Summertime
Summertime’s in full swing, and I have been everywhere else but on this blog..
Our garden’s growing:
Yes this is a wheelbarrow full of Napa Cabbage! We made saurkraut!
Spring Strawberries!
A Cool spring made for awesome pea harvest
Mini Pac choi growing up to become seeds
Medicines are in the Making:
Fresh blossoms of St John's Wort for healing oil...
Healing herbs (St John's Wort, Calendula & Lavender, Yarrow, and Comfrey) steeping in oil in a sunny windowsill
Dye Plants are being harvested:
Dyer's Coreopsis flowers!
These wonderful flowers have self sown themselves all over my garden! Each day I go and gather the newly opened blossoms, and dry them down. By the end of their season, I hope to have enough to dye a sweater’s worth of yarn. They will dye the wool a lovely salmon orange if I mordant with alum and modify with alkali. I will post pictures of the finished yarn!
Knitting outside of course! While my children swim or play or play at our various campgrounds, I have managed to get some knitting done.
Here’s my Enchanted Daybreak Shawl I finished while at our Knit Nite Girls ( Fiber Trash Girls) Summer retreat:
A Spider Web shawl for Mama Spider!
Here’s a few pair of socks I have finished, as I have been keeping up with my Year of Socks:
Sport Weight Sock for March
Handspun Socks for April
Fun Textured Socks for May
Handspun Socks for June
-Making lots of yummy treats from garden fruits! Inspired by a page in one of our favorite picture books, To Market to Market, the kids and I made Blueberry Turnovers.
- Yummy Turnovers with extra filling on top!
-These long summer days give me lots of time to spend with my wonderful kids. When I am outside with them, I am such a better parent. We’ve been taking lots of short camping trips, and we are learning so much from the wonderful woods.
Maizie found a huge Spring King Bolete Mushroom while camping!
Yes, that is Moss and friends learning to skin a Squirrel! Taken at our Wilderness Skills Family Camp.
Moss found an old Fire Engine while camping in Forest City!
Enjoy these wonderfully long days!
February Socks and a New Club….
For a short month, naturally I knit a pair of small socks! A cute pair of socks for my sweet 6 year old.
Yes, hard to believe she is 6. From this tiny little bundle:
to this: 
Out of these socks, a new tradition in our house..a fresh pair of handknit socks for your birthday month! Not for your birthday exactly, but sometime in the month. Moss is anxiously his birthday socks, which will be in April. I never like to hear him whine, but I did smile a bit when he was pouting about wanting his handknit socks…I am cultivating a taste for fine handknits in both my children!
February is typically a slow month, so I seem to get a lot of crafting done, and inspiration for new projects. One cool thing I did this month was join the Spunky Eclectic Weaving Club. Amy sends you yarn and a simple draft pattern, all designed to be woven on a rigid heddle loom. I have 2 rigid heddle looms I mainly use for weaving with handspun. I recently got the Weaver’s Idea Book, so that I could explore other techniques beyond plain weave on a rigid heddle loom. So this club will be a great inspiration for new project on my more portable looms.
We were given a few choices when we joined the club as to our color preferences ( i.e. earth tones, blues etc)..I chose the Wild category, which means anything goes! I love wild color combinations, and a club is a great way to push the edge of your color choices. Amy ( aka Boogie on Ravelry) from Spunky Eclectic is known for her wonderful creative and wild sense of color combining!
Want to see what we got for the first month’s club?
Two skeins of Rustic Silk Yarn, in these beautiful Gold and Purple colors.
Here’s the yarn Warped on:
The Draft we were given was a simple Houndstooth weave.
And here’s the weave in progress:
There is snow on the ground, tea in my mug, fire in the stove, and lots of yarny projects around! BLISS!
Looking forward to next month’s projects!
New Sweaters!
This new year brings two new sweaters!
The first is the Fairwind Cardigan. Inspired by Woolydaisy, our knit night group decided to embark on a knit-along. Each of us chose a different yarn, and we set to make this stunning sweater.
