Art Walk in Elizabethtown, KY

There are a few hand painted yarns and felted ornaments being offered by Lunabudknits at the Artwalk in downtown Elizabethtown this year. I learned about it through my friend Luna of Blueball Mountain Spindle and Needleworks who was gracious enough to let me add a few of my items to her display through the month of December:)

Hit the road at about 11 am and arrived at Luna's farm at around 1 pm. After being greeted by Bella, the very happy house pup, Luna took me out to greet the sheep, chickens and the most precious little calico kitty who thinks she is a guard dog. At this point, I realized I forgot my trusty camera so you must believe me when I say that the farm and house is absolutely wonderful!

There is a lovely little herb garden with tansies, wormwood and many other good smelling herbs off the back of the house. The wash room in the big barn is something to be jealous of indeed! With tubs for washing, pickers for picking, areas for dying, and lovely shetland fleeces bundled and ready to be washed, dyed, and picked. The big barn also houses the Shetland rams and chickens. Off to the side in a field with a little quan-hut are the beautiful ewes who were very healthy and enjoying the rays of the sun as we stopped by to admire their freshly shorn sides. And between the house and the big barn is the most pleasantly perfect little building Luna and her husband are in the process of restoring so that I can be a little wool house or craft room for Luna. The little building really has potential to be something so very special and I can barely wait to see what special use Luna has for it!

OH, I almost forgot to mention! Luna has two, not one, but two! bee hives on the hill behind the garden. Ah, the joy of fresh honey!

We went back in and waiting on the table for us was some of the best chicken salad you have ever had, compliments of Luna's hubby, Allen. After a quick bite to eat, it was on to the crafty room. Boy, oh BOY! does Luna ever have a wonderful crafty room. Full of bright and beautiful yarns, lovely trimmings and add in's as well as her extra wide drum carder. But the true center piece was the new Fancy Kitty electric drum carder! Ah, the joys of a carder you don't have to crank..... Someday, someday.......

We headed to the little shop where the fibery stuff is for the ARtwalk to do a few last minute arranging and setting up. From there, I bought a couple of bumps of roving from Luna and sat down at her traveler wheel. The first bump was spun into a single and the second was a spun single with brightly colored locks spun in. I then plied the two singles together to get a beautiful pale blue glitzy art yarn with stray locks sticking out here and there. You can see the yarn in the next 3 pictures....

The next yarn is from a batt I purchased from Luna at the Kentucky Wool Festival in Falmouth KY back in October. It is Merino carded with silk and loaded with firestar and glitz. Not too sure what I will do with it, but for now, I really enjoy just loving on it:)

Black Friday & Cyber Monday Sale

In keeping with the spirit of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, LunabudKnits will be offering a 10% discount for all online sales November 27th through November 30th on ALL merchandise including wheels, roving, yarn, drum carders, casein knitting needles and many more.

Simply check out and pay as you normally would through Paypal and your Paypal account will be refunded 10% of the merchandise sale price. Please note the discount does not apply to shipping charges.

Happy Spinning, Happy Knitting and Happy Holidays!

Steph

ALMOST.......

DONE!!!!

I'm at the end of my spring cleaning and have put a good sized dent into the mound of washing waiting to be put through the washing machine.... And all I can say is 'YAHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!'.

I think the issue that really started this massive 'Spring Cleaning' mission is the simple fact that I have a tendency to be a hoarder. You see, when I was growing up, we moved at the very least once every year and some of my precious junk would magically disappear. This was compounded by the fact that once we stopped moving, Dad and I started collecting. We didn't really collect anything special, just stuff other people did not want. See, if someone would say, I'm throwing such and such away, one of us would run right over and bring it home. Not that I went over board with hoarding, but I'm putting a stop to it before it becomes a problem. Honestly, I think this trait was passed down to us from my Granny (Dad's Mom)....lol She is a tidy little hoarder as well....lol I think hers stems from growing up in Liverpool during WWII.

Anyhow, enough of the explanations and on to the good stuff.... Pictures!

I'm finally able to cutely display the Casein Knitting needles available at LunabudKnits:)

An old horse tooth I found in a barn and then found again in a cute little box(pictured below).

The jeweled frog box.

The first load of stuff that went to Good Will. I'll tell you one thing, there are a lot of expensive clothes and shoes in those 4 bags, but it was like a weight was lifted from my shoulders by donating them to Good Will!

It's Beginning to look a lot like........

SPRING CLEANING!?!

