Thoughts On Spinning (From A Spinning Newbie)

April 25, 2016 by Ani Lee in What's On My Needles

You know when you discover something and you're like "how did I not know about this before? what was I doing all this time? my world is completely changed." This happens to me on a fairly regular basis - some examples I can think of - bringing my bicycle to college and being able to cycle around The Bay, buying garlic Persian fetta and putting it in salad, and most recently - spinning. Clearly I am easily pleased/my life is easily improved.

Spinning has my head, well, spinning - with ideas of what I can make, ways I can get more creative/have more control over the things I make. My mind feels like tons of tiny little lights are twinkling at once - or something like that. The plying possibilities- the spinning possibilities, the fibre I can source, the learning the thing. It's all so damn exciting.

spinning attempt #2 - mid Andean Bracelet Making attempt

Thinking of trying spinning? Here are some thoughts I have/things I've learnt (but take this all with a grain of salt, because I am clearly no expert)

See if there is a local spinning guild you can check out. Mine has been a ridiculously amazing resource and community. It has a library of tools- and I was even able to loan a drop spindle so I didn't have to buy one outright! In all likelihood, there's one in your area and the people there are the best people in the world (cuz, the fibre community, amirite?)
Try starting on a drop spindle - they're cheap, portable, and that makes it easier to get started, I think. That way you can easily start without a lot of upfront cost, and you can do it wherever. If you're anything like me, you'll be so stoked that you will take it with you everywhere- to the park for your lunch break, to the farmers market, etc
If you do start on a drop spindle - try the "park and draft" method first, just to get your bearings. You start by sitting down and over-spinning so that you don't have to do the downward motion + draft (aka pull the fibre through your fingers) at the same time. Here's a video that might help get you started.
If you have long hair, tie it up before you start, or you might spin your hair into it.... (not that i did this or anything)
Speaking of hair ties, have a couple on hand, they're really useful for tucking the excess fibre into on your left wrist so that you don't accidentally get too much fibre all mixed up in your work before you're ready to draft it.
Get some roving if you can, it's a little easier to work with than a raw fleece (at least for me so far) and there's minimal processing that you need to do before you can start working with it.
Try not to have clammy hands - I've felted some bits of my wool because I have perpetually clammy hands- I've not worked out a fix for this yet.... I'll update this if I get any advice on this.
Want to Ply? Look up: Andean Plying Bracelet for a simple way to get the fibre off your hand and plied! I think it's pretty amazing that you can make a plied yarn with nothing but your hands and the drop spindle.
Just start! It doesn't even matter if it's lumpy and weird and over-plied. It'll all work out. Wash your skeins when you're done, and that'll help even that shit out.

I'm thoroughly loving spinning - and I'm not seeing this love/obsession changing at any point. If you want to get started and need a hand, I'm happy to help! I can try giving a lesson over skype (or in person, if you're Aus based!) and I'll do my best to help you out. Shoot me an email at hello@closeknit.com.au if you wanna chat spinning :)

Ani

HOW TO :: (NOT A HOW TO) Improvise a Quilt

April 21, 2016 by Ani Lee in Learning As I Go

A few weeks ago, I made a quilt. Well, kind of. It's a wonky mess, that's not finished "correctly", but it is technically a "quilt" and I slept with it on my bed last night, and it didn't fall apart, so I'm calling it a quilt.

I went into this whole quilt-making thing not wanting to follow any rules, any tutorials. I was in a mood and I was just not having any of that. I was not about to cut anything straight, measure anything, do any math. I just wanted to make. the. thing. damnit.

Here's what I did:

Step 1. Take a bunch of old sheets and pillowcases - doesn't matter how many, I used 2 pillowcases that were different colours, a big flowery sheet, and a double bed fitted sheet. If, like me, you're using a sheet with elastic in it, rip that shit out. Seriously just make a cut with some scissors and then rip it out.

Step 2. Rip up your sheets/pillowcases. Doesn't matter the size, or if they match or anything. Maybe keep one that's reasonably big to use as the backing for the quilt. I basically ripped a double bed sheet in half (roughly) to get the backing for my quilt.

Step 3. Lay those ripped up pieces out in front of you and start jigsawing them together. Bonus points if - like me- you tried to do this on your bed and accidentally pinned through your sheets a lot

Step 4. Pin your pieces into place once you roughly have the look and size quilt face that you want - it doesn't have to be perfect here, I left a few spots that I filled in later with bits to fit the quilt backing that I'd made. I decided to fold my pieces over so that there weren't raw edges, but raw edges would be cool, too (I guess you'd just have to worry about the seams coming apart after a while)

HOT TIP (which I learned after I made mine, of course): try using safety pins instead of regular pins when you're pinning your quilt pieces together so that they don't just all fall out when you go try to sew it.

