Update postponed!

I know, I know...I'm sorry. For anyone waiting for an update, I'm moving my update evening to Monday nights, at least for a while. I'm teaching classes on Sunday nights so it's been a bit difficult.

I've got a a pretty good update for Monday so come on back if you're in the market!

I've also got news! Big family news! I've gotta reveal to a few people in person before I post it here, but soon!

I feel like...a...winner!

Yep! Not only did I win first place at Maryland Sheep and Wool, but I also won second place! Yep, they like me, they really like me! I'm so aglow with glee (really, look at the fine sheen of glee on me in that picture!). There's something so validating about, well, the validation. heh. I was very nervous about entering, thought they'd laugh me out of the contest, me with all my oddities. There's always a nagging doubt that computer props are so easy and free and not at the top of the genuine train, you know? In the art yarn world there's a lack of honest critique, people feel odd, i think, critiquing what so many consider art, an expression of an idea, feeling, etc. However, if you look at the history of art (and clearly I'm no expert but I read Jodi's regularly and that makes me feel like an expert), critique is always right there, pushing it along, making it better, making people strive etc. Blah blah blah, more on this later, what I really wanna gush about is my one, two, count 'em ribbons! Yeehaww!

more about the weekend later (and when I post about the weekend, you can be sure the ribbon pictures will be posted a second time, hee).

oh, and there will be an update tonight, blue ribbon vitreous humor and all!

What I haven't been doing and why

Oh jeez. I'm falling b e h i n d...

I should be spinning, recording, e-mailing, working, but instead I've been nursing a staph infection (which made nursing a fiery hell) and doing my best impression of a single mom while k.ad packed a little lunch skipped off to jury duty each day, so excited he finally got picked for a trial, a smile on his justice-doling face.

But everything is square now, no staph, nipples good, jury verdict. Now I spin.

MDSW

Update update: There will no shop update today (sunday, april 13th). I'm crazily spinning for Maryland Sheep and Wool which is in 20 days! Twenty days! I hope to have a boatload of eyeballs to take but I'm such a sucker for the lone knitter than e-mails me up out of the blue and asks so kindly for any spare vitreous humor I may have, you know, hiding under the couch, in the dog bed, behind the toilet, and just like a desperate twenty something, I put out. Yep, apparently flattery will get you something around here.

Subsequently, my stock of vitreous humor never really grows, resting on average right around the 0 mark. As soon as I have, like a dinghy full, I send it off. However, with 20 days left, I've gotta put my foot down, or rather, both feet, alternatively, on the spinning wheel, and spin and not sell. Yeah, so while I plan on having a few yarns the next few weeks, website production is crawling.

And where will this boatload of yarn be? booth D2, D3 in the Main barn, the Cloverhille booth, which will be fracking full of indie yarns! I can't even name all the amazing artists that are going to be shucking the wares, so stop by! I'll be wo-manning the booth on Saturday afternoon, so stop by and gimme a good slap on the arse! or, you know, say hi.

Who's going?

Invent-y

So I don't claim to have invented much, not really. I mean, I guess I've invented my style, (it's undeniable, right), monster hat knit kits, vitreous humor, tomato vine. But when it comes to actual techniques, I think it's rather bold to say one invented such and such technique. People have been spinning for, like a bazillion years, we can't be the first ones to have made a cocoon! I mean, almost everything that's being done out there has been done, I'd venture to say, for longer than I've been alive. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the state of art yarns has always existed in the way it does now, not by any means. I'm not even saying that we don't invent new ways to do things. I'm only positing that the core of the techniques have probably been done in some basic way for a long-assed time.

And while we are surely improving on them and using them more creatively, we didn't really invent them. I mean, is there more than a handful of techniques that are not in Diane Varney's Spinning Designer Yarns? She published that in early 1987. Which sure, I was alive, but usually by the time something has been published, you can be sure someone somewhere has been doing it awhile. I know the pictures in that book don't resemble the amazing, artistic, spirited yarns that are around us today, but if you read her text carefully, it's all there.

What hasn't been there is the proliferation, the connectedness, the artistic outlook, the design, the combination of techniques that result in inspirational yarn. That stuff? I think it's so brand new and so extraordinary and so very important. But I don't pretend that we're all invent-y.

Why am I talking about this? Because I gots myself an invention, yo!

Heh. What I mean I have a new technique!

What is it? It's a coil in a single with no carry-along (racing stripe, candystripe, whatever) and is not just an overspun section of singles. And still, it's a bit silly to say I invented it. I mean, just because I've never seen anyone else do it (except my students and Jody and Shannon because it's in the video), doesn't mean there's not someone out there that has been doing it forever. And even more silly because it's a coil and coils are not new. But still, it's coil in a motherfuckin' single! Holla!

