A BIG Honkin' Spindle Full Of Yarn -- The Garden In Springtime..... And Sampson Says It's a Dangerous Place To Live With All Of These Dang Spindles Everywhere....

"I'm hiding under the desk. You could kill a
pug with all of those dang spindles all over
the place here. If you ask me spindles are the
REAL weapons of mass destruction. And NO,
I'm NOT coming out! (Unless there's a treat
involved. Or a little piece of that sweet
potato. Or maybe...)"

 

 

Well, Sampson was going to write this entry but he disappeared somewhere. He's positively terrified of the Monster Spindle (Wait until he sees the new spindles I am designing to have made. The whorls are as big as dinner plates!). He did however turn the spindle with his nose three times so I could take pictures of the new yarn on the spindle, then he skedaddled off to parts unknown. Sigh... Ask a pug to do a simple little thing like write a blog entry and he disappears between one eye-blink and the next. Good help is hard to find, especially here. Anyway, here's the spindle full of yarn. It will be coming off tomorrow, soaked and hung to dry...

And next to answer the oft asked question...

Why Are Art Yarns So Expensive For So Little Yardage?

This question is often asked and I'm glad to answer. Of course hand-spinners of art yarns have all different types of processes, prices, and ways of pricing. One of the reasons I started this blog, other than to have a little fun with the pugs, show the fiber art of the moment whether batt, art yarn or wearable art, and the works in process because I always think that kind of thing is interesting to see, was to speak about my process as an artist and my feelings about different aspects of work as a fiber artist. So, to pricing...

Art Yarns are not typically meant to make a whole project out of unless perhaps a scarf or something small. They are typically used as trim, edging, or sections of a freeform project. I also make "Crazy Quilt Woven Pieces" of all sorts and sizes using many different art yarns in one piece. Here is a piece of wearable art that is comprised of a great many art yarns. This serpent, whose name was Beatrix, was one of my "Rainbow Serpents of the Dreamtime," a line of wearable art, or, a person who bought a different serpent draped it all along the back of the couch. (Oddly, and rather interestingly, one woman bought one of my yarns and loved it so much she said she couldn't bear to use it and part with it so she piled it in a big wooden bowl on her dining room table! Now there's a place I never imagined one of my yarns to show up!)

Beatrix was spotted and sold before she could even make it to the shop, but I will be making more Rainbow Serpents for the etsy shop. These pieces take a long time to make which is why I started with the batts and the yarns. 

The yarn at the top of this page is a good example in the discussion about pricing. It took four days to spin. I sat for hours each day laying out, in 12 to 24" sections, as many as a dozen or more types of fiber. I sit with bags and boxes and containers of fiber and fiber elements completely circling me and it's a meditative process choosing each different section's worth of fibers, spinning that section, and then starting over again. This is why I like working with hand spindles. For me it is easier to lay out a section of fibers, keep changing them, lay bits of curly locks, perhaps, as with this yarn, sari silk, silk noil, Angelina for sparkle as well as Firestar, rayon, bamboo fiber, angora, llama, alpaca, mohair and very many different types of wools, all so soft they are like clouds in the hand.

When the yarn is finished, soaked, dried, and the skein laid on my long old farmer's table I carefully measure it to check the yardage and then weigh it on a digital scale. I price my yarns by the ounce, and the price per ounce varies according to how many different types of fiber have been used, a little more if exotic fibers are used, and the time it has taken me to spin it. All of these things factor in when I set the price per ounce which is different for every yarn. So this gives you a little idea of how my Art Yarns are priced. 

Finally, I thought I would show you a picture of the three pugs who helped me make Beatrix. I am loathe to put the picture up because I was at the height of fluffiness when it was taken (we call chubby pugs "fluffy"...), but the pugs are so cute. And when you've got arms-full of pugs it's something to see. I'm losing quite a bit of weight now (and I'd like to lose this picture of me so fluffy!) but the pugs are just precious to me and it was early on in my life with my wee little black pug Babs who went to sleep and passed away in my arms on June 22. Such a little peapod she is here with Sam and Coco. Harvey didn't come until almost a year later...

From left to right, Sampson,
Babsie and Coco, with my
lopsided forever smile from
Bell's Palsy. Note, while I am
fluffy in the picture and Sam
and Coco thinner, now I am
losing weight and they are,
ahem, fluffier. Somewhere
there's a balance but we don't
know where???

