I make things! With fiber and fancy sticks!

'Fancy Sticks' includes a lot of things that one might not consider 'sticks,' traditionally.

[fiberandfancysticks]

About This Blog:

It occurred to me recently that I Did Not Have a place to just post all the things I make, the things I'm working on, or... anything. Random posts on my main blog are... basically buried in everything else I stick on there!

So this is my Dedicated Crafting Blog! It is a work in progress; expect both updates on my current projects, and posts about things I've made years ago! Based on my whim, and what I feel like taking pretty pictures of! ^_^

To see just my completed crocheting, knitting, and weaving projects, check out my Ravelry page linked over on the left! ^_^ This blog will mostly be in-progress ramblings about what I'm working on, eventually!

[fiberandfancysticks]

My current weaving project is (intended to be) a set of placemats for my mom! Thus far, it is an Adventure in using the full width of my 20" table loom, every single one of my loom's heddles (plus a few repair heddles for a threading mistake and for the shaft that had SLIGHTLY fewer heddles than the rest!)

I discovered that my previous solution for separating layers of warp (old cereal boxes opened up into wide, long, weird cardboard shapes) weren't actually wide enough when I was using THE ENTIRE WIDTH of the loom... so I bought this lovely roll of heavy cardboard paper, my friend trimmed it to size with a bandsaw (? I think?) and it fits PERFECTLY inside my loom, and works SO MUCH BETTER than the cereal boxes!

...I also discovered that none of the shuttles I'd been using previously were long enough for projects this wide, so I have three looong thin dowels and a weaving sword from a backstrap loom pressed into service as shuttles.

I spent FOREVER trying to decide what pattern to weave, after making the warp... and settled on a rather simple twill, but I changed the direction with each color change, and it is, in fact, looking REALLY COOL!

... now I'm just hoping they all come out reasonably the same sized!

[fiberandfancysticks]

I'm very slowly working my way through the 4oz of rolags I bought a while ago, with my lovely, lovely mingo asho supported spindle. The fiber's merino/silk and my first time spinning from rolags!

My plan is to make this a 3-ply yarn, because round. But I've mostly been working on it in a few minutes here and there, at my desk, while my computer's loading something, so it's really going quite slowly...

[fiberandfancysticks]

Remember that black-and-white fingerwoven strap I made, ages ago? The one that seemed too short to be useful? Turns out, it's perfect for my car keys!

And my brother saw it, right around his birthday, and said "Hey, could you make me one that matches my car???"

And so, here we are! :D:D:D

[fiberandfancysticks]

Oh, right, I have a blog for sharing pretty things I make!

Blackwork embroidery is FUN! :D I've been working on this on and off since around thanksgiving -- because I was looking for THE TINIEST knitting needles, I ended up diving into counted-thread embroidery of various types.

(the squares are from three different sampler patterns by loose thread stitchery on etsy -- their patterns are LOVELY and I highly recommend them, if you want to try this!!!)

[fiberandfancysticks]

Some days, you discover a Fun New Way to make blankets out of squares, and decide to try it!

It's fun to work on knitting something where progress is Highly Visible and I don't need several charts and notebooks to keep track of the pattern! So that's what I've been working on, these past few days, as a break!

[fiberandfancysticks]

Roughly 100 cocoons in a box!!! Now I have space in my Assortment of Cardboard Tubes to continue sticking starting-to-spin silkworms in them! (there are still lots more than 150 silkworms. I bought supposedly 250 eggs!)

This fluff is the extra silk from around all of these cocoons! Apparently, you can just spin this straight up? I'm going to try it!

I attempted to weigh the fluff, and it is less than a gram! I am VERY EXCITED! SILK!!!

[teashoesandhair]

Dear everyone who is currently working on a Thing, whatever that Thing may be,

Good luck with the Thing. You can do the Thing. You will do the Thing. You just have to do the Thing.

Best wishes,

Someone who is also doing a Thing

[fiberandfancysticks]

So. Did you know you can just... buy silkworms? And silkworm eggs? You can, for example, order 250(...ish) tiny eggs!

And then they hatch!!!

And then spend a month giving them ever-increasing piles of mulberry leaves, and begin worrying about if the neighborhood mulberry trees will survive the "month or so" it will take for the silkworms to get big enough to spin their cocoons!

