Authentic Fiction Blog

Things you should not do...

2011-11-08T08:59:00.004+01:00

* go to work when it's a holiday in your home country, while the stupid country you live in does not think so
* slide on the stairs and partially break a vertebra
* try to stop your sliding with your foot, because you could break a toe
* stop breathing

And: DON'T PANIC!

I just came back from one week of hospital, a bit shorter than before and with back aches when I do the wrong movements. Thank you very much. I am afraid, it will take a while to heal. Knitting is fine, but I don't know about spinning yet, and carding probably won't be so good. I have some other things to do, though, like designing new business cards, writing some blog posts, especially that one on the pumpkin soup, sewing a baby quilt for my little niece-to-be and knitting Julekuler and of corse do some home office. *sigh*

Settling down

2011-10-23T14:16:00.003+02:00

After a few years of unrest (I'd like to call it "finding myself" ;-)) I have come to tearms with the fact, that a woman needs a proper job with some proper money if she wants to induldge in luxuries (like having some sushi on a regular basis...). So I decided to leave London, move back to my mom's and search for a job.

Well, I can say that I have achieved most of my goals (still haven't won the lottery though...). I found a boyfriend( :-) ), found a job ( :-) ) and found a beautiful nice not so little flat here in the city of Koblenz which is a b*** to furnish, but hey this means I can go shopping!! ;-)

One of my top priorities will be a drum carder (oh yeah baby...) and a brilliant camera to take some brilliant pics of brilliant yarn for brilliant people.

So there is hope that I will lead a normal ordinary regular life. Peace out. Amen. Namaste.

Giveaway: Pumpkin Soup

2011-10-16T20:44:00.008+02:00

I thought it is time to liven things up a bit here just in time for the cold but cozy season with plenty of knitting. Well, I myself knit all year round, but anyways... we have a great giveaway! You can win this nice, bright, colorful and very soft yarn:

I named it Pumpkin Soup, because I was cooking pumpin soup the other day and I was thinking about how nice a yarn in these colors would be: orange of pumkins and carrots, yellow of potatoes and a bit of green. While my veggies were boiling I rushed down to the carder and came up with a well cooked batt of fine merino fiber. I spun it and plied it with a thin cotton thread in orange, and in the end it was 105 g and 113m.
One lucky winner will be the new owner of this beautiful yarn. If you want to participate, you just have to send us your favorite pumpkin recipe. We will evaluate them and choose the one we like best. It should be a full recipe you tried yourself (we would not appreciate it much if you just copy & paste something from the internet), or some really super secret or traditional or innovative thing you do to your pumpkins. Oh and it can be salty and also sweet (including baking).
Please send the recipe by email to info(at)authenticfiction.net (replacing the (at)). A ravelry message to cheshire-cat or impronerd is also fine. You have time to do so until October 22nd and we will then decide the days after who is the lucky winner.

Blue?

2011-09-13T14:28:00.005+02:00

I owe you some pictures of the indigo-dyeing! So I followed the instructions in "A Dyer's Garden" by Rita Buchanan, but I just had about half the indigo leaves that I should have for the amount of fibers I used.

It was a lengthly process, I think I managed to keep everything at the right temperature and the pot-in-a-pot waterbath system worked quite well. In the end the soup was quite smelly, so I thought I could have used urine after all, because that spectralite stuff can't be anything much different. I put in two portions of wool and wool/silk fibers and awed at the magic of color changing after airing the dipped fibers. The second portion was already much paler than the first one, so I decided to give them a second dip. And I am not completely sure, because it was already late in the evening after the first dip and I could not see the colors very good, but I think after the first dip the colors were deeper and not so pale. Anyways, I will try on it further if my plants ever grow back sufficiently. Here is my result:

The second portion has hardly any color and it looks more greyish. I think after the first dip it still had some ice blue, but if it faded because of the second dip or because of drying and washing I can't tell. Oh and the silk did not seem to take up the dye as much as the wool.

True Blue

2011-08-21T17:20:00.003+02:00

Just a note: though Tini is going to move, my humble self is still in the business. Though I am quite occupied, but whenever there is an order coming up, I surely will fulfill your wishes and ship any yarn your heart desires.

Now back to the topic! Since I have a small garden now (and own the book "A Dyer's Garden" by Rita Buchanan for even a while longer), I finally could go and grow indigo and dye with it. The indigo dyeing can be a smelly and lengthly process, using a fermented soup which includes urine, but Buchanan describes a fast method with fresh leaves, and using spectralite and no urine. I had to order the spectralite in Britan, which took a strangely long time to arrive. I did not use "real" indigo, but polygonium tinctorium (japanese indigo or dyer's knotweed) but that has the same color pigment as indigofera tinctoria. I had started the seeds in spring in a small greenhouse, and later I planted them to a sunny garden patch and crossed my fingers that they will grow readily. To my delight, they did so! Now they even start to flower which makes me hope to harvest some seeds later that year. Here they are in their green beauty:

I just cut off around 90% of it, I just left the stems with the most evolved flowers. It is said that it will regrow readily so I maybe can dye with it again later that year. I picked all the leaves from the stems and started the extraction process. Until now it looks good, I have a liquid which seems to be of a dark green, but there are several more steps to follow. I will keep you posted on the results!

Times they are a-changing

2011-08-20T11:23:00.002+02:00

A lot of changes has happend in the last couple of months. next to some personal changes am I starting a new job in the middle of September and will move to the beautiful city of Koblenz in Germany. but before then I will go on my long awaited holiday (I know, unemployment is hard..;-)) so I will not be able to reply to requests or send out orders till Aug 29th.

Wish you all a wonderful summer or winter!
So long, Tini

TdF Day 10 & 11

2011-07-12T16:18:00.003+02:00

I got my spinning wheel running again and after being held up with work and family I am now a proud member of Ravelry's "Spinkult"-Team :-). And having fun.

Day 10 was just a plain simple soysilk warm-up. Nothing fancy but so soft and cuddly *sigh*

Day 11 turned out to be a shipwreck. Not me, but the yarn. Blue, white and light green merino with mohair locks and some wooden beads. Stormy sea and a sunken ship = shipwreck. No harm was done to humans, animals or actual ships. Promise ;-).

Busy Bee

2011-04-29T09:57:00.003+02:00

I know it has been a while since the last post, but I was well occupied with moving, working, a bit of travelling, seeing the family and also creative stuff. I hope I can catch up with that in some future blog posts.

But what I would really announce now is that I will show up at a local craft fair tomorrow! *Squeee*
I just wrote them to add me to their mailing list to be notifyed earlier next year, but they said that a free spot is available because someone cancelled. It is totally unexpected and I have to organise a table, chairs, table cloths etc. and go through the things I would like to sell.
I will share with Katharina, like for the christmas market and expect it to be quite fun. Here are the details:

Marché Artisanal de Mies
9 am to 6 pm
Saturday, April 30
In front of the Administration Communale,
1, rue du Village, 1295 Mies

You can have a look at photos from the 2009 edition here. It seems to be a very nice market, with even a small flea market, animals, music and plant sellers. I just hope the weather will be fine, because we don't have any tent or pavillion. If you are in the area, come and have a look!

It's a baby!

2011-04-10T13:02:00.002+02:00

I finally finished two projects I have been drooling over for quite some time. "It's a boy!" and "It's a girl!".
I found the blue polka dot baby buttons in Cardiff and the were screaming out "spin me in, spin me in!". How could I resist that? And when I ripped off my pearl necklace in the same week I knew I also had to spin a girl equivalent. And they are sooooooooooooo cute! You just want to hug and cuddle them all day, make them laugh and sing them to sleep...

Take a look for yourself

Wanna hold?

Take care, Tini

Wakey wakey, have some tea!

2011-02-11T11:07:00.005+01:00

So the coffee dyeing went fairly well. Definitively a way to destroy coffee. I also found my two value packs of british black tea I had bought just for dyeing a while ago. I am also no big fan of black tea, because it makes me feel quite weird. But the smell is very pleasant - I was just concerned that the vapours of so much tea would cause some insomnia but it seemed to have no effect whatsoever.

I found a recipe which said something like 8 tea bags for 5l, which would dye 100 g of yarn and I was surprised, checked my tea pack and realized I could have dyed 1kg of yarn with those 80 tea bags which were in it. I re-checked the reicpe and it said it would become some kind of beige, so I decided to make some experiments on my own.
First I used 10 bags, and that gave some quite dark beige, bright brown. Then I used the same dyebath again, put in new fiber and another 20 bags and reached a nice caramel brown. In the end, it put in the rest of the 50 bags and put in more silk and wool/silk blend and got some dark copper.

I like the colors, and it is really easy peasy with the tea bags, no filtering neccessary and no dirty fibers (as long as no tea bags burst open). And very nice colors for a low price.

Wake up and smell the coffe!

2011-02-07T11:22:00.004+01:00

As I already reported, we will move soon to another apartment. I took this as a reason to go through my things and sort out what I don't need anymore, because I don't want to drag along all those things I never use from one place to the other.
I came across an old packet of coffee. I must say, I don't drink coffe because I just don't like it. I'm more the tea and hot chocolate type, and the only way I ever consume coffee is in coffee flavoured chocolate. This beforementioned packet of coffee is a leftover from my mum and I kept it because I planned to do some dyeing with it. Well, I never came around to do it, and now I thought why should I move coffee and undyed roving, when I also can just move dyed roving? And also, the process was not very difficult, as it seems as no mordant was needed. The only bad side effect was that the appartment was filled with smells of coffee and vinegar, and thats something neither me nor my boyfriend like much. Anyways, here is the result:

I used merino roving, which I put in at two different times and some tussah silk. I really like the colors, soft brown and beige, and the silk really looks amazing. I am just afraid that I can't spin it before we move, because there are two or three more yarns to finish before and I have so much other stuff to do. There are also two packs of black tea which emerged from the depths of the junk room...