It is now time for the puggeries and I to take a nap. It has been raining very hard all day, and thundering which scares poor Big Dog Moe half to death, and at 3:00 in the afternoon it is as dark as night. I find these kind of days soothing but Moe thinks I'm nuts and the pugs sleep through everything. 

Think happy puggery thoughts, and have joyful fibery days...

And P.S. Someone sent me this You Tube video of a pug singing (really!) the "Batman" song. I keep playing it over and over and it makes me laugh so hard I've had tears running down my cheeks -- a great antidote for those days when you are really down and blue. I sent it to my daughter to show my 6 year old grandson and they loved it too, so click on this link for a great big smile!

Pug Sings "Batman"...

P.S.S. Harvey was miffed at me talking about the singing pug and while he doesn't sing he likes to pose, like Batman, or Superman, or...

First Four Yarns Up and ONE WEEK ONLY SPECIAL! GET ONE YARN AT 50% OFF!!!

"BATTY FOR PURPLE PUGS" Art Yarn,
50% off THIS WEEK ONLY with purchase
of any other yarn in the shop!

Greetings One & All...

It is with a great sigh of relief that things start picking up in the shop. There are now 7 "Spinner's Batts", and the first four "Spindle Spun Art Yarns" are now up in the shop, another one is currently on the spindle, and there will be one or 2 more up in the shop this week. After several more yarns are finished and put in the shop I will begin to work on Wearable Art pieces, a great love of mine. 

Because one of my main goals when starting this shop was to make money so that I could send, with every sale in the shop, 20% of the sale to Mid-Atlantic Pug Rescue, and things started off slowly because just as I was beginning I took a fall with a glass in my hand and cut it up badly and spent weeks in stitches and then allowing the hand to heal, and then 3 weeks into finally working on making the goods for the shop I lost my first little pug, wee little Babsie, things just started, well, slow. In an effort to get things moving I am offering, this week only, the Batty For Purple Pugs yarn seen at the top (you saw many pictures of this yarn being created in the last entry written by Sampson...) 50 % off with the purchase of any other yarn in the shop. I am most anxious to start sending money to the rescue and Coco thought this might help....

"BUY YARN. HELP PUGS..."

Coco is a pug of few words. After she uttered the above she decided it was time for a nap. Coco loses her face when she takes a nap...

Coco, dreaming... "Buy yarn, help pugs..."

I think that might get her an extra treat. It was a good idea.

In the next couple of days you will see the newest yarn, still on the spindle, "The Garden In Springtime," a medley of greens, with blue, purple, a dash of pink and anything else is possible at this point! as soon as it is finished. I think you will love this one. It was Harvey's idea. Getting Harvey to help is really something so we are very proud to be offering this one in honor of Harvey...

"It's not true that I don't help. I'm so depressed,
my honor has been besmirched... heavy sigh..."

Poor Harvey. Tsk, tsk, tsk... Well, I'll stop here so I can get back to spinning. Thanks for stopping in and we'll see you again soon...

Maitri, mother to a legion of pugs (Or maybe it just seems like a legion...)

Sam Is Guilted Into Writing An Entry About Maitri's Low Tech Approach To Spinning Yarn....

Sam Speaks...

I would like it to be known that I am writing this under duress, and because treats are involved, and because, truth be told, our mother is the ultimate "travel agent for the guilt trip." Oy Vey, you oughta hear her moan and wail -- "All you all do is lay around all day while I work my fingers to the bone spinning yarn so I can buy you treats. The least you can do is write a blog entry now and again." -- and then she struck terror in the heart of every pug on the place. She started flinging things around in the studio and saying that she had come up with A WHOLE NEW IDEA and is very excited about starting on it as soon as she gets the first four yarns shown so far on this blog, and in this entry, up in the shop. We don't like it when she gets that look in her eye. She works all kinds of weird hours in the studio and won't sit in our big chair and I don't know where to go. Sometimes I help, I really do, if she just stays in our chair I help and we get a lot done. See.....

Well, ahem, maybe that wasn't the best picture to show but we got worn out separating the sari silk. 

