Over the last year, as part of our Fiberygoodness activity, we have released a range of ‘Yarn Recipe Cards’. These are simplified instruction cards for spinning different kinds of yarns, completed with step by step photos. The first was a set of 12, mostly yarn designs I have worked on and developed over the last couple of years. The second set was an collaboration between Arlene (Spin Artiste) and I, and it was prompted by the words of the late Maya Angelou, an amazing woman with some astounding insights. This was Arlenes suggestion and challenge 🙂 And I say challenge because it often is just that, taking words, or some kind of abstract concept, and turning that into a tangible and solid form, in this case yarn. To me this is what makes a yarn ‘art’ – the layer of concept and abstraction that has caused it to be created at all! This is exciting to me and I love the thought exercise it gives me as well. Arlene is especially good at selecting these challenges! We chose three quotes each to work on. Today I want to share with you the motivation and explanation of one of the three yarns I came up with, it is my no twist single: ‘Brave”. This is why. The quote: In the flush of love’s light we dare be brave And suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet it is only love that sets us free. (Maya Angelou)   I adore these words. To me these words describe unconditional love, simple but complicated, daring and full of risk, and yet it leads to ultimate freedom. Love challenges us to take chances, to be brave, it takes everything we are and we give that freely, and that act itself returns our freedom to us, in my mind it is all about letting go, and acceptance, and the consequence is the removal of fear. How to express that in yarn? wow! Its so BIG! This is my attempt… The Yarn: Along with the recipe cards, Arlene and I both did a short write up about each yarn design and how we related the words to the fiber. I would like to share with you what I wrote about this yarn, and Maya’s words. I hope it gives you some ideas for your own creations and another way to form a bridge between concept and concrete in your fiber work. Brave. A Woolwench yarn. I really connected with the notion of love requiring bravery, also that it offers us the chance to BE brave and even pushes us into taking risks. This prompted my idea for creating a very very low twist...

I just saw that the last post I made was the free recipe card with my new yarn design, I hope lots of people have tried this out and had some fun with it! Today I want to share my latest little passion with you! For a long time I have been yearning to find the time to explore book binding. This is because (confession time) I am a total stationery geek. I love notebooks, pens, fresh sheets of paper, different kinds of surfaces, and embellishments. I have seen so many amazing and inspirational things that people have done making their own books, and about 6 months ago I bought a bookbinding book, packed with different ways to put paper together! I swore to myself that I would one day work my way through that book, one recipe at a time. Well ok, that day hasnt yet come, BUT I did manage to incorporate some book making into our latest Fiberygoodness project! I learned about Coptic binding and discovered, it wasnt as hard as I thought it would be! Yay! I did some experimenting and came up with a design for some book covers, ready to go with a neat little coptic binding. The project I wanted it for was to create a record book/journal/study book to go with the course, that could turn into quite an heirloom piece. To me that meant that the entire project should be hand crafted, not just sticking stuff into a notebook off a shelf, but really crafted, page by page into something that could become really special. I talked to my mate Andy at Majacraft and sent him my design. Well ok I sent him several.. but this one worked the best, and YES he could make these for us to go with the course!  So there are a couple of reasons why I am so excited about this 🙂 FIrstly, I LOVE that this will make a really special book, a bound manuscript or an adventurers journal.. It was a very very satisfying thing to make. And secondly, because I designed it to be customised, see that grid of holes in the front? That is so cool.. it can be a weaving grid, warped at any angle and even in different sections. Or it can be a stitching board to sew into like giant cross stitch, or it can be used to sew a knitted or crocheted sample or mini artwork onto, or ALL those things at once!In this photo above you can see how I warped it in two directions… and in the end I also cross stitched over the entire weaving:This was just my first weaving, I had so...