The Patchwork Venture

2011-02-05T19:10:00.006+01:00

I think I have mentioned my patchwork affinity some time, and in the last weeks it set out in action. After collecting many pretty fabric pieces I planned to sew a cozy for my android phone after this tutorial.

Well, I never finished it. But I got inspired by the stripes and since it was getting cold outside and I dragged out my rapeseed heating pillow I got from my dear sister in law for christmas the year before, I thought this might be a nice first project to practice my sewing skills. And I did not just do one, but already a bunch because it was so much fun to do it (and I had to get rid of 5 kilos of seeds). Here are a few:

I really like my heating pillow and the rapeseed is just perfect because it is small and stays hot for a long time, it was still functional after using it for one year and the ingenious design of separated chambers keeps the seed in place. They are easy and quick to be heated up in the microwave or also cooled down in the freezer. Combined with the pretty cotton fabric they are just adorable. And I sewed them with two layers of fabric to keep it stable and also to give it a bit more of thermal isolation. I decided to have one side built up by fabric strips, and a solid piece on the back. Some pillows are gifts for friends, and one I made with my favorite fabrics for myself, voila:

But there are five more I consider to put into the shop and give it a try. And there are so many more small projects I can think of I would really much like to do and which could go well in the stripe scheme, next might be a knitting needle roll, because I need one for myself anyways. So stay tuned if you are in for a little bit of "off-topic".

Making Glass Beads

2011-02-01T12:18:00.005+01:00

Last weekend was quite short because I took a one-day-course in making lampwork beads. Since there was no offered course in the close area, I had to go to Bern which thus meant getting up at quarter to 6. On a saturday. yay. We started out making simple round beads, then advanced to some different shapes like cubes, cylinder and flat beads.

After that went pretty well, we learned how to mix different colors and add little knobs and dots etc. There is really a lot you can do! Unfortunately some of my nicest beads broke at the end after taking them off the sticks or while cleaning. Obviously I should have let them cool off more smoothly. Anyways, here they are:

They don't look very exciting, but after some practice I think I could make some which are prettier. Also, I don't have the experience yet which colors go well with each other. Our teacher also had some mouth-watering examples from earlier classes and I am considering to continue and take an advanced course some time.

Moving Sale!

2011-02-01T10:31:00.004+01:00

It really took a while to find a new appartment, but we finally suceeded! I am excited and can't wait to move. It also means:
- I am going to try growing some dyeplants because we will have a tiny bit of garden and a much sunnier appartment! I already bought some indigo seeds (japanese indigo and woad to be precise, as I heard that other species of real indigo are hard to grow in our region and I could still try them next year) , hollyhock, safflower and asperula tinctoria, and I will see what else I can scrape up.
- I am thinking about getting a real loom with 4 shafts, but that will depend on the space which will be still free after we settled in and if I feel much like weaving. Recently I did some backstrap/loom-less weaving which was not too bad, and I still have my Kromski Harp dormant in my bookshelf, but still, a real loom would be something nice...
- I am dreaming about having a nicely organized spot for all my fibers, yarns, fabrics and supplies, because at the moment they are just in ugly cardboard boxes, and also a dedicated place for sewing would be so cool...
- I will try to keep my yarns for sale easily acessible, so I don't expect any delays in shipping time.
- I will be grateful if we have less stuff to drag around, so I decided to make a little moving sale. I reduced the prices of the following ten yarns, so this is your opportunity if you like them:

Vive la France

Citrus Sorbet

Uruguay

Triad

Black Glass

Blue Fire

Rustic Green

Cameroon

Chile

South Africa

Finally, I will have to think about shipping costs. Because going to France will not be so easy anymore (unless I find another French village nearby) and the Swiss Post is just unbelievable expensive. But maybe Tini is willing to host my yarns and ship them from Germany, which apparently has become even cheaper. We will see what we figure out.

And the winner is...

2011-01-10T18:18:00.003+01:00

... drumroll...
... more drumroll...
... even more drumroll...
... just a bit more drumroll...

Dova113! She has faved our shop on etsy and was chosen by the very impartial random number generator. Congratulations!!!

But all you other folks, don't be sad, because you still will get %offs! You will be contacted individually in the next days and you will receive a personal code word and the amount of your %off. If you order something and communicate the password, we will refund you afterwards. Thanks a lot for joining in, it would be nice if you keep following us and we will surely give you another opportunity to win.

On the road again

2011-01-10T09:48:00.004+01:00

Happy new year everyone from me as well! I have had another big change in my life.
I moved from London back to my mum's (yes, funny comments can be made later) and am applying now for jobs and stuff. Then I will move again (I hate moving and have been doing it 4 times in 18 months. I should work on my attitude...) and hopefully stay there for well let's say 12 months?
My time in London was splendid, brilliant, mind boggling, awesome and just plain wonderful! But it's finally time to grow up (a little) and start a decent job with decent payment and a future. I will keep you updated on that new year's resolution.

We have also received a very nice picture of a scarf made out of our "Snowflakes on ice"! Thank you very much, Saskia!. You can check out her wonderful blog (in German)with great projects here!

So long and take care!
Tini

ahem

2011-01-06T12:17:00.007+01:00

You might have noticed, that there was no announcement of a winner of the yarn give away yet. This is because we have been sooo busy in the last days and I have been far away from my pc and did not have the chance to look for all the people who are in the drawing. So we will just extend the deadline (after all, there is still a bit of holiday spirit around) until sunday, January 9th! So you still can gain lots of %s off and be the lucky winner of "Soft Glacier"!

I wish everyone a happy, peaceful, healthy, successful and prosperous new year!

Tis the season to be jolly!

2010-12-25T21:36:00.014+01:00

!!! EXTENDED UNTIL SUNDAY, JANUARY 9TH !!!

Happy holidays to everyone! I hope you all have a great time with your loved ones, peaceful and joyous. And sorry for not writing earlier, but well I guess you can imagine how busy one can get.
I am happy seeing the family and the friends, eating loads of great food and having just watched the Doctor Who christmas special. And we have the perfect winter wonderland outside with heaps of snow.

We also wanted to launch a little christmas special for our shop during the holidays, but since I am a bit late we will prolong it until New Years eve, midnight. If you start following us on twitter, add us to your circle on etsy, include one of our items in your etsy treasury or like or share us on facebook, we will give you a gift certificate with 10% off with the order you use it for.
If you send us back photos of your finished items from our yarn with the permission to publish them or if you write about us on your blog including photos of our yarns or thereof made items, you will be rewarded with a 15 % off certificate.
The vouchers will be valid for half a year (until June 30, 2011) and can be used for all items in the shop unless marked otherwise in the description, but not for the shipping costs or other gift certificates.
If you did several of the things above, we will give you a bit more, but we will judge that individually.
All you have to do is to send us an email to this address with your information and proof/indication of your activity and we will return an email with your personal code and the amount of the discount.

Under all entries we will also give away this beautiful yarn:

It is called "Soft Glacier" and measures 80m, 10 wpi and 57g. The material is extrafine, white merino and it was plied with a green glittering thread, holding green glass beads. The winner will be drawn on New Year's Day.

Be safe and have a happy new year,

Cheshirecat & Tini

It was fun!

2010-12-07T16:32:00.004+01:00

I really had a good time yesterday at the EPFL market, sharing a stand with filambulle, spoutknit and jissa! It was just over too soon, and they did not offer anything of that delicious soup they had the year before. Also the (free) mulled wine was finished very early, but I guess we all had enough to be even more merrier than we were already. And without bragging I would say we had the most interesting stand of all, selling yarn, knitted things, cute little ornaments and handmade toffees.

I parted with a Santa Clause yarn (in Europe, Santa is coming on December 6th, so it was perfect for that day), and one of my favourites, the Holly Berry. I liked it so much, that I just had to take a photo which I had not done before, and the new owner promised me a photo of the finished item. It consists of a mix of bluefaced leiceter wool, tussah silk and soy silk, all in off-white and creamy tones, which I had mixed with traces of green and red to match the holly fabric I included in the yarn. Some golden sparkle, red glass beads and green holly sequins are also spun-in. I might make another one, I liked it a lot!

In the next days I will add the things which have not been sold at the markets to the shop, so be prepared to find lots of new yarns and other nice items very soon.

Phew!

2010-12-04T16:47:00.004+01:00

Why oh why must there be always such a stressful time before the end of the year? I haven't had one day to sleep in for weeks! I have been busy with work, having a conference and a short course in Fribourg. Which is quite cute by the way and has a chocolate factory outlet of one of my favourite brands right next to the university's campus.
Additionally, we had quite a lot of snowfall which made the train ride, though very early in the morning, even prettier and having a delicious hot chocolate in the factory's cafe even nicer. It was also great to finally meet Saskia, who has knitted some really beautiful things from Tini's and my yarns.
This is a cute little cowl from the "Raspberry Swirl"

and vou can find a picture of her gorgeous scarf from Tini's "Kiss from a Rose" in her blog post here.

