As part of my new goal setting system, I need a way to see how much I’ve actually accomplished each month and what better way than to write a blog post and share all my craziness? I’m actually really excited to write this post because I really have no idea how much I’ve managed to finish this month. It will be great to see it all in one place and be able to admire all my work from weaving, to soap making, to all my story ideas with you. So here we go…
If I can do it, so can you! Check out my Special blog post about how I set goals and accomplish them. (Will be posted this weekend!)
Soap
Let’s start with soap. If you follow me on facebook, you’ll know that I have come up with a new product idea, Cupcake Soap! I’ve made two batches of soap this month. I wish I’d made more, but when you run out of lye and you’re working all the nice days and the weather does not cooperate, well you do what you can. Perhaps I will get more lye and get to start making more soap next month! Woot! I got this!
Anywho, I made two batches of soap. Both batches I made both bars and cupcakes. The first batch went swimmingly! I love how they all came out the bars and the cupcakes! I am also playing around with piping designs on the top of my soaps. I’ve never done it before and I’ve always had trouble making the tops of my bars look attractive. I really like the piped look and am having fun playing around with it.
I decided to call my first batch, Halloween Soap. I tried to color it like a candy cane. I think it came out neat. I hope my buyers will too.
My second batch misbehaved a little bit. I think I was a little impatient and mixed my oils and lye when they were too hot. I also decided to add fragrance to this batch. I don’t usually add fragrance and so I forgot that fragrances typically makes trace happen quickly. Whoops. Oh well. I managed to work quickly and rescue my soap. Some of the bars are sad, but most of them are beautiful! Again, I really like the piping effect on top and how cute the cupcakes are!
This month while at the store, my boyfriend reminded me that I’m always saying I’d like a spray bottle and some rubbing alcohol for my soaps. Of course, this was after my second batch of soap for the month… But that’s ok! I will use it next time I make soap. *Spraying rubbing alcohol on curing soap helps to keep it from ashing, so it maintains its pretty colors.
Weaving
Oh the webs we weave! Or in my case, the shawls, shoulder shrugs, scrubbies, and cowls I weave! Oh my!
I am very happy with the amount of weaving projects I have finished this month. I mean look at this collection! It’s beautiful! And here I thought I was wasting a ton of time doing nothing this month. Who knew?
Scrubbies
Scrubbie side! Hmm I must have bought the green at the beginning of the month.
Cotton side! I love using multi color yarn.
I love making these little kitchen/bathroom scrubbies! They are such an easy quick project to do on the 6″ Square loom by Stone Mountain Looms while I am watching my new addiction FaceOff. And I’ve discovered a more efficient way of incorporating the loop that I think works better than how I was doing it before. Of course, 4 of these scrubbies (not shown) I made this month are actually for my kitchen… And I love them! I am never going back to sponges! The scrubbies clean my dishes and counters very well, and when they get dirty I can throw them in the washer. Every time I visit any crafting/yarn store I always have to look at their cotton and scrubbie yarns.
Shoulder Shrugs
Moving a loom size up to the 12″ Square Loom by Stone Mountain Looms, I enjoy making shoulder shrugs. I absolutely love love love my shoulder shrugs. In fact, I think I may need to make myself a few to keep to wear whenever I go anywhere instead of dragging a large sweater. Sometimes sweaters are just too warm, but these shoulder shrugs are excellent at keeping your shoulders warm and you comfortable.
I actually made one specifically for the pattern of this month and it turned out beautiful. While working on it, I was inspired to make another one. I’m guilty of starting the second one before I finished the first. But hey, they are both all woven and now I can move onto the next one! In fact, I may start a new one later tonight… there’s this collection of yarn I just got the other day that is screaming at me to become a shoulder shrug. hmmm, more FaceOff time?
Shawl
At one of the alpaca shows, I’m pretty sure it was the one in North Carolina, I wove all the panels for this piece. We’d met some wonderful alpaca owners from Texas who asked us if there was anything they could do with our looms. Of course, Theresa and I started brainstorming and I just so happened to have fingering weight alpaca with me, so I started this project.Fingering weight yarn creates such a lovely drape and is light enough to wear in warn weather. We’re thinking, evening shawl for nights out in Texas. What do you think?
I ended up playing yarn chicken really bad. (Yarn Chicken = working with yarn you’re not sure you have enough to finish your project with) To save my project I worked two 3ft Triangle looms for the sides and crochet them to a 2ft square loom. And it worked! It turned out just how I imagined. Light, delicate, and pretty. I’m happy with it.
Mobius Shawl
I love the front of the mobius because it just hugs in all the right places, keeping you cozy.
The back falls gracefully to your behind, keeping you all warm.
The last show, Fingerlakes Celtic Festival, I realized Theresa and I were down to two mobius shawls left total between the two of us! Holy smokes! Well that is just not good. We are headed to Tennessee in a few short weeks, so I got it into my head that I NEEDED to make more for the show. So I got out my huge, awkward adjustable loom and set it to Stone Mountain Looms Mobius Loom settings and got to work. Unfortunately, I am currently in a small one bedroom apartment and well… the adjustable just about takes up 1/3rd of the living room. My poor Bret… he’s been ducking around the huge loom for weeks now as I work on mobius shawls. I have finally taken it down to rest while I work on a new loom. With my work schedule I realized I probably will not finish another mobuis before we leave for Tennessee… It’s not nice to leave it up and empty just for Bret to smack his head on just about every time he walks past it.
