How on earth did my Divine Bird icon turn into a mushroom? I didn't do that. It wasn't like that this morning. It's even been changed in my image folder.

WTF.

My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul
divinebird goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as Renaissance Bar Wench.
dawn_metcalf gives you 13 softly glowing cinnamon-flavoured jawbreakers.
drakonlily gives you 11 green peach-flavoured wafers.
grand_sealink gives you 5 mottled green root beer-flavoured pieces of chewing gum.
huaman tricks you! You get a block of wood.
jaggedapple tricks you! You get an eraser.
kathrynt tricks you! You lose 6 pieces of candy!
kling_to_me tricks you! You get a piece of paper.
skullx tricks you! You lose 4 pieces of candy!
sorda_sol gives you 14 mottled green tropical-flavoured gummy bats.
tezcatlipoca98 gives you 9 light blue cherry-flavoured wafers.
divinebird ends up with 42 pieces of candy, a block of wood, an eraser, and a piece of paper.
Go trick-or-treating! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern.

AHAHAHAH Jaggedapple, you gave me back that damn eraser. :P

Trick or treat, my dears! And yay, my blog really is back. Check out pics of my socks (I KNOW SO EXCITING TO YOU NON-KNITTERS) here. :D

Yeah, it's time again--get yer writing butts over to the NaNoWriMo website and sign up, ya pansies!

I am actually kind of fired up about it this year, more so than other years. Like, I always look forward to it, but this year I'm facing it as a catalyst for my nearly dead writing mojo. I've got a great story (*I* think) and some great ideas, but I've been lacking the drive to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. But if I can get 50k words out of my head, maybe...just maybe...I'll feel the old magic once more.

Heck, even if I don't, I'll still have 50k words written that I didn't before! :D

Oh, and I'm Chocobo Goddess (two words) on the site. FRIEND ME OMG.

Check out pics and stuff on my blog (which is back up, yay!) at http://divinebird.com/wordpress

Also, did you know you can get updates from my blog that show up in your flist here on LJ? I have an LJ RSS feed that automatically sends a message to your friends list and links back to my blog. You can also comment on the entry here at LJ; I will see the comment either way.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled lurking! ;)

Yep, Divinebird.com is back up and running again! Hooray!! To celebrate, here's a fun little meme from the always-entertaining jaggedapple:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next seven sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
6. Tag five friends to do the same!

After the hem and tuck have been stitched, press them well on the wrong side. The hem and tuck finished are shown at No. 9. Sometimes the perforations will mark the fold line of the tuck, in which case follow the directions on the label.

If the tucks are not provided in the pattern they must be allowed for in cutting, and experiment in pinning them in place must determine their position, depth and the space between. Both sides of the skirt should be traced at once with tailors' tacks, as explained. After the stitches are cut and the two sides separated, fold each tuck along the line of the tracing thread and baste. Now measure from the under side of the tuck, toward the bottom of the skirt, the allowed width of the tuck.

From Authentic Victorian Dressmaking Techniques, edited by Kristina Harris.

I tag drakonlily, kling_to_me, duskydawn, esotaria, and skullx. I admit this is technically the THIRD book I grabbed, as the first one was a book of sock knitting patterns with no real sentences on that page, and the other was a collection of Belle Epoque illustrations of women with NO text.

I finished several large projects today, and now five of my six spinning wheel bobbins are empty. It always feels so good to see those empty bobbins looking back at me!

My spindle demo at the Coventry Farmer's Market fiber festival went pretty well today. I brought all of my spindles to show different types to the crowd, as well as different fibers. While I was successful in keeping people's attention, there were a few things I'd change for my next demo. First and foremost, I'd get myself a freaking timer!! I was supposed to speak from 11:45-12:15, but when I was done, it was 1:00! No wonder it seemed like it took forever. :) At least I know I have enough material for demos like that.

It was also nice to sell some things for once. I sold a pair of baby hats and a set of notecards, and a bunch of people really looked at my yarn. I mean, REALLY looked. I hope I see this translate into a few sales from the shop! Deb & Sandra did very well, too, so it's worth it for us to go back again. Each time we do this kind of thing, we learn something new to make the following time even better. One thing I know is that we are DEFINITELY getting our own canopy, and I will make fabric panels for the walls so we have some shade. I also need to get my own folding or collapsible chair. It's finally become a real necessity.

