big lace blues

lacework detail shot

 

My first commission knitting!

I am sorry, dear blog, for never updating you lately.

But I want to, so soon I will return.

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Fiber Lookbook: Pastel Intensity

rambouillet roving by cjdelights

Journal Bandolier by cleverhands

Cinder by squoosh

 

Woodland Auryn by Plumevine

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A Fury Evening – rescuing beauty

This is a piece themed on How To Train Your Dragon, particularly Toothless, the “Night Fury” dragon befriended by the hero.

It is also a project built around a strand orphaned from another project.

The two came together seamlessly, which is kind of surprising to me, when a theme clicks with something driven by a practicality. In this case, that I had a gorgeous orange ply that I’d decided was going to trainwreck “Tatara Nightfall”, which wasn’t looking how I wanted it to anyway…

And maybe my panic was unjustified, and having that third orange piece would have sparked off the yarn a bit more–but not for what I was aiming for.

Anyway, the idea to take the purple (a great high-contrast color with orange) and then maybe midnight blue, all colors that work together in night-scenes launched the making of the next two plies. The blue  and purple are both variegated in spots, the purple with a more smoky indigo, the blue with both that same indigo and a light blue. That ply looked just gorgeous on the bobbin, like the dragon Toothless’ hide, which gave rise to seeing it as a piece themed on that.

My brother had said Eboshi looked like a yarn for that movie, so the seed was already in my mind…

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Fiber Lookbook: the polar ends of spring

This is going to be long. My favorites list has taken a hit, if being overwhelmed by new stuff can be described thus, with the new feature of “circles” where you have all the people whose taste is similar to yours on a feed CONSTANTLY FINDING YOU STUFF.

And the color trends become more obvious as I favorite more things. First palette is:

Deep Wood Spring

Forest Print (Human Nature) by debbiecarlos

Swamp cashmere yarn by hedgehogfibres

Jardin de Paris brown velvet mini photo album by noshidesigns

These are deep earthy colors a little dusty with their richness, like the fresh dirt of spring and the first blush of green deeper into the wood than you can see.

The “Swamp” yarn is unfortunately sold already, but the shop is ever full of lovely things, and the others are still available at their respective Etsy Shops.

Another thing these share is fine detail, a stranding fine as new branches unfurling, and leaves stirring, delicate despite the weight of time in the earth they grow on.

The next color-set is the complete opposite:

Watercolor Skies

Brighton Boats by roseginnie

SaLe Sencha BFL by CorgiHillFarms

These tones are almost wintry in their icy blue–which is just apt for that chill of spring that reminds of where we’ve been. The sky hasn’t yet taken on that bravado of color that leads into summer, and the light is still a bit silvery, but the harshness of winter has mostly gone out of it.

Grounded by electric greens and shale-y browns, this is the lightly brushed tones of an ocean-side spring.

It so happens the roving is also sold already. The same recommendation stands for CorgiHillFarms–this woman knows her colors.

man leaning on stone wall in ireland by susanlavonne

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April in Blue – inspiration by Etsy Search

Tardis by valentinearts hailing from Schenectady, NY, which sounds nifty

I’ve gotten to a point of competence where it takes actually mulling it over to think of things I’m unhappy with about my shop and products. I don’t want to get complacent, and since I really do love the art of this discipline, I’m determined to challenge myself by putting up an inspiration wall of sorts here.

Tardis is an awesome geekery-yarn (sorry–my bias showing?) and is also a delightful fresh mix of colors. The varying blues of the handpainting against what seems to be a natural brown and sharp white is unconventional and works because of the nice proportions of brown and even less white. I think it would stripe up subtly with little bars of the other colors, and this blue pops against them.

March I by Eliade

I sometimes envy these singles skeins, corespun or not, and yet I have yet to try one. Mostly because my envy comes straight from greed to have more length with an equal amount on wool, which is a foolish reason.

I probably will someday have a skein that will demand to be single, to showcase its theme better…like this one. The light colors are so watercolor-fine that pairing them against anything (even the companion colors) would change the look from classic to something completely different.

The gentle browns also ground this Easter-hues skein to a more real palette of spring, rather than just a painterly fantasy. Stunning.

 

Panorama by dye2spin

This does that trick of taking on a spectrum of a color that is stunning alone because of its depth of hue–and the slightly contrasting blues without that green edge are there to add more depth. This is also more effective by being a single, and my envy has turned into creative jealousy so I will probably go and come up with a concept just to be able to do this now…

First inspiration post of the yarn-lust project: successful!

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Phoenix, spiralling

with shoe

I kind of like this picture. It’s not just that I’m in it–it’s that my sneaker and jeans are in it, while I show off my yarn on our sidewalk.

It didn’t make the cut to the shop, because that’s a distracting detail, but as a photograph…well. I find it charming.

the skein on my knee

The color of the light is notably different in these photos–because I found the red was not shooting true in the sunlight. The cusp  of sunset is when I have the most flattering light for most yarns–and since when that is changes throughout the year, there are times (like last night) when I am putting a bite of dinner in my mouth, and it hits me.

