Sesshoumaru and Maid Marian have never had anything in common before today…
and today, the only thing they have in common is they’re both represented on Etsy as yarns. ^_^
Sesshoumaru - Resurrection Sword
This is from two batts I created myself. I want to try another one based off of the character with more bold red and black–more dominant. Have to buy red roving first…
Maid Marian's Kirtle (Trysting in Sherwood...)
I’ve started “v-logging” about my fiber projects. Here’s a current one! At that account you can find one about the Raven King yarn, too.
On the Spindle
On the Wheel
Click on any picture to get to the shop GossamerSong
It looks like my swap-mate shipped this from Portland, Oregon. She’s on vacation, from Victoria, BC. Is that unfair or what? I suppose if you’re going to take a vacation from Victoria, you wouldn’t go someplace less nice. But my envy is turning me chartreuse.
Oh, the package?! Right…
some gorgeous fiber to spin!
She found out I spin, not knit. Though I wouldn’t have minded getting yarn for that inevitable day I decide to learn to, she instead got me hand-painted roving.
I love the stuff, and have never had any. The colors are spot-on my favorites, a palette of sheer beauty to my eyes. Also, not pastels, which I have been working with a bit too much lately. Thank you, Dennine!
And then there were the other goodies:
I am unworthy...
Tea, sweets, and then did you note the bookmark and book in the top picture? Here’s the book’s glamor shot:
This is a Fantasy YA--right up my alley!
a girl who acted out by buzzing off her hair and dyeing it orange is shipped off to a bike-tour of Ireland. Apparently, she is just beginning to like that when it’s Faeryland for her and her hairdo.
I have enough thoughts swirling in my brain about projects that I actually need to get them down. If there were many people subscribed here I’d hesitate to clutter their mind with my thoughts, but I don’t know of any.
So HAH!
Business Development
I’m going to see if I can go use a drum carder Thursday. If I succeed I may put off buying the hand-cards, and instead let myself buy fiber.
I may have a NEW borrowed wheel next week! Which will be fabulous. If it comes with roving, so be it. *squeeeee…*
Project Forecast
Strange & Norrell: reflecting the watery dark green, black, and aged white of the book cover I posted last, or maybe for now a Childremass one in the deep blues. I found some gorgeous deep green-blue fleece in my stash
Thornmallow: white with green and gray smears, reflecting the character in Jane Yolen’s wizard’s hall. Maybe some interpretation of the “prickly on the outside, squashy on the inside” theme?
And it may be time to think about a…
Sesshoumaru yarn. >.< White, red, gray/blue.
Current Events
I’ve been bound and determined to do this three-ply, straight-up from this hand-colored roving. What its name will be is haunting me, rather.
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell imagines a Napoleonic era England with ballroom niceties, pendantic scholars…and a history of wild magic some can’t quite forget.
Though the title refers to the two magicians dedicated to bringing back practical magic, my favorite character is one who seems always lurking in the shadows though he never physically appears.
theme: iridescent feathers
The Raven King is a human who came out of Faerie to establish a magical England in a golden age. (Parallel to the Arthurian mythology, I think.)
He is both shadow and flesh, myth and nature. The Raven King, an aspect of the deep, eerie magic of this English landscape. I love the idea, and I had to make a yarn to tribute it. I’m pretty proud of this one, and it’s a full 300 yards, by devious means I shall be making use of more often…
a cheapskate lazy-kate
Actually, that’s not how I did this one, but I just had to use that picture…
I just finished this yarn after it was a few months in the making–I had to especially buy the black merino roving, which I was able to purchase from my PayPal business money! Yay for selling stuff to buy more stuff–monies is fun.
This group is really active in a cohesive way: every season they have a read-and-knit-along with a certain fairy tale and its retellings, and they have themed swaps. The fantasy buffs there are articulate, friendly, and capable of silliness. Which is the best one can look for on Internet communities. I love it!
This summer they’re doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as the theme. This sparked off a great idea for using a beautiful roving I got as a gift…
a gluttony of fiber-kinds
It *was* awesome.
But it wasn’t mine yet. And with Puck on the brain, I decided to add a little chaos.
The Stuff
One strand is just the roving by itself, but the other has bits of greens, pinks, purple, and bright blue. Since the original roving had glitz, blue-string junk, natural off-white wool, and cotton or silk or mohair or bamboo, but most likely some combination, it’s a sort of whimsical yarn.
bright chaos
My literary theory behind this “Puck” is that Robin Goodfellow, though established as a prankster who amuses Oberon, is the only one in the play operating without motive, without blindness caused by fairy mischief (received or inherant). He’s the stable force in a crowd of madness.
“Believe me, king of shadows, I mistook” he says when his dispensing of the potion to the wrong couple is found out. The plea is sincere, concerned.
Puck ~ Agent of Good?
This is one of those yarns I got tired of before I finished it–the hand-selecting of the colors does that. It doesn’t flow, it chugs… But that’s what I like to have made, so I guess I’ll just have to keep chugging away.
I carded up some pink stuff that will be a little alike, but I already added my own touch. It will be less labor-intensive, yea-yah!
That will be somehow dedicated to the other fairies. I’ll be watching for a clever title on this reread…
I’ve been working on my yarn business again lately. This means time on Etsy, (oh perilous place, and sly) and trying to network my way into sales.
