More Fiber Fun

Once the threads/floss were all sorted it was time to move on to the many fibers that I have 'hanging' around here.  I hang them over dowling -- so just taking them off the dowel can make a mess which has to be straightened. 

Piles of fiber lay before me, stubbornly clinging together as I tried to put them in order.

My goal was to sort into color families and to hang them back neatly back on the rods.

This small wire box holds some yarn fibers that I hope to incorporate into future pieces.  Now, I think I'm ready for whatever ideas come my way.

"I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble". - Helen Keller

Fiber is good for you!!!

Whoever said that fiber is good for you must be right!  Everytime I look around my studio at the various stashes of ribbons, floss, yarns and fibers it makes me feel good!  Sometimes I reach out and touch those beautiful hanging ribbons and fibers just for the fun of it.

Sometimes I stare at a particular strand, looking at the color blends, being inspired to translate those patterns into something of my own. 

Sometimes I dump out all these rolled up balls of yarn and fiber and revel in the fact that they are here -- ready for use -- ready for looking -- ready for dreaming.

I am the "Fiber Queen" - long may my fiber collection reign!! Anyone need a special color of some ribbon or yarn, let me know because I probably have it! *smile*

"Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort". - Franklin D. Roosevelt

Sharing the Skeins

Recently a friend and I decided to ‘go together’ on some yarn. Both of us use fibers in our work – but we also make items that are small enough that we would never need a whole skein of yarn. So how to get some new and exciting yarn to use without buying yards and yards of it? We picked out two skeins at two different stores. The first yarn was called ‘seaweed’ and was a beautiful variegated skein in colors from brown to green. This is painted yarn, which I don’t think I’ve ever encountered before. Here’s the kicker – this skein had 600 yards of yarn (what did I say about not buying yards and yards?). That’s a LOT of yarn to divvy up between the two of us. Fortunately, when we looked closely we realized that we could cut it and then separate it out. You can see from the top of this picture that it was quite twisted at times. We would pull apart the strands and then come to a section that was totally twisted and had to be sorted strand by strand. The good part of all of this is we got to keep handling this lovely yarn.

The next skein was much smaller – but much more diverse in color. As you can see from this picture – there were lots and lots of color sections in this skein. So we each took sections, marked off the color section, cut it and then cut that section in half. Some portions were quite short, others were much longer. There were the two of us measuring these strands along a yardstick and trying to carefully sort them out and wind them up. What we ended up with is a riot of color and I know that both of us will find many uses for these colorful fibers.

There’s something so lovely about ‘touching’ ribbons and fibers – I can hardly keep my hands off of fluffy yarns, colorful fibers and floating ribbons. This adventure in sharing not only gave me great additions to my ‘stash’ but it pleased me to be able to sort through these natural fibers which had been woven, dyed, painted just for us!

"I like light, color, luminosity. I like things full of color and vibrant". - Oscar de la Renta