Anyway, to the task at hand. I have to write this quickly so I can take a nap. I've been up for ten minutes and I'm ready to go back to sleep. 

Mama Maitri believes in a low tech approach to most things in life (except for the computer which, if you ask me, she is a daggoned fanatic about..). She writes with fountain pens, putters about barefoot in cotton caftans, ambles about in the garden slower than the snails, and leaves the house so little she hasn't put much more than 800 miles on the car since New Year's Eve. She's not exactly (whispering) a ball of fire if you get my drift...

Anyway, since we moved her fiber tools and whatnots are all asunder in boxes and heaven only knows where and she said, "Why waste money? I'll just use an oatmeal box." She already uses the old fashioned spindle spinning and she said she bets more than one spinner in the old days used an oatmeal box or something of it's ilk when coiling the yarn off of the spindle. You see here. And she used the yarn that she used for plying to tie off the little skein in 4 places...

Here's a closeup of the yarn on the box...

And a closer closeup of the yarn itself before soaking to set the twist...

... and off of the box...

... and sitting on the kitchen table while Mama Maitri gets a bowl of water ready to soak the skein...

... and into the water...

... and then hung to dry on the porch on one of the hangers she bought at the Dollar Store. Man, did she go nuts. They were 10 in a package for $1. She got 10 packages, half bright pink and half neon green. I tried to explain to her it's not a bargain if you buy 100 hangers you can never rightly use in your natural life, but she loves those hangers and she gave me The Look. (That means No treats for you if you don't shut your pug mug up right there!) We are all afraid of The Look, and you would be too if your treat was hanging in the balance!

Anyway, here's the wet yarn hung out to dry... (Gee, aren't the other 99 really useful? Snicker)

.. and finally dried in the bright sunshine...

I think it's pretty though I'm loathe to admit it until I've had my treat. The smug look of satisfaction she gets, well, it's pitiful really...

Now she's working on a yarn in many kinds of reds with bits of white. I hope it takes awhile because once she's finished on the oatmeal box it will go, they'll all go up in the shop and then The Big New Idea will unfold. (Shudder)

Anyway, here's the red and white yarn on the spindle...

... and a closeup....

... and now I'm going to go get my treat. I've done my duty and she's got it sitting next to her while she's spinning. Slave driver, that's what!

"I HEARD THAT SAM!"

"Mais non, eet twas not me, eet was Big Dog Moe!"

I don't think she bought it, but I got my treat anyway, and that's all that counts.

Sampson, Velcro Pug and Blog Author, who secretly hopes for a book deal any day...

Here Come The Yarns Starting To Go Up In The Shop This Week! And The Pugs Were No Help At All...

Dear Patient Pug and Fiber Lovers,

Well, the first 2 yarns have been soaked and dried and will be weighed and measured to go up in the shop. The third yarn I finished spinning and plying today and I will be doing one in reds tomorrow. By Sunday I plan to have 6 -8 yarns in the shop and then I will start making things like fiber based jewelry, beaded and more, and other wearable art, as well as the woven pieces. Things are moving right along now and it feels good to be back at work. In the next month the shop will really start filling up!

The first two yarns you saw in process in the last entry. Here you will see them having dried and ready to weigh and measure tomorrow...

First the first "Fairy Fleece Yarn" very sparkly, having been spun from a variety of "leftovers" from the batting process from the first 7 batts. It was so much fun to work with and turned out really pretty. I'm really happy with it and it is very sparkly but I can't get that to show up well in the pictures. But you can see the bright pretty colors and it would be great fun in a Freeform Crochet project or any kind of knitting or crochet piece...

The next yarn is the first "Pug Fun Yarn" is not plied and has so many wools, fibers, sparklies, and other materials I can hardly name them all. A very soft, beautiful, fluffy, wispy yarn and a fair amount of it. As I said it will be weighed and measure tomorrow and then I'll know exactly what I've got to put in the listing.

The final yarn you saw last time in batt form only. Here again is the batt. This will be the "Batty for Pugs Yarn," spun from a batt that I created, a beautiful silky soft yarn that you will not really be able to fully see until it is soaked and dried like the two above but I think it's fun to show the process for people who love the yarns but are not spinners. Spindle spinning is a very different process that spinning on a wheel, and one is not better than the other, I just find the old fashioned spindle spinning a very pleasurable experience, though you will soon be seeing yarns made on Big Bertha, my "Babe Electric spinner." I want to use the electric spinner so that I can spin up greater quantities of yarn for those who need more yarn than the art yarns spun on spindles will allow. So here again is the batt the last yarn was created from...

