Emery Q. Asterism
Doin' mountainy things. I see fnords.
She/they | ✨💛🤍💜🖤✨
I tag my art with #inkthusiasm and my fibre work with #KnittingPirate. You might also know me as cougrr/qgr or Belaset.
My primary hobby is collecting more hobbies - I draw/paint, play guitar and drums, knit/spin/crochet, snowboard in the winter and bike the rest of the year, and I sure play a mean pinball.
| KnitBlog | https://www.knittingpirate.com/ |
| Fundraiser for My Brother | https://www.patreon.com/inkthusiasm |
My brother hasn't had any luck finding a job since he was released, and my SIL works for the local school system so her income is on summer vacation along with the kids. I'm still posting weekly art to the fundraising Patreon for them. Almost all the content is public, if you want to follow along!
In today's post, I rescued a half-mandala from several ugly stages and made something beautifully dark :)
#today has been awesome :)
First, I found on FB marketplace a set of the same coloured pencils that I still have from high school - but I have only the well-used set of 24, and they were discontinued in the late '90s, and sets of 60 go for *hundreds* of dollars on ebay, and this lady was selling it for $10??
So Husband and I drove to the meeting place and shared a cup of chai, and then I bought a set of pencils that appear to still have their factory sharpening on them. Never used. Holy wow.
Then we went to the library to get cards, since the county we were in is part of the reciprocal borrowing system with our home county - but there's no inter-county loan, it's just that you're eligible for a card at the other counties' library systems if you go there in person to get it.
While I was sitting on the bench near the checkout desk and putting my new card onto my keyring, a very angry person started shouting and flinging books right next to me!
I didn't feel like I was in any danger and the whole incident was over in about 20 seconds, but wow, that was unusual.
Further update: a tiny soft sample from the "waste" that I hand-carded. I picked out some neps during carding, and many more when I spun the singles. This is only about 3g, so it didn't take very long.
Second update: here is the last of the locks, a little damp still. It sure does look like three years of growth, as if he *tried* to shed the fleece, but didn't quite get there.
Update: Turning fleece into spinnable fibre!
The top pile is about half of the sample of fleece I brought home yesterday. In the middle, the nice locks I've flicked open - darker at the base, sun-lightened towards the tip of each lock. At the bottom, the short, neppy, broken-off bits. I'm going to try to hand-card some of that to see if I can rescue any of it.
It does still have a bit of lanolin in it, so I need to decide if I'm going to wash the locks again. I also have to decide if I'm going to spin directly from the locks or if I'm going to card first. Leaning towards the former, because carding will surely introduce more neps into this very fine wool.
No one expected shearing activities yesterday, least of all the sheep. (Soay are supposed to shed their fleece every year... but this one didn't.)
More on the blog: https://www.knittingpirate.com/2025/06/09/in-which-the-pirate-helps-shear/
It's a terrible time for Sai to get sick - the Bad Guys™ have just found them, and Marie (the one playing with her phone, in this drawing) doesn't yet know that Karla and Sai are werewolves.
...but she's about to find out.
(I seem to be illustrating scenes from my novel instead of, you know, actually writing it.)
I also did some doodling today! It started with the yellow sploosh, which reminded me of a dandelion, so I drew a lioness on it. Then I figured I might as well fill up the rest of the page and share it :)
Three months ago I started this spinning project with four colourways of fibre, and now I have twelve skeins of three-ply yarn in a smooth gradient.
