Stark Sanctuary

A place for everyone that adores the honorable, and less honorable Stark siblings. Also, a place where there will be rants regarding literary characters and literary archetypes. In addition, expect many many fantasy novel discussions. (LotR, here we come).

[angelofdirewolves]

Tour de Fleece Days 1 to 3

Once again we have the Tour de Fleece, and I'm actually participating this year! Last year was a little lackluster and I haven't spun much since then. I'm trying to change that.

The first project I'm working on is a Fiber Optics braid that I started last year. I plan to spin this, chain ply it, and eventually use it to make socks. It's been split in half lengthwise to preserve the color pooling so they match.

Here's where I was at the beginning of the Tour.

As you can see I had very little done then. I'd torn off a small section last year from the halved braid so that I could put it in a fanny pack to bring to a concert, where I started the spin and then abandoned it. The rest of the halved braid is on the bottom left of the picture.

Day 2's starting point is here.

That is just the sectioned fiber under the spindle there. After a morning spin watching an hour long YouTube video and the first of two movies and a few episodes of a TV show, I had finished the second piece of sectioned fiber as pictured below.

The fiber on the right of that picture is just what was left of the halved braid at that point.

Day 3 of the tour opened with another movie's worth of spinning completed.

That is the remains of the braid half drafted and with the beginning of it spun. The spindle certainly got hefty at this point! I had a couple breakages that I had to respin together on that day, but I think I can fit the entire half braid on the one spindle. I've done it before with other braids, so fingers crossed I can repeat it.

Day 4 is starting like this.

About half the prepared fiber from yesterday was spun, so there's a fifty fifty chance I can finish the singles for the first half of the day today. Given that I expected to be at this point about halfway through the Tour I am quite pleased with myself so far.

I'll keep documenting and see how this goes, since I do have a wheel project that I haven't picked up yet which will take some of my attention away from the spindle project. But for this I'm well on my way to my goal of having this braid spun and plyed by the end of the Tour!

Happy spinning everyone!

[shymagnolia]

so I got into grad school today with my shitty 2.8 gpa and the moral of the story is reblog those good luck posts for the love of god

[shymagnolia]

okay so i just got my dream job??? a week after applying to it?? and now i’m thinking….maybe this is the good luck post

[flagellant]

…..not even six hours later i got an offer of a well paying full time long-term job with free room and board in queens in nyc, allowing me independence and a way to escape an abusive situation and an unhealthy environment

likes charge reblogs cast, folks, this is the good luck post

[coffee-or-hot-cocoa]

i need all the help i can get for finals

[finnglas]

Hey so

the last time I reblogged this post right before I got a great job, in a permanent work-from-home position, with benefits, retirement, and a salary literally 3x what I was making before, doing something I really like. 

So you know. 

This might be the real one, y’all.

[ladyadrasteia666]

Reblogging to spread the luck and the good fortune

[littlebirdinagarden]

What’s everyone working on today?

I’m sick and don’t have the energy to craft so please let me live through you

[angelofdirewolves]

I just finished stitching the words and washing this birth announcement cross stitch that my neighbor asked me to finish for her granddaughter. She had started this piece for her daughter, the grandbaby's mother when her daughter was born and then lost track of it. When she tried to pick it up when her granddaughter was born she'd lost the skill at cross stitch and asked me to finish it for her.

(I think a large part of the problem was that the fabric. While the stitches were gridded on the fabric the actual texture of the fabric was something the kit called sailcloth so it's not beginner/relearner friendly like an Aida or evenweave linen so it wasn't clear where to put the needle for each stitch.)

When she gave it to me at the beginning of the month it had just the head and the teddy bear done, so I managed to get the rest of this done a few day's late for the baby's one year birthday.

It's washed and drying now so I haven't turned it over to grandma yet, but I'm thrilled at how it turned out and she stopped by last week and saw it while I was putting the backstitch in and gushd so I think she, the mom, and the baby will like it.

