A new journey begins

As I get older, I'm finding that I am happier and happier to follow my own dreams and forget about the dreams that other people think I should have.  Part of that has been exploring using my hands to make things.  In the past I've experimented with clay and wood (an had decent success with wood), but over the last 5 years I've found fiber.  Knitting spoke to me in a way that no other art ever has.  I've spent hours staring at pieces of paper trying to draw something, or feeling blind while trying to make paint do my bidding.  But, when I started knitting it was as if I finally understood something. 

From that I became curious about spinning.  2 years ago my lovely sister got me a drop spindle and some wonderful fiber.  I fell in love.  Once I got the basic ideas, I started dreaming of a wheel.  But the price was always prohibitive.  I finally found a lost orphan wheel on Kijiji and I had to have it. 

A lovely lady from Ravelry worked on it and made it awesome!

I've been busy

I've been really busy. 

School reached it's crunch point, and so I decided it was time to take up numerous new hobbies...  That makes perfect sense right?  Papers were due, assignments needed to be finished, I have finals to study for, and I made my first quilt, perfected my 2-at-a-time self striping sock yarn, learned to needle felt, taught myself how to knit socks 2-at-a-time, bought a spinning wheel..

*sigh*

It's been a good time. 

Here are the goodies.  First the quilt:

Amanda was very patient with me as I picked the fabrics.  At one point I think I had ~20 different bolts layed out trying to decide what to do.

If I had to piece them all you get to look at them all...  (be thankful there aren't pictures of each individual block!)

My first attempt at laying out the pieces.  It got very confusing.

Then we came up with something else.  It seemed good at the time, but I didn't really like it when it was done.

So then I used powerpoint and did this:

And the finished quilt out of the wash!

 So soft...

As I said...  I've been busy.  Here is the yarn that I just listed on Etsy.

This orange gave me fits.  First it was too bright.  So I played with colors and used some blue to tone it down.  Then it was too "dirty"...  So I had to add more orange and red to brighten it up.  The end result is gorgeous!  Such a deep color totally made it worth it. 

Black Widow!!!  Yarns like this make me wish I could find out what people do with them.  I want to see the socks knit from this.

Same with this.  It makes me smile.