Sheep – Hopefully Creative

Spinning Yarns

Learning the ancient craft of spinning.

A couple of months ago, I was walking one of the ‘Kunstroutes’ or Art routes organized near me. Throughout the town, there were expositions of people displaying their art. From paintings and sculpture to clothing and quilts, so many interesting things to see. It was great! One of the things I went to were two people displaying their knitted items and there was a lady spinning yarn. We had a chat and she told me that there was a spinning group nearby. So I got added to the mailinglist.

It took a couple of months for me to find the courage to join, but I’ve been a few times now and it’s great. I’m learning to spin yarn! I started with some white stuff that I’ve made into very lumpy thread. After that I went on to spin some of the fleece I have from 2010. I had washed a portion of it at that time and attempted to card it. Then met with a colleague recently to use her carding machine to card all of the washed stuff. I seem to be unable to do it with the hand carders that I have, so this saved a lot of frustration.

Single ply white yarn in hanks, tied with blue and purple yarn.

I’ve now produced about 100 grams of brown yarn. I’m so proud! Next step: knitting it into something…

Woodwork Sheep

Sheepy award season.

This year, we had an award ceremony where all of the roller derby team mates got together and presented an award made for one of the others. You basically had free reign to do whatever. We got the names of the person assigned to you very early on but I just procrastinated forever. I’d been half-looking for inspiration for all those months when I suddenly found it. A sheep themed coaster rack. Made out of wood with the coasters pretending to be the sheep’s wool. I figured, I can make this too.

So in my holiday, I set out to the local home goods store and found a placemat in the right type of colour and thickness of felt. Much easier to do that than to try to find something online. I then went on to the local hardware store and bought some sticks. Back home, I got my trusty saw, glue clamps, drill, Dremel and sanding stuff and got to work. Some of the big stick was sawn off for its body, it then got a couple of holes for its legs and I cut off a bit of its head so it would look more like a sheep. Some of the smaller sticks were cut to be the legs.

Then it was time for its coat. I made some templates and cut those out of the placemat. From the leftovers, I made ears and a tail for my lovely sheep. I put it all together and thought “I know what’s missing!”, so I made some roller skates. I found an even smaller stick, cut that into bits and glued it on while sanding a ‘wheel divot’ in and gluing on a tiny bit of placemat as the stopper. To finalize, I printed the statements that fit my person the best and put them in between the placemat circles. It was fun to try and make a thing with wood. It’s not my best crafting material, but I learn a lot every time I try it.

Paper Models

In the past two weeks or so, I was browsing the internet again and found a model of a paper dinosaur and a nodding sheep that were extremely awesome. I found them via instructables on a site called robives.com. Some patterns are provided for free and require printing on card. So I searched around the city for some card as specified and printed the patterns. I got out my little knife set, glue and scissors and got to work. A few hours later, there was an adorable nodding sheep on my table.

Some card, some glue, ink and two coins. It’s amazing how little it takes to create such a fascinating thing, that can actually move by cranking. So after the success of the sheep, I made the little dinosaur. This one doesn’t move of it’s own accord, but it is posable. The mechanism that allows it is very easy but works really well. Since I was an idiot and didn’t realize that the pattern has both a coloured and a white version, I printed the two designs in full and therefore twice. So I now have two nodding sheep and two dinosaurs.

Then I figured out that there were so many more awesome dinosaurs on the Rob Ives page that I bought a few of the models there. So I also have a sheep that shakes it’s head no and a dinosaur inspecting a little mouse. The disagreeable sheep has an interesting vertical mechanism, still with a crank. The Rise of the Mammals has four gears (these were an absolute pain to cut out) and a crank. It moves both the dinosaur and the little mouse. It’s still incredible that this can move, at least to me.

For now, bye from my new collection of paper critters, and I expect more in the future.

Gear Baaahg

I used to have all kinds of useful things floating around willy-nilly in my bag. It would take hours to find the pen, or the nail clippers or the charger for my phone in the depths of my bag. Then one day, I put all those little things in a zippered bag. I did not learn from this experience, since I have been having the same problem in my sports bag. For derby, I have a number of tools, pens and whistles floating around that I could never find when I needed them.

Then I got the luminous idea to make a bag for that gear. I still had some of the sheep fabric left from which I cut the black sheep. So I pinterested around the place and found this tutorial for a zippered pouch from Peggy Sew. My printer doesn’t work, so I measured the dimensions from the screen and drew it out. Two bits of fabric and a zipper, a bit of sewing and done!

It even has a handle so I can quickly pull it out of my gear bag.

After finishing the sheep one, I also made another one, a little smaller, for things like plasters and painkillers. This one is in green, and doesn’t have a bottom seam and was a quick fix. We will see if it holds up.

Next Step

Remember, eons ago, when I spoke about my sheep? I have finally acquired the elements for the next step in the sheep to something process. For in order to start spinning wool, one has to (apparently) card the wool. This is done with spikey boards with handles, and they are spikey. So while trying out my two new toys, I managed to hurt myself again. When I tried to pull the wool of the carders, I managed to get the spikes into my right middle finger, not once, not twice, every time. After a while I had to quit because on the last try I managed to actually draw blood. Figured that was not the goal of the exercise. I now start carding only when I’m wearing plasters on said finger.