Now that project is done I'll head back to some other projects on hold. My spindle wheel is fixed so I can finish my mystery fiber lace weight, I'm plying some alpaca singles on a spindle, and there's a wool coat I want to have finished by this winter.

[a-tour-de-fleece]

Finish Line

WE MADE IT!

Show us what you’ve spun up this year! What achievement are you most proud of?

[angelofdirewolves]

Well, it’s been an interesting - and busy - Tour de Fleece this year, and I met a little over half of my goals. 

Let’s start with a recap of what my goals were and then break down how they all turned out. Under the cut, because I am very talkative and have lots of pictures saved up from the last two weeks. 

Keep reading

[angelofdirewolves]

The first post got very long, so to continue with my TDF 2023 adventures, see under the cut again!

Keep reading

[angelofdirewolves]

Last up my final TDF project and my thoughts on the Tour and plans for the future. 

The hydrangea fiber underwent the largest change of expected project plans. 

We started off here. 

With 8 oz of lovely hand dyed merino. I said that I wanted to pick out each of the colors and do color work like the wonderful squeakpip’s Iggy Peck colorwork sweater (their post here). When I planned this, I couldn’t find the post to see that they had two different colorways of braids for their colorwork. 

Then, when I opened up the braids to start dividing by colors, I had another dilemma, because when I looked at them the colors were very blended rather than being distinct like I had hoped. 

So, I pivoted. I pulled apart the roving by rough colors into bright/light, green, dark green, blue green, and blue purple, and pulled out my hand cards, to make a 3 ply gradient. 

I took my roving scraps and used my hand cards to make them into fluffy mini batts (pictured on the left)

Then, once I had those fluffy mini batts of loose fiber, I used my cards to make more traditional rolags with my cards. I did the bright/light to the green fiber in this gradient, with occasional spots of blue or dark green where the colors were separated less than perfectly. 

When I later weighted the roving that I have not yet processed it comes to around 5.25 oz. 

I started spinning on my spindle, and managed to spin over half of the finished rolags - there were about 30 from the fiber pictured above, which were then placed in careful order in the tiger box also pictured above. 

By the time I filled the spindle for the first time, I only had 12 rolags left in the box of processed wool. So, I wound the yarn off the spindle onto my swift and chain plied it onto the same spindle. 

I finished chain plying this yarn on the last day of the tour.

As with the cloud batt, I haven’t skeined it yet, and so don’t know yardage and final weight of the yarn (thickness and mass alike), but I’d say it’s probably 100 yards of chain plied fingering/sport weight, and close to 1.5 to 2.0 ounces of spun fiber. So I would say that I met my goal for this project for the tour. 

It does leave 5.25 of un processed roving, and .5 to 1.0 ounces of unspun rolags to work on, but I never planned on finishing this during the tour. 

Un processed but color sorted roving pictured above. 

So, that was all I did during the Tour. 

I got less done than I had hoped for - I didn’t touch the linen or the fleece for my vest at all, but I am trying to give myself grace. I wound up having two weekend trips where I couldn’t bring my spinning along, and I also had to finish a pair of socks for a friend’s birthday present, so there was less spinning time than anticipated. 

However, I think this was for the best. While I didn’t get to try out the linen, now I can do so without pressure. I also came to the realization that, since there is so much yardage I want to do with the fleece for my vest, I should do my sampling for that on the wheel as opposed to a spindle which was my initial plan.

I also, on the negative side, managed to strain my pointer finger working the spindle to finish plying the hydrangea yarn and the cloud yarn by the end of the tour, so no more spinning for me until that stops hurting. (It is already feeling better after a day’s rest and night’s sleep, but being overcareful is better than damaging it.)

So, onto my plans for once I’m healed up. Obviously I want to work on finishing the hydrangea yarn - finish the rolags and get the next bunch of those processed for my next spindle’s worth of yarn. So that’s going to be my spindle project for the immediate future, with the hope of maybe finishing that project by the end of the year. 

I also do want to pull out my spindle wheel, since I haven’t used it in almost a year with other crafts pulling at my attention. If and when I pull that out I want to spin up the linen, since I have another sweater project on the needles and don’t need to work on the handspun vest right this moment. 

