the peaceful peacock

So instead of tak­ing more pic­tures of the new tea blends, I got myself into a tizzy and cre­ated four more.  I’ll just show you some gra­tu­itous Mon­tana shots instead while I tell you about the new teas.

This beau­ti­ful place we call home is a major com­po­nent of the inspi­ra­tion, after all.

I’ll go into fur­ther expla­na­tion as the details get a lit­tle more solid, but for today I thought I would let you know the names of the new crew:

• Move Me Brightly
• The Peacock’s Fancy
• Glo­ry­bound
• Sacred Earth
• Green Go Lightly
• Prairie Shine
• Firedancer
• Beloved
• Black Moon
• Moun­tain Morning

Yep.  That’s ten teas that have erupted out of the flurry of flow­ers, herbs, spices, and top qual­ity teas over the last few days.  It was really fun but I think I’d bet­ter take a break for awhile.  I’m a lit­tle crazy from all the caffeine.

Whoops, for­got one.  Wood­land Maiden.  That one has hops.  And sticks.

So as soon as I get all the names rounded up, I’ll announce the win­ner of the Tea for Two set on Tum­blr (you can see it in the side­bar over there under “cur­rent state of mind” ~ it also auto­mat­i­cally posts to Face­book).  Thank you to every­one who entered!  I’m excited to see who gets to be the first to try Move Me Brightly–as for every­one else, it will be avail­able on Etsy pretty quick.

Dur­ing the month of April, The Com­mu­nity Food Co-op here in Boze­man is fea­tur­ing a com­mu­nity art show cen­tered around recy­cled mate­ri­als.  You can check out two of my skeins of upcycled/recycled yarn!  Just look upstairs, right next to the elevator.

shot through the heart.

wookie.

Bench Mon­days. That explains a few things.

From my obser­va­tions in this side of the blo­gos­phere, it seemed that every­one had sud­denly been over­run with mice or some­thing.  Well, it just so hap­pens that it’s Mon­day and I have a pair of shoes to show you, so I’ll be jump­ing on the band­wagon for a bit.  Benchwagon?

Nice how these things work out sometimes.

As part of my chal­lenge of the utmost kind, I decided to take a fairly hideous pair of shoes (found in a free pile) and see if I could breathe new life into their tired, old soles.

They started out dirty, kind of weird shaped, and very beat up and funky-in-the-bad-way.  I ruth­lessly scrubbed them in the sink, let them dry out for a week, and cov­ered them with the fab­ric that I made from my first run on a rigid hed­dle loom.  Let’s focus on that instead of the crooked nail­heads, shall we?

There might be some more mod­i­fi­ca­tions (wood­burn­ing on the base per­haps?) and a lin­seed oil fin­ish, but that’s the gist of it.

And never is there a photo shoot around here with­out a helper:

No mice around here.  Just a bunch of cra­zies suf­fer­ing from cabin fever.  Hope this Mon­day is deliv­er­ing new views for your clan too.

I recently made a hat for a friend, inspired by a whole lot of hand­spin­ning and my pal Linda’s book, Cro­chet Adorned (avail­able on her web­site or at your local bookstore).

I really dig this book because in addi­tion to the mod­ern, ele­gant adorn­ment pat­terns (flow­ers and medal­lions and but­ter­flies, oh my!), Linda has also included a stitch dic­tio­nary with easy-to-decipher instructions.

Detail of stitch­work:  Com­bi­na­tion Crunch (page 136) with the Mini Scal­lop Edg­ing (page 116).   There are also a cou­ple of rows of basic clus­ter stitches in there too.  The yarn is com­posed of my hand­spun Pur­ple Moun­tains Majesty paired with High­land Peru­vian wool and the Wood­land Pixie pat­tern is my own design.

As an expe­ri­enced cro­cheter, I feel chal­lenged but the direc­tions are clear and direct enough that my new-to-crochet friend Kelly Ann can nav­i­gate her way through them as well.

For­give the blurry pics…you know what they say about work­ing with chil­dren and animals.

The thing I love about mak­ing my upcy­cled yarn is that it cre­ates a beau­ti­ful, unique prod­uct that has the per­son­al­ity and strength that wool has demon­strated through­out the ages.  Just right for its intended wearer.

Almost got it…

There’s my girl.

One for Papa.

This hat was made from my first hand­spun yarns and knit up on nee­dles that were far too small for my adjust­ments to this awe­some pat­tern that I will be using again and again and again.

One for Mama.

This tam was made from the upcy­cled yarns from my stash using a pat­tern from my very favorite cro­chet hat pat­tern book.

And one for a pretty lady down the street that I traded for a cou­ple of super sweet hula hoops.  This lit­tle num­ber is cro­cheted from Serendip­ity yarn that was solar dyed.  The hat is my own design.

For those of you who haven’t yet had the plea­sure of meet­ing her, Serendip­ity is my hand­crafted spin­ning wheel that my great aunt gave me.  She has a mind of her own in a quirky (some­times frus­trat­ing) way.  And she’s the queen of nov­elty yarn.  It’s pretty much all she makes.

On the left there you can see the lat­est ver­sion of my upcy­cled yarn efforts.  Basi­cally I ply a bunch of plain bits together into some­thing new and funky.  I’ve been learn­ing a lot by work­ing with already-made yarns and it’s a relax­ing and low-key way to prac­tice nov­elty spin­ning tech­niques like coil spin­ning and Turk­ish knots.  I’m really dig­ging the effect of the mul­ti­ple lay­ers of color but the tech­nique needs some refine­ment in order to cre­ate a bal­anced and secure result.

On the right, you can see the results of this prac­tice with my own hand-dyed, hand­spun wool yarn.  This par­tic­u­lar set is a crepe yarn spun with sparkle and coils.  Sadly, it’s hor­ri­bly itchy so I think it would be most appro­pri­ate for a bag or for outerwear.