This is by far the most fancy sweater I own. I almost am scared to wear it, for fear of mussing it up with food stains, paint splatters from the little ones, or firewood snag, or dirt from the garden…I am notorious for wrecking up all my clothes with this country lifestyle. Here’s hoping that this sweater avoids that fate, and can accompany me on some of my more refined adventures! LoL!
Next, I knit a sweater by the same designer, Cecily Glowik MacDonald. Idlewood is a lovely tunic with a cozy oversized cowl neck.
Like the yarn I used? It has a great story to it….Several years ago, my grandmother gifted me all of her knitting stash and tools shortly before her death. In one of her bins of yarn was 1500 yds of 100% soft merino wool she had gotten on clearance from Joann’s Fabrics. Reason why it was on clearance was that it was the most hideous shade of pastel mint green. My sweet grandma couldn’t pass up such a deal on 100% wool yarn ( thankfully she was a yarn snob too, and turned her nose down at acrylic yarns!), so she bought it and stashed it away. Well, of course I had to find some way to use this good yarn, so I threw it all into a dyepot with Sabraset Dye in the Mustard colorway (3 depth of shade) and voila! Soft yarn in a kettle dyed colorway I could actually wear without looking nauseated. Thanks Grandma!
My husband Gordon took the photos at such a beautiful time in the evening with the golden glow of sunset. I am sure he thinks I am nuts for wanting to do a photoshoot of sweaters, but he loves me and puts up with all my nutty behaviours when it comes to all things fiber related! 😉
I have two more sweaters planned from stash yarn…next up is Sabine wrap from Cocoknits. I scored this pattern and a divine skein of yarn from my trip to Verb for Keeping Yarn Store in Oakland.
And I also have plans to knit the Tephra pullover with a lovely burnt orange yarn I scored at WEBS last year.
This sweater knitting thing is sure addictive, and a great way to plow through stash yarn.
January Socks
We are having a wonderful January thaw, as the temps near the 70’s and the sunshine seeps into our pores. I’ve let the housework go to hell, as I’ve spent most hours these past few days outside. Walking trails with the kids, hanging at the park while the kids ride bikes, basking in the sun on the deck. Getting my vitamin D, baby. The common thread of all the outdoor activities is: sock knitting. Got my trusty knitting bag clicked on my hip, with a simple pair of socks on the needles. Great on the go knitting. I even knit on these socks in the dark as we attended some films at the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Fest in town…I did get a few odd looks, but who cares? I was enjoying the entertainment and getting something done at the same time, which was more than they were doing….
So, the fruit of my labor…a lovely honey colored pair of socks! The first pair in the dozen I have pledged to knit this year.
The yarn is Blue Moon Fiber Art Socks that Rock Heavyweight, in the Honey colorway. The pattern is Thuja, which is imprinted in my brain after knitting it twice in a row. A great simple sock pattern.
Already thinking ahead to the next pair for Febuary….I am going to knit my daughter a pair of knee highs for her birthday ( which is in early Feb.) so I am getting a jumpstart now.
Ah, if I can keep up my sock knitting mojo, it’s gonna be a good year.
3,2,1, Cast On…..
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!
I am bringing in the New Year, DIY style, clinking my knitting needles instead of champagne glasses….casting on for my first pair of socks of 2011.
Thuja Socks in Socks that Rock Colorway ” Honey”. I just made a pair of these same socks using a different colorway for my husband for Christmas, and i now have the pattern committed to memory. Boy they knit up fast on thicker than fingering weight yarn. Getting a good start on the year’s knitting….
I think this year I have more craft related New Year’s resolutions than ever!! I have lots to crank out this year. I have several sweaters either on the needles, or in my queue waiting to be cast on. This winter I am getting selfish with my knitting time, and gonna deck myself out in some warm woolens.
I have plans to finish my Fairwind Cardigan by the end of January. Today I knit almost all day long, and managed to finish the bottom portion of the body. I did 3 lace repeats, and the length is just right! Now onto the sleeves, which should go fast.
I also have cast on for the Idlewood tunic, a pattern by the same designer as the Fairwind, Cecily Glowik Macdonald of Winged Knits…I love so many of her patterns, and her directions are clear and easy to follow. She uses this wonderful increase “ K1-b/r”, which creates a subtle but lovely raglan shaping. I am knitting with yarn I inherited from my Grandma’s stash. She had a whole shopping bag full of this soft wool yarn in that hideous mint green seen in baby yarns. So i just dropped all 15 skeins of it into a mustard dyebath, and voila. Yummy hand-dyed yarn to knit away with. You will see pictures soon….