Apart from spinning, I have a pair of socks, that sweater project, a granny square afghan, and several sewing projects either planned or in the works, so I’ll have plenty of projects to keep myself occupied for the rest of the year. 

Hopefully I’ll remember to post pictures to tumblr of those projects instead of just disappearing until next year’s Tour de Fleece.

My thanks to @a-tour-de-fleece for hosting this Tumblr TDF and reblogging those lovely posts from the other participants this year, because they were wonderful inspiration. 

Happy crafting everyone!

[a-tour-de-fleece]

Finish Line

WE MADE IT!

Show us what you’ve spun up this year! What achievement are you most proud of?

[angelofdirewolves]

Well, it’s been an interesting - and busy - Tour de Fleece this year, and I met a little over half of my goals. 

Let’s start with a recap of what my goals were and then break down how they all turned out. Under the cut, because I am very talkative and have lots of pictures saved up from the last two weeks. 

Keep reading

[angelofdirewolves]

The first post got very long, so to continue with my TDF 2023 adventures, see under the cut again!

Next up is the cloud batt. 

Unpacked and unrolled, the cloud batt wound up looking like this, a gorgeous batt with Romney, Polworth, Merino, and sparkles. This is my first time spinning from a classical batt so it was another experiment. 

I wanted a two ply lace/fingering weight yarn, so I split the batt into two roughly equal halves.

I had two spindles my dad made me, so I decided to spin each half on a spindle and ply together onto a third spindle. 

I further subdivided each half of the batt into four sections and treated each of those sections like roving, drafting them as I typically do, and then spinning into as fine I yarn as I could spin. 

Partway through the first half. 

Three quarters through the second half and the completed first half of my spindles. 

Once I had both spindles full, I let them rest and plied directly off the spindles onto my plying spindle - an old CD spindle that holds the most yardage of all my spindles and my spindle wheel.

But this wasn’t enough, because eventually I got to the point where the plyed yarn was so heavy that I couldn’t keep putting it on the CD spindle without the yarn breaking and one of the spindles had less yardage than the other and ran out. So, I used my ball winder to make a center pull ball and plied from both ends using one of the original spindles. 

I haven’t skeined this yet, but I would be shocked if this were under 200 yards of a lace/fingering weight yarn. I’m thinking this would be a lovely mini shawl or lace scarf once I know my final - washed - yardage and weight. We’ll see what happens. 

The next reblog in the chain will depict the final project I worked on during the Tour and my wrap up of the Tour and what I accomplished. Stay tuned!

[a-tour-de-fleece]

Finish Line

WE MADE IT!

Show us what you’ve spun up this year! What achievement are you most proud of?

[angelofdirewolves]

Well, it’s been an interesting - and busy - Tour de Fleece this year, and I met a little over half of my goals. 

Let’s start with a recap of what my goals were and then break down how they all turned out. Under the cut, because I am very talkative and have lots of pictures saved up from the last two weeks. 

My initial goals were as follows:

Spin two spindles of short staple bagged wool - or make dryer balls with one bag ~ 1 oz spinning (I haven’t weighted this, but it’s probably 6-8 oz a bag, but only 1/2 an ounce fits on my supported spindle)

Sample and spin half of the linen into singles - 4 oz

Spin all of the cloud batt  - 3.5 oz

Prep and spin two colors of the hydrangea roving ~ 2 oz (probably)

Sample the fleece for my sweater vest yarn ~ 3 oz

The bolded items were what I worked on over the past month, and the items I struck through were not worked on at all. 

Let’s go by project listed order. 

First off, we have the bags of hell-wool. 

As I suspected, this wool was not at all amenable to being spun by any spindle. I tried to spin it on the first day and had no luck at all, and the attempt was abandoned in disgust. 

So, I turned to my attempt at needle felting with a DIY felting pad and DIY felting needle. This failed miserably - I couldn’t get it to start to clump together at all, no matter how often I pricked the small ball of fiber I was trying to work with. 