Oh! And I bought myself a little Bolga basket. It's the perfect size and shape for my drop spindle projects, it's portable, and it's cute. I'll get a large one someday, but this one makes me happy on its own. I also picked up some more Wensleydale roving from the same source as my prize-winning skeins. My goal is to spin enough for a sweater, especially since it's a nice neutral charcoal color. I have been asked in the past whether or not I can get more, so now the answer is YES.

Divinebird.com is still down; I'm in the process of redirecting to Divinebird.net, but that may take a little while. *sigh* I just want my site back. Anyone else have ideas about how I can get some results? It'll be two weeks as of Tuesday. :(

PS: jaggedapple, I met someone today who also works in Ghana, and she had two Ghanians with her! I told them I knew someone who worked with the Volta school and she was very happy to hear that. Also, I need to teach you to spin so you can teach people there. She came to see my demo because she wanted them to learn. :)

I'm hoping this pops up to the top of searches soon. My page, DIVINEBIRD.COM, is down at the moment. I am adding DIVINEBIRD.NET as a secondary domain until I can get the .com back up, but even that will take a few days to start.

Please bear with me while I get my page back on track. I am now considering my domain to be held hostage by Internet Names For Business, and I'm pursuing any route I can to get my name back.

Thanks, guys!

Still no website. I officially hate the people who bought my old webhost, for a) not getting back to me right away and b) not even telling me they were the owners of my domain when they bought the company. Until then, please bear with me while I maintain a holding pattern here on LJ. That being said...

First of all, my yarn got a 4th place, a 2nd place, and two 1st place ribbons at the Big E's Fiber Nook skein competition. Best part? One of my skeins got Best of Show! :D

Pics:



And now, seriously, the coolest meme ever:

( My Interests Collage! )

duskydawn, drakonlily, and esotaria, you guys totally need to try this. I beefed up my interests on LJ so I would get more pics, and I love how it all looks together.

Hey, all--I'm not dead, but my page sure looks like it. I'm waiting on hold for the second time AS I WRITE THIS to talk to the DNS people at my old webhost. Turns out my domain expired, and though it was supposed to be renewed, I think it was set up with my old CC. To make matters worse, it doesn't appear that I ever got any emails at ANY of my addresses to indicate the domain was about to expire, so now I'm without a domain until I can get in touch with a real person. :(

The absolute WORST thing about this is that someone linked to me on StumbleUpon, and my traffic went through the roof this week!! AUGH AUGH and now the site is down. WHYYYYYY???

This message in frustration brought to you by GreatValueHost, the people who bought Fuitadnet, who used to be my host way back when. I need to see if I can get my domain transferred somewhere so I don't have to deal with them anymore. OMG.

This blog is not actively updated; my posts are now on Divinebird.com where you can either follow the blog directly, or grab the RSS feed from the sidebar here on LJ.

That's all!

Because I just KNOW the Intarwebz can't get enough of me, the Divine Bird Blog now comes in new LJ-FLAVOR!

That's right, you just add divinebird_rss to your LJ-friendslists, and you'll get my posts WHETHER YOU WANT THEM OR NOT without having to go hunting for them.

Many, many thanks to Cendri for doing this for me, because honestly, I am a total RSS n00b.

Aside from the inevitable yarny talk, what do you guys want to hear about?

Hey, don't forget my blog is now over at THIS PLACE. I miss hearing from you! I know there are a bunch of people who watch me on LJ but unfortunately you don't get updates on your flist if I update somewhere else. I know a lot of what I talk about is yarny stuff, but there is more, and I swear I would post a lot more often if I knew people were actually *gasp* READING. :D And with the blog, you can now get RSS updates--so use your Google Readers or whathaveyou and you don't even need to come looking for me. :D

So yeah, just don't forget me! Even if I'm not posting on THIS journal and I'm not constantly on IM like I used to be, I am still online and alive. Come visit me! I even post pics!

I think I've finally got it figured out.

From this point forward *crosses fingers* I should be posting directly to my website, using WordPress's lovely blog feature. I have set it up so that you don't need a special ID to post (though you can create one if you want), you can still comment, you can still see the art/yarn/woodworking, and I THINK you can even get an rss feed going.

If you would, please check it out and let me know how you like it, then bookmark it for future updates. I will continue to be a member of my LJ communities, of course, but will likely not post much of anything here from this point onward.

Eventually, I'll have divinebird.com point to the divinebird.com/wordpress/ address, but that's for when I have brain cells left to process the, uh, process.

Divine Bird Website Grand Opening!

Clicky!