Then there has been the first of the two christmas markets, the one in Bellevue. It was the whole weekend and I was really busy before, finishing stitch markers, finding some decoration and finishing several new winter yarns, including a new "Marmite d'Escalade", for which I even have a perfect box now!
You can see it at the left side of the picture of my part of the stand, next to a bunch of wintery art yarns I will you tell more about later:

Here is a glimpse at one of Katharina's wonderful shawls. You can find out more about them on her website.

I did not sell extremely much but it was still fun. The time also just flew by because I took my spinning wheel and lots of people stopped by amazed to watch me spinning.
It was very "sympa" and I am already excited about the market at the EPFL, which will be quite different.

I also went to a craft fair in Lausanne, but it did not have much to offer in regard to knitting and spinning things. There were several stands for patchwork, though and I could not resist to get some fabric for my evergrowing stash. Some already found its way into this "Christmas Tartan" yarn.

Next activities will include more knitting, some sewing, the obligatory baking of the cookies and a trip to London to spend some time with Tini before she moves back to good old Germany.

Market-ing

2010-11-15T12:10:00.004+01:00

I have been looking for some small markets to sell yarn, but was not very successful, partly because for what I found the fees were incredible expensive, partly because obviously the organisation thought of being something better and did not even bother to reply to my emails. Also I was a bit afraid that my capabilities in French conversation were not good enough. I had already given up on this season, as two nice people offered to share a stand at local christmas markets. So I am happy to announce that I will show up at two markets:

1) Marche de Noel des Artisans Bellevue: a small christmas market in the community of Bellevue, just outside Geneva, 27.11. &. 28.11., from 10 am to 5 pm in the "salle communale". Katharina Braunitzer (http://mise-en-zen.ch) will host my yarns at her stand of gorgeous knitwear. I don't know yet, how much time I have to spend there, but Katharina will be happy about any visitor.

2) Marche de Noel of the EPFL in Lausanne, thats one of the two leading technology high schools in Switzerland. It will take place on monday, december 6th from 5 pm to 8 pm in the building "CO". Though it is not very long, it is really nice and they offer (at least they did last year) free hot wine and soup. The stand will be shared with other Lausanne knitters, organized by Filambulle, and I am really excited about it, it will be a lot of fun and we will offer lots of knitted and handspun things. I am also working on something else, but till now it still a bit secret (partly because I don't know if I can do it in time, so I don't want to make empty promises).

Attention please: the epfl market will be on monday, 6th. I had posted a wrong date. Sorry for that.

Autumns End

2010-11-15T11:46:00.002+01:00

This time of the year just goes by too fast! I really like winter, and I can't wait to plunge into spinning winter yarns, but autumn is also such a great time, besides usually it is simply rushing by. I have three more autumn yarns before it is getting all wintry.

First is the «Autumn Sky», my favourite of all three. Its stunning yello, orange, brown, rust and deep red colors are set into contrast with some short pale blue stripes. It is a single yarn with a thin effect thread of colorful tiny pompons spin-in and a handful of very pretty fabric leaves. It is all soft and squishy and will make a simply beautiful accessory.

Next in line is «Lonely Leaves», also a single yarn from handcarded merino, including some traces of angelina and firestar. It is mostly dark brown, but if you take a closer look you will discover subtile colors. I included a sewing thread with small leaves from a plastic foil in brown, dark red, yellow and orange. They are a bit itchy, so I would not recommend to wear it next to bare skin but eiter use it for a bag or add a kind of lining. It is quite thin and lacy, therefore with 142 m / over 150 yd a bit longer.

In the third yarn, «Autumn Colors» I used some of my own handpainted fiber along with commercially dyed and hand mixed roving to achieve these amazing colors. It is a very soft twoply yarn, and it includes shining red leaf sequins and brown glass beads. They dangle a bit out of the yarn.

«Autumn Sky» is already available in our shop here, the other two will follow shortly.

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-31T21:00:00.010+01:00

As I already announced, I spun some Halloween yarns from all the nice things I bought on my trip to the US. I know it is pretty late, since today I finally could shoot the photos and it actually is Halloween. Well, but I don't want to keep them from you, and I think I might not be the only one who can just barely make the holidays in time. I will try to be more punctually with the winter yarns, which are my most favourite things to make every year.

The first I spun is the "Witching Hour", from black and violet merino, plyed with sewing thread and some glittering thread, including violet sparkly pompons, mutlifaceted sequins, faceted glass beads, black lace ribbon, some more sequins in the shape of bats and pieces of a black "Trick or Treat" ribbon.

The next is "Eerie Glow"from black and green extrafine merino, containing green and black sparkly pompons, green sequins, black spider sequins and green glass beads, spun a bit wavy or coily.

Then I spun a mixed-up yarn,"Halloween Overkill", mostly orange and black but with some hints of violet and green fiber, with black and green eyelash yarn, green, orange, violet and black pompons, green and orange sequins, big pumpkin sequins, orange organza ribbon and sari silk, a few glow-in-the-dark glass beads and some more of the spider sequins.

Last but not least is the "Orange Pumpkinness", frim black and orange extrafine merino, plyed with an orange sewing thread and some orange tulle strips. There are pumkpin sequins in two sizes, and some of the small are reflecting, usual orange sequins and orange plastic stars, glass beads and sparkly pompons. It also contains pieces of orange "Trick or Treat" ribbon.

There is also this cute little scarf I made a while ago. I was never wearing it because it turned out to be a bit small, rather a children's scarf. It is made from handspun yarn in black, violet, green and orange, plyed with a white thread, knitted up to a soft, snuggly, stripy scarf, a bit airy with some yo's. Measures ca. 11 x 170 cm / 4.3 x 67 inch. Exactly the right thing to keep your little ones warm in the cold autumn nights.

A short Excursion to the Land of Plenty

2010-10-27T15:04:00.008+02:00

I am already back for almost two weeks, but I just had to write a little report about my journey to the USA. I went there for my dear friend Kat's wedding (long live the happy couple! It was a wonderful wedding!) and next to hitting some second hand book shops, indulging in Waffle House, getting the best pizza ever at a place which also does trivia games, going to bookshops on sunday evenings and hanging out watching football and baseball, my friends were so nice and endured going to some craft- yarn- and fabric shops with me. And it really was a-ma-zing! If I was living there, all the worries and sorrows from where to get the right supplies for crazy art yarn were totally gone! No annoying search for the sparse number of shops in Switzerland, vast selections, no annoying custom fees because there are also loads of internet shopping possibilities in the same country, sales wherever you go even in the season. It is really interesting to see what the US "competition" could do, what possibilities one could have. But then, maybe, choosing from all this offers and stopping oneself from buying too much stuff might be hard as well. I got some loot, including some nice Halloween items which I already started to spin in (though I am late), here is a quick and unorganized shot of it:

I also saw lots of nice quilts and I got a starter-kit for cutting fabric pieces and a small selection of fabrics and a "Jelly Roll", which is a pre-cut sortiment of fabric stripes, rolled up.

Some of the fabrics I can also use for spinning them in but most of it I plan to use for quilting, which I would like to start. As soon as I get the time. Next to weaving. And more knitting. And some other things.

Hills of Wales

2010-10-26T15:20:00.003+02:00

Snowberry & Lime is living in Wales and visited me in April. And as a gift she brought me a beautiful mixture of green lamb, baby camel and organic linen reminding me of the hills of Wales. I will go to her place in November and hopefully finally lay my eyes on these beauties myself :).

But here a little taster. It really hurts me to give it away but unfortunately this green is soooo not my colour. Otherwise I would be running around with a new green hat. Oh, that reminds me, I have to make a hat....

Now in our shop!

The monster finished

2010-10-24T13:12:00.003+02:00

I did it! After 4 days of mega knitting I finished my friend's scarf. With cables. 100 % merino. So warm I warmed myself with it while it grew on my needles (no kidding). If that's not warm enough I recommend a family relocation to Maui for my friend.

It was that long that I could not get in on my camera in total :(. But I managed to get the pattern on the picture.

Next: buying a new camera...

A truly huge pink ribbon!

2010-10-14T17:49:00.004+02:00

A while ago I knitted a pinkish square for the Swiss league against cancer. It was supposed to become a part of a huge big solidarity ribbon which would be revealed in October. People were asked to send in also photos of their work in progress which can be seen here. Obviously they received so many squares (almost 20 000!), that it was not just enough for the ribbon, but also a bunch of blankets which will go to relief organizations.
The ribbon is 12 m high and was presented on October 1st on a public square in Bern. Here on their website you can see lots of photos of that event. Looks like a damn big pink ribbon!

Norway Part 3: crafts, museums and lots of spinning whorls

2010-10-04T21:39:00.017+02:00

After telling you about the Norwegian landscape here and there, now I come to the more crafty side, because I was really curious to see what is and was going on in fiber and folk arts.

