Barbara
LightNews LightNews
banner
calmspin.bsky.social
Barbara
@calmspin.bsky.social
130 followers 130 following 240 posts
Quietly creating on Treaty 7, Canada. 🇨🇦
https://bwanhill.ca
Posts Replies Media Videos
calmspin.bsky.social
New and old and new.
I’ve been immersed in Aran Goyoaga’s new baking book. Last week alone: over 5 hours in the kitchen building sourdough starter & testing out recipes. It’s her best book yet.
I’ve also started knitting again with this beautiful Akara Rose BFL yarn. I’ve had this skein for awhile!
Olive green cookbook with title: The Art of Gluten-Free Bread in clay coloured text. Author: Aran Goyoaga. A ball of plum coloured yarn sits beside the book and the beginning of a cuff of knitting on cable needles.
October 19, 2025 at 5:38 PM
calmspin.bsky.social
Construction paper collages of orange hands and hearts on a cool colour gradating background. Construction paper collages of orange hands and hearts on a cool colour gradating background. Phyllis Webstad quote at bottom of display: “Every Child Matters”
September 30, 2025 at 2:00 AM
calmspin.bsky.social
Still bothering me and I must comment that I feel this is a further affront to visual art education in Alberta. Not that I showed my kids some of the images from here, but, taking the award from my own 1985 high school art teacher home and wondering where culture in AB is headed.
Passage on Hellenistic art from “The History of Art” explaining the period of art where artists strived for realism in depicting a wide range of human experiences and emotions. ISBN 0 60035803 8 1985 Spine of a 1985 History of Art textbook, sitting on a standard vinyl wood veneer looking school desk.
September 9, 2025 at 1:55 PM
calmspin.bsky.social
Thank you so much for the share. There are some new titles I’m going to check out! Here are a few I use throughout the year (grades 1-4) Just picked up the game this summer for sub days/filling in the gaps. Have a great school year! 💫
September 8, 2025 at 1:38 PM
calmspin.bsky.social
When plans go awry,
be flexible and pivot.
Spin, read, spin and read.

Embracing a quiet day.
Foreground: an open book face down with the title: etta and otto and russell and james by emma hooper (2025 Selection Canada Reads). Background: a mug with water and two support spindles with blue and white fibre and a spinning bowl and spinning bowl with support. All on a yellow oak table in the sunshine.
September 6, 2025 at 4:32 PM
calmspin.bsky.social
A small return to my neglected labour of love. Collecting bread seed poppy seeds from the garden.
To the left: part of a small white bowl with green and black lines decorating the rim. The bottom filled with black, grey and brown specks of poppy seeds. To the right: a dried seed pod bouquet of Papaver somniferum lying on weathered wooden boards.
September 1, 2025 at 4:14 PM
calmspin.bsky.social
I am smitten. 💜
‘Thomas Edison’ dahlia. First time growing in my #yyc garden. Will definitely be trying to overwinter the tubers.
Large purplish red dahlia surrounded by green garden foliage. Bird’s eye view of large purple dahlia flower on out of focus oak wood background. Large single stem purple dahlia sits in a tall and narrow glass vase which sits on a pale oak table.
August 31, 2025 at 8:51 PM
calmspin.bsky.social
Yes. Begin again.
A perspective change will help…
and take time to spin.

Back to work.
A red and white fibre card in foreground, a rainbow single of yarn wrapped on a drop spindle, small pile of acrylic yarn scraps and burgundy day timer and black pen in background. All resting on an industrial brown wood plastic laminate office desk.
August 18, 2025 at 2:26 PM
calmspin.bsky.social
August 18, 2025 at 2:27 AM
calmspin.bsky.social
💜 @saylormade.bsky.social
A single purple poppy flower off centred in a blurred garden background of green foliage and red Coral bells.
August 13, 2025 at 9:41 PM
calmspin.bsky.social
Upgraded the aesthetics of my spindle storage. IKEA Täting
Black plastic basket with holes on the left sits beside a natural fibre woven basket from IKEA on the right. Inside the woven basket are wooden support spindles for spinning wool, sitting upright and suspended between the basket weave.
August 13, 2025 at 7:44 PM
calmspin.bsky.social
It was a good day:
Drawing, beautiful gardens,
and chats with a friend.