Ultimately, the process for making dryer balls from this was two fold. I took half of a bag of white fiber - full of vegetable matter, and wet felted it using soap, hot water, cold water, and a lot of agitation into rough ball shapes. 

Pictured above, these cores after being air dried for the better part of two days. They still had a lot of VM in them, and they were dubiously together - the one in the middle you can see had little nubs peeling off, and the one on the bottom had a crevasse about halfway through the ball and would practically lie flat if pressed. 

In order to make these a) less likely to leave VM all over my clean clothes when used in the dryer and b) more likely to stay together to serve that purpose, I went in my fiber stash and found 8 oz of a nice camel colored wool roving. I peeled off about a foot and a half of roving for each dryer ball and wound it over each dryer ball so that it was completely covered in roving. 

Following the instructions I found for making dryer balls, I put these unfelted balls inside a pair of stockings. 

These went into the washing machine and dryer with my normal laundry, to felt the roving over the cores, and they turned out like this:

As you can see from the close up, they’re  a little fuzzy and pilly from the new roving, and there are some places where the wrapped roving shifted and didn’t cover the core completely, but they are fully functional as dryer balls. The next time I do a batch of laundry, I’ll put them through the washer and the dryer with my clothes to try and mitigate the fuzziness. 

I have the whole bag of dark fiber and a half bag of the white fiber left and I think that, come autumn when the weather turns and the birds and beasts are preparing for winter, that I’ll put the remaining fiber out on the compost heap for them to scavenge and line their winter nests, because I don’t need more than seven dryer balls, and I don’t want to keep the rest of this. It’s been in my closet long enough, and the sooner I can get this stuff out the house the better. Besides, giving it to the birds and squirrels means that some use’ll be gotten out of this, which is ultimately what I wanted. 

This was, ultimately a nice experiment in wet felting and it will be nice to phase dryer sheets out of my laundry routine in favor of something more eco-friendly. 

However, this post is getting long, so I’ll post this and reblog with my further fiber efforts. 

[hazmatazz]

your opponent is the most selected option. please don't spoil anything in the tags

rock paper scissors?

rock

paper

scissors

Voting ended onJul 6, 2023

[a-tour-de-fleece]

What is the Tour de Fleece?

The Tour de Fleece is a world wide, decentralised, annual, online spin-along, happening parallel to the Tour de France bike race. It first popped up in 2012 when spinners would watch the Tour de France while sitting at their own wheels! Since then, it spread around the globe. There are no official groups or rules and everybody interprets it a bit differently, the only guideline being "spin during the Tour de France".

Some people spin every single day, some people match the rest days (and don't spin on those days), some people match the very challenging mountain days (and spin something that's a challenge to them on these days). Some people set a specific goal like "spin this whole fleece", or reach a certain yardage, some just try to spin at all. Some groups award prizes!

What is this blog?

This is not a group that awards prizes.

This is a shared space for everyone who wants to do the Tour de Fleece and wants to talk about it. We will encourage and cheer each other on and offer advice, but the main focus should be having fun. Everyone sets their own goals, challenges, and pace, and if anybody drops out halfway through? Then that's awesome, because they have spun a lot of fibre but also recognised and respected their own limits!

Submissions and asks are open and encouraged, and I will track these tags:

tour de fleece, tdf, tour de fleece 2023, tdf 2023

You can also simply tag @a-tour-de-fleece for a reblog!

Why A TdF, not The TdF?

Because there are no official groups or authorities on the TdF, and this is basically just me, my fibre arts mutuals, and anyone on tumblr who wants to join. There a certainly more spinners who are on tumblr and do the TdF but unaffiliated with this blog, so I didn't want to claim any status as the tumblr TdF.

+++

This year's dates:

July 1 - July 23, 2023

+++

Disclaimer: this blog is run by @swords-n-spindles who is, occasionally, at war with their executive functions, so will sometimes drop the ball. Apologies in advance, and gentle reminders are welcome when I forget stuff!

