(Sp)interview

Way back in August I posted about how I taught myself how to crochet. I showed how I used a store-bought yarn to make a hat and felt it, which was really fun. That hat didn't turn out too well, but it did teach me a lot. Shortly thereafter I found another hat pattern that I wanted to try, and I also wanted to try out some different yarn. I looked for and researched yarns, and fell in love with the handspun yarns I saw on Etsy.com. They're so much more unique and interesting than almost anything you can get from your local craft store. After going through and oohing and aahing over each Etsy offering, I finally came to the decision to buy yarn from 222 Handspun. I contacted Elysa, the owner of the business, to inquire about a custom order. She enthusiastically took on the project of making a beautiful earth-tone skein for me, based on some inspiration pictures I sent her.

I'm going to review the yarn itself and show you the hat I crocheted with it in a post next week, but I do have a treat to share with you right now! Elysa was kind enough to grant me an e-interview, which I present below. It was so interesting to me to learn about the processes at work behind a handspun yarn - and about the background and creative process of a fiber artist. I hope you enjoy her responses as much as I do!

Zach (That's me!): Tell me a little about yourself (where you grew up, where you live, what other hobbies/interests you have, etc.). 

Elysa: I'm originally from Barrington, Rhode Island, but I've lived in Northern Virginia for about 16 years. I'm from a pretty artsy family - my Dad is a photographer and my mother is very crafty, so naturally I take after them. I studied photography and do that when I have time. I'm pretty much into anything crafty and have tried everything from soap making to quilting to jewelry making. I'm definitely more of an animal person, and I've volunteered in the past with a no-kill animal shelter and help support spay/neuter and feral cat TNR programs. My dream would be to have a hobby farm with some sheep, alpacas, bunnies, and a white pony (or unicorn if I can get one). I'd also grow flowers and vegetables. In fact, I just recently got in trouble with my Home Owner's Association for growing pumpkins in my front yard. I'm kind of an outlaw gardener I guess.

Zach: How/when were you introduced to fiber arts?  

Elysa: When I was a kid, maybe about 8 years old, I attended a summer camp run my a friend of my parents. It was just me and two other kids learning how to garden, weave, make a loom, use natural dyes, and other hippie kind of stuff. It was amazing. I still think back on that experience and how much it influenced me and introduced me to making things by hand and working with natural materials. I was always entranced with weaving and textiles for some reason. My mother had unsuccessfully tried to teach me to knit, so weaving, sewing, and macrame were the things I could do. My mother and the women in her family were good seamstresses and she taught me how to sew. She made lots of clothes for me as a kid and taught me how to sew clothes for my barbie. I wish I still had the poncho and some of the great 70's stuff she crocheted for me. I'm blanket obsessed and one of my biggest fiber-related regrets was giving away a mohair blanket I got at the Blarney Woolen Mills in Ireland to an ex boyfriend.


Zach: Do you knit or crochet?  

Elysa: Ha - see answer above! I'm totally dyslexic and have difficulty coordinating left/hand right hand movements and counting or remembering sequentially, so knitting is a huge struggle. I admire people who can do that! But I really don't have time with all my spinning so I'm OK with letting someone else do it. I just wish I could have someone make the designs I have in my head though.

Zach: Describe the process of yarn making (where you get the material, what type of dye you use, how long the process takes, etc.). 

Elysa: I buy a lot of wool from local farms in Loudoun County, Virginia or when I go to fiber festivals like Maryland Sheep and Wool. I'm very lucky to have tons of sheep and alpaca farms close by to where I live. Lately I've been lazy and buy a lot of already washed fleece, but when I see a good raw (unwashed greasy fleece) I will take the time to scour it and skirt it which means picking out all the yucky stuff like bugs and dung. I don't think people realize when they buy handspun how much work can go into processing the fiber even before it's spun into yarn. It takes days to wash and dry a fleece which on average is about 5 pounds of fiber. I dye the fiber in a large roaster pan using acid dyes (which is less scary then it sounds). Acid dye is powdered dye that reacts to an acid like vinegar or citric acid and binds to the protein in the fiber. Once the fiber is dyed and rinsed, I set it out to dry. You have to be very careful or wool will felt when agitated or exposed to extreme temperature changes when wet. When everything is dry, I either spin it on my wheel directly from the loose fiber, or I create a batt on my drum carder. Running it through the carding machine into a batt aligns all the fiber in the same direction so it is easier to spin. I spin the fiber on a wheel much in the traditional way spinners have done for centuries. The whole process of creating yarn can take weeks to complete.

Zach: Do you have a studio? What is your work space like?  

