps it is enough for a hat?

It’s not the best yarn, but I am still practicing. This was spun from some of the roving I won in a raffle at the Michigan Fiber festival over the summer. I have no idea about the fiber content. It’s wooly, but I don’t know what ind of wool. At any rate, it’s good to practice on as it is more persnickety to spin than the other wool I have spun so far.

The weather has been warm, and the loofa I attempted to grow is now, in November, in bloom.

I haven’t said too much about the garden since the Spring. We grew plenty of tomatoes, but not so many I could start canning them. The strawberry plants really seem to have taken hold, so I expect some berries next year. Same with the raspberry bushes. I really need to trellis those up. I slacked a bit on the gardening this summer, but I managed to do ok maintaining it, and I didn’t kill anything. In fact it is all still quite green. I hope to do better next year, and I am already making plans. Perhaps gourds of some kind?

Where to even start? Ok, I’ll start with a request. Please go vote as often as you can for Brenda’s video at the apartments.com Possession Obsession contest. Help Brenda beat the junk girl and win $20,000! And it’s not just because Brenda rocks, her collection and video deserve to win.

On to YarnCon! Could we have assembled a nicer and more talented group of people? The only real problem I had all day was not having enough money to spend! I did buy a few things, to be sure, and since books might be an ever greater weakness than yarn, and books that talk about yarn are the greatest weakness of all, I bought books. I picked up Susan Strawn’s Knitting America: A Glorious Heritage from Warm Socks to High Art. Susan was very sweet, and sold out of her books. I might have to order a copy of this book for my mom, she couldn’t get enough of the samples of knitting that Susan brought with her, and was immersed in the book later that day. I also got the delightful Shannon Okey’s (AKA Knitgrrl) Spin to Knit: The Knitter’s Guide to Making Yarn. I wish I didn’t already own Naughty Needles: Sexy, Saucy Knits for the Bedroom and Beyond so I could have bought it from our surprise guest, Nikol Lohr. I bought lots of other goodies and I will take pictures and tell you about those soon as well. I already started a swatch with the lovely cotton yarn I bought from Lisa at Carpool…

A very exciting moment for me was the chance to sit for Franklin’s 1000 Knitters Project. I am not shy in front of a camera, but never have a felt as at ease as I did when sitting for Franklin. What an unbelievably sweet person. Thank you Franklin! I hope I get to see my picture! But, having seen the other pictures I have no worries, and am honored to be a part of his project. My only regret is that I did not get a picture of Franklin!
Speaking of pictures…

Oh, I know summer is not over, but that stretch of time between Memorial Day and Labor day went by in a flash.

Our home and garden survived the rain storms last month, and we have a wonderful abundance of tomatoes. I plan to use my new canning skills on those guys, so we can continue to enjoy them for months to come. The strawberry plants are filling in the space I set aside for them, and I think we will have plenty of strawberries next summer. My raspberry bushes are also growing, so I think next year I might be canning jams as well as tomatoes. Yeay! I have also been enjoying being a part of the CSA. I have learned to like veggies I never gave a chance. Eggplant, I am so sorry I said bad things about you, same goes for you beets. I also like learning to eat seasonally, learning what grows when, and that some have a couple of cycles of growth.

I’ve also been busy with YarnCon. If you are still thinking of applying, please go ahead, we still have some time to accept more applications. So far the applications we have received have blown me away! YarnCon is going to be fantastic. We already have people lined up to do book signings, demos and workshops, and the vendors are amazing. I’ll let you know the details soon.

Life in the kitty hotel is great. Mr. Big Cat has been staying with us, and my cats have become much better hosts than in the past, making it a peaceful animal house. They even let me knit and spin! Thanks to a visit from the talented and kind Vera, I have learned to ply with my spinning wheel, and am really enjoying the process. I was spinning upstairs, but it gets hot, so I took my chances spinning in the basement, and the cats were curious, but not enough to injure a paw. I really am trying to catch up on uploading pictures, and when I do will show you the results. I have also been knitting Scott’s light winter hat, and am making slow, but good progress. I just take it everywhere, and when I find I have a moment, I work on it. It’s just a 2 X 2 rib, very easy.

Well, just because it’s after labor day, it doesn’t mean i get to slow down, so off I go.