Second disclaimer: the cottage core to TERF / white supremacy pipeline is real. If you think we're xenophobic traditional housewives because we're doing a very old-fashioned craft, fuck off. I value the safety and comfort of trans, BIPOC and generally queer crafters higher than the comfort of TERF, pro-life, "traditional values" and/or politically right-wing crafters, so the latter can fuck off, too. If you've got issues with that, I invite you to make your own blog and content.

[swords-n-spindles]

Hey guess what time it is.

[swords-n-spindles]

I FORGOT ABOUT THIS SCHEDULED POST. Time to come out of the woodwork, spinners! Tell us what you’re planning for TdF 2023!

[angelofdirewolves]

*rubs hands together evilly*

Oh, yes, I have plans for the Tour de Fleece this year. *

*disclaimer: I do not intend to spin all of the fiber in this picture, but to make starts on working on it. 

Lets break it down. (Under the cut, because I am verbose)

These two bags of fiber are the bane of my existence. I bought them for something like ten dollars a piece (gloriously cheap for the amount) when I was first learning to spin, close to a decade ago, and they have sat in my stash since that day. 

This is because there was a reason they were cheap. I am virtually certain that either the sheep that these came from was half bald or the bags are entirely made up of second cuts, because the average staple length of these fibers is a half inch, and that is being generous. 

I’ve tried to spin these several times before, but had no luck. So, what I am going to try this time, is to use my semi-supported spindle method and see if I can finally figure out how to spin this. If it doesn’t work this year, it’s never happening. In that case, I’ll figure out how to turn this lot of slightly scratchy wool into dryer balls via needle felting, that way I get some use out of the fiber. 

This is 8 ounces of linen fiber that I would very much learn how to spin. I’ll use my spindle wheel to spin this and do some sampling (wet vs dry spun, thick vs thin, etc.) with around one ounce, and then spin the rest as fine as I can to make my reenactor/fascinated with old textiles heart as happy as I can. 

Making this will also require the acquisition/creation of a distaff, I believe. Given my dad does hobby woodworking this shouldn’t be hard. I can use a half inch length of dowel until he decides that distaff making interests him and he turns me one on the lathe. 

This is slightly less than four ounces of a sparkly blue-gray wool batt, in a color way called cloud. I haven’t spun yarn from a batt before, so this is also a new experience. I’ll be spindle spinning this.

Now, presenting 8 ounces of merino in a colorway called hydrangea. I’m going to do something that I’ve seen on tumblr, where a person (I can’t remember the name and will link them if I find the post again) separated a multi-colored roving by color, spun up each color separately and then made a colorwork sweater with the finished yarn. This is too little to make a sweater (unless I also do a corresponding pr white or black yarn as the main color and use this as the contrast ... hmm. Things to consider) but I want to do a color work project with the finished yarn. 

This is a project I would like to do on a spinning wheel/my spindle wheel, but that’s ear marked for my linen project, so this will also be spindle spun.

Finally, we have the big one. I bought this lovely gray Cheviot fleece in 2019, and washed it that year. This has been ear marked since I bought it for a particular sweater vest pattern. Ravelry Link  It’s a lovely cabled gray sweater vest, which requires around 1500 yards of DK weight yarn. I’m thinking I’m going to be make 3 ply yarn, so that means 4500 yards of singles. The fleece was almost four pounds before washing, and the commercial yarn that the pattern calls for is only around a pound and a half, so I should probably have enough. 

For the Tour de Fleece this year, I want to do my sampling for this, because coming up with how to make the yarn I want (carding vs combing the fleece to prep it, woolen vs worsted for spinning, 2 ply or 3 ply yarn, spindle vs wheel) is going to require a lot of permutations. If I actually get started on the final spinning for this by the end of the Tour, I will be pleasantly surprised.

That’s a break down of all the different projects, but most of these will not be finished by the time the Tour is finished, so to sum up, see the bullet point list below.

