A Wonderful Sale!

HOORAH!

The sale was very successful!

I would like to send out mad props to the ladies of the Saskatoon Spinners and Weavers Guild for drawing together to create such a great event. We had all manner of beautiful handmade items for sale including handwoven scarves,stoles, table linens, blankets, jewelry, garments and rugs as well as handspun/knitted toques and scarves. I am so excited to be a part of such an industrious group of people! Also the demonstrations were tons of fun and I think that we got lots of exposure as well as some interest in future workshops which is awesome!

Thank you to my friends and family for support, encouragement and feedback I appreciate it immensely.

And thank you to everyone that came out and took a peek!

Here's a shot of the business card holder I fashioned with black card stock, double sided tape and some 8 inch pieces of inkle left over from past projects.


Here are a few images of the last set of jewelry I made before the sale:


I am currently setting up shop at etsy, and I hope to spend a little time altering the remaining chokers to make the sets more versatile. I want to make the pendants removeable so the choker may also be worn alone, and the pendant could then be clipped onto a chain of choice. Also looking into ways to make some of the pendants double as brooches. I plan to experiment more with the lariat style of necklace as well!

Anyway, stay tuned in the new year for some inkle updates and possibly a few workshops!

Also a fellow fibre student from college has a wonderful knitting blog where she posts all her designs. She recently made a wonderful blog mention of my inkle jewelry and I thought it was super sweet of her! She has some fantastic patterns available and I highly recommend checking out her blog Little NutMeg Productions ! So much knitting candy!
<3

Hearts off the Charts,
JQ

The Last of the Inkle Jewelry!

Hello Jellos!

I'm feeling much better now that the deadline has come and gone. We had so many beautiful submissions. I can't wait for the sale! Slowly the crazy-meter is dropping in this house. I got so much done I just feel on top of the world. These are the items I made between the last post and this past Saturday.

Some inkle bracelets decorated with fringes, picots or crochet scallops:





A set of teal/brown/cream chokers and cuffs:



And (my favorite) the high contrast black and ivory:




I adore anything Tim Burton. My best friend told me they were very Helena Bonham Carter. Here's a photo of her I found on fanpop.com:



She's pretty rad (both HBC and my best friend).


Thanks for stopping by!
JQ

Inkle Jewelry Frenzy!

Hello everyone! Just a quick post with pictures of the recent creations! 6 days left until the deadline!

Peach and brown/caramel lace cuffs with three different matching chokers:






Pink and brown with cream. Three chokers:



And a strange set of bright red and purple chokers, with one matching cuff that was the trial cuff:





Thanks for dropping by! I usually ramble off on in my posts but I am in a crafting tizzy!
Cheers!
JQ

SSWG Annual Sale Poster

For anyone local who might be interested the Sasktoon Spinners and Weavers Guild is having their annual Sale on November 27th. There will also be demonstrations taking place throughout the day. I will be taking along a couple of my inkle looms threaded up for plain weave and pick-up.

Thanks for stopping by!

123456SWITCH

CrazygoingslowlyamI...

Hello Jellos!

My posts on this blog have been pretty sparse lately, but that is because I am sooo busy getting some projects done for the Guild Sale at the end of November. There aren't enough hours in my day to finish all the things I want to have available for sale. I'm really looking forward to the event and I keep joking around with my hubby that I am going to make my fortune. :P

Okay without further ado I give you....PICTURES!

Progress on the rug hooking front has been pretty slow. Between the Sale and Christmas presents this has really hit the back burner. But the elevator portion is complete and it looks pretty awesome !


And I finally brought my floor loom out and set it up! Yay! First time on it. It needed a little TLC, but I managed to find the hardware it was missing, and get some new twine on the aprons. I have very little in the way of "nice" fibre in my stash. It's mostly dishcloth and crochet cotton and acrylic/unidentified synthetic blends. I wove up this warp I had dyed back in my college days. The warp is dishcloth cotton, and the weft is a slime green acrylic fauxhair. I tie dyed the warp in an over-dye, so it looks sort of like Ikat painted warp!


And a couple inkle bracelets. I'll hopefully have at least 20 of these bad boys ready for the sale in all different colours. I'm contemplating adding button/crochet flower accents on some of the plainer ones.


AND here are the projects I'm REALLLLY excited about!