But!!! Today!!! The first few silkworms have started cocooning!!!

I got home from groceries, and saw this:

And moved the silkworm responsible into a little toilet paper tube! And then I checked all the other boxes of silkworms, and found a few others starting to spin, including the one that is A COCOON ALREADY in the newspaper bedding!!!

I'm very excited!!! Because SILK!!! and also (maybe primarily) yay I'm almost done dragging piles of mulberry branches into my house!!!

[fiberandfancysticks]

Okay, well, I GUESS it's pretty! But this (knitting!) is still a RIDICULOUS way to make a FLAT thing in the round! So I probably won't make the rest of the blanket this was a test hexagon for.

Probably.

...

right?

Also, I guess it was a good thing that I haven't yet thrown out the styrofoam blocks my new toilet came in? XD I would not have expected it to be such a GOOD blocking surface!

[fiberandfancysticks]

I'm at the local maker space, after running a class here this morning, theoretically making a warping mill with my friend. Which means, in reality, I'm spinning as my friend futzes with the maker space's new embroidery machine!

Ah well. I'm Quite Tired, and at least I have my spindle!

[fiberandfancysticks]

This is my current Tiny Emergency Project; if you find yourself out with nothing to do but wait, it's very useful to have a Very Small intricate crochet doily in your bag, waiting patiently to be worked on!

I'm using very very thin yarn (it's actually one of the 4 2-ply yarns that made up a much thicker (but still thin!) shawl yarn, which I liked much better taken apart. (also, don't do that. Separating the plies in 1000-yard balls of yarn is REALLY ANNOYING! But in this case... it was worth it. Probably.)

The pattern is Carlotta, by Grace Fearon; I've been working on it very slowly. I... usually bring other projects with me! ^_^

[fiberandfancysticks]

Having now finished weaving the length of this strap, it's become obvious that I'll need to make a second, matching, strap. Of course!

...it's a good thing I decided to make this bag out of yarn in colors I Really Like Together. I keep changing my mind and/or otherwise having to re-do parts of it.

[fiberandfancysticks]

Some days, it's hot and humid and perfect for fingerweaving while watching one of the many, many things your friends keep yelling at you to watch.

This will be the strap(...s?) for the largest sprang bag I've made! Which currently looks like a pile of yarn, instead of a bag!

[fiberandfancysticks]

This is the enormous circular blanket I made for my mom, 90% done in 2018! It's huge and heavy and I kept having to find new dark purples because yarn kept getting discontinued >_<;;

It is Extremely Cozy, and works very well on her bed!

[fiberandfancysticks]

I am finally ALMOST weaving something on my loom again!

This yarn is Interesting silk, that I'm not at all sure WILL hold up to weaving. But I'm trying it anyway, because assuming it works, I'm pretty sure it will be lovely! I'm planning to use this same yarn for warp and weft, so hopefully the colors will interact in Fun and Interesting ways!

...

But first, I have to make at least two more braids of warp.

[fiberandfancysticks]

So. A few months ago, I attended a meeting of the local weaver's guild! (Yes, that's a thing. Yes, it's very cool.) and the speakers that month talked about a type of weaving and loom from Laos which was SO COOL, doing extremely intricate supplementary weft patterns using a system of 2 shed plain weave and strings that store the supplementary weft pattern in string heddles. It's AMAZING!

I decided to try to replicate it, on my trusty inkle loom!

Setting up the heddles took FOREVER! And it's... really not very easy to use! But it DOES work!

...

And then I got my 4-shaft table loom, and got Slightly Distracted from this project. So it sits, keeping me from using my inkle loom as a warping board, taunting me.

Currently, I'm trying to decide if I should pick it back up and try to draft out a pattern, and then weave more than my Very Simple Test Blocks... or just say, "This was a good trial run!" and take the whole thing apart (so I can USE the LOOM for my VERY IMPORTANT planned tablet weaving projects) then set up my table loom to do the same thing, only BETTER. (Because my table loom has a reed, and easily set up plainweave heddle shafts that AREN'T awkward bundles of looped string in uneven clumps.) Thus far... I have not decided.