Now that the holiday presents have been opened, I can share a few of the projects that were under top secret wraps..
A handwoven bag made for my husbands I Ching book and runes. The cloth for this was woven on my rigid heddle Flip loom, and the band was cardwoven on my inkle loom. It is lined with wool felt for a sturdy pouch, with a snap closure.
And here’s the sweater vest I made for my daughter Maizie:
The yarn is handspun, 2 ply from roving from BeeMiceElf in the Bougainvilla colorway. It is superwash merino, so i can launder without worrying about felting.
I had just enough yarn to make a small matching vest for her new doll:
She was so pleased!!
And for one final Christmas craft….my own present of course! Who knows what to get me better than myself! I bought myself a pound of this luscious ecru BFL/silk blend from Paradise fibers, undyed. And at our last dye day at my studio, I dyed it all up as a lot enough to spin for a vest. I was very pleased with the results, and I considered it my Christmas present to myself!
So here’s to plenty of knitting, weaving, spinning, sewing, and whatever craft is your fancy in the New Year!!!
Mini Etsy Update
Dreaming of New projects in the New Year!!
Happy Holidays everyone!! hoping everyone is filled with abundance of family, food, and everything this holiday represents. The light is coming back!!!
So, it has been ages since I’ve posted here. It has been a busy fall of craft fairs and holiday crafting.
MamaSpider Studio teamed up with WoolyDaisy of Washboard Woolies, and Genevieve of Fairy Tale Felts for the holiday craft fair circuit. It was wildly successful, and all of us spread the warm woolies to others during this Solstice season! It was great fun sharing a booth with these two lovely and creative women!
Now that the flurry of holiday crafting is over….now is the time for MamaSpider to get creative on new fronts…
My latest inspiration for the New Year is to knit 12 socks in 12 months. I was inspired by PrairiePoppins over at Handmade Homeschool, and also by the YarnHarlot, who embarked on her own ” self imposed Sock Club”. great motivation to move thru yarn stash and get a pile of socks out of the deal.
So here is my mosaic of yarns i have chosen to knit into socks this year…most likely most of my socks will be of the “plain vanilla” sort ( you know, just a whole lot of stockinette or easy rib) since I have these little critters around here I homeschool. That way i can knit during read aloud time with Maizie etc.
1. EKF BFL sock “Carmelita”, 2. EKF enchantments ” Chai”, 3. EKF enchantments “Rom”, 4. EKF BFL Sock ” Red Dirt Girl”, 5. Socks that Rock ” Rooster Rock”, 6. Socks that Rock ” Autumn on Tap”, 7.Shephard sock ( from Colrain MA), 8. Enchanted Knoll Farm “Sunflowers”, 9. Hello Yarn Fat Sock “Nostalgia”, 10. Plymouth Happy Feet, 11. mamaspider Handspun 3 ply, 12. Socks that Rock “Honey”
I am also knitting up several sweaters, and have a lot of weaving projects in mind. I will be blogging about these fibery exploits soon!!
Happy Holidays and wishing you an abundant New Year!!!!
Feelin’ the love
Summer’s flying by…..amidst the business of summer, there is productivity; the whir of the spinning wheel, the rhythm of the beat of the loom…miles of yarn spun, and yards of fabric wove. and piles of cukes and tomatoes and melons and fragrant herbs and buckets of blackberries to can. I love the cadence of summer…simply trying to keep up with abundant inspiration all around.
But today i am feeling the love…the love of crafting in a way that inspires others…. I recently had a visitor at the studio. a lovely intern from a neighboring farm…she blogged about her visit. Lovely.
I also recently received a mysterious letter in the mail. I opened it, and found an intriguing poem, written just for me by a lovely lady who purchased handspun yarn from me at last winter’s Holiday Faire at the Schoolhouse. The yarn i spun, had inspired the words, and also a scarf which she lovingly knit for her husband. This is the gift of craft….to make yarn that inspires someone else’s creative muse. What a blessing. here’s the poem:
A skein of yarn;handspun and hand-dyed.
