atomhearteve

coming back to my business senses!

2009-06-22T23:06:15Z

hey all,

it has been a long time, ain't it?
i am going to be back on the wagon now and am going to be posting some new yarns soon.
so far i have updated my shop with some herbal love products, so if you are in the mood, come and take a look.

cheers!

eva

Etsy: Your place to buy & sell all things handmade
atomHEART.etsy.com

and hello to you too.

2009-02-17T07:36:43Z

hi blog!
it has been so long. so much has happened between the time we last shared.
good things.
bad things.
in between things.
but i am alive and plan to find sweet happiness with my wheel once again....soon... i hope.
hello out there fibery people!
where have i been?!?

last year this time while being a productive knitter/spinner:

I need my Power Beanie!

Happy Birthday Nana

2008-11-17T20:30:12Z

Hello Friend Filter!

Wow, how long it has been.
I am going to try and blog more once again now that I have escaped my spin burnout and have returned to the world of fiber escapes and cotton wooly dreams.

This weekend I got the chance to finally hang/chill/laugh with Lexi, quite the dynamo of a woman and an excellent teacher.
We packed ourselves and our wheels and lots and lots of fiber in Urban Fauna Studio on 16th Ave in SF.
It was an unseasonally hot day and we enjoyed the sun and lunch at a traditional japanese restaurant with nice sake. A good day was had by all.
Here are some pics and some yarns.

Camp Pluckyfluff SF

Ebel

2008-07-28T05:27:16Z

He is almost crawling you guys....
My little baby is going to be 6 months old in a week.
Where does the time go?

Turning over a NEW LEAF.

2008-07-28T02:04:53Z

Hey all:

I now live on a nice little property that is blessed with it's own spring that we all drink from.
As well, we have a little water marsh made from the grey water so I am deciding it is time to tone down the acid dyeing thing and switch to non-toxic natural dyeing using the alum mordant and cream of tartar.
Hopefully I still get the crazy and wildness that I love from my acid dyes, but I know it might mean going a step or two down on the "pop" scale for colors, but it is just time to go green.

First yarn from my alpaca loot!

Raspberry Kisses:

Natural black baby alpaca and candy pink handyed Romney locks
Wrapped in vintage sparkle threads
Spun super bulky thick and thin

And some natural dyeing with artichoke leaves and acorns (for the tannins/mordant):
Created a nice gold ochre.

Fiber score of mammoth proportions.....

2008-07-26T06:54:40Z

I just had to share the bounty- fiber score of my life.

20 alpaca fleeces, and 10 baby alpaca fleeces, all clean and no pesticides used and the best part is that they are LOCAL and I made a friend with the farmer lady, and 85 year old woman who is an inspiration.
She hasn't spun since '89 after the earthquake broke her wheel. I am going to go back up there and spin with her and bring my Louet and do some art yarns..... she was over the moon.

What a wonderful birthday present from my mom....

My car swimming in a sea of fluffy love:

I spun up a yarn with the natural black ( my favorite fiber ever!) baby alpaca tonight....it was way softer than the softest merino....le sigh

Friends!

2008-07-23T07:29:23Z

Oh how I have missed thee!

So much to tell, so much to show...

First I guess I will start with some yarns....

Opal:

Fiber:

The Muppet Show:

Yarns both listed at my shop: http://www.atomheart.etsy.com

My birthday present: WINGS! I have been wanting wings my whole life.... now I have them almost finished, once more sitting.

My boys:

Brown and blue....the colors of their eyes....perfection.

How the hell is everyone???

xo

Where have I been friends??

2008-06-26T04:33:30Z

Hello people!

Wow, things have been a whirlwind around here....

We did a week camping trip that was amazing and SO MUCH FUN.....I am so loving my family of boys and men right now...
Then we came back to a psycho nightmare that is leaving us a bit homeless but oh, one hour later we have a cool huge house for cheaper...WTF??
What is going on? Is everyone's life this crazy right now???

