Oasis show w/ Heidi & Elizabeth of She'enedra

Heidi & I went to a workshop with Super Kate & Nikki of Subee Djinn at the Oasis on February 6th, unfortunately for them we were the only students...but it was fortunate for us! We got some real one on one critique and practice doing their special duet techniques.


After the workshop we got to dance in the evening showcase which is always fun. It was pouring rain that night and in Southern California that scares everyone! So the audience was really small, but our friend Richard Lowe was there and he took some nice pictures.



Tonantzin is on a hiatus until April because she does taxes for a living, Ayse still dances with us occasionally but for now She'enedra is mostly me & Heidi...we do have some upcoming gigs with the other girls soon.

On Friday we are dancing at the beautiful Hollywood restaurant Dar Maghreb! Come and see us if you are in town!
http://www.darmaghrebrestaurant.com/client/darmaghreb/index.html

Corespun

I've been making some corespun yarns now. It's a great way to show off those beautiful batts that you see everywhere. It is done by taking a laceweight yarn as a base and spinning fiber over it on nearly a 90* angle. It's trickier than you would think! I went out and bought a few cones of Jaeggerspun wool/silk lace weight yarn for the core. It was probably too expensive of a choice, but after I tried core spinning on cotton, I wanted something that would have the stretch of wool and the soft bounce. I'm going to give the cotton core another whirl (no pun intended) Esther of Jazzturtle recommends using crochet cotton and her work is beautiful so I'm going to pick some up this week and try it out.

I used to think corespinning was kind of like cheating, because you used a yarn that was commercially spun as a base; but now I feel it's just a different technique for a unique effect. And naturally being my silly self I will try using some of my own homespun as core one of these days as well.

Isn't this interesting???

me spinning at my jensen wheel
Originally uploaded by elizknitsspinz

As I mentioned previously I have been watching the Sit & Spin DVD and it's pretty cute w/ music and everything. So the other day while I was watching and spinning my son walked by on his way to the kitchen...then he stopped by on his way back past, looked at me and said "So you're making your own yarn?"
hmmm
I've been a spinner for how many years? There have been how many spinning wheels and looms in my home for how long??? It's very interesting to me that a mom can be doing things for sooo long unnoticed until there is a little bit of rock music added as sound track.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while!

But here are some pictures of what I've been doing instead of posting blogs....

Spinning my little fingers to the bone! This is some wool I bought while at SOAR I'm going to make a little bolero with it.

This is some delicious camel/merino blend I also bought at SOAR...I think it came out rather well! But I have no idea what to make it into...any suggestions?


And more wool I bought at SOAR that I Navajo plied (3 strands of singles).



And I ordered Jacey Bogg's dvd on spinning art yarns and am now busily learning new techniques. This is my first attempt at making corespun yarn.





And here is my first attempt at making coils...

In order to show off the yarn-I didn't want to knit it or weave it (even if I wanted to it wouldn't fit through the heddles & dents on my loom)-I laid out the yarn on stabilizer and then sewed it on my sewing machine then put it into super hot water to dissolve the stabilizer and voila! A scarf! This scarf is so soft and I just love it so much that I keep wearing it everywhere and believe me I'm running out of clothes that match the orange!