Puttering Around ...

Ukpik

     Well, these days my husband, Don, is hard at work in his woodshop making some scroll sawn products for the craft show next month. Therefore, he's tracking all sorts of debris up through the house, which is keeping me busy with Mr. Vaccum. I've got most of my products packed up for the show, and that leaves me to make some sort of thing to display some of the smaller jewelery items. I have to go for a little walk out back later, as I'm thinking of cutting a small hardwood and trimming back all the branches, then spray bomb it some Christmas color and secure it in an attractive and simple base. That ought to solve the problem rather nicely and after all, it is a pre-Christmas show. 
     Since we had several days of wet and cold weather, I've been playing with some little critter designs, trying to capture the cute factor. Who's old enough to remember the Ookpik rage? I was a kid but I remember everyone had to have one. I got one at some point and it was really cute .. all furry and big eyes. Of course, ookpik is simply the Inuit word for snowy owl and it's more correctly spelled Ukpik in the Canadian north these days. However, they were to die for cute so here is the rendition I came up with. These are needle felted and around three inches in height. The feet and tail form a tripod allowing them to stand alone. 

   Yesterday I began spinning again, using my drop spindle. I have so much natural white short staple medium wool from meat breed sheep here to card. Since I've already carded a bucket full to the needle felting stage to use for core wool, I decided to try spinning some and make at least 100 grams. Here is the start of a fairly fine single ply. I've mixed in some long staple BFL (oooh .. so soft and silky) at about 25% that was dyed a lilac color. Today I'm working on the other single ply, not yet photographed. I'm mixing in about 50% violet dyed Corridale and then I will be plying them together. I hope it will be fine enough to make a thick pair of mittens. At least that is my goal. If it turns out a bit too coarse, I'm not sure what it will be turning into.