And the spun yarn...

The yarn partially plied...

The plying yarn, a wonderful, slubby yarn that you will see better when the yarn is finished and dried like the 2 at the top...

The two spindles in the plying process...

I tried to get one of the pugs to write this entry so that I could start working on the 2nd "Pug Fun Yarn" in reds. I'm very excited about that. But this being after 9:30 at night they wouldn't budge. Pugs have no work ethic. None. None at all. 

Coco, will you help me?

She wouldn't answer and what's pitiful is since Babs passed she likes to sleep in Babs' bed. They were always together and would sometimes sleep together in Coco's big bed. She wasn't quite asleep but she wouldn't budge. Sigh...

I thought that maybe Harvey would help because he's a lovie-dovie sweetie pea. No go. He wasn't budging either...

Harvey told me that he has such a hard life that he couldn't possibly be working this time of night. You can see what a hard life Harvey has above... Ahem.

I had a feeling that Sam would be a lost cause, but when you're desperate you try anything.

"Um, Sam, would you like to write this entry so I can start on the next yarn..."

Sam hid his face in the pillows. I'm not convinced that he was really asleep but he pretended he didn't hear me. Pugs are sly. Don't let the cute faces fool you. Sly, sly, sly. So here I go at almost 10:00, having written the entry with a whole huge box of various fibers beside me and I'll start spinning again. 

Pugs, whatta ya gonna do with 'em? I guess I'll keep 'em. They're good for squishing and kissing and I guess that matters most of all...

Okay, what are batts? And what is plying? Questions answered about fiber art implements and techniques...

Dear Friends of Fiber and Pugs, 

While the pugs have been trying to entice you to jump through hoops so they can get more treats (rolling eyes), I have actually been working. And as I read through the comments and e-mails offline and on my Facebook page, I realized that I started my shop with lesser known items. It might have been best if I started with items that I had made like the wearable art pieces which might include anything fiber-made, items from jewelry to scarves, stoles, vests, capes, shawls and more. And these will arrive in the shop in the weeks and months ahead. Some very soon. But as an enthusiastic fiber artist who loves the process from the ground up, I started with batts. I think that I wanted, in the items I presented, to work through the whole process of creating and selling fiber art from the genesis of the process from raw fibers to finished items. Or so was my reasoning. However, it has left quite a number of people who came to the shop to support the pugs rather puzzled. They had no idea what batts were, and there was nothing, yet, up for sale, soooooo..... I thought I had best explain.

What are Batts? The first 7 items in my shop are "Pug Love Spinners Batts." Batts are an elemental part of the process for one who handspins yarn whether on hand spindle or wheel. Not everyone uses batts. With more traditional spinning a specific fiber is chosen and spun, usually thinner yarns, bigger skeins, the type and amounts of yarn you will use to knit a whole sweater say, or other garment that requires more yarn than "Novelty Yarns" or "Art Yarns" will yield. As the modern age of spinning has drifted onto the scene, much as there are many schools of art in painting where there are the traditional realistic paintings, surreal, modern, and more, we have evolved, in spinning, to broadening our horizons from the simple, traditional, elegant yarns that are the basis to knitting, crochet, and weaving to a whole new day when fiber artists have been drawn to "drawing outside of the box" and using more and more non-traditional fibers and elements in the yarns that they create. 

One of the first steps in this process is to card many elements into one form that you can work with to spin the yarns. This begins with blending varieties of an infinite number of fibers and often unusual elements into a lofty roll of blended fibers that are very soft, easy to spin, and provide a wider range of color, texture, and interesting, infinite possibilities. Hence, fibers are "carded," and when taking the blended fibers off of the drum carder you have a "batt." Here is one batt from different angles so that you can see the outcome of this process...

(This particular batt is in my store at the link above and is the "Falling Into Pug Love" batt.)


First ~ Choosing The Fibers...

More ibers to sort through and the carding begins. See drum carder at bottom right in picture below...

After lifting carded fiber off of the batt you can see the two sides laid out flat...