These are the carders and the loot from the first night.

I hope though, that I can continue on the road to having a something made from my own sheep. I have tracked down a spinning wheel that I can probably use, so maybe, maybe, I’ll end up with a something in the (relatively) near future.

Below are my fingers, especially the damaged one. If you don’t want to see, don’t scroll further down, it’s not that gruesome though, just a couple of red pin like pricks. By the way, I know that the pointy finger is strange, it met a door 18 years or so ago, and still hasn’t recovered. The blood on that one isn’t from the carders, though.

Thrifting

I’ve been trying to find carders at an affordable level to further continue on the journey of the homespun scarf (or something similar). In order to do this, I’ve been wanting to visit second-hand shops to see if they have them there. Since they are available new, but they cost >50 Euro and I am not willing to spend that kind of money on an experiment.

There is an online ‘vendingplace’ where people can sell their stuff, but I haven’t had much luck there either. There is a lot of demand and little supply, so classic economics teaches us that the price will be high. This is sadly the case. So the second option is those second-hand shops. One pesky little objection to this brilliant idea is that they are generally open from 10-5 on weekdays on limited or not at all on Saturday. Since I am at school each weekday from 9 to 5, this is making it difficult to visit second-hand shops.

However, the other day I was able to go to the one in the next ‘city’ over. They didn’t have carders, or knew what they were, but they did have some patterns that I liked. Although I don’t really wear dresses, I like the pictures a lot generally. I also tend to choose patterns for the pictures (yes I know that this is logical), and ignore those with terrible fabric choice. I can find it difficult to see past that. I found 3 dresses/skirts and 1 men’s shirt that I had a plan for (that failed). They were 25 cents each, which I figured I could spare. Anyways here are my patterns:

I really like this skirt/blouse? combo because the picture looks so happy. I think that only the skirt is a contender for making, but I like to look at the happy girl.

The men’s shirt that I don’t think I’ll really ever use. However, I like the dress. I hate the ruffle on the right line drawing, but I like the left one a lot. I find that kind of neckline interesting, and I’m curious to see what the pattern piece actually looks like.

I also really like the idea of this wrap skirt. I think it looks nice, and keeps movement possible. Also the vest thing I like. It would be interesting to try. While I’m not very interested in the boxyness of the jacket, I do find the sleeves fascinating, so maybe there will be some sort of incarnation of that someday. Hopefully I’ll be able to find some carders someday.

My Sheep

In the summer of 2010 I worked in an ecological museum with a garden. The owners were two hippies (sorry, there is no other way to describe them), eating ecological peanut butter, sour dough bread and selling biological pizzas. The lady who owned it was wandering around the place, one day, with three sacks of sheep wool. Straight of the sheep. Somehow we got talking about it, and I mentioned that I knitted and was interested in learning how to spin. One of the bags contained leftovers and she gave them to me for free.

Now, admittedly, that bag was left unopened for about those 2.5 years since I received it. The couple of times it was opened, the smell was quite.. interesting?? The past two weeks I did not have to go to school, although I did have some homework I should finish. However, freedom makes you do strange stuff, so instead of the homework, I located the tutorial online (this one) that could tell me what I needed to do with ‘my sheep’, as I have since named it. It said that I should have washed it as soon as I got it, I didn’t of course, but now I decided to tackle the problem. First, one has to remove all the dirty bits (straw etc.), which I did halfheartedly in the first batch, a bit more vigorously in the second batch, and I started on a third batch:

You might wonder why the pictures that will follow have different colour wool in it, that’s because I only remembered making pictures once I had the first load done, and was halfway through the second load.

So you pick out all the bits, and fill the bathtub (our bathtub fills very, very, very slowly and it needed to be half to 2/3 full of hot, hot water). You then spread the wool in a single layer over the water and push it up and down in the water, careful not to agitate it too much. This ‘first rinse’ results in some really dirty water. Pick the wool out and let it drain. Fill the tub again (this is what makes it take forever to do this in my house) and add some detergent, do the pushing up and down and drain and repeat the process if the water is still icky.

If you decided you’ve done enough washing because your back is killing you from bending over the bathtub too much, or because it really is clean, it’s time for the rinse. Again fill the bathtub and now add half a cup (whatever that may be) to the water and dump the wet wool in it and push it up and down. Drain it again. Now it’s time for drying. My first batch was small, since I wanted to test it out. I found some chicken wire in the garage, draped it over a laundry basket and spread the wetish wool out over it. The second batch was much larger and since I’d given up because of said back I draped the entire chicken wire mesh over the bathtub to catch the falling droplets.

I did the washing 2 days ago and it’s been drying since. I should take it down some time soon, since it’s feeling pretty dry. The next step will be ‘carding’ or getting the fibers to align for spinning. I’ve been asking around for hand carders, but they do not seem readily available anymore. (Go figure!) So I need to buy some of the internet and then the next leg of the journey can start!

Someday people, someday I will have my own homespun scarf (I’m not going to bother with a sweater, much too difficult!).

Tag: Sheep