Episode 16: Guest Episode

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   Michelle is

            Ravelry: MichelleTF

            Instagram: michelletfcrafts

            Facebook: Valdelia Maker

    Erica is

            Weavolution: Erica J, Jahanara, or Weavolutionary

            Ravelry: weavemage

            Instagram: weavemage

            Facebook: Weavolution
Intro and Outro Music: Sundown by Joseph McDade, thank you!

Finished Objects:

Oli
We had a guest on the show today, Erica's husband Oli. Oli shared two of his recent fiber arts projects. First a bag he made from the remaining fabric Erica wove for his Viking coat.

Second he made Erica a facemask. He used some patterned fabric Erica has had for years with some Persian figures on it. He did a great job matching the patterns on the fabric when cutting out the pieces. Erica had seen that some people are using elastic bands for securing facemask. Since her hair and TJ's hair is too thick to use the thin hair ties, they have about 20 laying around the house not doing anything, so this seemed a good use for those hair ties. Erica's persona in the SCA is Persian, so this really does suit her.

Erica
Erica finished the first of TJ's socks. These socks follow Ann Budd's BluPrint class pattern. TJ really likes them. They are knit with a 3 x 1 rib in a glitz sock yarn from Gynx Yarn.

Erica's bin of handspun yarn that needed wet finishing hit the overflowing state, so she spent some time wet finishing 12 skeins of yarn. She simply soaks her yarn in hot water with a bit of soap, rinses it with warm water and hangs it to dry. Since most of her yarn is destined to be woven then wet finished more, she does not do much vigorous wet finishing in the yarn stage. More detailed photos of her color study yarns will be coming in future episodes as she discusses her comparison of the various yarns.

For the very last bit of her Finn colour and breed study.  Erica made 2 batts out of the remaining Artic Berries, from CraftyJax. Erica will spin the two batts and ply them together. She is looking forward to getting all the yarns together and having a look at them side by side, stay tuned for thoughts on this study. 

Erica finished her final yarn for her Organic Polwarth Breed and colour study with a 2 ply Graffiti colourway yarn. She is quite pleased with it. Both singles were spun quite consistently, likely, because Erica is spinning almost every day and spun the singles in rather quick succession.

Erica finished a number of other yarns since the last episode. You can see in the photos, how Erica uses tyvex wrist bands to label her skeins. These can be written on in permanent marker and the wrist bands make it through the wet finishing process just fine. She has also adapted this process for her warping chains when making new weaving warps.

Deep Cover colourway from Sweet Georgia Yarns.

 Lakeside colourway from Crafty Jaks

 Two of the Arctic Berries yarns

Michelle finished the cross stitch she's been working on. It may have to wait until the stay at home order is over to get it framed.

Michelle made two needle felted air plant hangers that she finished.

Squid:

Octopus:

WIP's

Erica has spun the singles of this beautiful colourway. It is called Petal from Bee Mice Elf. Erica still has quite a stash from this dyer, who is no longer dyeing.

Below are the last two colours from Erica's advent calendar colourway. The single on the left was a bit naughty and thus is now knotty. Erica lost the end and created such a mess trying to find it had to cut the yarn and start at a random point. She is curious to see how this works out when she finally plies the yarn. The second photo below shows the mess that was made when trying to find the end, Erica tried for about 3 days on and off the find the actual end of the yarn, before deciding her time was more valuable and cut the yarn and kept spinning. When she rewound the yarn (above photo left) she had to break the yarn a few times and knot it back together, hence the yarn being knotty. :)

Erica decided to tackle the 5 ply yarn from her 51 yarns spinning in an unconventional way. Inspired by the crazy yarn Michelle showed her while recording a previous episode, Erica took 5 different bobbin ends and plyed them together, then put a knot in each time she ran out of a yarn, thus creating a skein with samples of 5 ply, 4, ply, 3 ply and 2 ply yarns to compare. Erica used a rigid heddle, which she often substitutes for a warping paddle, to seperate the 5 yarns. The below photos show the rigid heddle Erica used and how she had to use 2 lazy kates to accommodate 5 bobbins of yarn. It was a fun experience, but Erica is not sure when she might ever need a 5 ply yarn.

Erica is thinking about planning a sweater spin, here is a photo of the braids she is thinking about spinning for her sweater.

Michelle started needle felting a Cthulhu air plant holder.   She needs to finish turning him green and wet felt some wings for him.

Michelle has picked up an old project from years ago.  Her husband asked her to make him a cloak and requested embroidery all over the back of it. He did help her with the embroidery, but it's been sitting for years waiting for a lining. She has now cut out the lining and is just waiting for some black thread to stitch in the lining.

Here's a picture from the pinning process.