And then the batt is rolled and up in the shop it goes...

Note how different the batt looks from each side, as it does when looking at bottom and top. These color variations create beautiful yarns as they are spun, hence carded fiber gives the spinner a much wider range of possibilities in color, texture, look and feel of the finished yarn.

In making a batt you choose from among a great many fibers what you want to use from vast numbers of types of wool, exotic fibers which might be buffalo, chiengora (dog hair), llama, alpaca, angora, etc,. and other elements from silks, rayon, wool curls that have retained their bouncy curly nature and have been dyed to make a wispy yarn with panache and delight, perhaps some of the new elements that create amazing sparkle to the batt/yarn like Angelina, Flash, Firestar and more. These are pretty basic. If you are creating Art Yarns you may be including anything and everything but the kitchen sink from torn, cut or ripped fabric and essentially anything in the house that will run through a drum carder It is truly amazing.

Fiber being "carded," run through a drum
carder that blends all of the elements you
want to include in the batt. A batt is a great
boon for a spinner who wants to be able to
spin beautiful yarns that have already been
blended with many elements into one usable
form that they can then tear off a strip at a
time to spin.

The above fiber was carded into a batt that I will be handspinning to go up in the shop in the next week. Here is the finished batt --

This will be spun into what I call my "Batty
For Pugs" yarn, the yarns I have spun from
a batt I created just for one particular yarn.
All of my yarns are one of a kind and will
never be duplicated.


Next time I am going to discuss the differences between traditional yarns, novelty yarns and art yarns. And do note that if you talk to 10 different fiber artists they will give you ten different definitions of the difference between the last two. Some yarns are considered both novelty and art yarn, but art yarn can actually stand alone as a piece of art in and of itself. To see some of this you need to visit the amazing Lexi Boeger's website/blog. She has written two amazing books on creating art yarns, and on her website you will see that some of her yarns have actually been installations in galleries. Truly and utterly amazing. And she has a whole host of wonderful links to other yarn artist's blogs and websites. Find Lexi here. Lexi is known as "Pluckyfluff" and she is one plucky fiberfluffyliscious yarn artist.


I will end by answering a question about plying. In one of the last entries you see a yarn being plied. Not all yarns are plied and actually few of mine ever are, but I am starting to ply a little more to add definition and the ability to add more elements into the yarn to create wilder ever more artistic flair to the yarns themselves. 


When you spin (And I am speaking about using a hand-spindle here which is the main method of spinning that I use and prefer.) the spindle spins, or turns, clockwise. The fibers are twisted together and on the spindle full of spun fiber you can see what the yarn will look like. For example...

Two separate yarns are spun...

And then a third empty spindle will be used to "ply" the yarn. The two yarns having first been spun clockwise, are held together and spun counterclockwise on the third spindle. Plying secures the spun fiber, and creates a more 3 dimensional look to the yarn which is positively fascinating to work with.

The nubs in the above yarn are
called "cocoons" in the new world
of art yarns and are fun to spin and
really spice up a piece of fiber art. I
used this yarn in a piece of wearable
art I created, a serpent I named
"Beatrix."

"Beatrix," one of my "Rainbow
Serpents of the Dreamtime"
wearable art pieces...



So I hope that that helps a little for people who are entering my "Pug Love Fiber Art" shop hoping to find more traditional items and wondering what the HECK is going on. More wearable pieces of fiber art will be coming along soon. The yarns are next up however.


Until next time, and, ahem, don't let the pugs reel you in for treats with their sad stories. They are positively shameless...

"Don't listen to her. She starves
us here. It's shameful. If we don't
get extra treats we might not
survive! Where's the "Pug Love"
in that, I ask you?


COCO, I HEARD THAT. FER GAWDSAKES GIVE PEOPLE A BREAK....

Never trust a pug. They are so cute they are dangerous. They can get by with anything. And around here they pretty much do.

Come back again soon and look for handspun yarns to go up in the shop this week. I'm behindhand because I lost my first little pug, wee tiny little black Babsie, 2 weeks ago and everything here kind of came to a halt. You can read about her tender last day and gentle passing on my other blog, Maitri's Heart.

Blessings and Love to one and all, from the 3 pugs, Big Dog Moe, the 6 parrots & I...