Shop update - 8/21 at 1PM CST

The next Cloudlover update is scheduled for Saturday, August 21 at 1PM CST, here! I'll be adding some handpainted yarn with this update, as well as 4 new colorways on various spinning fiber bases!

Look, I'm spinning!

It's been really hard to maintain a balanced schedule between work and the fiber biz. I loathe getting home at 6 and having only 4 hours in which to make dinner, take care of the animals, catch up on Etsy stuff, list items, and then hopefully card batts or spin before it's time for bed. Sticking to a shipping schedule frees up time, but not enough! I blame the day job ;)

Anyway, I managed to finish a few yarns this week. Here are two of my favorites:

"Märchengarten", my new favorite colorway, spun into a Falkland single!


"Cupid & Psyche", spun from batts carded by Hobbledehoy! I spun this one thick and thin and added little squishy coils here and there.

And as long as I've got spring on my mind, despite the fresh blanket of snow outside, here's a pic of Mr. Bun!

I can't wait until it's nice enough to let him romp around in the yard!

buried in wool

It's a great place to be, really. I'm almost through the 20+ pounds of roving I ordered a couple of weeks ago. I'm going to have to buy a whole bump next time, and replenish dyes soon too. So I guess my business experiment is going well. I don't think I'll sell it all in a month, but I'll at least "produce" it all in that time. I've found a lot of ways to streamline all the little processes, from fiber prep to shipping. I just wish I wasn't bogged down by a day job. I keep thinking about the endless possibilities, but those possibilities more bandwidth than I have to spare.

Here is the latest batch of rovings:


I've been buying a LOT more of other artists' fiber lately; something I thought I could curb by producing more of my own, but being surrounded more by my own stuff makes me crave something different and new. I've been trying to spin lots more, but it comes in fits and starts.

This is probably the best yarn in the world, spun from Hobbledehoy batts- I call it "Waves Become Wings":


And this is "Aeroplane Flies High" from my handpainted roving:


That's all for now! I've got to try to catch up on some sleep :)

experiment

I need to publicly announce goals or else I am much less likely to follow through with them. You all need to help keep me accountable for achieving this!

The goal: to devote an entire month to some hard-core dyeing & spinning. Hard-core meaning ~30 rovings/skeins of yarn dyed on the weekends, and spinning every night. The BF encouraged me to see if I could bump this whole side-project woolly business up to the next level, and he promised to help. I placed some mammoth orders on Monday- 10 pounds of merino, 7 pounds of falkland, 6 pounds of BFL, 27 skeins of yarn, and dyes. Yeah, my bank account is freaking out a little bit, but hopefully I can get through this in a month and more than have it paid for in a week or two. This will also help me get geared up for doing the craft show(s) in the fall.

In other news, two of my newest yarns:

Another Elvis-inspired yarn, "Viva Las Vegas", spun from Hobbledehoy batt,wrapped in gold thread with some sequins here and there:


And "Monster Mash" from some Falkland roving I dyed up. Colors didn't turn out quite as I expected them too (I wanted more vibrant purple) but it will still stripe nicely and it's bouncy fun!

back to it

A week ago, I got back from vacation. This pretty much sums it up:



But if you'd like to see more, they're on my Flickr account. Gratuitous greenery! The BF and I visited one of his old classmates who now lives on small farm and has plans to flesh it out and make it fully sustainable over the next couple of years. I got to spin outside under a giant tree with hummingbirds flitting around and big ol' farm cats flopped about on the grass. Yeah, it's kind of a wonder I'm back in Chicago. I don't know how well I'd handle country living, but I'm getting closer and closer to making the jump and trying it out. But I don't want to work. I just want to retire to a full time spinster at age 25. Wishful thinking, eh? I don't think I can afford a farm AND student loans on a spinster's income. Rats.

I did a lot of spinning while I was down there- mostly in my BF's parents' house and in a local cafe. To my surprise, only the bus-boy asked me what on earth I was doing. Maybe it's rural enough down there that most people are familiar with spinning wheels?! Anyway, here is what I got done last week and some of this week:



From top left: Laminaria, hand dyed BFL; Calico, hand dyed merino (huge skein for a two ply!); Prismatic Wall, hand dyed merino; Harlequin, merino from Pigeonroof Studios.

I finished two yarns yesterday, including the first of my Elvis-inspired yarns that I've been dreaming up (I went to Graceland last week!) More will follow, rest assured...

Time to get back to the dye pots. And to place another wool order. I may do something crazy like purchase an entire bump. WHOA.

Oh, P.S.- I got into YarnCon! I've got time, but I have to lay out a Plan for inventory, setup, etc. And I'm feeling kooky enough to apply for DIY Trunk Show too. I'm out of control! It's probably actually not-so-smart to do two craft shows within two months of each other in the fall when everyone is clamoring for holiday shopping and I'm only doing this part-time. But I'm enough of an over-achiever to try it anyway.

countdown...

My vacation officially starts in one week and half a day. I'm already looking at the lists of wineries and trying to determine a wine budget (2 cases for about $300 - eep!) BUT I'm saving so much money by not flying anywhere/not staying in a hotel/etc. so I might just do it. I'm so excited to see real live cypress trees.

Oh, in case I didn't mention it before, I'm going to Southern Illinois with my boyfriend, to run around the woods he grew up in. It's a cheap thrill for a girl like me who's wild at heart but has been in the city for far, far too long.

In other news, I got another customer appreciation photo!



This was spun by Claire de Lune out of my "Tart" roving.