As I cast it onto my needles it cast me
out into some world beyond the scarf i begin
and the blue and green collide like some kind of
magical map she spun into existence.
nights before the fire
the magma mixing with the oceans,
now the caribbean,
now the seas around fiji
now the crystal blues of the Artic
now the waters swirling around coral reefs
colors deepening as the seas sweep away from shore
periwinkle turning into cerulean
and now a touch of ochre for the dry hills
and the desert and the tumbleweed in the Eurasian plains
and now the seas green of the Aegean transmuting into
the dark green of the pine forest punctuated
with the brown shaggy bark of the redwoods
along the coast leading me out
and onto the moors their gorse of green moss
after a long rain and now a splash of vermillion
the hummingbird’s throat vibrating in my hands
and now cerulean celadon chartruese live agate aqua
the Amazon river weaving its way the the rows
the world she spun slipping now between my fingers
each knit or purl wrapped inside the other and then turned
around the one before it awaiting the next as the needles click
as her spindle whirs
mama spider spinning the world
the colors she painted drying by the woodstove
wound and bound together with pieces of string.
these are the colors of the planet
seen from reaches of space
these are the colors of the earth
seen from cabin windows and bridges
these are the colors of the land
as I walk between the trees
and stop to dip my fingers
into the stream.
—Laura Pendell, for Rowen White.
New England Spring Fiber Tour 2010
Well, here I am finally updated in the blog with a wrap up of my New England Spring Fiber Tour, 2010….which was a tale of my fibery exploits while being on-call “Grandma sittin'” in Massachusetts!
Unexpectedly due to several health crisis’ in Gordon’s family, we had to leave our California homestead ( right in the middle of spring planting time in the gardens…argh!) to go take care of Gordon’s 90 year old Grandma for two weeks. The upshot of the whole trip was several fiber related adventures, which has made me fall in love with New England all over again. Western Massachusetts is a treasure trove for the fiber artist…many local weavers, shepherds, and yarn stores that have me leaving for the airport with yarn laden bags, and a box via USPS with my loot!!
Where do I begin? First a few pictures of Gordon’s mama’s farm…an 1800’s era farmstead in Shelburne Falls….
view of the fields from the creek
the Clesson Brook that runs thru the farm
Igor the Rooster, with a great "hat"
The kids had a blast at the creek, and we enjoyed many walks out behind the house. New England is so green in the spring!
So you wanna hear more about the fiber and wool, right?
Well, fortunately for me, the first weekend in Mass. coincided with WEBS Yarn Store’s HUGE tent sale! WEBs yarn store is HUGE…biggest yarn store in the country i think. The only yarn store I’ve been to where you can get a shopping cart for your shopping convenience!! lol!
the WEBS yarn store warehouse...a LOT of yarn in here!
Well, I didn’t manage to snag a picture of the crowd at the tent sale, but you can only imagine hundreds of knitters elbowing their way thru a serious crowd to get deals on bags of yarn…I scored a couple of sweater’s worth of yarn for a mere $35, plus a few skeins of sock yarn for only 4.00 a skein. Who could resist the bargains??
WEBs yarn store
Next on the Fiber Tour, we went into the village of Shelburne Falls, home to the Swedish weaving school, Vavstuga. This is literally a 2 minute drive from my mother in-law’s home!! What a treasure!!! I cannot wait to come and take a week long intensive here!
the weaving room at the Vavstuga Weaving School
a student project on the Swedish drawloom
This charming little weaving school just sang to my heart. To see the unique swedish drawlooms warped with all sorts of bright colors was so inspiring!! I was 3,000 miles away from my own weaving studio, but was delighted to visit this studio, where students of all ages and backgrounds are learning new ways to warp and weave. I was in heaven. That night I even dreamt of weaving in that studio, playing with color and texture to my heart’s delight!!
I want to take their 5 day Swedish weaving basics course, and am hoping to do so in the Spring of 2011. They offer lodging, organic meals, and 8+ hours a day of weaving. Pure Bliss in my opinion…now just to talk my mother into childcare for the week!!!