So tell me, who else out there does a coil in a single? I'd love to see what everyone else is doing? If you've ever done one, share a pic! Show your mad invent-y skillz. Heh.

Space for silence

A glimpse into my schedule, a shot in the head:

Lots of people ask how I get all my spinning done with 2 lil'uns running amok, all home-schooled and free-spirited. It's easy, my children are very dirty, like monstrously dirty. Dirty faces, filthy clothes, hair like rats nests, it's shameful, really. All the time that people usually spend cleaning their children, teaching them good hygiene, I use it to spin.

Heh. Okay, if you know me, you know that's not totally true, though LB is often known to bellow from the shared bedroom I don't have any *skivs or I'm out of socks again, but mostly we're pretty clean, and if we're not, at least our outer layer of clothes covers up the dirty skivs and socks. How I really get it done is that I work each day from 8am to noon (except thursday and friday when I work from 1pm to 5pm). I also work at night after everyone is in bed, but that's usually felting, dyeing, designing, knitting etc. not actual spinning.

Those 4 hours are my studio time and everyone is pretty good about not interrupting. Occasionally SP will need some nursing time, or LB will need me to untie his knot practicing rope, but generally it's just me, up here, carding, treadling, skeining, and watching/listening. Herein lies the problem, I think, with my headpace, or lack of headspace. Or at least part of the problem. Spinning used to be this solitary, silent, thoughtful time for me and lately I bombard myself with media while I spin. I watch netflix, I listen to books on CD, I divert my mind, never giving it a moment of peace.

I've been feeling a bit scattered, lost in myself, crammed up, jammed up, short tempered, lacking patience, tapped. I don't know if the 2 things are connected, this crammed feeling and the media jacked into my brain, but I'm guessing that if one isn't the cause of the other, one could at least start to alleviate the other.

So I'm starting slowly and for every 4 hours chunk of time that I spin I'll have silence for 30 minutes of it.

I know 30 minutes may sound like nothing but I can't go cold turkey, and I wouldn't want to. I enjoy the books, the netflix, but I don't think it's good to never have a moment of thoughtful peace, quiet, meditation. So here begins the space in my head experiment. We'll see if 30 minutes of no input is able to carve out a little niche in my mind, loosen thing up in there, give things a little more space to move around, mingle, meet other parts of my brain that been to tightly packed for too long. Who knows, I might come out of this with the patience of a Saint and some awesomely creative yarn!

*unders, underwear, skivvies, drawers, knicker-knackers, cheesecloth for the twig and berries etc.

head space

My last post got me thinking. Well, first I was thinking, then I posted, and then I thought about thinking and how I can't seem to stop doing it lately and how I don't really put much of it here, on my blog.

I never wanted my blog to turn into a place that was just about my business, just about selling yarns or whatever. I'm super vigilant about it in my podcast, it seems so cheap to use entertainment to sell people stuff. Who wants to listen to a podcast or read a blog that's constantly trying to separate you from you money, or convince you how great some product (or producer) is? Not me. In fact, there's a podcast I don't listen to because it listens exactly like that, one long ad and ego boost. But never mind that, I digress. It's not that I don't think I should post about Insubordiknit, I mean, it is what keeps food on our forks and us one step ahead of the bankruptcy lawyer, but there needs to be a balance, right? Something maybe in the area of 10% shop talk? However, when life gets so crazy and busy that I can't see straight, much less spit a coherent sentence into my computer, shop talk takes over and I become boring, one dimensional. That or I become closed-mouthed, not blogging at all because all I'm doing is working and I feel bad posting about the shop so I don't even post about the wonderful spinning I'm doing for fear it'll come off like I'm trying to sell sell sell.

So here's me trying to get back a few other dimensions, some meatier posts. I've been able to bring back a little knitting action but this blog is dangerously low on the personal. Do y'all even know me anymore? Heh. The truth is, I feel a bit like I don't know myself lately. Maybe this will help. My goal:

-- a personal (dear diary-ish) post a week, just so I can get back in my head, make a little room in there for me.

-- a knitting post each week, after all this is a knitting blog, yo.

-- a spinning post each week, cause it doesn't always have to be about selling the yarn, sometimes I just wanna talk about spinning.

wow, that's three posts a week! Can I do it? Let's see.

Two pictures that capture a childhood

These two candid pictures of my favorite boy were taken by a friend of mine while we were all at a music festival in the park. They are, perhaps, my very favorite pictures of him, ever. For me, they totally capture his entire childhood (well, minus the part where he mumbles and grumbles). Man, how do I get that happy? I think I need to start meditating. Maybe just 5 minutes a day, just to clear my mind, it's never clear, constantly thinking and calculating.

Anyway, I hope LB, when he's older, looks back and his childhood feels like these pictures.