First, there are the omnipresent wool sweaters, hats and mittens with 2 colored patterns like stars (I really love those! And I just learned, that they are in fact resembling roses), reindeer, snowflakes and other patterns, which you can get everywhere in souvenir shops.
But there is so much more than that. The Norwegians really seem to be much into knitting. I saw yarn and needles even in a little village in a souvenir shop.
In the bigger cities there is a chain of craft shops called "Husfliden" with a big offer in yarns and knitting supplies (also knitting kits, and I decided to rather knit my own mittens than buying touristic ones, so I bought a kit of Norwegian wool with a nice pattern), but also tools for spinning (fiber, handspindles, the one and the other wheel), weaving (cards and rigid heddles for band weaving, weaving yarns and in the old location of the Husfliden in Oslo there was supposed to be a big loom on display, but they moved into a fancy shopping center and there was no loom anymore). There are also all accessories and things you need for making your own folk dress, called "bunad". These are worn for special occasions like the national holiday, weddings and so on. The folk museum in Oslo hat a big display of them. They are reallyreally pretty, many I saw were red and white with a black apron. All have very beautiful embroidery, and I was considering to get a small one of the sew/embroider kits they sell, but I am not much into embroidery and I did not want it to lie around in the boxes until I may or may not come around to do it. Some of them would surely be able to be converted it to a knitting or a weaving chart.
Because the band weaving really it something I want to continue. I already did some card weaving a while ago, and discarded rigid heddles or tape looms as just less complicated and more limited, but that is not entirely true. I found the Yarn Jungle blog, featuring the most beautiful handwoven bands, which are exactly my taste (again, stars, snoflakes...). Ok, it is surely not trivial, but I really want to try. In the museums I also saw nice bands from the Sami people in Northern Scandinavia.

And in the Viking Ship Museum there were remains of tablet woven bands from the Oseberg find, and it was very amazing to see a around 1000 year old band from a craft I could do. Here is a good article on the textiles they found in the ship.
Rigid heddles are often beautifully embellished and in Bergen they had a small heddle from bone, in a special exhibition on bones and objects made thereof, which was small but oh so beautiful:

Another ancient craft is nalbinding. I also tried that some time ago, and found it interesting, but made just one piece and never continued. But seeing it in cultural context was really cool and that beforementioned bone exhibition featured some nålbinding needles. And they also had replicas which they sold, so I did not hesitate to get my own bone needle :)

We saw another archaeological museum in Oslo which was free to visit. It had many many many spinning whorls. Amazingly many. But again, before spinning wheels were invented, handspindles were the only means to make yarn and stone the material of choice. It would be too great to own a very old whorl. In the same museum they have a special exhibition on runes and there was - guess what - a spinning whorl with runic inscriptions. It says something like "Gunnhildr made this spinning whorl". In the museum they had also a display of plant dyed yarns. I just have to figure out from the name of the plants they showed what they used. And indigo and madder are most certainly dye stuff I am eager to try out.

I also saw some spinning wheels, they were all "castle wheels", and often there were also yarn winders and at the Viking Ship Museum there were pieces of a niddy noddy. Very amazing!

Oh and Hardanger embroidery is also very nice! We made a cushion cover at school, but the lace I saw is much more sophisticated with very fine threads..

Now I just need the time to do all this knitting, spinning, dyeing, weaving and nålbinding! And to decide what to start with.

The giant blue project - spin, spiiiin, spin, spin

2010-09-26T14:06:00.003+02:00

I'm done spinning! It felt like for ever, spinning the eight batts, but yesterday night I finished and plied it all while watching the Lord of the Rings III. In the end, I managed to end up with two loads full on my big bobbins. The result are two giant skeins of yarn which are soaking in the water right now. It does maybe not look like much on the photo, but It is the biggest amount I ever spun and plied at once, and probably the largest skeins I ever made.

Norway Part 2: fjords, railway & waterfalls

2010-09-24T17:21:00.017+02:00

Here is some more on the wonderful Norwegian landscape. I went to visit the Geiranger fjord and while I had to wait for the ferry (being in Norway off-season can have advantages as there are way less tourists, but then some museums are already closed, ferries go less often and some activities are not offered anymore, like the weaving demonstration in the Folk Museum in Oslo which would have been great to see), I marvelled at the fjord. It was a bit weird to have salt water in something which looks like a big lake, and I collected some shells from the "beach", played around with bladderwrack and scared of some noisy seagulls. There even were some jellyfish in the water in Geiranger.

The fjord is really nice to see, though the waterfalls were not thaaat spectacular after 2 weeks of dry and warm sunny weather.

I continued to Ålesund, which is a cute little town on the west coast which has been rebuilt in Art Nouveau style after it had burnt down in 1904. The view from the city's hill and viewpoint at sunset was just beautiful.

The next day I took the scenic Rauma railway (though not by steam engine or tourist train, since out of season...) on my way to meet up with my boyfriend and passed some pretty spectacular mountains and rock formations like the "Trollveggen".

There are really some wonderful railway lines, another one we took was the Flåm railway as part of the "Norway in a Nutshell" tour. I am no big fan of organized tours, but this is mainly the round trip ticket with public transport. We first went to Gudvangen via Stalheim by bus and a very impossible steep road, passing some major waterfalls (which had, thanks to extensive rainfall) lots of water in them.

From Gudvangen we took a ferry through the Nærøyfjord and the Aurlansdfjord which was just amazing. We passed waterfalls, more waterfalls and some waterfalls. And a small village named Undredal with population human 120, goats 500. The walls of the mountains are so steep that we were constantly changing from sunlit warm spots into cold and dark shadows. The views were just stunning and the white mountain tops in contrast to the green woods and fields and the blue water sooooo beautiful!

In Flåm we set off to hike up to the foot of a waterfall and got some handmade apple juice from a small farm on the road which was just delicious. We continued by train to Myrdal on the Flåm line, a masterpiece of a railway line with lots of tunnels and great views and a photo stop at the Kjosfossen waterfall.

After Myrdal we continued by train on the Bergen-Oslo line, which we were also taking when
we finally went to Oslo two days later.

The next day unfortunately the weather got worse again, so we did not see that much of the gorgeous scenery of the Eidfjord and Hardangerfjord we went out to see that day. We also could not make it to the Hardanger Folk Museum or much of the other places which are supposed to be nice. Driving up a mountain to have some nice view when you can see from below that the view might consist of mainly clouds does not make that much sense. The giant hydro power station had also closed for visitors the days before, and they must have been the only people to like that much water falling from the sky. But we made it to the infamous Vøringfossen waterfall, which was really breathtaking.

On the pictures you can't really see how steeeep it is. The last one is shot from the top where the two waterfalls plunge down. We had the glorious idea to hike to the foot of the waterfalls, since we could see a small trail from the top. Unfortunately the trail was a bit dangerous since blocked by fields with boulders and those were quite wet and slippery. We read somewhere that it was supposed to take 1.5 hours to go there and back, but that is a bit utopic. We turned back after what was maybe 2/3 of the way, we were also a bit worried that it would get dark. Well, it was still totally amazing from the top.

We spent the next day with travelling by train to Oslo, along some more beautiful topography. The train line goes up to a kind of high plateau at Geilo and Finse, with snow-covered mountains, rivers and lakes and also a glimpse on a glacier. The Lonely Planet says, that in this region some scenes for Star Wars II on the ice planet Hoth have been shot. Well, it was not that icy what we saw, but still very worth seeing.

I really would have liked to just get out of the train and hike a bit, and it would be a great future holiday to do so.

Norway Part 1: glaciers, mountains & sheep

2010-09-21T09:29:00.010+02:00

I am back from my loooong looooong trip to Budapest and Norway. Geee, I have been away for 4 weeks in total! My dear boyfriend joined me for the last week in Norway but sadly also brought lots of rain. Those of you who know his name or his chosen nickname might find that actually funny. But there is so much to tell that I better start at the beginning.

The first part of my stay in Norway was not mere pleasure but work related, since I attended a summer school where I also had to give a presentation on my project. We stayed at a nice camping place next to a lake in little cabins which were just too cute, since they had these traditional grass roofs including ferns and flowers (ours had little blue pansies), and some even had little trees growing on them. Me wants a grass roof, too!

Food was plenty and consisted of loads of potatoes. Also the view was splendid, we had perfect weather which made staying inside for the lectures a bit of a shame. But we also went into the field to learn how to apply the methods we heard about and got to see some awesome countryside. The place is located in the Jostedalsbreen national park in the Nordfjord aera. Have an impression:

We also walked up to the glacier, which was the first one I actually saw from close by. The color of the ice was really amazing, it really was greenish-blue inside, at the rim crystal clear. There was a small cavity between the glacier tongue and the soil, so it was almost like a thick blanket.

There is also an ice cold glacier lake and one brave guy had a short swim (or rather dip) into it. I found it to be a bit too chilly.

We found lots of delicous blueberries, and some small cranberries and berries which don't exist in the more southern parts of Europe, but they were not that tasty. I heard rumors of cloudberries, which look just like orange raspberries or blackberries, but had a different taste and were used together with cream as a traditional christmas desert in Norway, but I never found some wild ones.

Norway is also full of sheep, some were even running around more or less free in the countryside and on the narrow one-laned streets. Of course I made inquiries to get some Norwegian sheep wool which was a bit tricky without a car and staying on a camping place some miles off the next village. But the camp site host knew someone, who knew someone and so I ended up with a bag of unprocessed wool! I am really happy about it and I hope that soon I will have the time to spin it. Sadly they keep their sheep mainly for meat production and one of the most famous traditional Norwegian foods is lamb meat with cabbage, but still it is nice to have sheep everywhere.