I got to visit my friend Julia‘s farm, which is a delightful homestead in the woods of Colrain. She raises Border Leiscester sheep, which is wonderful wood in many ways, Nice curly locks, good sheen, and nice big fleeces. I have a fleece of her’s coming my way. Julia is one amazing knitter, and is test knitting many garments for Gudrun Johnston’w new knitting pattern book. If you haven’t looked at Gudrun’s designs, run don’t walk over to Shetland Trader. Her patterns are awesome. She is traveling to Scotland this summer, and taking my friend Julia along as a knitwear model. And just who is going to be the photographer for this event..none other than Jared Flood of Brooklyn Tweed!!! How awesome is that?…i am tempted to beg Julia to allow me to come….perhaps i can carry their bags? something? honestly, i couldn’t get away from this crazy life for that, but I can dream….and get the whole scoop from Julia when she gets back!!!
Another gem of a farm I discovered was Moonshine Designs. They raise high quality angora goats for the mohair, and weave and knit exquisite garments from this soft lustrous fiber! The shawls they weave from handyed mohair boucle yarns are one of a kind, and the colors are amazing. I just had to splurge and buy a pair of their Mohair socks, made from 85% kid mohair fiber…so soft, and they wear like iron.
All in all, I came home feeling really inspired to get back to my studio, and weave!!! Plus a box of new yarns from my excursions will help me with that!! I am getting myself in gear for the season of craft fairs and events from my studio. I will keep you posted on my new projects!!
Mama Spider’s got a New Studio!
Yes, it’s true! Springtime has brought me into a new space for my studio, and I am soooo happy about it!
My old space was a funky old garage in the front of Willow Springs…cold and drafty in the winter. And nothing but noisy motorcycle traffic noise in the summer, as folks on Harley’s would cruise up Highway 49 up into the hills for a day ride. Not so relaxing for weaving, although i would always get a few curious looks as i would weave or spin with the doors wide open! The road so close was always unnerving, especially with my kids sometimes playing out front while i wove. My intuition and fears about that road came to reality when my year old Border Collie dog named Cowboy was struck by a car just outside my studio. Fortunately he survived without hardly a scratch, but I knew that this was a sign that I couldn’t have my studio there much longer.
Well, due to a whole heap of circumstances, I was given the opportunity to move to a new space within the Willow Springs Art collective, and I jumped on it. The new space was smaller ( so a few borrowed looms would have to go back to my weaving teacher.), but was well insulated with a nice wooden floor and cheery orange walls. Easy to heat, with a big sunny window that looks out at the community gardens at Willow Springs, will a gate all around to provide a safe and shady space for my kids and dog to play!!! YAY! the bonus is that with this new space I have access to the community kitchen for water for dye pots, and a nice place to make tea and snacks on long weaving days or evenings.
You wanna see some pictures?
Here’s my carding corner….
and here’s a view from the back of the room. You can see the attached kitchen thru the doors, and my “Beast” of a loom on the left ( 12 harness, 60″ wide!!) with a few rigid heddle looms propped up on it.
I can’t wait to host some dye days and classes here. Perhaps even some craft nites. it’s a much cozier space, and it’s been fun to make it comfortable with a nice layout to get lots of work done! Willow Springs is hosting a “Living Skills” Day, and I will be teaching spinning, weaving, and dyeing. The event is on June 26th. Hope to see some of you there!
On the knitting front, I just finished my February Lady Vest from handspun yarn…
More details of this can be found on my Ravelry Project Page..
It was a fun knit, and I used just about every last inch of handspun to finish it. We’ve had late rains here in California, with some cold hail today, so I am enjoying my last chances to wear my new wooly vest..soon it will hibernate in the cedar chest during the long hot summer…soon it will be time to knit and weave cotton garments…
And I have a new warp to share:
I handpainted some warp chains, with the intention of making yardcloth for a shirt for myself. I will share with you soon the finished cloth, as the weaving is going fast, as plain weave does! Painting warps is lots of fun, and I will be posting a tutorial on it in the near future!
Until next time, happy spring!!
Mama Spider's Weavings 