I want to:

Spin two spindles of short staple bagged wool - or make dryer balls with one bag ~ 1 oz spinning (I haven’t weighted this, but it’s probably 6-8 oz a bag, but only 1/2 an ounce fits on my supported spindle)

Sample and spin half of the linen into singles - 4 oz

Spin all of the cloud batt  - 3.5 oz

Prep and spin two colors of the hydrangea roving ~ 2 oz (probably)

Sample the fleece for my sweater vest yarn ~ 3 oz

That seems reasonable - hopefully - because it’s only approximately 14 ounces over the 23 day tour and it’s very unlikely the bagged wool is going to be at all usable for spinning. 

Of course, this all pre supposes that I will be able to finish my current spinning project, which requires three of my five spindles (two for the singles, one for plying). However, one single is done, and the other single is only one ounce, so that shouldn’t be a problem. *knocks on wood*

I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone else does for the Tour de Fleece this year!

[batmansymbol]

OKAY TUMBLR. IT'S TIME TO SETTLE THIS ONCE AND FOR ALL.

Reblog this if you pronounce “.gif” as “GIF.”

NOT JIF,

GIF.

And here is the link for the opposite.

WE SHALL SEE WHICH ONE PREVAILS.

[jaubaius]

Art Car with singing fish and lobster

[propheticfire]

The above caption egregiously omits that the fish and lobsters are singing Bohemian Rhapsody.

[saprotrophix]

[irrationalplanets]

I have not seen enough people talking about how the 20th anniversary of Fellowship of the Ring is in like a month

[irrationalplanets]

[angelofdirewolves]

Weekly Crafting Check-In 10/24

I am almost finished with the dragon!

The first hoop is fully finished, I finished the tail, the feet, and the arc of the wing. The orange fill of the wing is about half finished, and I have seven days to finish that and to use the floss to edge what I sewed in the second hoop. 

I also spent some time talking about framing, and there is a plan, that involves picking up matting for this project on Friday, and me either sewing the motto on a separate piece of fabric or writing it in my best calligraphy. It probably won’t be framed by the end of the month, but the stitching definitely will be done by Halloween. 

I’m torn between what I am going to work on after I finish sewing this, since I’ve been working on it for months. There’s a holiday quilt pattern I want to do, my dad promised to make me a rag rug loom, I need to finish my spindle wheel project, and I have a scarf I want to weave for my godmother for the holidays this year. Lots of things that I want to try, so I am excited to be very close to done with this so I can move onto another project!

See you all next week with a finished dragon/personal crest!

[angelofdirewolves]

Weekly Crafting Check-In

More progress on the dragon!

I’ve almost finished the main body of the dragon, I just need to sew in the tail and finish what I can reach of the last foot, so I should be able to finish that today, and then progress to working on the floss edging and detailing. I’ve enjoyed playing with longer satin stitches on this to show how the legs are moving, even without the edging to highlight it, but it’ll show more clearly and with more color with the edging. Once again, once I finish the floss detailing, then I’ll start working on the wings in the hoop, detail those, and then move the hoop to finish the dragon. 

My dad and I were discussing how to frame this, and he said that we should probably purchase glass so that it doesn’t get dusty and matting material so that the glass doesn’t rest directly on the stitching, which seems like a good idea to me, but this means that I may not be finished with the framing come the end of the month. Given that I have 75% of the most detailed section of the dragon done with 21 days left, I have no doubt of my ability to finish stitching the dragon, but the framing may have to wait until after the discord challenge finishes. 

Hopefully I will be almost ready to move the hoop if it’s not already moved next week. See you then!

[angelofdirewolves]

Weekly Crafting Check-In 10/3

I have finally finished 3/4 of my personal crest project.

I am very glad to have the tree finished, even if it only fully happened yesterday morning. (Procrastination is terrible, and then the floss edging around the branches took longer than I expected). Then, yesterday afternoon/evening, I started to work on the dragon for the discord mystical creatures craft along, and I am very pleased with how far I have gotten in the span of half a day. 