The monster

2010-09-19T15:25:00.005+02:00

A friend of mine asked me if I could make him a scarf. Just a simple black merino scarf. But since he is from Poland and winters there happen to be cold (with a capital C) he wanted it to be long (with a capital L).
So far I have spun and washed 300 g (10.5 oz) of black merino. It's going to be a monster! It's drying right now but when I have started knitting I will keep you posted!

Almost live from Budapest

2010-08-31T23:00:00.008+02:00

Tini already mentioned that I am away right now. Though it is for work and not for real holidays (besides next week), I had the chance to do some fun stuff on the first part of my trip, in Budapest.
When I arrived, it was the last day of the yearly folk arts festival in the castle district and I was lucky that I got the chance to go there. It was a bit like a medieval market, but also much different. For one, the goods were a bit unusual. There is a big tradition of painting eggs and making gingerbread, so there were some stalls selling those. Unfortunately eggs don't give a good a souvenir. Also making beaded jewelry from seed beads/rocailles seems to be quite famous, and I got the chance to buy some nice beads. Lots of stalls had ceramics and pottery and other had leather bags and other things. But of course I was mostly interested in the textile arts, and I totally fell in love with those indigo dyed fabrics they sold at two booths. I don't really know if they are that typical for hungary, because I heard about them earlier, related to eastern Germany, but nonetheless they are beautiful, with little flowers, dots, some fabrics even with borders and other nice patterns.

They are either printed blue on white fabric, but more famous seems to be to print with a substance on the white fabric, and then dye it in blue and the formerly treated spots will stay white. I got a bit of the fabric to maybe sew an apron as one of the sellers had - was very cute with lace, or to do some patchwork. I had that idea to make a quilt from fabrics I got on my travels, and this is just great for that.
There were lots of weavers, either with big looms, or little hand devices and I learned how to weave locks into a fabric to make a flokati. And I also saw some spinners, like this old lady, spinning flax directly from the distaff.

The spinning wheels were quite old, and usually with double drive, though I also saw one with a single drive and a handle to use it by hand. There was one stand who sold fibers, cards for card weaving and combs for making bands with fancy patterns and felting equipment and I got a pack of roving in a nice color combination which will become a pretty souvenir yarn, maybe together with some of the beads. I even met a woman who dyed yarn with plant dyes, but she just spoke hungarian. But I managed to understand what plants she dyed with, and I think I really should have a go on elder berries, even if they are supposed to be not that extremely lightfast.
Also the food was nice, there was one stall selling "Pomposch" which is made from bread dough, sour cream, onions, cheese and bacon and came from a wood burning oven.

Besides that, Budapest is absolutely worth a visit! The poppy seed ice cream is indeed very delicious (and we absolute should make more Poppy Seed Icecream yarn...), there is every flavour strudel, Gulasch and other nice dishes with peppers.
The city is marvellous with lots of sights like the castle, the labyrinth under the castle, the Fisherman's Bastion next to the castle, various churches and buildings which were decorated with colorful tiles like the Great Market Hall.

And one of the nicest things are the hot thermals baths. I went to two in Budapest, first the Szechenyi spa, which had (next to other nice features) a big heated outside pool, and it was just great to hang out in the evening after a stressful day in this giant bath tub, with hot water showers in the light of the rising full moon. The last day, I made it to the famous Gellert spa, which had beautiful art deco stained glass in the reception hall and mosaic tiles inside. Outside there was a wave pool, but unfortunately it did not work when I was there. But I had the feeling of being really spoiled. The third bath I visited on a field trip and it was so rich in sulfur, that my silver jewelry tarnished and is now a very ugly color. I hope I can clean it somehow.

There is still much which I could not see and I am quite positive that I will visit again. At the moment I am in a cozy little hut next to a fjord in Norway, after two days of traveling. But that is another story yet to be told.

Holiday

2010-08-31T11:54:00.004+02:00

Both Cheshire Cat and I are on holiday till the 8th of September. Wish you all a pleasant holiday season and a lot of sun!

See ya,
Tini

New stuff

2010-08-22T13:42:00.004+02:00

Hello everyone,

I finally had some days off and got some spinning done. Yes I still know how my spinning wheel looks like, where it is and how to operate it. Although sometimes I doubt that myself....

These goodies are drying right now so look out for them in our shop in the next couple of days!

Oh, and Cheshire Cat: have fun in Budapest. Wonderful city. Lovely people. Great Strudel. Awesome.

The giant blue project - the carding

2010-08-06T17:39:00.005+02:00

I had a bit more time to continue on the heap of blue yarn. After carding the alpaca, I carded 4 batts of merino roving, in different shades of blue and some greys. I have dyed some merino with textile colors which are usually intended for the washing machine a while ago, and it turned out to be perfect for this, because the blue was a bit shocking, but in combination with the darker shades it works quite well. After that I divided the alpaca and the merino batts in halfes and spun one half alpaca and one half merino batt in thin layers to another full batt and ended up with eight fluffy merino/alpaca batts:

Don't they look yummy? The total weight is around 550g, so it is really good that I started out with a bit more than half of the 500g in alpaca. I also started spinning it, here is a peek:

The giant blue project - the dyeing

2010-08-01T10:19:00.005+02:00

I never spun big amounts of yarn at once, besides strawberry yarn maybe, but that usually is still a bit different from skein to skein. Now I met that lady in Geneva who fell in love with my yarns, and she was interested in a big amount of yarn for a reasonable sized project. It should be soft and in shades of blue, and having still a quite big stock of alpaca fiber, I suggested merino and alpaca, and we agreed on 500g of twoply.
Last week I finally had the time to dye the alpaca and it was quite a big bunch. I used some koolaid, easter egg dyes and acid dyes, and ended up with different blues.

I got me a used salad spinner for some bucks by the way, which turned out to be quite useful. I already pre-dryed yarn with it without having it to squeeze, and it was also good to get the hot dye soup out of the fiber after microwaving it.

Yesterday I carded up all of the alpaca fiber and ended up with four fluffy batts, weighing 250g in total.

Next step is carding it into merino/alpaca mix batts, and then spinning them up. But first I have to spin off the residues on my big bobbins to have enough space for this.

A facebook summer giveaway

2010-07-28T23:01:00.006+02:00

If you are on facebook, probably the best way to stay up to date with our doings is to become a fan of our facebook page, which you can find here. If you become a follower, you now have even the chance to win this pretty yarn:

It is called "Butterfly Meadow" and is a single yarn from a handcarded batt of green shades, yellow and pale blue merino, containing a helping thread with tiny pink glass beads, blue beads, iridescent yellow sequins and 5 butterfly-shaped buttons.

It measures 100 m / 110 yd, ca. 80g, 9 wpi and of course created in a smoke-free environment as all our yarns.

What you have to do to get into the drawing? Simply become a follower of our facebook site by pressing the "Like" thumbs up button. The yarn will be given to one of our new followers on August 8th at midnight CET+1h (central european summer time). You can get even a second lot for the drawing, if you answer to our poll, which you can find on the discussions site. The winner will receive the yarn shipped free and will be notified via facebook. If we hear not back and receive the shipping adress within 3 days, the price will be given to the next in line.
Good luck!

The ultimate Tour de Fleece 2010 report

2010-07-27T23:46:00.007+02:00

The Tour the Fleece was a real challenge! I managed to spin almost every day, but more difficult was, to report the progress outside the ravelry group. So here comes - with a bit delay - a complete show & tell of the yarns I spun.
I already introduced you to "Spinning Onions to Gold" and "Don't cry, Argentina".

After that, I spun "Fireflies", which is a cute yarn from black, blue and dark green merino and some wensleydale fiber, plied with a thin thread holding bright green seed beads and neon green sequins. Afterwards, I thought it would be so cool, if the glass beads were actually glowing in the dark. A long search later, I found a supplier of bright green glowing glass beads and ordered them. They should arrive soon and then I can make a firefly yarn which actually glows in the dark.

The "Moonlit Garden" yarn took 3 days to finish, but I like it best of my yarns this year. It is a single yarn from a merino batt of black, dark and bright blues, containing many many things, like blossoms and flowers of different kind, some sections have blue sparkling eyelash yarn, and different beads, pearls and sequins.

The last worldcup yarn is the one for the United States (though I might still spin one inspired by Paul, the octopus), consisting of blue, white and red merino, spun to broad blue stripes, interspersed with thinner red and white stripes. It is plyed with a dark blue and a blue glittering thread, holding silver sequin stars in the blue parts.

A while ago, I met the shepherd of the university's flock of sheep, who allowed me to take some of his fleece. I only took around 100 g to start with and spun a two ply yarn from the unwashed fiber. It turned out to be not that good an idea, because it was quite greasy and held lots of straw particles. From now on, I will give it a thorough wash before I process it. The result is quite interesting, though. As far as I understood, his sheep are crossbreeds from mainly local species and the fiber was quite frizzy and elastic. It is a bit rough, though. It borderlines the comfortable bare-to-skin-wearableness and I am thinking to make a carpet from that and other raw fibers, maybe with some color accents. But then I would have to spin much much more of it first.

I had a short intermezzo with a soot sprite (those of you who know Hayao Miyazaki's animes "Spririted Away" and "My neighbor Totoro" are probably familiar with them) under heavy usage of black eyelash yarn, containing little pompons thereof and eyes made from white sequins and black seed beads.