Speaking of yarn, I started handpainting yarn. I think I'm pleased with the results so far, and I'll have more fun trying new things this weekend- since I have 16 skeins waiting for me in the living room ;)



I should have more BFL here tomorrow, so I'll get in one more huge weekend of dyeing before I'm off for a week. I think I'll dye some skeins for myself to take on the trip- duh, I'm bringing my wheel, could I live without it for a week? ;)

zzzz

I am pooped. I got up at 8 today (after staying up till 1 AM dyeing and rinsing wool- remind to not do that again) and gardened for 4 hours out in the 85+ sun and humidity at a local organic garden. Fun, but I'm covered in a mix of dirt and sunscreen and I'm so tired I don't even care!

This week, I spun up a couple of new yarns and started doing some fall knitting. Yeah, knitting is hard to get into when it's this hot, but I'm working up some great fingerless mitts. The first is from Folktale Fibers famous handspun patchwork yarn in the colorway Silhouette:

These are my test mitts, so they're a little big. I'm keeping them for myself.

Then, I got all inspired by the book by Cosette Cornelius-Bates, aka Cosyknitsliterally, called "Knit One, Embellish Too." It totally caters to my sensibilities and skill level as a crafter and knitter, so I started these mitts from some Pigeonroof Studios roving I spun up:

I think I'm going to embroider some vines and sew some small coordinating buttons on as 'grapes' or whatever.

I feel like it's been forever since I've knitted anything, so it's nice to do it again. Also, I find it's great to keep me busy during 7-hour sessions of playing Twilight Imperium with some friends.

Anyway, here are the yarns for the week:
Frog Prince, bulky singles from misc batts, unknown weight and yardage:


Get Happy, a mash-up of several

And Violet Hour, many purple and black batts, plied with clear thread, 110 yd, 4 oz:


Plus the Pigeonroof yarn in the WIP above. I got Intertwined the other day, so I'm going to try some new techniques this weekend- I think I'll start with corespinning my autumn-inspired LOOP batt!

I'd better go either check on how my rovings are drying, shower, or fall asleep.

new fun things

This past weekend was super productive. On Friday night, I spun a gimongous skein of yarn. This was the first time I had maxed out my jumbo bobbin- 170 yards, 5.75 ounces! Yowza! I call it "Corsair", because it reminds me of an elegant pirate:



I really love this. It's a mash-up of several different batts, but mostly some superwash merino from Enchanted Knoll. I think this yarn would make the most gorgeous cape or shawl EVER, so I'll be sad to see it go... and not so sad if it doesn't sell ;)

Also, on Saturday, my awesome BF finished up the banner he designed for my shop & blog (see above!) and then formatted parts of it to make into stickers! Yes, STICKERS! I've had a sticker fetish since I was a kid, so this is a huge deal for me!



So the kite-sheep is my logo, and the other sticker, the one with the clouds and the sheep, is something he did just for fun. You can't read it, but it says "Domesticated Sheeps- Making your day more happy." Ain't that the truth!

I also finished up the book Craft, Inc. by Meg Mateo Ilasco last night. It was a great step-by-step on how to turn a craft hobby into a full-time job. Granted I won't apply half of it to myself because I am in no way ready to do this full time, it was good to know the first steps- like applying for business licenses, etc, which are mostly necessary to do shows and stuff. Hey, who knows, this could go somewhere!

To reward myself for feeling all ambitious and productive, I bought a ton more fiber. Well, at least a couple of pounds anyway. I realized a 3 day weekend was coming up and I wanted to get psyched for busting through most of my stash. I also packaged up and sent off handpainted rovings for my first two swaps- one through Etsy and the other through Craftster. AND I just wound off a skein and am setting the twist now, so hopefully it'll be dry in time for Fiber Friday!

Hmm, yeah... I HAVE been busy ;)

fib3r pr0n

Work has kind of sucked this week- I've worked late at least two nights, and Wednesday I was up in Milwaukee, which meant I had a 12 hour day. ICK. So the fuzzy arts have been on hold for a bit. To make up for it, here are gratuitous pics from other rovings/yarn that I haven't posted yet (quasi-new):

Bela Lugosi roving (corriedale):


Nocturnum roving (corriedale) Not as happy with this one. I was going for some deep tonal blacks but it didn't really happen, what with the big red splash and the white spot. Whatever, it'll spin up just fine methinks:


Pigeons roving (BFL). Now I know pigeons aren't purple and blue and all that, but it reminds me of the way the light hits their feathers and shimmers in all those nice pretty colors:


And here are my second three rovings, ever- left to right: Amazon, Sakura, and Dollhouse:


Amazon handspun:


Sakura handspun:


Snuggling yarns!


I tried spinning Dollhouse with the intent of plying it with thread, and I think I'm going to hold off on any more plying adventures until I get a wheel. It just ends up being a huge mess and a pain in the ass. Never mind that the cats have darn near destroyed everything while I am spinning it anyway!!!

more yarn

I spun up some of my first dyed roving last week, plus some batts I bought on Etsy. Here they are:

This was spun from the green and yellow corriedale roving which you can see in the previous posts:



And here is a sample-size LOOP batt called "ribbon dance". It was FANTASTIC to work with!



There are two more, but I am going to wait until the bit of yarn I'm working on now is finished so I can post a complete "roving to handspun" comparison!

first worthy yarns!

100% Merino, in "Magic Mirror" colorway by Freckleface Fibers. About 70 yards, but that's a guess as I lack a real niddy noddy (this skein was wrapped around my dear BF's forearm). It's bulky to dangerously thin, with some kinks. But it is awesome.


This is "Beyond the Realm" in progress (from Copperpot Woolies). Also merino, but much slicker, so it's a bit of a challenge for a newbie like me- but oh so pretty!