I finished all of the orange thread that is not in the wing, and I started on the claws and horns. I think for this I am going to work on the body first, get the body all thread filled and floss edged (there’s going to be yellow between the orange panels and some detailing inside the fins in addition to the edging), and then start working on the wings after the body is stitched. I think once I’m finished with the claws I am going to start from the head down, with the eye happening at the floss stage so that it sort of sits over the thread background instead of just getting lost in it. If I can get most of the body thread filled this week I think that would put me very much on track for finishing the stitching during the stitch along. I’m keeping the colored version of this from my initial design and the pattern I traced this from very close so that I can consult it frequently when I’m stitching.

I also decided that instead of inscribing the motto at the bottom of the work, like I had initially planned, I am going to wood-burn the motto into the frame, because the Iris got placed a little too far down and it would be smaller than I liked if I wound up stitching it. This means that the dragon is absolutely the last thing I have to stitch for this project, which makes me very happy. (As mentioned last week there is a tiny little case of burnout that is manifesting in planning many projects, but I am going to finish this and one of my other WIPs before I actually start any/purchase anything for those new project plans). 

[angelofdirewolves]

Weekly Crafting Check-In 9/26

This week my progress was directed entirely towards my embroidery/personal crest project. 

This picture is my progress as of Friday, when I finished outlining what I had stitched with floss, and took it out of the hoop to iron it before I put the hoop back on to finish the branches.

This shows my current progress since then, with only about 1/3 of the branches completely filled. The mythical creature craft along the discord group I’m in starts today, but I’m going to finish stitching the branches first, because it’s a five week long craft along. My goal for today is to try and get more of the branches filled, with the goal of starting the floss outlining on Tuesday, so that I can have a few days of stitching on the dragon before I post again. I will admit that I am starting to get a mild case of I’ve-been-working-on-this-one-project-for-too-long, because while I have done other things, I haven’t ever put this away seriously for the past monthish. So hopefully I can keep up the good work and just get this tree done so that 3/4 of the motifs are done and I have four weeks to stitch a glorious dragon in beautiful reds and oranges and yellow. You’ll get some pictures next week.

[angelofdirewolves]

Weekly Crafting Check-In 9/19

Last week I mentioned the possibility of pulling out my loom to make a scarf for holiday presents. Well, I did that, and I did that twice. 

Two lovely woven scarves destined to go to my aunts come the winter holiday season, woven while I was watching Lord of the Rings for the umpteenth time this past week. I bought the yarn (those one pound skeins that you get at Michaels) in 2019 intending to make a three color plaid scarf for one of my aunts. That didn’t get finished until January of this year because three color plaid is hard, and I warped it way too long, and it’s practically twice the length of these two scarves. The striped one I finished in one day while watching Fellowship. I started the red and white plaid one while watching Two Towers and finished it the next day watching Return of the King. I am very proud that I got these done and can finally send them out to my aunts. There is one aunt on the other side of the family that I might decide to make another scarf with since there’s enough of the white and green to make one like the red and white one pictured above. But that won’t happen in the immediate future, because there is a crafting deadline on my personal crest project.

I mentioned last week that a discord group I’m in is doing a mythological beast craft-along that starts in late September and I am planning on doing the dragon at the top of this for that. So, I need to make more concerted progress on this tree of life today and in the next few days in order to move the hoop to get to the dragon. I have about half the trunk filled, along with the lupines. My hope is to get to get to the part where it all divides into branches and then start my floss edging, using the colors that you can see in the unfilled trunk, the light brown and the warm brown. That’ll add some color and fully finish what I’ll have stitched thus far. 

I’m thrilled with making so much progress, both on the scarves and on the crest. I’d forgotten how fast weaving goes, and was very pleased to have two finished objects. The crest has gotten a lot of focus these past months, and I have two and around a half of another of the four motifs done, and by the end of the craft-along, I hope to be finished with all four, leaving me with just the motto across the bottom. The satin stitch for the trunk has been a little more difficult and pulls more than the iris petal satin stitch, largely because the tree is just so much larger. I’m paying attention to my tension, and I think it’ll be fine, but it means that the stitching goes slower than I hoped for. Ah well, even slower than I would wish for progress is better than no progress. 

See you all next week!