Next was a merino single yarn in greys, blues, whites and a hint of green and brown, including pieces of Tibetan prayer flags. I always liked them and got the idea for that yarn a while ago. It resembles the landscape of himalayan mountains, and combines it with the cheerful colors of the flags, in the traditional order of colors.

I always liked that Android operating systems are named after deserts, so I spun a chocolate eclair yarn from merino and alpaca, plyed with a golden thread, and a cupcake yarn, from brown merino, some alpaca and pink and violet merinos, plyed with a pink thread, containing plastic flower beads and seed beads which look like sugar beads. The gingerbread, froyo and doughnut soon to follow.

And last, but certainly not least, I had another go on a fabric stripe polkadot yarn. This time from different colors, the usual blue, but in combination with red fabric I bought in Osaka (Japan is great for fabric shopping, too bad I discovered that fabric shop street in Tokyo almost too late), and white fabric with bright green dots from Vienna. I also added white seed beads. The fiber is merino in shades of red, blue and green.

That's all, folks! I am glad that it is over and that I did not bad, especially in catching one of the daily prices, but I also can't wait for the next TdF!

Tour de Fleece - I won something!

2010-07-18T19:22:00.007+02:00

Yes, I know, I am a bit behind in reporting about my spinning for the Tour de Fleece. I promise to write an update soon. But today, something really great happened. I was drawn as one of the two daily winners by the random number generator! Yippiee! Now I may choose one of the many prices which were donated by a bunch of real great fiber artists. In fact, I found several very good shops for gorgeous spinning fiber, so I thought I might do a little feature on my three favourites. I still have to decide, where I will get a price, but I also might do some fiber-shopping at the other ones.

First, there is wildhare fiber studio. Here you can not only get handpainted fibers of different quality and sheep breed and handcarded batts, but also a lot of other nice things like knit kits, wpi gauges, spinning equipment, some art yarn ingredients like angelina and firestar and handspun yarns. I like her "Irish Eyes" handpainted BFL wool top, and I totally fell in love with this superwash wool top "Autumn"

Then there is "Into the whirled" who sells mostly very nice handpainted tops from BFL, Falkland and Merino and she also donated one of her BFL batts in stunning colors and color combinations which make me just drool. I totally adore her gradient color batts, like this one:

And finally, I stumbled upon "Kelpie Fibers" who sells handdyed commercial yarns, mostly socks, and a big variety of dyed spinning fiber. She chooses very cool names for her color variegations, like "Shadowlord", "Oceanic Flight 815", "Alien Encounter" and I really like her "Oathbreaker" merino roving:

I could continue indulging in all the pretty handpainted fiber one can find out there, but I stop now and probably will have a swim in the lake before I am off to the open air cinema. I so much are in mood of doing some dyeing myself, and I hope I can find the time soon.

Tini's attempt to actually try to succeed

2010-07-09T12:33:00.005+02:00

Well as you might have noticed from the title my head is a bit, well how to put it correctly...full. Yeah, I guess that's the most neutral expression that does not include multiple warning concerning hard language and partial nudity (see, what I mean??) at the beginning of this post.

Anyway last year during the Tour de Fleece I was without any equipment, spending the first three months in London. A year later, I have the equipment and I am willing to try to spin next to a 60 h week (14 h tomorrow alone...) a yarn a day. Good luck to myself. The first day has been successfull so far (Well done, me, well done).

Anyway I stop moaning now and will continue to spin and be merry and happy. My cute little yarns are drying as we speak (or write and read respectively rather (is that a correct sentence?)) and am waiting to make your days. They made mine already :-).

Here the first Tour de Fleece success:

Hope you like it as much as I do. It is my Holland support for the final.

See you and enjoy your weekend!

Tini

Semi-Finalists and Eliminatists

2010-07-06T10:13:00.010+02:00

Right on time for today's semi-finals I present "Uruguay", which is a white-and-blue single thread yarn with golden multifaceted sequins and small golden sun confetti spun-in.
I also finally could finish "Southern Africa", a cheerful 2ply from black, red, white, green, yellow and blue extrafine merino fiber. Though they already left the game, it is only fair to honour the host who did a really good job.
And of course we had to spin at least one German yarn, this one is quite bulky, features a black, red and yellw section, plyed with a golden thread who holds little beads. It is already reserved, though. But we are quite sure that we will spin another one, especially if Germany wins the tournament as we hope. :)

For the Tour de Fleece I also spun a worldcuppy yarn yesterday: "Don't cry, Argentina". It looks suspiciously similar to Uruguay, but I used a shade of blue which is a bit more pale and I spun broader stripes, and plyed it in the end with a golden thread and another one who holds some golden suns.

Tour de Fleece 2010 - Day 1

2010-07-05T16:45:00.006+02:00

Two days ago, the Tour de France started. That does not neccessarily interest me much, if it was not also for the Tour de Fleece. I participated at this annual ravelry-wide spin-along event with big excitement last year and was really productive, you can find some pictures of last year on our facebook page. So I was looking forward to this year's to boost my spinning and help me un-stash a bit (to allow myself to go fiber-shopping afterwards of course).
The "Breakaway" is naturally my key skill and I am supporting Team Tardis and might do something fairy-tale relevant. We also have a wildcard team for our art yarn community (gooooo, Team Spinnkult!). But I don't inted to only spin art yarns, but also some unprocessed raw sheep wool and who knows what. I started with pure tussah silk, which I had dyed with onion skins a while ago. I really really love it! If it was more my color scheme, I totally would keep it. But I can't figure myself much with this bright golden/coppery yellow, so this beauty will go to the shop soon.

I also realized that silk is not the best thing to spin when you are sweaty because of a murderous heat wave (for me, that is everything above 30 degrees C), because all the fine fibers will stick to your skin. And it was quite a bunch of silk I spun, the yarn had more than 200 m in the end as a 2ply.
I might not be able to report every day's progress as it is also quite much work to spin, take pictures, upload them and link them and report about the tdf in ravelry, but I will show all the finished skeins I spun sooner or later. And I planned to make at least one skein per day.

A little bit of Brazil

2010-06-25T10:42:00.005+02:00

I got so many ideas, but why can't the days have more hours - or why do I have to sleep so much? Next to spinning theres quite a lot going on. We have to move soon, and moving in this region, especially if you limit your future home to a couple of villages who have the right distance, location, price and connection to public transport is not an easy task. Of course there is my day time job. I spent yesterday's lunch break to pick cherries from the university's trees (with permission of course) and in the evening I went to a strawberry farm to collect some berries fresh from the patch which is actually the best thing to do. From tomorrow onthey will also offer raspberries and other good stuff. The next days I will be occupied with converting them to some jam and cake.

I have lots of fun with the soccer world cup, currently I am on the second place of the institute's prediction game. Germany is still in and will play against England on sunday! Today's match will decide if Switzerland will stay in the tournament. And the team is getting a lot of support in their home country:

I am busy with spinning more yarn, I finished Southern Africe. It is just a bit sad that the host country has already left the game. I got the right ingredients for Uruguay and Argentina and can spin Chile and USA. Soon more to come.
I also spun a small yarn of Brazil before I ran out of the yellow fiber (I got some more in the meantime). It has already found a new home: the little son of a knitting friend is a big fan of Brazil, and it is just enough to make a scarf in a good size for him.

Ole, ole, ole, ole!

2010-06-18T20:46:00.005+02:00

England. Slovenia. To be continued on Wednesday. My current home (England) and my friend's home country (Slovenia). You can imagine what's going on next week.

Anyway, here are my contributions to both teams. May they play well and fair!

See ya, Tini

Pink Ribbon

2010-06-10T13:02:00.011+02:00

The Swiss League against Cancer has made a call for knitted squares to create a giant pink ribbon they want to place in Bern on a public square as a sign of solidarity against breast cancer. I didn't have any pink yarn as that is not one of my favourized colors, but I had some pink fiber from dyeing with cool aid and sandalwood/cochenille. Since I am in the mood of de-stashing, and it is also for a good cause, I spun the fiber together with some sparkly stuff to a yarn and knitted it to a square. I did not exactly meet the 30x30 cm requirements but it is quite close. The color is not exactly what I would call classic pink, because natural dyeing often gives the strangest colors, but it is intended to have a ribbon with different shades in the end and this will surely contribute to that :)

If you want to participate, you can send your square until June 21st 2010 to this adress:
Krebsliga Schweiz, «Gemeinsam gegen Brustkrebs», Effingerstrasse 40, 3008 Bern, SCHWEIZ.
You will also find more information on the project and the anti-cancer-league on their website.

World Championship: Round 1

2010-05-30T22:12:00.005+02:00

Tini came up with the brilliant idea to spin yarns for every team to participate in the upcoming soccer world cup. So we decided who will spin which yarn and started to spin and spin and spin, and here are my first nations:

This is Cameroon at the left with small yellow plastic stars, then France with beads, sequins and some pieces of striped ribbon, then Switzerland with Swiss flags and on the right there is Portugal with a car flag which I cut into stripes and spun in.
I still have to wind them, but they will show up in the shop in the next days. More to follow soon!

A small Gathering of Spinners

2010-05-30T21:18:00.004+02:00

Yesterday, spinning people were again invited at Annelis' shop "Tricolaine". I really enjoyed our last meeting in September and I was happy that I also could come this time. So I took my poor not-so-mobile spinning wheel by tram to Carouge. Actually, I am also to be pitied, because my wheel is quite heavy. But luckily the walking distance was just short. This time, I got curious looks by several men who wanted to know if mon petit rouet was really working and came up with the usual sleeping beauty remarks.

