i made a pretty

hi mom

you made me. that was a fairly awesome thing to do.

i know i've been the retarded black sheep of the family sometimes. made you lose your shit and caused you lots of worries and heartache when you deserved none.

sorry about all that.

and now i'm 5000 miles away and haven't seen you in six months. life is good here, but not being able to hug you and say thank you and have farting contests with you sucks donkey balls.

i really really miss you.

back in the winter i saw this lovely merino-silk fibre at work that reminded me of you. i was only just learning to spin with a wheel, but fearlessly i sat down every night after work anyway for a month to spin a skein of yarn. my first full skein of yarn, in fact.

after ogling the finished 500-yard skein for a good week or so it seemed only fair that you should get the very first thing i've ever knit with my own handspun, and so i started knitting you a shawl. the pattern is the same 22.5 degrees one i used to make my own shawl for TNNA.

towards the end i managed to run out of yarn for the scalloped edging, so i dyed some more fibre at work. not being very smart i added soap to the dyestock, and the fibre got felted. but being very persistent i spun it anyway, even though every second felt like a good old prison-style ass ramming (as you know i'm quite fine being gross).

and this is how it turned out.

it's soft and shiny and lovely and for some reason it's perfectly stripey too -- i can't say that was intentional, since i just split the fibre into two bobbins and plied them without any colour planning whatsoever, but i'm willing to accept all of your oohs and aahs anyway.

i hope you like it. i love you and miss you and one day i'll be back and we'll have us some good stinky times again.

unnatural born

apparently i'm pretty awesome at this spinning thing.

did i mention that i only started with a wheel over christmas?

don't mean to brag or anything. but that's two months to the date.

seriously. don't mean to brag.

oh, fuck it. i know i'm awesome.

newlyweds

there has been a sharp and rather unforgivable decline in the amount of knitting i've been doing in the past few weeks.

here's why.

yes. i have been lured into the dark side. she's new, she's gorgeous, and she's mine.

finger bondage

thank god my left middle finger's into bondage. otherwise this picture might seem odd.

john wayne is politely averting his eyes...what a p***y

to those of you not familiar with the joys of handjobs (the giggle-inducing literal translation to käsityöt, meaning crafts in finnish), that's my puny hand after 3 days of spindle spinning and andean plying. turning that hot mess into 2-ply yarn was another 3 hours.

i can't believe i've actually grown fond of doing this. it's slow and it's unpredictable, and it causes so much physical pain that i'm pretty sure it does count as S&M. what you're seeing here is no more than 40 grams worth of twisted arms and cramped butt muscles and 80s metallica (hairdo's and all). and it's only 1/4 of the lorna's laces BFL top i got back in november. and once all finished it still won't amount to a whole lot in terms of yardage.

but somehow there's a poetic element of concentration and achievement there, meditation even. turning a raw material into something i can use. being more than just one part of the shearing-dyeing-spinning-knitting chain. mastering a skill that's not inherently programmed into the brain of every tom, dick & harry out there.

just wait for the finished yarn. it's gonna be epic.

i do not have a problem

i am currently working on this.

i am currently also working on this.

and this.

and this.

and this.

and this.

and this.

and this.

and this.

i do not have a problem.

spinning is not hard

you can all relax now. i've found peace. i no longer feel the need to use my drop spindle for horrifying purposes such as gouging out the eyes of anyone who comes up and says "oh but spinning is not that hard". i'm now the master of myself and that demonic phallus of doom.

to recap, here's what i barfed up on my first spinning session back in november.

this is from session no. 2. not as much of an eyesore anymore, but still too snarly and completely unusable for any of my lofty purposes. few things in life are good enough for me, as you surely are aware by now.

finally at some point during the third session yesterday i managed to find my groove. and spinning actually became fun. fun, i tell you! every single muscle in my body may disagree, but fuck them and their stupid stupidness.

see how even and consistent and pretty the finished yarn is? the way things are going i might actually end up using this shit for something! sure there's still a little too much twist, and i'm still really really slow (a staggering 23 meters in four hours) but dude! i made it and i'm happy. besides, i was way faster to learn than the chick at knitty, and that's what counts.

i need to go buy more fiber now.