Coutts Centre, August 5, 2025

couttscentre.ca
An open sketchbook with pen and ink rural landscape drawings and pencil crayon rubbings of old things. An open pencil case with coloured pencils and a leather strap appear cropped at the bottom of the picture frame. A large perennial/annual bed to the right with red poppies prominent in the centre of the bed. A grass pathway swoops to the left and up to a wood and stone heritage cottage with trees in the background. Pink echinacea flowers in the foreground, surrounded by other greenery and deciduous trees in the background. A wood and stone path at bottom right, is framed by tall spires of warm colourful hollyhocks on the left. The background shows a heritage cottage with white trim windows.
August 5, 2025 at 11:57 PM
calmspin.bsky.social
Tidying up the garden and finding a use for “scrap” flowers.
Small clay white and pink wide mouth vase sits on wooden patio table. Various random garden flowers in yellow, red, pinks and whites sit inside haphazardly.
August 2, 2025 at 8:58 PM
calmspin.bsky.social
The more time I spend with this Lojan ‘Buddy’ wheel, the greater confidence I have it was a satisfying purchase. And now, I can get parts for it at www.tisseetfile.com/en 😊
Bird’s eye view of modern looking wooden spinning wheel with flyer threaded with a variageted pink single of yarn being wound onto a bobbin. Spinning wheel sitting outside on brick dappled with sun. (Lojan ‘Buddy’ wheel spinning Merino top at a 1:9 ratio and aiming for a single approx. 22 wpi)
July 29, 2025 at 10:16 PM
calmspin.bsky.social
Bees too busy to sit still for photos. Photographer to impatient to wait. Veronicastrum virginicum beginning to hit its stride. #BotanicalTuesday
White spikes of flowers vertically in the foreground with one bee bottom on spike to the right. Greenery and buildings/Bluesky in background.
July 29, 2025 at 6:32 PM
calmspin.bsky.social
It’s so nice to see this colour! Confirmation that I didn’t do something wrong when I solar-dyed this mohair with goldenrod. I was expecting the results to be much more vibrant.
Solar-dyed mohair with goldenrod and alum mordant.
July 28, 2025 at 2:22 PM
calmspin.bsky.social
Very rainy July so far, which is highlighting interesting plant forms on this #botanicaltuesday
Moisture capturing “hairs” on Gaillardia aristata: close up of yellow,red centre circle of a flower with yellow petals beginning formation radially around centre. Green spiky leaves further radiating out and fine droplets of water are captured on plant filaments. Close up of two green ball shaped Papaver somniferum seed pods. Rain water has pooled in the top of the one in foreground. Water droplets cling to the round smooth surface of the side of the seed pods.
July 22, 2025 at 10:57 PM
calmspin.bsky.social
This and that learning:
chain-ply spinning, eighty grams.
Those warm colours though! 🔥
Skeins of yarn resting horizontally in stripes of white at the top to oranges/reds/yellows to whites/blues to variegated purplish browns.
July 20, 2025 at 10:25 PM
calmspin.bsky.social
#Lojan Lazy Kate plying ball place holder. 🧶
A spinning spindle rests on the end of a wooden t shaped bar. Yarn singles travel to the end of the bar which rests on a ball of yarn to be chain plied for spinning. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation logo on a white and black mug of tea is behind. All resting on an oak wood surface.
July 20, 2025 at 2:20 PM
calmspin.bsky.social
Last week’s Tour de Fleece practices and investigations and the spinning tools I used.
Spinning tools and fibre from left to right: Helen Mawdsley support spindle with berry coloured merino/cashmere, Fox Mountain support spindle with grey and mixed colour luxury mix, Lojan bobbin with warm colour merino, Snyder cross-bar, Mawdsley cross-bar spindles, chain-plied goldenrod solar dyed butter yellow mohair and 4 mini skeins/tests of warm coloured merino yarn. Spinning investigations of colour using Lojan ‘Buddy’ spinning wheel to create a two-ply yarn, chain-plied yarn and chain-plied yarn from singles created on a crossbar spindle. Original yellow/orange/red merino top on bottom.
July 13, 2025 at 3:18 PM
calmspin.bsky.social
Back on track. 😅
Cross-bar Snyder wooden spindle rests on an oak table. A plying ball sits beside it and spindle is partly loaded with a chain ply of butter yellow mohair.
July 11, 2025 at 2:40 AM
calmspin.bsky.social
It’s like one of those bike crashes. 😬
#tourdefleece
Dishevelled remnants of centre pull ball of mohair single split between a tangle, a chain-ply ball and a wrap around one of the cross bars of a dismantled cross bar spindle. All resting on an oak surface.
July 10, 2025 at 11:32 PM
calmspin.bsky.social
I can’t bring myself to mow our “lawn.” (Clover flowers smell amazing and the bees love it.)
July 7, 2025 at 4:36 PM
calmspin.bsky.social
In between this and
that, my Tour de Fleece plan is:
tiny spins each day.
Snyder cross bar spindle spinning in progress: pale yellow vintage (mohair?) fibre wrapping a cop around bars. Fibre top in background. All resting on pale oak wood surface.
July 5, 2025 at 9:57 PM
calmspin.bsky.social
Inspired by www.artpedagogy.com
Will scribble more this summer.
Cat drawing in sketchbook with black ink pen resting on page. Cat model in background. #sketchbook #postingtothevoid #catsofbluesky #penandink
July 1, 2025 at 8:51 PM