In the end we were six spinners and several people who came and watched and even tried it themselves. And it was nice that we were a really mixed group of different age (Celine was spinning with her newborn baby bound around her chest), some kids came by and and also Greg showed up, though without his wheel.

I got a bag full of raw wool of the Swiss sheep breed "Roux de Valais" which is quite rough and coarse, but also really eco-friendly, natural and charming. And they look just cute!

I also finally got the hang of the long draw. I just didn't have to courage before of letting go, but in principle the yarn won't break if there is enough twist. I started spinning green fiber for new strawberry yarn which will be finished hopefully soon, so watch out!

It was a really nice day and I can't wait for the next time.

World Cup Fever

2010-05-10T14:26:00.002+02:00

Hello everyone,

as many of you might know, cheshire cat and I are from Germany. And thus we at least have to pretend to love soccer. Well at least I do when it comes to the World Cup. Which will begin in 6 weeks.

And I love flags and different countries (hell, I am living in one...). I am not kidding. When I was a kid I spent hours looking at different countries' flags in my dad's atlas. And I love when people dress up during the world cup in their nation's colours and jerseys. And so I decided to make my own World Cup celebration by spinning yarn for every single nation that is taking part. I will try at least. But 36 is quite a number, but then I love a challenge.

I you have any tips, what I could include in each nation's yarn, just comment please. I will be delighted to do my best to include all your wishes. And the we will scream and shout and drink a lot of beer. And cry and laugh and curse other nations and swear to hate them forever. And will drink with them even more bear afterwards and declare our endless love to them. Cause that's what it's about, isn't it? Fun and passion! (Yeah, and beer. Whom are we kidding? Really...)

So watch out for your nation! The first ones are already finished, so the party begins soon!

Wish you a fair and brilliant World Cup, Tini

Guerilla Knitting Retrospective

2010-04-25T20:12:00.010+02:00

The Snowflake Graffiti was not the only one I made! It did stay up for around a month and got several admirers (the most excited one must have been the little son of a fellow knitter) before it disappeared. There was also this graffiti I named "White Lace" because, well, it was white lace from handspun merino singles. It also lived for several weeks, on the Mont Blanc bridge, Geneva's most important connection between the left and the right shore and I could see it every morning on my way to work.

Not so lucky was my most favourite piece until now, the knitted Tardis. I found the perfect place at the pavilion in the Jardin Anglais, but it was already gone 36 hours later. I still hope, a Doctor Who fan liked it that much and adopted it than that the city's cleaning service thought it was a disturbance in a touristy area. Well, maybe there will be another one sometime.

The same day I set up another graffiti, which was also gone some days after that. It is this nice flower square, coming from the same blanket pattern as the snowflake.

I really like the design, so I made several more, one I put up at easter on a lantern post next to my mother's home, three others will be swapped in our graffiti swap in the "Spinnkult Forum" to travel to distant places and another one I will just keep and put up somewhere in our appartment, then the risk of it disappearing is not so high (and if it did, I would know who took it ;)).

I also spread the idea to my knitting friends from the Stitch&Bitch and together we knitted up something to decorate the bridge next to our weekly meeting point. It was damn cold (there was a very icy wind blowing) and we were lucky when we could get back in. I learned that night, that sometimes it is better not to sew on things but rather use a quicker way for fastening something. I just saw that Annelis shot a photo of me in action.

It stayed up for around a week and I came back to make daylight photos. It was nice to have different types of things and that we could cover a quite big area. I hope we could do something like that again. Or maybe (but psssst, that's just still just a thought), it would be cool to combine guerilla knitting and geocaching, and invite just all interested guys to contribute to a giant and stadily growing yarn bomb, maybe in combination with a knitting inspired stash!)

What else to show you? I made labels for my graffiti, from cotton strips, showing a space invader from a hand made rubber stamp, which I will sew on:

All in all, I really like doing it, it is fast done and can be a good practice on different techniques, but it is a bit frustrating it the tings disappear so fast. And I would really like to know where they end up. But then again, maybe I don't want to know it. So I decided to do another kind of guerilla* at the moment and stick with the knitted things to our flat. Which surely also needs some modding ;)

*gardening

Good to know!

2010-04-16T15:28:00.006+02:00

This week I finally made it again to our weekly Stitch&Bitch in Geneva, where I met the fellow knitter who ended up with a bunch of my handmade stitch markers half a year ago. In principle they are the same as those:

These are the "deluxe" version with bead cups, featuring gorgeous faceted glass beads in different shades of violet. It was great to hear that she likes them a lot and none of them ever came apart or had wire sticking out. Apparently I did a good job and the design is quite robust :)
I am also thinking about making some sets for the shop, but I am a bit busy these days, so that it might take a while until I can set some up. But I am also open for work on demand, and I can do different colors as well. Just the bead cups are a bit hard to come by.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

2010-03-17T11:12:00.005+01:00

Go and wear something green today! It is one of our most favourite festivals because we just love Ireland: St. Patrick's Day. In its honour I re-decorated our banner and spun this nice green yarn:

It is called "Wild Clover" and contains little shamrock leaves, glass beads, sequins and some handmade white clover flowers. It is available as from now on here in our etsy shop!

Also new in our shop today: "Green Grass". A two-ply from a bright and a dark thread, which is not as plain at the second glance, because we handcarded the batts from merino, wensleydale and some mulberry silk and linnen and the yarn shows a nice play of different shades of greens and different fiber types.

And these pretty items still would like to find a new home:

Green green green - handspun twoply yarn from silk and merino fiber, plant dyed with golden rod:

Spring wave - bright green and white merino yarn with golden angelina:

Thawing Snow - merino and mohair yarn with tiny green and clear seed beads

Snowmelt - two-ply of white and green, partly handdyed merino, spun with a silver thread to give it some sparkle:

And finally the Green Rainbow Shawl handknit from commercial mohair/acryllic yarn, now for a special price:

Now I will see if there is anything going on in an Irish Pub over here tonight.

Cheers!
CheshireCat

New Name, New Fun

2010-03-15T13:36:00.004+01:00

Geeeez, it is a while since we posted something here. Well, the excuse is, we both have been busy. Me with my PhD (preparing measurements and some appearances at conferences) and Tini with getting settled in London. I even missed presenting the Valentine's Day-inspired yarns I made. But I promise improvement and try not to let the time rush by so fast. I also see that we should free the blog from its wintery appeal since it is really getting spring now.

One thing I did was choosing a new nickname. I began to dislike "Teetante" more and more, and I also finally came up with a new name. Cheshire Cat. But then I just could not convince myself to make the change. And then I heard about the new "Alice in Wonderland" movie. And then I hesitated even more. But what the heck, the cheshire cat existed before, even before Lewis Carroll's books as far as I could see, and it will stay around even after the movie hype is over.
I already changed my twitter name and my ravelry account (now cheshire-cat), and I started working on the web page. But beeing buisy, it might take a little while to get rid of all the hidden remainders of the "Teetante". I excuse any upcomming confusion, but I just didn't want to be stuck with a nickname I really didn't like anymore.

Moving

2010-01-19T13:15:00.006+01:00

Heya,
I finally did it. I left Germany, moved to London. With two bags. And my country spinner. Which is bigger and heavier than I thought. But we made it alright and love our new place.
My mom sent me a packet with a lot of fiber and my dying pot. So...I have a lot of things to do. Spin. Dye. Spin some more. Knit. The usual.

The first London baby is already finished and there will be a lot more to come!

See ya, Tini

Snowflake Graffiti

2010-01-12T13:01:00.011+01:00

I really really love snow. I got snowflake earrings, Let-it-snow-socks, I crochet snowflakes, I love to include them in spinning and I just can't see enough of it. I also was thinking about doing Guerilla Knitting for a while (after reading about Guerilla Gardening and considered that a while but could not find anyone else around here) and was looking for a good occasion to do it.
Last weekend, when this relatively moderate snow fall started over here (not as much as in other parts in Europe, though) I combined the one and the other and started knitting a snowflake graffiti. I used some old handspun in multiple red merino and some random acryllic yarn and went on practicing intarsia knitting.

It turned out quite ok despite the difference in the yarns and I went out to put the snowflake to its new destination. I decided on a sign post on the square in front of our appartment. It was a really exciting feeling to get out at 2 am, trying to avoid people who were still walking around in the city and to find a place and attach it without being noticed. I took some more photos by daylight when it was already covered with snow.

This morning it was still there and I'm really curious to see how long it will. This is definitely something I will do again, I already have many ideas and another source of inspiration was the "Yarn Bombing" book I finally received today which gave me some additional ideas. But that is another story and will be told another time.

I saw three gifts on Christmas day

2009-12-25T15:09:00.006+01:00

Happy holidays everyone! Today is the day! The three winners for our holiday special are chosen.

We had 29 people to reply to the blog posting and who were in the running for the set of stitch markers. I wrote the chronological numbers on lots and the first good luck fairy (my dear boyfriend, so it was a very bearded fairy) drew #17 which is ESME.

Four people sent us back project photos and the winner is MARIE with her "Engel I Snoen" which is really cool and I'm particularly happy for her.

