Goodbye Old Smoker Lady

Hooray for new curtains! These replace the vile old smoker lady curtains we used to have. They were disgusting. Dirty, lacy, and smoky. ewwwww. The fabric is a linen cotton type deal, part of my super cheap haul from Fabrix. I love fabric and am finding that its easy to build a fabric stash similar to a yarn stash. I find there is one key difference in the two stashes-- emotional attachment. I get all attached to colorways and blends and brands when it comes to yarn (for example, an unhealthy tendency to covet my Dream in Color Smooshy in Happy Forest.) With fabric, its pretty, but there are no designers or anything to get overly attached to. Maybe there is, and I am just a fabric-obsessing novice.


I was suddenly spurred to make these by a convo last weekend with Kristina and Sara in which they decided this fabric would be good for curtains. I measured, and the fabric was the perfect size for the window. Adieu to the last old smoker lady curtains!



These curtains are much more opaque than the vile old smoker lady curtains. This means I will not have to make accidental eye contact with the old smoker lady in the next building, who smokes out her window while seeming to look into ours. Despite the profusion of old smoker ladies, we do not indeed live in some smoker filled retirement community.


Basically all I did to make these was hem the edges, and make a two inch casing at the top in which the curtain rod goes. All in all, it was about 30 minutes of cutting, pinning, ironing, sewing, and ironing again.



My dyed yarn from Kristina's Birthday dyeing adventure:

I think I might use this lighter skein to make a shawl or scarf... and the brighter ones can be sockies.





Happy friday!

Sunny Yarn on a Foggy Weekend

Kristina and I engaged in all sorts of fiber fun this weekend. The two highlights: spinning and dyeing. As part of my birthday present to Kristina, I provided all the materials and set up for yarn dyeing. The yarn is 6 skeins Knit Picks Bare Peruvian Wool in fingering weight. The dye is 3 of each red, yellow, and orange Easter egg dye tablets. The dye packs were two for a dollar back in April after the holiday passed. We used Kathryn Ivy's very user friendly yarn dyeing tutorial. Here are our results....

Steaming:

Out of the steamer:



Hanging dry:

Kristina brought her drop spindle and some beautiful fiber, and showed me some tips to refine my spinning technique (which was very lacking). No pictures of my results yet, but here are some action shots of Kristina:



She spins from the fold, and produces fine, even singles that are currently far beyond my skill set! I love the green and pink combination, especially when they mix in the same single.



Good weekend with good friends!