Category: Craft

Walking entertainment

On By CarynIn Cats, Craft, dog

The Texas summer is ramping up, and I don’t like walking when it is hot outside. Luckily, I have a large kitchen counter with room to walk circuits in the house. To keep the kitten occupied, I tied a ribbon to a small clip and clipped it on the back of my shirt.

Ribbon tied to a clip
Kitten following the ribbon
Izzy also finds the ribbon enticing

The drier air is also better for my spinning, since heat, moisture, and pressure are the factors that felt wool. Missy the dog also thinks spinning time is kick the ball time, and it is amusing to watch her figure out the timing to drop the ball in my path so I can kick it before walking past. So yes, I walk the house spinning with a drop spindle, kicking the ball for the dog, trailing a ribbon for the cats. I am walking entertainment, but I’m getting in those steps!

Kitten ramp

On By CarynIn Cats, Craft, Life Hack

Thor the kitten was very interested in going out into the catio. The problem was, he is too small to jump back in the window. Hm. I grabbed a length of hardwood, wrapped it in outdoor fabric, secured the fabric with heavy duty staples, and screwed the end of the board to the catio structure. Now he has a ramp.

Kitten ramp

Like all good accommodations, this one can be used by everybody (well, every cat body), or easily by-passed by the older cats.

Thor using the kitten ramp.

Thor took a very long afternoon nap after spending time exploring the catio. He is relegated to the bottom layers until his muscles develop and his limbs get longer to make the big jumps possible, but that is OK because it gives Izzy the adult cat a place to escape.

Plying hemp

On By CarynIn Craft

After finishing spinning the single, I made a two ply yarn from my hemp sample. I transferred the yarn to my niddy noddy, then tied it in four spots and removed the skein.

Hemp yarn off the spindle onto the PVC niddy noddy
Skein of 2-ply hemp yarn, before finishing

The next step is to boil the yarn, which still gives me trepidation. It will happen, but I need to sneak up on it.

Spinning a blaze

On By CarynIn Craft

My youngest gave me a box of yellow to orange dyed merino wool and I decided to spin it up separately rather than blend it (so many choices with these bundles of colors!)

Spinning during a walk

I like the small bundles of wool because they transport easily; I can walk with the roving loosely around my fiber hand, or I can pop the fiber into a container in my purse so I can spin while waiting.

Fiber and spindle stash in my purse
Spun and unspun Merino wool

Cloud tassel

On By CarynIn Craft, photography, Sky

Every year I make bookmarks for my youngest’s teachers. The teachers love them, and my youngest gets enthused about ideas. This time she wanted herself flying through the sky, so we took her picture laying on a bench, and I Photoshopped her onto a sky with fluffy clouds (since she chose to wear her fluffy cloud sky shirt). But what to do for the tassel? I went digging through my stash, looking for white felt, but instead found some poly batting. I could work with that. To make the clouds, I cut out a oblong of batting, then melted the edges with a candle flame to reinforce the edges and make it more cloud-like.

Melting the edges of poly batting
Poly batting “clouds”
Bookmark with cloud tassel

I attached the “clouds” to the bookmarks with a length of pearlized cotton. For this blog, for safety sake, I blurred out her name and face. The bookmarks that went to the teachers were not blurred!