The Tartan&Kilt yarn will stay in Germany and will travel to the North to TIKALINA. She also sent back a photo of her adorable polka dot crochet scarf. There were six customers during the time span of our giveaway and my mother drew the lots.

Congratulations you three and thanks a lot everyone for participating, and even if you did not win we are very thankful to have you as our customers.

The becoming - Part 2

2009-12-25T15:01:00.005+01:00

We received back two more project photos.
The first is from Katharine, who bought the "Elinor Dashwood", a yarn which I liked a lot and planned to keep at first, but I could not find a good pattern to work with it for a while. It is made from brown alpaca, merino and baby camel fiber, violet merino and some white merino and silk and contains little seed beads, faceted bohemian glass beads, violet sequins and white faux pearls.
Katherine knitted it up into a lacy cowl which is a really cool project for the yarn, I like a lot how it turned out:

Tikalina made a crochet scarf from the "Polkadot" yarn, which is a cute yarn with fabric stripes. The scarf is really a neat idea and I adore it.

Thanks a lot, guys, for all the pretty photos and for sharing it!

Have yourself a very frosty photoshooting

2009-12-24T00:54:00.008+01:00

For at least a year I had this idea - knit a very special hat from a handspun xmas tree art yarn. With glowing fairy lights and lots of sparkling stuff.
Well, I finally did it and it is for sale here in our shop. I had a skein left over from last year, mainly because of bad timing (why must this time of the year go away so quickly??? I could spend at least 4 more weeks with spinning xmassy yarns and also doing other stuff like shopping for the perfect presents and baking cookies).

The yarn is spun from extrafine merino in greens and white, and includes lots of sparkly things like beads, sequins, stars, garland and tinsel.

It turned out to be just perfect for the cause. It was just enough for the hat and the included garland is just placed on the right spot, the repeats of the different coolors right how I hoped they would turn out! The only problem is the tinsel - I was not so convinced about it in the first place and it doesn't stay in. But it could be removed completely or I could also come up with a way to include more.

Here is a close-up:

So one frosty afternoon I braced myself against the cold winter wind and went out into the snowy park to take some photos of it. Please excuse my weird look, being cold, watched by passers-by and trying to get some good shots before my finger freeze was a bit much to manage at the same time.

At least someone was so nice to put up a giant mirror wall in the park - as a part of the annual "Trees & Lights" Festival in Geneva

I also managed to include the chain of lights! It consists of tiny LEDs in red, green and yellow and is powered by two 1,5V AA batteries. It is just a short string and I put in in a spiral on the hat. And it GLOWS!

The becoming - Part 1

2009-12-23T23:23:00.009+01:00

First a little reminder for our still ongoing giveaway special. You have one more day to leave a comment to win the set of stitch markers, buy some yarn from our shop or send us back pictures of your project with our yarns.

Here are some pictures we have received - and maybe some inspiration for you if you are looking for some ideas for what to create of our yarns.

First a cape/cozy from Fazzo:
Teetante took part in an art yarn swap with the theme "nature sprites" and sent her the yarn "Tree Spirit". Nice work!

Marie got inspired by the yarn "Silver Frost" - and the song "Angel in the snow" by her favourite (just a little understatement) band A-ha too knit her scarf "Engel i Snoen". She combined several yarns to an a-ma-zing scarf! It turned out like a dream, just look at the details, like the tibetan silver charms she included at the end!

She also knitted another scarf - "Angel's Delight", which she still plans to sell to donate 100% of the price for breast cancer charity. If you are interested, she will be happy to be notifyed.

More pictures soon!

A Feature

2009-12-21T10:42:00.006+01:00

Pink (no, not the singer) was so nice to feature our Poinsettia yarn in her blog "That Crafty Bitch"!

Thanks a lot, we are really honored. She also runs two etsy shops, one with nice buttons, recycled clothes and bags and other pretty things, the other one with her handmade pottery. Check it out!

A short lesson on strange Swiss traditions

2009-12-10T13:28:00.026+01:00

Once upon a time, in December of 1602, the evil French troops from neighboring Savoy tried to conquer the city of Geneva, which was (and still is) at the southwestern border of Switzerland, surrounded just by French territory and the lake Geneva. They hoped to surprise the Genevans in the middle of the night and tried to climb the wall to open the city gates from within. Just around the place where I sit now and type this, but there was no Starbucks at that time, and no internet of course.

Well, the Genevois noticed it, raised the alarm and defended the city walls. It is also said that there was a woman (la "Mère Royaume") who poured a cauldron of boiling soup over the attackers. In the end the French were defeated and since that time, in Geneva there is he Festival of the "Escalade" (means something like climbing), which is celebrated every December. The funny thing is how they celebrate it. Ok, they have a nice costume parade and bands playing at night, with horses and illuminations by torches. They also have a famous marathon where people run several times through the city, which seems to be quite a big event and for the children there's a Halloween-like disguise thing.

But the strangest thing ever is that they create chocolate cauldrons in best Swiss chocolate, filled with marzipan vegetables, all in remembrance of their favourite weapon to fight foreign troops. They make a huuuuuge one which is smashed in a public event. But you can also buy smaller ones in different sizes, emty or filled, in dark, milk or white chocolate. They are really all over the city, in every chocolaterie the shopping windows are in brown, yellow and red colors.

You may ask why I am telling you all this stuff. The reason is: it seems as if I'm getting a kind of Genevan after all, since I came upon the idea to spin a yarn in remembrance of the chocolate cauldrons in remembrance of the historic one. Therefore I acquired an official Geneva crest, used real Swiss alpaca fiber and some none-Swiss merino and golden angelina (well, Geneva is kind of international anyways...) and created little polymer clay vegetables like mushrooms, radishes, potatoes, gherkins and so on. The yarn is plied with a brown sewing thread and contains some red and yellow 2ply-sections. Here is the finished product:

I brought it over to Tricolaine, but if you are interested in getting in just drop a note.

Pour les Genevoises

2009-12-06T00:06:00.005+01:00

Annelis is housing three of my winter yarns at Tricolaine again, here they are:

"Santa's Hat" is made from red extrafine merino and white bluefaced leicester fiber. It contains 3 little santa hats from felted fabric, glass beads and multifaceted sequins.

"Rudolph" is an old friend, I already spun it last year. I really loved it so that I had fun spinning a new skein. I just finished another one which will go to the online shop in a few days. It is spin from red extrafine merino and a mix of hand processed brown alpaca (from a Swiss farm) and brown merino. It contains little brown felted reindeers, red little bells and red pompons.

"Poinsettia" is a new yarn from red extrafine merino and green handcarded merino who also contains some golden angelina and little amounts of red fiber which gives a tweed-like effect. I spun felt flowers, green multifaceted sequins and red rocailles into it. There is also another skein for the etsy shop.

So if you are around and interested, go and check it out!

Have a nice Holiday season!
Teetante

New pics

2009-12-04T14:03:00.008+01:00

As some of you might have noticed I had a huge load of problems with my camera lately and the pictures turned out to be blurry and...well... if I would curse in public I would do it now.

Anyway I was able to solve this problem and have taken new pictures for China Jade which is such a gorgeous yarn and appeared crappy in the pictures. But not any more :-)!

Check this out:

I hope you like it as much as I do. It is a handdyed handspun soy silk beauty perfect for wool allergics of any kind (whether you are really allergic or just can't stand the itching).

See ya, Tini

The Biiiiiiig Holiday Giveaway

2009-11-25T16:41:00.009+01:00

We decided to make some people happy - because that makes US happy. There will be three lucky winners on Christmas Day, Dec 25th, who we will announce in our blog.

The first one will be the new owner of this absolutely gorgeous skein or art yarn:

It is spun by Tini and she named it "Candle Light". It is a thick, bulky single yarn in orange, yellow and red with some golden glittering angelina fiber. Soooooooo cuddly and soft, you will love it!

The second winner will get this set of 10 stitchmarkers, handmade by Teetante from faceted bohemian glass beads in reds & greens. They are really pretty and are made from a wire sling which makes them usable also for bigger needles and convenient to put on and off the needles.

The third giveaway is another yarn, spun by Teetante. It is the quite famous Tartan&Kilt yarn, Spun from a handcarded merino fiber batt and includes fabric stripes.

So you might ask yourself what you have to do in order to win one of these beauties.
The first will be given to one of the people who send us back a photo of a finished project (ok, almost finished is also right), made from one of our yarns. Just send it to info1234@1234authenticfiction.net (remove all numbers!) with the permission to publish it on our blog or website (with your credits of course!). We are sooooo curious to see what becomes of our yarns that it would really make us happy if you send us loads of photos.

For the stitch markers just answer to this blog post, and if you are lucky we will draw your name. Please make sure to leave your valid email adress or other means to contact you.

Finally, the Tartan&Kilt yarn will be sent to one of our customers in the next month.

For all three things, you have time to participate between now and the midnigt to December 25th (GMT time zone). On Christmas Morning we will draw the winners by lot. One entry per person, and every gift will go to a different winner. So have a nice pre-holiday season and watch out for our Collection of winter yarns, like Rudolph, Midwinter's night, A Hat full of Santa etc. in the next weeks.

A new home

2009-11-20T17:48:00.004+01:00

Hello our fellow yarn lovers,

we have found a new home here. I hope you'll enjoy it as we do-

The welcome Christmas party will be announced soon so we'll keep you posted!

Cheers, Tini and Teetante