Wow, I have been a BUSY girl these days! Between getting a new job, spinning up a storm, and doing a demo at a local fair, I'm beat! I've spent the last couple of days photographing, arranging, and posting my latest yarns on my actual site. I thought about posting them here, but some of the collages are quite large. I don't want to break your screens, so check 'em out here: Textile Gallery

I've also updated my Etsy shop with a whole bunch of the yarns pictured on my page! The crazy thing is that even MORE are coming...wait til you guys see the sock yarn that's on my wheel right now! It's fabu.

Tomorrow or Sunday, I'm dropping off my entries to the Big E skein contest (that's at the Eastern States Exposition, for you out-of-towners)...wish me luck. I've never entered yarn before! I planned to at this year's Massachusetts Sheep & Wool, but you may remember that I missed the deadline, making the Big E my actual first competition!

Speaking of which, I got the best compliment of all the other day. The guild member who told me about the competition is someone to whom I look up when it comes to spinning. When she heard that I had officially entered, she gave me a big grin and said happily, "Well, it's nice to know we'll actually have COMPETITION this year!" This is the kind of person who always places in these things, and rightly so. She and a couple of other guildmates usually compete and I think they've been hoping for some fresh competition. Though the statement could sound haughty to some, I know this woman, and I took it in the best way possible. If she thinks I can compete against her yarns, well...I feel better about entering now. :)

( Ok, so I said I wouldn't post my collages here, but I can't resist one. )
Ta!

With color, it's from nature: watching how every plant and bird and animal looks against the backdrop of leaves, grass, water, sky, etc.

With design, I look at historical & ethnic costume and modern couture and try to blend them together into something new and wearable.

Big shocker, I know. I have been amazingly busy here, spinning a bunch of new yarns both for my shop and myself. I'll have more pics this weekend, but here are a couple of new collages. Stop me if you've heard this before...

( Large pics under here, yo )

I realized that I tend to make these for just about every yarn I've spun so far. I should see about getting them printed up and putting them into a book as a kind of journal, yanno? This is why I keep all the original photo files in their full size/unretouched/etc. :) It would also double as a kickass yarn portfolio!

Come to think of it, when I look back on my yarn photos, I realize that not only has my spinning improved with practice, but so has my photography! I've always been conscientious about taking photos of my textile works, making sure whenever possible that the background is free of too much clutter and the item or yarn is fully visible. However, when I had a simple point & shoot digicam, there wasn't much I could do in the realm of artistic value. The quality (or lack thereof) just wasn't worth the effort.

However, when my dad loaned me his Kodak DSC5000, things started to change. I think you can see where they start to evolve. Getting rid of the flash made a huge difference, as did choosing my backgrounds for clarity, minimal distraction, and beauty. I stopped taking pics at night, too, which made me take advantage of natural sunlight to truly communicate the beauty of the fibers. Recently, I set up an area on my desk that allows me to create a soft white backdrop. While it's not as pretty to me as the yellow embroidered fabric is, the uninterrupted white isolates the skein and gives the viewer a purer view of the color and structure.

How cool is it that the practice of one skill enables the improvement of a separate skill? :D

Same stuff from the other day, better photographed this time and with far better lighting.



( And the rest are under here )

I think it's time to just start updating my website. What do you think? :)

Pretty 3-ply yarn, spun from the July batch of Abby's Batt Club batts.

The process: spun 2 blended batts on separate bobbins, then spun the color-separated batt on a 3rd bobbin. Plied those 3 singles together.

The result: 430+ yards of 3-ply yarn, 26wpi, 3.75 oz.

The remaining batt: will be spun and chain-plied for heels & toes of socks. No, seriously, Abby, I will SO be making socks from this. ;)

The pics:





I hate how flash photography turns out, but this was the best I could do for the crappy light we had today. I will try to get better pics tomorrow.

I think this is the finest I've ever spun, and the most even yarn. This is for me.

Wow, so the evening was a mix of ups and downs that ultimately balanced out on the positive. I suppose you can't ask for much more in life, you know? I may go into detail later, but for now, here's the recap:

Went to see Yarn Harlot in Madison, CT at RJ Julia Bookstore. Of course she has a name (Stephanie Pearl-McPhee) but since I talk about like 8 million people here, I am not going to add yet another girl's name to the list. So she's YH for this entry. (Sorry, Steph!)

We got there about 20 minutes late due to waiting for someone who had specifically told me he'd meet us elsewhere (major mistake on my part and MAN am I sorry), trying to stop for gas at a gas station that was...closed(!)...and a set of the very worst directions I have EVER gotten from Google Maps. No, really. I have no clue why we ended up on back roads when there was a perfectly good highway nearby! Grr.