Elysa: I have a spare room which serves as my studio and packing and shipping central. I've completely outgrown my space though. Most of my fiber is organized by color and type into large stackable bins. I just recently sold my first spinning wheel and drum carder to make room for my second generation of equipment.

Zach: Do you have a "day job"?  

Elysa: I'm a User Experience Designer for an online education company during the day. It's like a Web Designer - I make sure that the site and applications are intuitive and easy to use. I feel lucky because I'm in a creative field for my day job, but my yarn business allows me to do what I want to do and have complete creative control.

Zach: Where do you find inspiration for the color palettes you spin?  

Elysa: I'm really a color addict but I go through phases. Recently I've been using a lot of neon and it sells very well but sometimes I'd like to use subtle or more natural tones. There are only a few colors that I really just don't like and stay away from like bluish greens (unless it's pale aqua which is my favorite color). I tend to go for unusual colors and contrasting palettes like lavender and orange together or acidic tones like mustard and chartreuse. Sometimes I see palettes in a JCrew catalog or on Pinterest and I try to match my dye to it. I doesn't always come out the same, but I find it gives me a boost in new color direction. Mixing dye is so much fun but it can be tricky to reproduce certain colors. I don't take dye recipe notes even though I know I should.


Zach: What is your favorite fiber to work with (spinning or knitting/crocheting)?  

Elysa: I love Cormo or any really soft, bouncy wool. I also love mohair for its distinct fuzziness that reminds me of a favorite blanket from childhood. Alpaca is lovely to work with also.



Zach: What is the best and worst part of the process?  

Elysa: I think the best part might be when I get to see what people make with my yarn and fiber. I love it when someone makes something really wonderful and interprets it into something that I never could have imagined. Just the fact that someone would buy something I made is the most rewarding and validating thing for a creative person like myself. When someone really appreciates the work that went into making it and is willing to spend a bit more for handmade it's the biggest complement.

Zach: How/when did you get started selling on Etsy?  

Elysa: I've been selling on Etsy for a couple years now but I was a customer long before that. I love to buy handmade and always get inspired by what other people make. I've met some of the coolest people on Etsy and in the fiber community and I think it's a testament to the type of people it attracts.

Thank you so much, Elysa, for the great interview! If you have a question for Elysa, I bet I can get her to answer. Just leave the question as a comment below. If Elysa is willing, I may just post the question/answer next week in my yarn review post. Until then....

Snake String

Rick and Maria have done it again! The founders of Zentangle released a new tangle last week. It is called Bunzo, and I absolutely love it!

The Diva's challenge this week was to tangle a tile utilizing Bunzo. I'm always up for trying a new tangle, and since Bunzo consists of only one shape, how hard could it be?

Here the writer would normally state how difficult the seemingly easy task he just mentioned was, but in this case it actually was that simple, and I'm no normal writer! So if you haven't tried out Bunzo already, go do it! Now!

Last weekend I was watching my little 3-year-old brother, and he sweetly drew me a picture of our pet snake (the one featured in this post). It reminded me of a Zentangle string, especially since he drew it on a square piece of paper. So I adapted it into a string for my tile:

Thank you for the string, Seth!

I think my enthusiasm for this new tangle is evident in my final tile:

Tangles used: Bunzo, Paradox, Knightsbridge, and Bales.

I mentioned recently on Designed to Create's Facebook page that I wanted to do some night photography with my Zentangle tiles. Halloween offered the perfect opportunity! Of course, you need some light when you take photographs in the dark, or else you wouldn't be able to see anything. Desiring an unusual light source, I ended up using a candle's flame as my illumination. The long exposures required for the darkness allowed me to play around with the candle, moving it around while the shutter was open. Here is the result:

Falling Stripes

Another fun challenge from Laura of the I am the Diva blog this week - stripes, part two! 

I started with a simple striped string, and added one cross-stripe. That cross point was just crying to have an "X" drawn on it, so what better tangle to use than Xyp? I love Xyp - it's one of my comfort tangles. 

I expanded from there with Coaster, another fun one to tangle. Then some Btl Joos-esque things. And finally good old 'Nzeppel. They all combine into this tangle that I love! Is that boastful, to say you love your own work? 

Fall has definitely arrived here in Texas - some trees have already lost all their leaves, when only yesterday (literally, not figuratively!) they were full of beautiful brown/yellow/red leaves. We have lots of wind here - I don't know the voracity of the statement, but I have heard it said we're the second windiest city in the U.S. aside from Chicago - and when it decides to blow, it has its way! My leaf picture almost didn't happen. I admired the giant leaf piles (a.k.a. Zentangle backdrops) I passed on my college campus all week, and the day I finally brought my camera to shoot the Zentangle we had a nice-but-inconveniently-timed "moisting" (translation: moist misting) and strong winds. All of the lovely leaf piles were gone! But wait, in that corner over there, could it be? YES! A leaf pile! Perfect...except for the direct sunlight. Now what? If only I had my reflector I could diffuse some of the light. Staring down at the pile in despair, I noticed my shadow falling across the pile...maybe, If I stand just right, I can get my shadow to block the direct light and get some nicely diffused light. Bingo! Voila! Auld lang syne! It worked! And that's the story.