Everywhere you go in this house of hair....lol

Twice a year I go psycho on the house to prevent any creepy crawlies from getting into my stash. All of my skeins are line up in a row and spend about an hour each in a steam bath regardless of whether they are protein (ie. wool, mohair, etc) or plant (ie. cotton, linen, etc) fibers. Any ball of yarn that enters this house is immediately put into a skein for just this occasion. As the skeins lay out waiting for their bath, other wild and crazy things are going on too....

You see, it started last night at around 9:30, continued until 3 am, and will probably continue until Sunday or Monday when I have my buddy with his steam cleaning team come to suck any vestige of dirt remaining in the carpets. Every single drawer, shelf and closet will be opened and emptied of it's contents, vacuumed, wiped down with Spic'n'Span, oiled if it is wood, and finally refilled with my precious junk that I decide to keep.

I'm up to my eye balls in precious junk, so I am being rather harsh on myself and have created a monster size 'Good Will' mound and have completely filled one garbage bin. I'm being a very good girl and sticking to my resolution that if I haven't used it, worn it or looked at it in the past year, well, it's probably time for that little treasure to move on to a new home.

Seriously, I have enough junk to fill several peoples homes, drawers and closets. And all that junk has been weighing on my mind, shoulders and not to mention my drawers, closets and shelves for quite some time. Pretty much the only type of precious junk that is safe in my house from this cleaning cycle are books. It's not really that the books have lucked out, but rather that I went through them like a mad woman this summer so that I could put more books on the shelves. Light bulbs and power tools are safe as well....lol The only way I could be parted from my power tools would be over my cold, dead body. Even then, I'm pretty tenacious about them!

I think what really prompted the massive cleaning was receiving a 40 lb box from a supplier full of yarns and roving and I had not a single inch of space to put them. Time to get back at it.....

Sorry no pictures of my manic cleaning:)

Oh..OK... Just one picture, but please excuse the MESS!

Phat Fiber Box Here We Come!

Whew, it took me a while, but I finally have my little submissions ready for the Phat Fiber Sample Box. Here they are:

Wacky Batty

Wacky Batty's are odd ball One Of A Kind creations made for your spinning pleasure.

I simply can not begin to describe how luscious these batts are! Well, I can start with an OMG. These started as part of my fiber club. Honestly, if I have to look at either of these selections for too terribly long, THEY WILL BE SPUN!

These particular batts all started with a mess of fibers I received from a supplier (note, we will not be using this supplier ever again!). The tangled mess started as a wad of pure white 60% mulberry silk tangled together with about 40% merino here and there. I'm very thrifty, so I really could not tolerate the idea of chucking this soft fiber. Off to the carder I went. After the first pass through the carder, I started stripping the batts into 5 peices. Taking one strip from each batt, I would send the batts back through the carder. This was done 10 times! Once the prime consistency was met in these batts, I added a touch of green and blue glitz as well as silk noils and neps and sent them back through one more time.

At this point, I'm sure you have seen my shop and know that I'm a HUGE fan of color. I blended several batts consisting of earthy brown merino and camel; brown merino, black corriedale, green sari silk and natural camel down; ocean blue and warm teal merino topped with black corriedale and blue tussah silk; and last but not least hand dyed aqua alpaca fleece, ecru bamboo, and snow white firestar. These fun batts were then layered into the final result which you see here. Oh, yes, there is a touch of white banana fiber in there.

We had a discussion a while back on the Etsyfast group about pricing. If I calculate the price of these batts by my time, I have well over 17 hours into these batts and at minimum wage of $7.25 the hourly price of my work would be $123.25.

Two batt groups available at LunabudKnits each weighs 4.7 ounces. Price is per 4.7 ounce. Ingredients: Alpaca, Merino, Firestar, Mulberry, Tussah, Sari, Camel, Silk, Corriedale, Glitz, - 4.7 oz 134 grams

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

In EXACT order above...

'The Good' 'The Bad' 'The Ugly

And yes these are terrible pictures of a terrible deed. Master minded by 'The Bad' Little Kitty, Ace who is not quite so little any more. Nor was he quite so cute at the moment either!

See, it happened Friday while I was vacuuming the carpet in the dining room. Unbeknown to me, 'The Bad' Little Kitty who is not quite so little any more, Ace was hiding behind the striped curtain which is behind the three tiered stand you see in 'The Good' picture. I don't know how he managed to knock over the stand which resulted in 'The Ugly' but the rotten little stinker who has grown rather fat managed quite well in his hasty retreat from the room. This unfortunately resulted in breaking my 3 tiered stand.

The stand was broken in two 'Ugly' places. The picture above shows the place where the spot weld on the metal did not hold due not only to being knocked over, but also from being knocked over on to the kitchen table and then hitting the floor. I'm hoping in the future to have this little spot re-welded.