I miss my LJ peeps and hope everyone is doing dandy...
We are moving out and packing so I might be MIA for the next couple weeks....
I will be back tho!

Wish me luck!

xo

Some pics from the trip...

Wild Rose:

Pinnacles, CA

Our humble home:

Me and T:

Father's Day:

Good times!

July Knit Girl Voting~

2008-06-22T15:33:43Z

hello all!

It is time again to vote for the next Knit Girl and since my good friend Meg is running for Miss July I am here asking again for your help on votes.

Miss Megzilla is a fellow Cancerian and so incredibly sweet, that it almost hurts.
She put together the Afgan project for Indulgence, who recently lost her husband in a head on collision and really puts the love and sweetness into the Knit Girl group.

Vote for her here at http://badknitgirls.com

Thanks everyone~

xoxox,

eva

KNIT GIRL JAZZ

2008-06-18T00:52:20Z

atomhearteve @ 2008-06-08T10:00:00

2008-06-09T05:05:50Z

So the polls are in....

I am Miss June Bad Knit Girl!

Check out the profile page at http://www.badknitgirls.com

Thank you everyone who voted. There was a little shady business that went on in the voting......but I still won. :snort:

And in most exciting news I got to have and awesome day selling my wares at Crime's Of The Craftin' Kind and did pretty well.
This is the first of many so hopefully with better advertising more people will find out where we are and what we are doing.

It was pretty funny when the punk band started playing while the retired seniors strolled thru. But the Little Cesars and Coors were free, so you could color me happy.
Here is a pic of Bredette and my booth.
Isn't she a hawtie? Seriously, she had men hanging out around our booth all day.

This is it!

2008-06-06T08:08:08Z

If you are in the Bay Area come and check this out!
I have been so busy getting ready for this I could cry just trying to talk about yarn....so come and see what the fuss is about at:

And if I haven't already squeezed a VOTE out of you, today is the last day to vote for Miss June Bad Knit Girl.......

http://www.badknitgirls.com

Thanks to everyone who voted!!

:mwah:

Spin Off and Dye In!

2008-06-01T01:13:10Z

Today my IRL spinner friend Laura came over to try her hand at dyeing and spinning on her new Babe Bulky wheel.

What fun!

Here is what we did....in pictures...

What fun!

:le sigh:

I wish every day could be like this.... pure joy.

All votes count!

2008-05-30T18:16:39Z

hey everyone!

So it is already super close at the polls.

Please cast your vote and tell a friend. This is gonna be a close call, so please HELP!

One vote per computer.... xoxoxooxo!

http://www.badknitgirls.com

Knit Girl Voting Time!

2008-05-29T21:58:53Z

Hello all!

Starting tommorrow (Friday, May 30 and ending June 7th) I am going to be running for June Knit Girl on Ravelry.
This is a great group that embraces all women in all stages of life and offers support and sassy encouragment for all.
(If you haven't checked them out, do now!)
I love this group of women and frequent the group as much as my favorite spin groups these days.
It would mean so much to me to get your votes so I could represent as a Spin Girl as much as a Knit Girl.
I love you guys!
Thank you!

**Please vote for me as June Knit Girl at http://www.badknitgirls.com
Only one vote per IP address/computer please!**

Strange Love.....

2008-05-24T19:02:04Z

Somehow Beater and Squirrell II's relationship just "works".
I guess there are happy endings after all.

Love is blind people, love is blind.

CocoRosie love....

2008-05-21T17:51:55Z

Found this and wanted to share.
I love these girls....

Supercoil Weekend

2008-05-21T07:15:17Z

:Earthworm: - BFL and handyed suri alpaca
:Tundra: handyed corriedale, local natural brown alpaca and mohair remnants

**All that work for 20 yards of yarn!
Ode to the supercoils!**

The history of women and the wheel.....