Creator - A Poem

If you've followed my blog for a while, you've read a lot of my writing, primarily my commentary on Zentangle tiles and my other artwork. I don't write poetry very often, but every once in a while inspiration will hit and I'll put some prose on paper. Last week was just one of those times. Here's the story:

Listening through Gungor's extraordinary new album, Creation Liturgy, I came to the twelfth track, "We Will Run/He Is Here". Expecting to hear the glorious harmonies of the band members raising their voices in worship, the instrumental lead-in prefaced a spoken verse rather than a sung one. The voice rose with the music, growing in intensity as the words flowed, the spoken word poem unfolding, initially delicate words transforming into an impassioned vocal epic. It was beautiful.

I researched the track, and discovered the poet performing on the album is Amena Brown, spoken word poet. She toured with Gungor, performing to their musical accompaniment. Here is a video of one such performance. I also love her poems Resurrection and You.

I'm not sure what got into me, but I decided to try my hand at writing a spoken word poem. 7:00 in the morning, waiting to go in to work, journal out, pen out, mind spilling onto the page. It was awesome - I just uncorked my thoughts and let them flow. I edited it, let a few people read it, edited it some more and then more. Now I'm just going to let it go, release it and see what happens. If you read it thinking of the style in which Amena Brown performs her poems, it makes a lot more sense.

Creator
He conceived everything you see
Everything that matters
He created matter
He built the world
He composes all your cares, worries, troubles
To build you up
Build to conquer
To conquer death, sin, Satan
That is His aim
To be victorious
He has a plan
A plan of salvation
Of saving
Sanctification
He is the Spotless One
One, because there are none spotless
No, not one but He
He fulfilled the plan
The nails in His hands
Finished a tour of earth
To bring us rebirth
He arose like a rose from a withered seed
Seeing the sun
Being the Son
The wood of that cross would be mine but for Him
The metal of those nails the only medal for my pitiful pursuits of piety
His power displaces my frailty
His blood my iniquity
He arose that I might rise
Beyond the skies
And see His eyes
Bliss
Ravishing the senses
Free from captivity
Free from myself
In the presence of the Almighty I will one day bow
I say that with surety
For He has assured me
That a place in His kingdom is mine
All mine
Because of what He did
How He rose
The price He bid
Buying me freedom, redemption
Satisfying the red
Now no need for the black
Out of that dark and into the light
It is light
His light
Light and peace
Hope
My hope
My peace
Jesus saves.

Thank you, Jesus, for saving me! Thank you for reading. If you have any comments or tips about the poem, I'd love to hear them! This is my first Monday post in a while, and you can expect more in the weeks to come I have a Zentangle book review in the works, an interview with a yarn spinner and a review of her yarn, more pages from my Sketchbook Project sketchbook to post - Busy busy! Until next time, tangle on.

Thinking Outside the Comfort Zone

Do you like challenges? Or do you shy away from them? I think my answer would be a little of both, depending on the situation. Challenges take you out of your comfort zone, throw you off balance, make you think. They also cause you to grow, improve, and truly live. I can't think of a challenge I haven't come away from without feeling it was worth it and improvement was made.

This week's Zentangle challenge truly challenged me. The Diva asked us to take inspiration from a charity called Beads of Courage. I think it's an awesome organization, but how do you boil something like that down to black and white, ink and paper? I could have gone the way others were going, and while I loved what I was seeing, it wasn't speaking to me saying "this is what you should do too."

The essence of the Beads of Courage program is the beads, and the essence of a Zentangle is a string (at the least it's what you build the rest of the tangle on). So I decided to make my string with ball chain to serve as a string of beads. Spontaneously arranging the string and tracing it onto a tile, I was off and running!

That's It (not!)

Well, kind viewer, that's my tile for this week. That's it. Have a good one!

Just kidding. This wouldn't be much of a blog if that's all that I said about my pictures, now would it? Although pictures speak a thousand words, here are a few more to explain the story behind this Zentangle.

Thread

Tangles used: Sankegg, Ixorus, Ix, Paradox, and Hollibaugh.

Do I have your attention now? In case you missed it, that is a Zentangle on a snake. Bet that's the first time you've seen that, huh? I'll explain why there's a snake in the picture later...