Sunday, July 30, 2023

You have a new subscriber…

About eight months ago I signed up for a Substack subscription/account/identity – I don’t even know, what it really is called. I had seen that Margaret Atwood was now publishing on Substack and I wanted to follow those posts. Soon followed India Flint, and by Sarah C. Swett (more on her in another post in a few days). As for ‘browsing’ and finding interesting new voices, that has not turned out to be the case for me, so far. I do not want to spend too much time on it and going down a rabbit hole, as I would rather spend more time making things than being caught in the digital web. 

But imagine my surprise when, a few weeks ago, I received an email with the title ‘you have a new subscriber’, and supposedly somebody has signed up to follow me on substack. I am not aware that I have registered as a writer, I thought I was just signing up for reader, and the only thing I have written are a couple of comments where I am allowed to. I am not a paying subscriber to India Flint, so I am not allowed to comment on her, although I might have given her a hint on the Bach piece she was talking about a little while ago. I do understand that this app is offering a place for writers where it is supposed to be easier for them to earn money for their writing by acquiring paying subscribers. While I am considering upgrading, perhaps, I had not even remotely thought about writing on Substack myself. When I was young, into my teenage years, I did say I wanted to be a writer. To be honest - the two or three novels I wrote as a teen were lousy and have been lost to the obliteration of times. And somewhere along the line I gave up that yearning to write novels. Can't come up with a good plot and pull it throuhg, although I did find three or four fantastic first sentences that would have made good entries.

I have indeed published a book – my PhD thesis, not exactly a bestseller that made me rich, and, to be honest, I don’t even know whether it could still be bought, after all, that was 20 years ago. I have written a good number of more or less interesting newspaper articles for our local paper, but gave that up a while ago because that was rather low paid. I write this blog – not regularly enough, and, for my liking, not always interestingly enough, although some posts were pretty good, I think. And I write for the German Guild’s quarterly magazine for members, which is fun. Unfortunately a couple of times the people I wanted to write about had just been ‘done’ by the commercial magazine Patchwork Professional, which meant that we put off the feature in the Guild’s for a while and may return to it at a later point. 

However, I wonder what that lone subscriber was expecting, how he (male name) came across ‘me’, and why on earth he subscribed to somebody who had not published a single post. 

Since April I have been working 60% and had thought I would be more relaxed for sitting down at the sewing machine. Then I would have had interesting stuff to write about here, too. Hasn’t happened. The 60% is still encompassing a lot of emotional energy, my husband’s illness is not exactly for the light-hearted, or at least I can’t take it light-heartedly. And July was Tour de Fleece, as mentioned in my last post. As last year, I spun along. This year I did not have 3 weeks of isolation, so I wasn’t expecting to accomplish really much in that area, but as it is the closing date today and I looked at what I managed to spin, I think I did pretty well. 

First goal had been to ‘spin every day I am in town’, and finish as much of the red as possible. That happened pretty quickly. 


Went ahead to spin the third thread for the 3-ply.



I plied the red, 

 

then re-started on this very fine cashmere-something mixture (which I am still working on), for spinning at home, and the bobbin is much fuller now.

 


And carded most of my blues together to have another spinning project for when I take the traveling wheel to go and spin somewhere. 

 


Which I did a bit this week, twice, ending up with an impressively full blue bobbin right now, and still a good load of more blues to spin in the future. 


 

But the tour is over. A lanolin bath was in order.

 


I am not measuring, but I like the pictures of what I have done. So perhaps, hopefully, back to the sewing machine again. Putting on the backburner the things at work that have been tying up my creative energy more than I appreciate. And – I am going to Festival of Quilts this coming Thursday. That should be nice. But not a whole lot of sewing will be going on during those days, either.

Monday, July 10, 2023

TdF 2023, Rest Day

 The Tour de Fleece 2023 started a week ago Saturday and I am 'participating' again, as has become a bit of a custom for me during the last years. Not taking it too seriously, for example, I didn't post myself a special 'challenge' yesterday, although it was an especially hard day for the cyclists. 

Final goal of stage 9 yesterday... I really do like biking,
but I am not sure I would want to go up this hill in a race!

Fortunately, this year I am not in isolation with the grand sickness, but that, of course, means, that I don't get to spin along the tour exactly on every day. Nevertheless, I have done pretty well so far in terms of yarn produced.

I spun the largest part of this red, only a small amount had already been on the bobbin.

Then I carded a remnant of some orange-red-y fibers I had with gray and Nassi silk.



It is supposed to be the third thread in a 3-ply, and I am now filling the bobbin gradually.



I am more than halfway through the carded lot and thinking about plying a first attempt with the little bit of the one thread on the picture above, which, if I do a bit of weighing and calculating, might tell me whether the pure red is enough or needs to be spun on a bit.

But I have also finished the "Entangled in Yellow" binding (now it only needs a tunnel). 

 


And because I felt a severe urge to start a new quilt I have been wanting to get going with I also threw a few turquoise scraps on the wall - and ended up fiddling with this little boat that wants to be made. Not sure where it will take me, or how big it wants to be.


 

In the realm of establishing order I tried to introduce a kind of inventory of my spinning fibers as well. These are not all of the boxes I own, but at least they now carry an indication of what is in them. Makes it easier to find something. Or to be reminded of all the different things available for carding and spinning experiments.