I’ve discovered quite a few things to love along the way. Backfiring? I don’t know… having things I want to buy, to motivate me to do better at selling isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Right?
Right?!
This is my latest listing: Under River Aracthus, titled after a scene in The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner.
I’d like to sell this so I can buy: That Old Black Magic by ButterflyGirlDesigns
…even though I’m planning to create some very similar batts to make a Raven King yarn. (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell are neither of them the main interest in that book, you know.)
In tag surfing, to kind of see how my items are comparing, and who is doing similar things, I come across the greatest random geek stuff. (That tag is “geekery”.)
GuttersnipeYarn for sure does not need *my* press, but how awesome is she? Let me count the ways:
~ She does “Costume Flick” yarns. This means… Austen characters. She has a Wickham yarn. She has a Harriet Smith yarn.
Yes, this is fabulous, and my envy is part awe.
~ She also has a whole Sweeney Todd category, which is awesome because the color scheme of the movie was, from what I can tell without watching it. ^_^
~ She does Steampunk yarn with Stuff to put in.
I think I’m going to have to postpone my non-yarn favorites sharing until another time, but look forward to it. There’s photography, jewelry, and…Lego Wizard keychains.
I just sold a yarn that I never posted here. I’m thrilled it’s going to be used! But it’s prettiness as a skein, too, must be preserved somewhere…
This photo's lighting makes pearly colors like shells or watercolor landscapes...
I love the splashes of unexpected color in this–I mostly worked with a periwinkle mohair that was hand-dyed and variegated in itself. Then I added touches of Corriedale roving from Ashford–the greens, and bolder purples. There’s also natural colored off-white and charcoal wool. It was so much fun to make!
the whole skein
Laputa Drifting refers to Castle in the Sky by Hayao Miyazaki. The land is a cyborg of tree and machine, mostly shut down but still drifting masked in the upper atmosphere of Earth. The largely blue tone of this suggest the sky–the green and charcoal touches are more the colors of the actual land. The overall impression matched some of the screenshots to my mind, though.
Castle In the Sky, Hayao Miyazaki
could never get tired of these colors...
the silkiest and most photogenic skein I've made yet...
In Hans Christian Andersen’s tragedy The Steadfast Tin Soldier, the ballerina and tin soldier are destroyed together in a fire.
The point of the story is somewhat ambiguous, but the images are not—maybe it’s partly the illustrations I remember, but each element of the story is deeply colored. The Ballerina, an ideal and motive for the Tin Soldier, is ethereal and fragile in a world of metal figures, dark gutters, and hot fires.
The particular blending of white, gray, and pink remind me of her part of that story.
Close In for Color
I think the colors are a little less blended when seen in real life, but with the ashy gray and variety on pinks I named it for something a little more bold. The image of the words together is soft enough, though.
The two strands are different: I used a friend’s batt for the first, which was the pink merino and natural gray and white together. I hand-carded a similar gray (maybe the same) with a hand-dyed pinky-orange roving and white.
I was apprehensive about the other pink clashing until I saw how it looked carded in. I still won’t be plying them directly against each other.
Another Shot
I was going to do another identical skein…but found I didn’t want to. I’d rather come up with a new one to join the Nutcracker and Paper Ballerina in a suite of pink dances. ^_^
On gossamersong.etsy.com once I’m back from a roadtrip!
This skein is another of the ones I created bit by bit, selecting a palette of colors that I selected from as I went along, keeping in mind the two plys to be made out of the single. It’s always a surprise to see the actual product though. I think I did pretty well creating the look I was going for–a blur of neon signs and lights against the purple dusk and black of the night sky.
The Real Thing
{Gosh, this picture makes me want to try again with more greens…though I’d have to acquire the greens and black. Therein lies the peril. Sigh.}
Dark
DNAngel is a comic and anime show involving a young man who shape-shifts into an immortal “art thief”. The Tokyo night theme and the similarity of colors in the actual comic’s scheme prompted me to name it after that character.
Kaito Dark ~ a Tokyo nightscape
This batt is one of the ones I made while on Fiber Play-Day with Rebecca of “Virtuous Threads”. It was fun to spin up, knowing I liked all the colors together, and seeing what would happen.
I don’t seem to have named it, or written down yardage. Which is odd. Maybe I just have no recall of what it was. Time to make something up! (I love this step.)
This picture doesn’t do this yarn justice, but I call it “Watercolor” because the way the skein’s coloring drifts, from black to white and through the tones between. Especially when grouped next to other strands, it looks Impressionist.
Moon and Shadow
This is from the same kind of two-tone batt. (Jacob’s sheep wool: they’re naturally spotted.) The batt had significantly less of the darker wool, but I also spun lengths of only white intentionally to make a change. I loved using an abundance of the same wool to create different looks. The skeins are on the small side, so if you like them and do smaller projects (or funky ones with disparage gage yarn), let me know!
Gossamer by Moonlight
This yarn is actually two tone, natural tones but of different wools (not a Jacob fleece). I made a short length as an experiment, and mimicked it for this skein.
a motley crew
I haven’t had access to more of the two-tone batts like I used for the skeins above, but I think it would be fun to try to create some bigger skeins especially like the watercolor one. And see what people can make out of them, too!
