Handmade Holidays - Macro Series

Woo hoo! The holidays are coming up! In........ like 4 months. Ha ha. For the first time in about 5 years, i'll actually be home for the holidays, with MY parents versus my husband's. I've loved sharing my family holiday traditions with my husband's family. I've loved camping on Christmas and forging our own traditions as a newly married family. I've loved learning his family's traditions and especially loved eating their Thanksgiving feast! But i'm pretty stoked to have Christmas back at my childhood home, with sledding!

I'm so excited. I'm also poor, as per usual and need to scheme up some handmade gifts. Handmade is almost always better, poor or not, and I always get a lot of joy out of hand crafting or cooking gifts for my loved ones. As an artist, I'm never at a loss for gifts to give, but this year I'll be focusing on my new fiber art skills, soap making, and other homey crafts vs fine art.

For a little bit of fun, I'm beginning a series of posts with macro images of my handiwork. Little teasers of the gifts to come, and after the holidays i'll post the projects in full. I'm excited to make, to give, and to show off the months to come.

Feel free to leave comments with your guesses as to what the items will be!
Here's the first one, destined for a certain sister of mine:

This post is also found at the Simple Lives Thursdays blog hop

Spinning a Yarn!

Clementine and I have been productive lately! Spinning singles, plying doubles, cleaning and skeining, I've even been experimentally crocheting (secret Christmas presents) with great success! Now, I just need to learn how to accurately measure my skeins so that I know how many yards are there... and to properly plan projects so that i know what to do with what.

My very first ball of plied handspun - spun and plied on a spindle

Increased productivity!

My first wheel-plied yarn, still unwashed and on the niddy noddy. Washing brings out the beauty and softness!

All washed and evened out. So bouncy and soft!

  Pretty, ay? Not bad for my first month on a wheel! I think i'm a natural. Hee hee. Lots of room for improvement, though. I can't wait for my first, almost totally evenly spun and plied skein. For now, i'm rocking the hand spun look of handspun, with some thick and thin action.

I'm not sure what critter this creamy white fiber came from. I procured a lot of nice fiber for a lady out in Henly, TX before I moved, and not all was labelled. It was nice to spin, and is very bouncy and mostly soft. I spun a bobbin full of singles, so i ended up with a bobbin and a half or so of plied yarn with a length of singles left over to add to something else. I have a feeling i'll have a lot of 'bits and pieces left over' to work with from now on. This skein is about 4.5 ounces and the other is a little less. I may dye one of them if one of my nice spinning friends hosts a dye day, hint hint hint. Or, i might try the koolaid method - i just prefer natural looking colors so i may just leave it as is.

What do you think, knitters and crocheters? Would you like working with this yarn, or is it still too lumpy and uneven for your tastes?

This post is part of the Simple Lives Thursday blog hop!