It’s golden out there!

Ditching meals is not something I do for my art when it comes to stories (though heaven only knows how many I’ve sat through with my mind spinning until I could get back to something) but light–ah, transcendent, fickle light.

Only the last 10 or so photos were in this light after the light had gone indirect, though I probably shot over 40. It’s all right, though…

I seem to have hit a point of competence where I can find where the photos are that I want, and they tend to be bunched together, where the lighting was right, and the angles good. (Though that day the mosquitoes had discovered me. It was like a circus had come to town.)

This yarn is a bit of a masterwork for me, because of the execution of the idea–it travels from void-black, into ashy tones, to the pearly white of an egg, up into flame and then to the red of a Phoenix–and then after another third of the yarn has passed, it burst back into flame, settling down into smoke and ash, and a black void.

It will make a very striking project for someone.

Phoenix Spiral

is available for adoption

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I didn’t have much of a desire to post here for a while, and so I have a whole SLEW of yarns I’ve created in between.

I’ll start with the ones I have already sent off to buyers, first Kyoko, which I had mentioned before the hiatus…

 

Love Me! Member Kyoko

 

I find it kind of inscrutable that this hot pink yarn of slightly muddy aspect would go before Northern Lights, for instance, but I guess color consistency is something people find desirable. :mystified:

Now, here’s a yarn that went to a loving home fairly quickly, despite being multicolored…

 

A Beast's Roses

 

You need to see more of that, don’t you?

 

A Beast's Rose Garden...

 

This is two-thirds the “Beauty and the Beast” colorway from ThePrincessRooms in the Spring Swap, and one third the Geranium Batt from GiggleJelly, which added just a shade more green and white so that the misty, leaf effect was added to an already gorgeous roving of rose hues… (See my post on Roses by Moonlight, upcoming, to see Beauty in another context entirely!)

I used a very light mint-green roving against another of the Geranium batts to create this little skein:

 

Chrysalis

 

Which is in my shop now, despite a lack of quite perfect photography.

That’s it for new yarns except the one I posted today, but I’m holding out for a really good photo-session, and will post it solo…

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Gossamer Gleams

Treasuries are one of the more inscrutible features of Etsy–brilliant, using user-made collections of items as the Front Page’s rotating display, but now they’ve made it something that doesn’t expire within a certain time limit it seems a bit like an abyss of information.

But it’s great fun to curate these little shows, and fun to gamble on getting to the front page. I’ve done so once, with this Hobbit Themed Treasury, a collection of things I thought you could find in a hobbit-hole–little homely, comfy items and clothes.

Yesterday I put up one that’s much colder and a bit more eerie–called Gossamer Gleams of Web and Strings.

Arachne Scarf by kteis

I have an obvious fascination with cobweb and the word “gossamer”, and this was a fun riff of of that–all silver and black, but glowing.

Black Rutilated Quartz Necklace by aubepine

Cobweb Wings by OnGossamerWings

I found the perfect Fiber Art items to make this really a treasury to reflect back on my interests, which in my last “Raven” treasury, I didn’t feel I could.

Sterling Merino-Silk Yarn by SkeinYarns

Iceberg by TianaCHE

A Tiny Tree by Meganzii

And there’s the only non-tactile item–an art print that completely sums up the image I had in mind when creating this treasury. It’s gorgeous, and mostly the work of the natural forces that first made gossamer and built edifices of tiny wires of iron-strong silk.

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A Note of Leaves

the twist...

This was themed on leaves sent in lieu of letters, in envelopes, and threats by rose-petals in the post.

Both *my* stories are still being made, but the yarn is done–my friend’s story and picture are complete, which puts me to shame.

Right Where it Belongs by Pascalle Ballard

This yarn is only 73 yards, because I was working with limited amounts of the brown and red, the key colors

my rural shabby-chic shot...

In my photography for my shop I’ve started using the backgrounds provided by my own yard–at first just the trees and sky and grass, but I loved the way one photo turned out against the peeling paint of our porch, and started veering toward a sort of intentional rust-bucket homestead look. I don’t know if it’s working as a concept, but I like it…

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Patrolling Gotham

This Batman yarn is one to be debuted at the Con Art Show next month! Can I wait that long?

Gotham Patrol ~ Batman Fanart

When spinning up the deep purple-black side, I was much amused by the steampunk look of it…just being a sepia-tone sort of color made it automatically steampunk to my mind.
Which led to the idea that Batman would lend himself to steampunk–which started firing neurons like you wouldn’t believe

not exactly color-true, but representative...

This yarn is much superior in person, because the nuance of the color is hard to capture, first of all. Black is deucedly hard to photograph, two shades of it even moreso.

It’s also the softest, most fluffy yarn I have ever made, which can only be experienced by holding it.
I can’t even describe it. Just wow.

I want to do a more cartoon-colored version sometime, but not right not…

Next is Kyoko: Love Me Uniform variant!

Love Me! Section No. 1 Member

{This is cross-posted with my LiveJournal}

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