In the days of my youth

In the days of my youth, originally uploaded by confections.

I've been having lots of fun with my flickr account lately and discovered this flickr toy last night. You upload a portrait and it Warholizes the image.
I have also done one of my maternal great-grandmother, my grand-aunt, and my mother. I'll add them below.

My sister and her kiddies have left after their visit, and it is very quiet around here. I did a little ragamuffin yarn spinning yesterday and will handpaint some sock yarn later today. Fiber Friday on Etsy is coming up and I'd like to have a few items to post this week. I'm off to Bedfordshire....

Shuttle, bobbin and handwoven cloth

Shuttle, bobbin, and handwoven cloth, originally uploaded by confections.

This is one of my handwoven pieces from last summer. I'm hankering to warp one of my looms this spring and create some new cloth. In my yarn stash, I have a handpainted warp chain from a class I took with Christie Dunning at the University of California, San Diego Crafts Center. During the same handpainting session in that inspiring class, I painted a complementary skein of weft yarn.

In a few days, after my sister and her lovely kiddies head home after a too-short visit, I'll pull out my copy of Learning to Weave by Debbie Chandler, complete some calculations for my envisioned project, and get down to warping. Oh, the possibilities!

She is a weaver; through her hands the bright thread travels. -- Judy Collins

a cuppa

a cuppa, originally uploaded by confections.

My sister and her children have been visiting from Pennsylvania this month and yesterday we trotted off to our favorite tea shop, Tea-upon-Chatsworth, in San Diego. We had a great time in this tearoom, owned by the gracious, lovely, and talented Joy Walsh. To check out her current menu, visit her website. Make a reservation for tea if you are in the area; you'll thank me, I promise.

My Victorian Grand-Aunts Galbraith

My Victorian Grand-Aunts Galbraith, originally uploaded by confections.

These stylish ladies are the sisters of my maternal grandfather. I love their Victorian grandeur. Several of them were schoolteachers and never married; they tatted and painted on china and traveled abroad. My mother remembers playing dress-up with her sister from a trunk full of their cast-off dresses. Their mother was a dressmaker before she married my great-grandfather.

I recently began to do some serious genealogy on-line and found a long-lost cousin in North Carolina who had this photo and several dozen others from my mother's family that we had never seen. What a treasure!

Travel Fantasy

You Belong in Paris

You enjoy all that life has to offer, and you can appreciate the fine tastes and sites of Paris. You're the perfect person to wander the streets of Paris aimlessly, enjoying architecture and a crepe. I took the little quiz in the link below and voila! I should be in Paris! I've been there twice, but I was the proverbial starving student backpacker one time, and a burned-out exchange student with an impossibly heavy suitcase the other. I must go back at this older, wiser stage of my life, revisit the ghosts of the past, and explore this city afresh. See where you belong and Bon Voyage!

What European City Do You Belong In?

Ashford Niddy-Noddy with Ragamuffin Fabric Strip Yarn

Ashford Niddy-Noddy with Ragamuffin Fabric Strip Yarn, originally uploaded by confections.

Yesterday I received a quillhead attachment for my Lendrum spinning wheel. It functions much like a drop spindle, but is attached to the spinning wheel. The newly spun yarn does not have to pass through the orifice, so chunky, textural yarns like this one (composed of remnant fabric strips) can be spun with relative ease. This mini-skein reflects my first attempt. I'll post other skeins as I create them.

Green Flash Colorway Handpainted Mohair Roving

Green Flash Colorway Handpainted Mohair Roving, originally uploaded by confections.

This is the raw material I used to create the snarly boucle yarn in my earlier post today. The day-glo green is named after the phenomenon of the green flash that sometimes occurs at the exact moment of sunset on the Pacific Ocean (and elsewhere). If conditions are exactly right, as the last bit of the sun sinks into the ocean, a brilliant green flash occurs. I have witnessed this flash twice at Sunset Cliffs in San Diego, California. When trying to find a name for this piece of handpainted mohair roving, I remembered the green flash, and it just seemed to capture its essence.

Mini Niddy-Noddy with Snarly Boucle Yarn

Mini Niddy-Noddy with Snarly Boucle Yarn, originally uploaded by confections.

Last year I had handpainted some extra-fine mohair roving in a colorway I call "The Green Flash". I unearthed it and spun it into some snarly boucle at Starbucks last night. This little sample skein is the result. It looks for all the world like an unfinished bird's nest in the pictures below.