2008-05-15T21:50:04Z

Orgins:

"One controversial aspect of the history of technology in North India concerns spinning wheel. Because cotton textiles originated in India, it has long been assumed that the spinning wheel, as used with cotton, must also have been invented in the subcontinent, perhaps between AD 500 and 1000. However, early references to cotton spinning are so vague that none clearly identifies a wheel, according to Irfan Habib. The references could equally indicate earlier methods of hand-spinning. The earliest unambiguous reference is in a document dating from about 1350 which mentions women using spinning wheels in the previous century. Habib also points out that the most usual word in India for a spinning wheel is charkha, and this derives from the Persian language. He therefore thinks that the spinning wheel was introduced into India from Iran in the thirteenth century.

If the spinning wheel is not an Indian invention, where did it originate? The earliest clear illustrations of this machine come from Baghdad (drawn in 1237), China (c. 1270) and Europe (c. 1280)...There is some evidence that spinning wheels of some sort may have already come into use in both China and the Islamic world during the eleventh century."

-Encyclopedia

Women spinning through the ages.....

"The spinning wheel was an attractive emblem because it was so malleable. For patriots it symbolized women's contributions to the American Revolution, while for sentimentalists it conjured up a timeless domesticity. Craft revivalists saw in it the harmony of labor and art, feminists women's untapped productive power, and antimodernists the virtues of a bygone age. For Elizabeth Barney Buel, the wheel captured all of these ideals, and more. In The Tale of the Spinning-Wheel, published in Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1903, she attributed the success of the colonial experiment to female industry. "The plough and the axe are not more symbolic of the winning of this country from the wilderness, nor the musket of the winning of its freedom, than is the spinning-wheel in woman's hands the symbol of both," she wrote. Colonial wives "spun into thread and yarn the flax and wool that was raised on the farm, and then knitted every pair of stockings and mittens, wove every inch of linen and woolen cloth, and cut and made every stitch of clothing worn by a family which generally numbered ten or a dozen Johns and Hezekiahs and Josiahs and Hepzibahs and Mehitable Anns. No wonder a man could go to the war for his country's independence, when he left Independence herself at home in the person of his wife." Although she did not claim to be a feminist, her prose radiated a conviction that women mattered in the past, and that they had not been given their due.

For Buel, the spinning wheel united women across space and time. She laid out her evidence point by point, dropping learned allusions to archaeology, art history, folklore, mythology, opera, and the Bible. "No written page of history, no musty parchment or sculptured stone, is so old that we cannot find upon it some traces of the spindle and distaff with their tale of joys and sorrows spun into the thread by the fingers of patient women whose hearts beat as our own to-day, in tune with the common throb of humanity." New York artist and Litchfield summer resident Emily Noyes Vanderpoel added authority to the argument with delicate drawings of mummy cloth, Stone Age fishing nets, and medieval distaffs as well as colonial flax wheels. Her frontispiece for the book captures Buel's notion of a "woman's sphere" centered in the home. A youthful spinner, dressed in the gauzy costume of the early republic stands in a vine-covered doorway, looking outward but securely planted within. Her enormous wheel, with its hub centered just beneath her slender waist, measures the reach of her arms and the power of her sexuality. She is both productive and potentially reproductive, fitted to her setting yet visible beyond it. "

-A Bed Sheet in Beinecke
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

My first Mother's Day of TWO

2008-05-14T05:11:27Z

In pictures....why I live my life.

This is how he wakes up every day....oh to be so happy!

Weekend yarnage...

2008-05-14T00:46:57Z

Ok, so here is my stash from this weekend, sorry I lagged....I just well, you know about the duct tape and all. :le sigh:

The upper left is a granny stack coil yarn called " Green Beans" and the upper right is a really soft and lofty corespun called "Seaweed" and the last one is a supercoil of a wrapped crazy carded single called "Candy Shop".... I think that was the craziest yarn ever.....need to make more...

