Snickering Pigs

I finished Angry Bird Pig #1 a month ago. Here he is (reference blog post Too Busy).

I finished Angry Bird Pig #2 last week. Here he is.

Here they are together. Aren’t they ridiculously cute?!?

Can you tell one pig is bigger than the other? Not sure how that happened but I must have tightened the yarn tension on the second one. It’s probably closer to pattern gauge than the first piggy. Have one more to make.

Ian calls them “Snickering Pigs.”

Bloo Bamboo

Referencing my 2nd blog post Spinning in Madrid, I have finished spinning the indigo-dyed merino bamboo fiber I’ve been working on for more than a year. A UFO (UnFinished Object) no longer!

 The stats:

• 60/40 Merino Bamboo blend - 4 oz.
• 573 yards of 3-ply yarn
• 18 wpi (wraps per inch) - lace weight
• singles spun on Ashford Traditional single drive/treadle standard bobbins
• plied using jumbo bobbin accessory
• the fiber was very easy to spin fine

The yarn is squishy and super soft to touch.

I had always planned on plying from 3 bobbins to see how the colors blended. This is my shoebox Lazy Kate set up at a 45 degree angle. The yarn comes off the bobbins smoothly as long as I keep my guide hand straight up from the kate. No tension line required on the bobbins (although I do have 2 pushpins and an elastic cord ready for tension if I so desire).

Two bobbins had yarn left over so I chain plied the singles for a variation of the straight 3-ply yarn. The colors in the chain plied yarn are more delineated while the straight 3-ply color blended to a lighter blue throughout the skein.

31 yards of chain ply.

I find the color gradation more interesting in the chain plied yarn. But I would still be plying. As it is, it took a week to ply 500+ yards of straight 3-ply.

A 2 year long project is finally finished. Whew!

Reminders

I have been seriously delinquent in posting to this blog recently. I have many excuses but none worthy of writing down. I was reminded yesterday that this blog is important and necessary (if not to anyone else) to me.

My local guild, the South Coast Weavers and Spinners Guild, hosted a presentation by Sarah Jackson, noted weaver, textile artist and member of the guild. Sarah gave a talk on her path as a textile artist and showed slides of her work. The two most important things she said to me were to always label and document your work. She photographs everything and writes her own blog.

As a busy mom with not a lot of time to do my own textile work I always think that I never finish anything. My original goal for this blog was to keep track of my UFO’s this year. To finish more projects than I start. As I said above, I was reminded yesterday that this blog is actually my documentation. That writing and photographing my work is important to me to show my progression as a textile artist. It is necessary to show myself that I actually do finish quite a number of things. 

The documentation does not have to be in a public blog of course. But I find that there is some accountability when I post here. I get feed back from my fellow textile artists. It is fulfilling in the way that show and tell time is at guild meetings.

As a side note, my fellow guild members have loads of talent. Including established and published artists. It is intimidating sometimes to go to the guild meetings but also inspiring. In no way do I include myself in the same class as these artists yet :-) but it is very cool to hang out with them.