Step 5. Sew your quilt top! start wherever the hell you want. I know I did. There's probably an easier way to figure out where to start, but I don't know it.

Step 6. If your seams are so wonky that they cause a whole part of your quilt to get all billowy and floppy, just fold that bit over and make it an "accent" - make it work, right?

Step 7. with right sides facing (this is the only time that a rule matters) sew your quilt backing to your quilt face - now you've got a lil quilt cover-y thing that you can slide some batting into.

Step 8. Go buy some batting - and maybe measure your quilt before you go - that way you're not wasting money/batting. Bring your batting home. Cut your batting (probably don't try to rip it, that probably wouldn't work out well) to just under the size of your quilt - I didn't measure, I eyeballed.

Step 9. With your quilt cover thingy right sides out, slide the batting inside. Trim if it doesn't fit inside. I had to. Then once it does (roughly) fit inside, pin it in a couple place so that it stays put.

Step 10. Make some cross marks with pins (or don't) and just start hand sewing little x's every so often to hold the quilt in place. I guess mine ended up somewhere around 10cm apart - but again, screw measuring.

Step 11. Sew up the top of the quilt either by hand or by machine.

Step 12. Admire your wonky ass quilt.

You've just improvised a quilt! Sorry in advance to all the real quilters who actually know what they're doing - let's just call this thing a "how to that's not really a how to".

What's on My Needles (Or Rather, What Isn't) - 17th Dec 2015

December 16, 2015 by Ani Lee in What's On My Needles

Each Week, I'll share a quick snippet of what I'm currently working on, no matter how small (or rough) it is.

Once again, I find myself with a lack of knitting project progress to share here, mostly because I'm trying to rest my wrists, but also because I've been struggling to motivate myself to knit. Does anyone else find that when they take a hiatus from knitting the urge to knit begins to subside a bit? Maybe that's just me. I find it a bit sad - I love that bizarre urge I have to knit the majority of the time, it makes me feel a bit empty when it's not there.

Now, to explain this week's "What's On My Needles (Or Rather, What Isn't)" or alternatively, "What Was Previously on my Needle(s) and Now Is Gone". I started working on this little patchwork pillow thing a couple of weeks ago, rather improvisationally, because I don't know what the hell I'm doing, so I'm just making it up, and I clearly don't have the patience to make a pattern or anything like that. I basically just started sewing pieces together and adding more on as I went, more or less keeping a straight line of fabric at the top and thinking it would roughly be the shape of a pillowcase.

I decided after doing the bulk of the sewing on a machine, courtesy of the babes over at Bobbin and Ink (the communal sewing space where I rent a machine, and get lots of kind feedback and help, even when I've totally screwed something up), I would do some of the final sewing by hand in the park. So I popped it all in my handy little Field Bag - needles, thread, pins, and headed over to the park. I sewed in the sun with This American Life playing in the background, it was all a very nice affair.

Now somehow, I woke up yesterday morning and it's nowhere to be found. I scoured my room, scoured the friend's house we went to after dinner that night, nowhere. And I got really bummed out; this little project - a practice of improvisation, trying not to give a f**k that the seams were wonky, a practice in being patient and kind to myself- was abruptly ended. I never got to see it fully formed, as a pillow, never got to show it off as one of my first sewn pieces - "that I hand dyed with avocado pits and skins and other plant materials!" (I hear myself exclaiming that)

At first I just felt sorry for myself, then I began resenting that feeling, that such a simple and silly object could make me sad. It made me think of all the unnecessary want and greed that comes with owning things, the consumerist mindset that I think can even be applied to objects you make yourself. The more I think about it, though, the more I think it's not so much the loss of the object, but of what the pieces represented - the newly formed friendship with Laura, who let me into her home after meeting me once, made me delicious snacks, and let me dye this old ripped up pillowcase with her, the kindness of the ladies at Bobbin and Ink, forever practicing patience with me, even when I've followed none of the sewing rules and made a huge mess, the excitement of a sewn object becoming a part of my "fibre arts" repertoire. The half-finished pillowcase was a representation of many good things that have come into my life recently, of the luck I've had with finding such incredible people, and the gratitude I have for them.

Maybe the picture here is enough to remember what it meant, maybe the act of writing this out did just that. And maybe, just maybe, some nice fibre artist will find it on the street and give it some much needed love.

Ani