By AmeliaWho can resist a good fiber (fibre, even!) club. Not me ... Besides running Ring Your Bells and The Rhyme Times, I am having a blast in a variety of other yarn and fiber clubs myself. It's great to keep in touch with things from the viewpoint of the customer, and see how other vendors treat their customers. Keeps me on my toes and making sure I give my best to my own club members!
My newest joining was the Socktopus Fibre Academy (SoFA -- what a great acronym!). If you haven't run across Diane Mulholland yet, she's someone to watch! She blogs as Needles on the Move and is very helpful on ravelry as dianemulholland (pretty clear, eh). She's the spinner behind the Fibre Academy, so I'm really looking forward to this.
We've been asked to post our meme responses to their kick-off meme, "My Top Ten". So here, you all get to see a little bit more about me, and my take on what I like from indie dyers, fibres, and learning about spinning!
- Fibres: cashmere! if I had to downsize my stash to fit in a suitcase, I'd put all the cashmere in it. I could spin happily to the end of my days, and likely never empty the suitcase, spinning laceweight. I love shiny too, so anything with silk in it. My favorite wool is California Variegated Mutant, crimpy-springy and soft.
- Spinning technique: DK weight sock yarns, 2-ply, overplied -- this is my usual yarn, but I think I'm beginning to shift to laceweight weaving yarns (2-plies and singles). I love learning new techniques too, experimenting with boucles, cables, and more.
- Plying technique: 45 degree angle upright kate like my Alexandria Horizontal Kate, when I'm being organized; a center-pull ball on my thumb when I'm rushing.
- Dyers: Crosspatch Creations, Three Bags Full, Come In Spinner, Ewe Give Me The Knits, Pigeon Roof Studios, HollyEQQ ... there are more, but that should be enough to get you in trouble too :-)
- Colours: Shifts with my mood. Purple and green are perennial faves, I love marine tones for calming, rich jewel tones for pepping me up.
- Book: mainly escapist fiction, a good mystery: Dick Francis, Agatha Christie. I read a lot of kids' books to keep up with what my children are reading -- Harry Potter, Twilight. And a ton of non-fiction: if it's about spinning, I've probably read it. My favorite spinning book is Mabel Ross's Essentials of Yarn Design for Handspinners
. My current book-stack is weaving books.
- TV Show/Movie: House, The Avengers, Sherlock Holmes -- still the mysteries. We watch on hulu.com, veoh.com and other onlines hooked up to our TV. My favorite movie of all time, remains Gandhi - love spinning to it! Before that came out, it was Lawrence of Arabia.
- Spinning Mag: Spin Off, Spindlicity, KnittySpin.
- Favourite time of day: Dawn -- I love the rising sun lighting up the world, so gradually and yet still a surprise when full daylight finally pops into place.
- Indulgence: chocolate. Or more cashmere :-)
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posted 5 February 2009 at http://askthebellwether.blogspot.com/