At the time, I was not aware that this join had never actually been connected to the stand! And there was good reason for this. Because who ever had initially welded the plate to the stand was not the best welder on the planet. This left a rather large bead where the plate met the post. To top it off, the plate was not attached at the proper position on the post. So in came my trusty little dremel tool and the cutter head and grinder head. I cut off the back of the plated with the cutter and then used the grinder to smooth it out to properly fit into place. The grinder head also came in very handy to get rid of the bead from the bad welding job.

Here is 'The Ugly' completely fixed into 'The Good'. Sorry for the dust. I had no idea the dremel left that much of a mess.

And of course who can stay completely mad at 'The Bad' little kitty when his fat furry little butt sleeps in the funniest of positions!

Handspun Yarn

Zipped out a few handspun yarns for the shop:

That was spun from roving purchased at the KY Wool Fest from Diane's sheep. And I haven't quite decided whether to list it or not:)

Handspun and hand dyed merino with binder cord for detail. This yarn is available at: LunabudKnits

Another Handspun and Hand dyed yarn available at LunabudKnits.

They Arrived...

Well, in all honesty, they arrived last week:) My sweet little minors head parts for my Antique walking wheel. I did not take before pictures, but I really should have because the pictures I posted in a previous post really just do not do justice to how dirty these little wooden spindles were.

Here they are after a good hard cleaning. Several of the arms to which hold the minors head were full of mud dobber nests. All of the parts sucked up the wood oil like they were little oil vampires! Thirsty old wood in deed:)

Now, I'm off to whittle away a few little spokes to hold the minors head to the arms. And a few arms need proper repair. Until then, I can't wait to get them on my wheel!

A felting we will go!

I've finally done it! Felting that is. Years ago, I bought some felting needles and just never got into the needle felting thing. This week end while waiting on trick or treaters, I came across the felting needles and foam block. I thought what better time to have a go at the needle felting than when I am waiting for the little ghouls and goblins to come knocking at my door:)

The sheep above was my third attempt at needle felting. It has a wire base and the body was formed using left over wool from the flick carder. On top of the base is several layers of Lincoln fleece which was then covered in Lincoln locks. I used a touch of Corriedale dyed black to complete my little sheep's legs and head.

The second felt project used the same left over wool base covered in hand dyed merino and glitz. The tree trunks have wire bases and the tops are covered in a lightly spun single of merino, silk and firestar.

The Frog. This little fellow is my first attempt at needle felting. I have to say that I am as pleased as peach pie with how he turned out. Again, I used the left over base to start on the first lily pad the frog is sitting on and then moved on to the little pink flower. Well, if you know me, you know that wasn't quite enough, so I started another lily pad and thought... Wouldn't it be nice if it all sat on a mini pond. The water is made of two different shades of blue merino and glitz.

After finishing the base , yet again I decided that the little scene just was a tad on the bland side, so I figured I would try my hand at a little frog. The frog was formed using a Targhee fleece that had dyed and then realized it had a break in it. I just never had the heart to throw out the fleece because the color was beautiful so I have slowly been using it to make felt balls. It felts fabulously, so I thought I would give it a go under the needle. After finishing the little fellow and placing him on his lily pad, the eyes were added using a white merino cashmere mix.

I'm really very shocked at how well I did on my first felting attempt here. Have packed away my little needles and foam block, because I can see that if I leave them out I could be very tempted to pick up another little hobby. But perhaps, I can just reserve these little projects for a little pick me up on rainy days:)

Over the rainbow!

Ah, the joys of old wheels!

Just recently purchased. A lot of used walking wheel minors head parts and ..........

One complete Minors head.

The plan with the Minors head lot is to devise a way to attach a minors head to my current wheel. It looks like I might have enough parts here to make several complete Minors heads and surely one of them will work out.

Found this little charka wheel on one of my many searches on Ebay. It is in need of some tweeking that I have yet to get around to. I would consider this little wheel more of a vintage wheel than an antique.

This was taken Spring of 2009 as I was driving along I-75 in Kentucky. Not a great photo, but not bad considering it was a camera phone:) Just wanted to share a little Rainbow Joy with you today!

So, what do you think?

If anyone out there regularly reads my blog, I was wondering if you liked the new layout?

While I did like the old layout, I felt the need for a change. I found this cute little template at : http://www.yummylolly.com/ And you see, I do have a little thing for Japanese Cherry blossoms, so when I saw this sweet little template, well, I just could not resist.

I did have to reload all of my widgets, but that only took about 5 minutes:) Outside of that, I am very pleased with my new blogger threads.