Jackie E-S is the owner of HeartStrings FiberArts, a showcase for her growing roster of original pattern designs. As a certified master knitter and teacher, Jackie continues to share her love of knitting and knowledge through design and publication of skill-building pattern instructions, and conducting workshops, programs and demonstrations. Her interest in the fiber arts extends beyond knitting and spinning to include weaving, dyeing and all needle arts. She also enjoys contract bridge and music.
To start off the month of February, I can’t help but have something about hearts. With a name like HeartStrings for my business, you should not be surprised that Valentine’s Day is a favorite holiday this month. In fact, I take the liberty of celebrating all month long. 🙂
Just for fun, I created a simple online puzzle using a detail stitch photo taken of the Cascading Hearts Faroese Shawl. Â Want to play? Click the picture below to start the puzzle and see if you can beat the best time in putting the pieces back together again!
I hate it when I do stupid things. I should have known better, but I wasn’t paying attention like I should have. Â My mistake was in using this wool lace piece atop my walnut wood grand piano that I periodically polish with lemon oil. Unfortunately, one one occasion, I must have missed thoroughly wiping down a small area of the piano’s cover. After returning the lace to adorn the top of the piano, the acidity in the oil treatment eventually caused the wool damage you see here.
Wool damage - Oh no! what happened?
This wool damage happened years ago, and fortunately I learned my lesson and I’ve not repeated the mistake. The reason I am bringing it up now is, as you can see, I still have to tackle repairing this lace. Of course, the damage has not gotten worse because once I removed the contact with the acid source, things are ok. I am so careful to use acid-free papers for my published patterns, archival methods for storing my knitted models, etc., so I definitely know better. Bad me!
p.s. You might have thought this was insect damage (e.g. moths or carpet beetles). If you ever experience similar damage (and I hope you don’t), do check that the way you are using or storing your fibers are not such they are in contact with something that could harm the fibers. It would be a shame for you to assume it is insect damage, treat for that, and then just return to continuing to have the problem for other reasons.
Have you noticed that I have blogged daily for the past 30 days? (actually 31 counting today) It is part of the 30 Day Blogging Challenge led by Cricket Walker.
This challenge was the motivation I needed to make a commitment of posting to my blog regularly. I’ve learned a lot along the way. It’s been fun to do research, plan the photography, etc. I appreciate you stopping by to peek into my life and musings, and I’ve enjoyed hearing from people who have taken time to leave comments, too. In fact, I am having so much fun, rather than winding down, I think I am just now winding up!
One of the things I am finding helpful for keeping organized and motivated is the WordPress Editorial Calendar plugin by Stresslimit and Zack Grossbart.
Wordpress Editorial Calendar
This calendar is now my command center for managing posts on my blog. After installing and activating the plugin, the calendar is accessible directly from within the WordPress Dashboard under the Posts section. The user interface is intuitive and well-designed, thus working with me rather than against me. The calendar automatically picks up posts that have already been published. New posts can be entered for any future date. Sometimes I just enter a quick working idea as a title placeholder for a date. When I actually start working on the post, I can spiffy up the title, or even drag and drop that post to another date.
I first heard about the Editorial Calendar from Glennete Goodbread, another member of the 30 Day Blogging Challenge. You can check out her blog article here.
Even though I’ve learned a lot, it has made me realize how much more I want to learn and do with my blog. I have set up a test environment to play around with a new template. And maybe some other new features I can bring to my blog for you to enjoy in the future. So please subscribe or come back to visit each day for “taking time to smell the roses”.
p.s. A shout-out to all my fellow Blogging Challenge friends who have been blogging along with me these past 30 days. Here’s to all of us to keep going! Thanks for your support and encouragement.
Last spring I planted a few seeds I had been holding onto for 8 years. I had collected them from a fellow fiber-friend on the other side of the state. Jean – are you listening in? All I remember was that I was attracted to these flowers she had growing along her fence and that she was happy to share some seeds. I am sure she told me the plant name, but of course I didn’t write it down at the time.
Viney Flowers - What are they?
So with just 3 of these plants along my back fence, I had a glorious fence-ful of viney flowers that I enjoyed through the summer and into the late fall. They even served as a nice back-drop to the preliminary photographs I took of the “Half-note Symphony” shawl.
Half-note Symphony Shawl
But I still do not know the name of this flower/plant. Do you?
p.s. If this flower is looking somewhat familiar to you, but you need a larger photo to look at, try this. But beware that it is a 3.8 MB file and could take a while to download depending on your connection speed.
Jacob sheep are small, multi-horned animals somewhat resembling goats. I love their spotted colors because of the fun I’ve had with their wool fleeces. From just one Jacob Sheep fleece, I can create a palette of tones from light to dark. Let me share with you a couple of the approaches I’ve used to create yarns from these spotted fleeces.
Jacob Sheep photo courtesy of Redflight
I was fortunate to be able to attain fleece from Jacobs that had been bred for next-to-the-skin softness. I prefer getting whole, well-skirted fleeces. That way I can do my own sorting beforehand to not only keep the grades of wool separate (e.g. setting aside the softest from the neck area), but to also keep the colors distinct. I do this before washing. Then I pick and card the washed wool, while still keeping the colors separate.
Then the interesting creativity begins in combining the colors in a way to produce a range of light to dark tones for the intended project. One method is to spin singles of the separate colors, then “color graduate” the singles into a series of 2-ply yarns. An example in which I used this method is the Jacob Throw pictured below. The project was begun in the center with the lightest of the 2 -ply yarns and circularly progressed outward to the darkest. More about this project can be seen in the Resource Area of my HeartStringsFiberArts.com website.
Jacob Throw - Lace afghan in hand spun wool
Another fun thing I have done with the sorted colors is to make color graduated batts. I lay strips of light to dark on the carding cloth of a drum carder. For producing a 2-ply yarn, I need 2 batts for each resulting color-graduated skein of yarn. I make each batt as identical as possible in both total amount of fiber and amount of each color.
Batts carded from sorted Jacob Sheep wool
I spin a singles from end-to-end of one of the rolled batts, then spin another as-identical-as-possible singles from the other rolled batt. It doesn’t really matter whether you spin light to dark, or dark to light — just do the same for both batts. Now, ply the 2 singles together so that the colors basically align. Of course, you could also just use the singles in a project. I’ve included some old photos above and below to give you an idea of how the different stages look in going from batt, to singles, to 2-ply.
Singles (left) and 2-ply (right) yarns spun from color-graduated Jacob wool batts (in background)
Oh, and you might notice in these old photos that there is a label in the picture. I used to sell my batts prepared this way back when I had a retail shop. I called them “Prismatic Roving”. I offered the monochromatic batts shown here. I also had some I would card from commercially dyed wools to produce a range of hues in a single batt. Those were more “Prismatic” in that they were colorful. But the monochromatic is still my favorite because of its simplistic, natural colors.
I hope to get my fibers and drum carder out again soon and play around with other interesting possibilities. I’d love to hear about interesting things you’ve done (or want to do) with Jacob wool, too.
Related Images:
Behind the scenes with Jackie E-S and life at the HeartStrings FiberArts studio.