These chokers were made on the inkle loom (I can fit about 4 per threading or 3 chokers & 2 bracelets). I wove picots in for a length at the front of the necklace, and then used the loops to pick up and crochet a little lace trim. From the trim I attached these medallions I've been working on. They are crocheted around thin bangle bracelets. I suspended little motifs kind of like snowflakes or suspended buttons with crochet chains and un-worked cotton in a spiderweb/dream catcher effect.

I'm so thrilled! I love that these materialized pretty much exactly how I envisioned them! I've had to do very little troubleshooting. Each one is totally unique and intuitive. No pattern for making the same choker twice, though I have incorporated aspects from various free online patterns for crochet motifs and borders.

Button web:


Sage flower with snowflake:


Yellow flower medallion with lacy leaf accents:



Okay back to work!!
<3
JQ

Fangirl Crochet...

My friend Kim posted a link for me to a pattern for a crocheted Bob-omb purse. For anyone who might not know, Bob-omb is a character from the Super Mario Bros Nintendo game. I already have a bit of Mario paraphernalia around my house, and this struck me as a groovy addition.

You can find the AWESOME original purse pics and pattern here

But I had a lot of trouble with the pattern and wound up winging it and writing down my own instructions. Also craft felt was used for the eyes on the original but I'm a bit of a purist so I crocheted my Bob-omb's eyes. And the pattern didn't have a wind-up key, so I made one for him.

This is a pic of the little guy before I sewed him together.


And here he is all finished!


If anyone would like to see my version of this pattern feel free to e-mail me. You can find my e-mail if you click on my profile.

Hope everyone is having a great day!
Hearts off the charts!
JQ

Basic chunky mittens...

Greetings Jellybeans!

Well the weather is dreary and cold and wet. It's time to embrace the fact that another cold Saskatchewan winter is just around the bend.

So to cheer myself up I put some potato & leek soup on the stove to simmer, and pulled out the knitting needles. :)

This is the first pair of mittens that I knit up using my wool from the dye-athlon last week. The very first colour I dyed I was going for dark brown and wound up with a lovely rose-brown, that is quite mottled because I am terrible for not fully reading instructions before tackling a project. :P Oh well I was on better behavior with the rest of the batches.


Here's a detail of the cuff:


I used a little bit of navajo ply hand-spun that I've been working on sporadically over the past year. The roving I purchased was called "skittles" and contains fuchsia, purple, orange, and emerald green. It will make a perfect accent for many of the colours.

And these are the mittens my sister in law brought back from Finland. I based my pattern off them. But the Finland mittens are so soft and fuzzy compared to my sywash type mitts.


Next up I have my pumpkin orange all balled up and waiting to become mittens too.

Because the yarn is so chunky these knit up super fast! They are done on 5.5/6.5 DPN and are only 21 stitches around. It's dreamy! Each skein will average on full pair of mittens and leave a bit for a few stripey pairs later.

Hearts off the Charts!
JQ

Dye-athlon!

I've had yarn simmering away in the dye pot for nearly a week straight and now that I have finally been able to pile it all up on the kitchen table I feel like a kid in a candy shop! I tried for primaries and secondaries , but I wound up with all kinds of different hues. I'm well pleased with the results! This is all 100% wool. White Buffalo Canadian Brand Lopi. Usually used make cowichan sweaters, it's super chunky and will make warm mittens and toques. I thought I'd share my photos with you. I couldn't stop taking them.

Stacked up haphazard on the table:




Hanging on the rack:




Again on the rack:



And dangling in a rainbow around my arms:




Just. GLEE.

:D

<3 JQ

Indigo Dye Day

Hello Jellos!

I participated in an indigo dye day with a few other ladies from the local weaver's guild on Sunday and these are the results!

The center skein is what the natural colour of the hand-spun alpaca yarn (my old buddy Airo) was when I started. The skein to the left is after three dips, and the skein to the right is four dips.


A closer look:



The center skein hasn't been washed/set yet and has been in storage so that's why it looks a bit crimped. Here's a shot of just the two indigo skeins:



I dyed a few skeins of crochet thread I had kicking around waiting for some colour. These will be used for inkles of course!



I had spun a chunky looking sample of angora bunny fluff awhile back so I thought I'd throw that in as well. It will have to serve as a super soft blue accent on something, because there isn't very much of it!



I have been dying a bunch of the lopi wool I had in bags in the basement and have a few skeins drying int he basement overnight. I'll try to be back in the next few days to post those results!
Happy September everyone!

<3
JQ