Still, we got to hear YH speak, and I got one good picture of her--because we were late, we sat on the floor almost at her feet. Here she is:



I tried to get a few others but they didn't come out. :(

So she finished her talk, and then everybody piled out of the room to get their books signed. I met up with Jenni and Briana, two more of my friends, and bought my book for YH to sign. We got in line to wait for the signing, dragged out our knitting, and just chatted for a bit.

Then this other girl came up to me and asked if my shirt was a Threadless shirt, which it was. And then it turned out she was on Ravelry. And so I brought out one of my Moo cards--the ones with my yarn on them--and I said, "awesome, friend me on Ravelry! I'm on there as Divinebird."

She blinked. "Are you a Yarnie?" she asked, and when I nodded, she said, "I need to give you a hug! OMG! I can't believe it's you!"

WTF? Someone recognized ME? Huh? Had she bought yarn from me before or something?

Turns out she was the recipient of a yarn swift I'd made. The moment she told me her screen name, I almost freaked out. What are the chances, really?? I hadn't thought about her being in the area, and I'd never seen a picture of her. Man, that ruled. So we all ended up at the back of the line, and I realized we needed pics all together. It was like Six Degrees of Yarn Harlot.

YH signed my book and chatted with us for a while, and then we got this pic (ignore my exhausted-hot-out-of-sorts expression--I wish I'd hopped to the back of the pic, for reals! And wtf is up with me looking taller than everyone?? I'm like 5'4".) of the whole group.



We all decided to go over to Village Pizza for dinner, as I had not eaten a real meal all day and it would give us a chance to hang out & talk. YH asked if we knew of a place to eat in the area. Props to Briana for immediately suggesting she come with us for the pizza. :) YH agreed, and we planned to meet over at the pizza place after she finished up some of her work at the store.

Briana was laughing at me when we walked down the street (we were on our way over to a new little tiny yarn store that had stayed open for the event) because apparently she's never seen me fangirl anyone before. I guess she's only seen me around people who, though famous in some way, don't impress me the way YH does.

To put it another way, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is one of my personal heroes. Not because she's a funny writer who writes about knitting (though that does make her COOL), but because she uses her powers for Good. She never shoves it down our throats, but somehow she manages to convince her fans over and over again that Medecins sans Frontieres could use a few bucks. She turns her tour stops into opportunities for local shelters to receive hand-knitted hats before the winter. She raises our collective awareness of individuals and groups in need of help--monetary, emotional, and physical. She seems to do this as a matter of course, and that's an aspect of her personality that I would like to emulate. I always fall short, but it gives me something to which I can aspire. It's like thinking of others and how we can help in a tangible way is something that's second-nature to her, and through it all she remains an exceptionally cool chick who enjoys a drink and some pizza with absolute strangers.

So yeah, I fangirl her. I can't help it.

Meanwhile, back at the description of the evening...the wool shop was tiny. No, smaller than that. And it was warm. I mean, something like 8 people who are already warm from walking on a hot night suddenly pile into a small room filled with wool--that is a recipe for HOT. I grabbed a card, though, and I will def. stop back in next time I'm in the area. When I'm not distracted by personal heroes and heat and a strong desire for food.

The Village Pizza folks were lovely and very tolerant of our taking over the middle of their restaurant, half an hour before they closed for the night. We hung out, had some food, drank some birch beer, and generally had some nice conversation. I do hope I didn't make too much of a fool of myself (see above fangirling) though Melissa and Lilith said I wasn't too bad. ;)

After YH left to go back to her hotel, we headed out ourselves. We made a quick stop for gas (at a gas station that WASN'T closed, take THAT, other gas station!) and water at a grocery store, then got on the highway.

I don't get down to Madison often. On average, I go once every year or two for specific events. I don't know the area well, or oh, which exits to take on the way home. I somehow missed the exit for Rte 9 and didn't realize it until I'd gone about 20 minutes past it. We got our bearings again, turned around, and went BACK to the right exit. Once back on track, we didn't have any problems the rest of the way home.

This was totally going to be a short entry but I guess there's no way to talk about the evening in ten words or fewer. I kicked myself all night about missing Aaron, because that really was my fault, but there wasn't anything I could do by the time we connected. Lilith DID say later, "Jenny, next time we go to see YH, we are leaving TWO HOURS EARLY."

Sounds like a plan.