With that said, I did manage to make two mobius shawls this month! And they’re beautiful! These two projects had no pattern. I just grabbed a bunch of yarn from my stash that had similar shades of colors and just wove willy nilly. And they both turned out beautiful! Oh my gosh, I love have they turned out. It was so hard to just switch colors whenever and not make the switches even on both sides. I am super happy that I fought my instincts to weave exactly what I woven on the top half on the bottom half. It was worth it. I am going to have to try this method out on a few other project shapes just for fun to see how they’ll turn out.
Rectangle Cowl
This loom was a prototype from the original owners of Stone Mountain Looms. Unfortunately, it does not make a complete piece when pulled off the loom. In fact, the piece of fabric it makes is not a very good size. I enjoy weaving on the rectangle shape and so I got custody of the strange rectangle size. Somehow my brain turned it into something neat. I found a way to turn it into a cowl that anyone can wear with a fleece back sewn on.
*As of 2018, this size loom is not available for sale. Sorry*
Triangle Cowl
This cowl is 100% alpaca yarn.
This cowl is mohair and wool.
This is such a neat design made on the 3ft Triangle Stone Mountain Looms. Theresa came up with this design and I fell in love and started making my own. You weave two triangles and by crocheting them together you can make this great shaped cowl. I managed to finish two cowls at the beginning of the month. They are beautiful. I can’t wait to make the next ones!
Regular Scarf
I noticed at the last show that all my alpaca scarves were gone. Well, I couldn’t let that happen. I ended up getting distracted by the mobius loom, but I did manage to weave one new regular scarf and it turned out lovely. I will attempt to make at least one more before Tennessee, but who knows which loom may call my name and demand I work on them instead.
Spinning
These were spun by Theresa and plied by me. So proud.
Oh my gosh! I have finally sat down at my spinning wheel and managed to spin my first bobbin of alpaca fiber. Then I plyed it to a nice brown color that Theresa spun. It looks so nice. I am looking forward to spinning more and learning how to spin more evenly and not as thick. It’s so exciting knowing I will soon be able to start spinning my own yarn to use in my weaving projects. How cool will it be to tell someone at an event that I not only wove the piece they are interested in, but I hand dyed and hand spun it too! Crazy! But it is so neat that I’ve added it to my goal list. Besides, if I can understand how thick I need each individual strand to make certain yarn weights now, it will be easier to understand it later when I am processing fiber in my own future fiber mill.
Writing
I have gotten so much writing done this month on top of all my crafting. This is the result of creating a weekly goal chart and sticking to it! I am super proud of myself. Here’s what I’ve accomplished this month:
Earth Priestess
This is a fantasy novel I have been working on for a few years. I dreamed it up one summer and after reading how to write a book in a week, I went to work and actually wrote a book in a week! How amazing is that? Of course it needed heavy editing and revising, but the bare bones of the story were there. I was so excited I immediately raced over to my best friend and editor’s house to show her what I accomplished and don’t you know it, the darn file wouldn’t open! I didn’t sweat it because I always back up everything I write so I figure it was just messed up on the flash drive I had with me.
We had a great visit and I went home to start emailing her chapters only to find all of my copies were gone. I was devastated. All that work gone, except for my hand written notes and the first two chapters, it was all gone. I cried and put it away. It was just not meant to be. Life happened and I forgot about it until about two years ago when I moved into my first apartment. I dusted it off and all of a sudden the story morphed and I caught a fever.
The next thing I knew I had ten stories outlined with seven more ideas ready to be outlined. I was super excited so I started writing and this time around, I feel the story was more developed and definitely a lot better than the original! The characters are speaking to me more than they had before. Yes, the story has taken a different direction than the original idea, but it’s just so much better. And now it is just about done and ready to be published in August! I can’t wait!
Earth King
Now that I have Earth Priestess well in hand, I took time to read through what I have written for Earth King and have started filling in the blanks. It’s so fun going to bed at night having my characters running around in my head. Sometimes they help me out by giving me a memorable dream or they demand I get out of bed and write right now! I sound like a crazy person, but it’s what happens when you start writing.
When I’m standing at my looms weaving, a lot of the time I have to have my word document open because as I mindlessly weave, scenes from my book start playing out in my head and I just have to pause from weaving to jot it down.
I’m excited to see how Earth King will develop over the next year.
Newsletters
I have finally got the knack for writing my bi-monthly newsletters! I am actually enjoying writing them so much. I try to make them light and fun, full of relevant information on where I will be vending next, to my favorite projects/products. They’re kind of like a shorter version of his blog post. If you haven’t already, you should go sign up to get my newsletter below! I even let you know about sales and other deals before anyone else!
Onto July
Now that June is coming to a close, we are ready for July and my Birthday! Yay me! A whole year older! Woot! There are so many different events and projects I’m planning, it will be interesting to see what I get done, if I get anything done… I will stick with my new weekly goal plan and keep watching as I make wonderful strides towards my dream! And I will keep suggesting how much Bret wants to live on a fiber farm while he is sleeping… maybe it will convince him it’s a great idea 🙂
-Ashli