Here are some close ups for you yarn p0rnographers....

I am now officially a mod at the Intertwined Spin Along on Ravelry.
So come on by and play...we don't bite.

Check out the SAL at Intertwined this weekend...we are going to be supercoiling!
So you all know what you will be seeing this weekend...lol.

Holy MOLEY YARN Stocking....

2008-05-13T07:12:04Z

I have been so super busy on the wheel lately....sent off my yarns to Material Whirled and have been stocking up for the Crimes Of the Crafting Kind show next month (CO"T"CK not COCK like I mistakenly wrote last time.)

Got my spin on at Sheepie Dreams on Saturday and then after the funnest day ever I put my wheel down before loading it into my car and it fell over backwards and cracked! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Tears fell after that, esp due to the timing of this macabre event. I don't even consider my Ashford as a wheel anymore, so that was not a reassurance. Sooooo, until I get the part to fix the main base of my Babe, I am spinning with duct tape ladies, yes, duct tape. Now you can make fun of my plastic wheel AND the duct tape! lol!

I love my Babe so much still, it just spins so well, it is like it was made just for me.

Here are some yarns....

Etsy: Your place to buy & sell all things handmade
atomHEART.etsy.com

I also got to spin on a great wheel on Saturday.... :le sigh:
Yet another toy I desire now.
I have two in my family that need work, so maybe I can fit it into my two room shack?
Think again. I will have to keep the refrigerator outside if I want a Great Wheel to fit in here!
Well,

that is all...

Happy Monday ladies.

xo

Mother's Day

2008-05-11T18:18:28Z

I just have to share this story with you all.
I have a confession to make.
I am in love with a Knit Girl.
Her name is Rebecca......

Here is why....

Mysterious Package arrival at doorstep Saturday morning:

Who is this from? Are these huge pasties?

Hmm, it is addressed to "Miss Spin/Knit Goddess", what is this???
Ok, I must wait til tomorrow to open it....no cheating....(atomHEART still totally oblivious to Sunday's meaning)

Sunday morning! I got to sleep in~ wow! New woman.
What do I do before I even get my green tea or go pee?
I run right to my secret suprise and rip into it like a horny teenager...

Lookie inside...

Following directions, I open the big one first....

And for the record, I did fart, but I didn't fall over.

But wait....there is more!
Look what I found in package number two!
Two needle bracelets in my colors~ size 7 and 4

Oh,oh, oh Rebecca how I love thee....
I am not kidding about that marriage proposal.
We could be like the Brady Bunch, your girls, my boys....
A little farm and some hot rods....

And a sleepy headed smeared makeup kiss.

MWAH! I love you girl~ you brought tears to my eyes....

It is official....

2008-05-10T05:54:17Z

1920's lithograph drawing of a woman spinning on a Great Wheel.
In solid brown.

I am besides myself with glee.

I wish all my tats were done in brown now.

Best part was that it was FREEEEEEEEEEE!

spin challenge "Poor Little Critter"

2008-05-08T22:04:22Z

Voting is going on today!
Go check out pluckyfluff's blog and yarn museum.

Guess what I chose? Not that hard to guess eh?

"SealTIN aka: Beater"

I chose to use a beaten seal pup for my poor critter. This little guy hadn't had a chance to swim or eat a fish before he was beat down and skinned for his fur. But he has had a second chance. I found him discarded in the sea and pulled him out and reclaimed his bloody white coat from a drunk fisherman, who had fallen asleep.
Slowly I repaired him, stitch by stitch. His fur is somewhat reattached but I haven't been able to stop the bleeding from his mouth. My son has decided he dosen't mind, and has adopted him for his own. SealTIN was the lucky one, he got another chance. 300,000 seal pups this year weren't so lucky. They were a part of the worlds largest marine mammal hunt last month.

Materials: white mill end wool, black Merino bits, red Cotswold, Romney and pure white bamboo.