the peaceful peacock

Before Annabelle was born, I laid out a plan of what I thought I could actu­ally achieve with an infant and a tod­dler underfoot.

I knew that phys­i­cally cre­at­ing would be a chal­lenge (to say the least…) so while she was very, very tiny and liked to sleep all the time, I learned to make my own hand­spun yarn.  Once the wheel became too excit­ing for tiny hands to resist, I moved into the next phase of the plan, switched gears and focused on lay­ing out the web­site of my dreams.  I have been deeply immersed in learn­ing the skills to make this happen–not an easy feat.  It’s just about there though and I’m pretty sat­is­fied with the over­all appear­ance and set-up (like the bare bones of my gallery!  take a look!)

And so comes another shift.

The time has come for me to drag my moth­er­ing hor­mones away from the chil­dren (some­times kick­ing and screaming–me, not them) and into the stu­dio for a few hours a week to hit the machines.  We have a sum­mer mar­ket com­ing up you know…but don’t say that out loud because I start get­ting a lit­tle frayed around the edges.  The plan was to begin cre­at­ing inven­tory in Jan­u­ary and I hon­estly can’t stop myself.  I just walk into my stu­dio, sit down, and auto­mat­i­cally start stitch­ing things together.

Slow and steady.  That’s me.

And that’s a tall order for a woman whose mind fol­lows the pace of the speedy lit­tle rabbit.

This year I plan to offer a wide selec­tion of hand­spun yarns, a vari­ety of knit­ting and cro­chet acces­sories (like the hook and nee­dle cases), and a lim­ited col­lec­tion of hand­made cloth­ing of my own design.

Which just might uti­lize my skills in hand dye­ing and/or applique, like this cus­tom skirt in the works:

And due to the unex­pected arrival of the girls last fall, you just might see an appear­ance of some hand­wo­ven goods.  Like belts.  Maybe.

So click your heels three times, whis­per a spell and it might come true.….….

gallatin county farmers market, handspun yarn, handwoven, Montana, weaving

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.

bench mondays, challenge of the utmost kind, handwoven, recycle, shoes, upcycled shoes