Amy Gleixner

Hi! I'm Amy. During the day I'm a software engineer and I have a teeny, neglected side project that helps another knitter encode words into lace patterns.

The majority of the rest of my time is spent creating. My main squeezes (after my partner, of course!) are music and fiber arts, primarily knitting, but I like to dabble in all sorts of things. I've played with glass (lampwork and stained glass), metal (blacksmithing, soft metal annealing, dapping, soldering, riveting, sawing, patina-ing...), clay (polymer and throwing on the wheel), leather (shoe making), paint (mostly oil and acrylic, but occasionally watercolor), wood (both indoor and outdoor construction projects, tables, desks, benches, and garden enclosures), origami, cosplay (Toadette, a faun, Mary Poppins, Suzy Bishop in her crow costume, Screechy from Care Bears...)...I'm sure I've missed things. Lately, I've been working on hand-sewing pieces for my wardrobe in an effort to get away from plastic- and fast-fashion-based clothing.

I enjoy "wild swimming" and swim in the lakes and sound year round. Usually I wear a wet suit, but I've been working towards getting even more acclimatized to cold. I hope to not need the wetsuit by winter 2021.

I love mail. Send me some! My address is: 301 Union Street, PO Box 191, Seattle, Washington 98101. I don't check it much more than monthly, especially since the pandemic, but I'll get there eventually and write you back if you leave a return address.

Music

I grew up surrounded by music. Apparently I used to run around the house belting the aria of the Queen of the Night from Mozart's Magic Flute at 2? That's how the story goes, anyways. I've been singing for as long as I can remember and started violin lessons at 9. I studied with the ear-training-intensive Suzuki Method, so I can play pretty much anything I hear on my violin. In elementary school I sang with a regimented children's church choir and played in the local youth orchestra. In high school I sang in the audition only choir, and played the violin in the Denver Young Artists' Orchestra.

During the summer before my senior year in high school, I worked as a minstrel for only tips at the Colorado Renaissance Festival. I returned the next year, playing violin for a little trio called "Jack and the Scallawags". We performed Irish drinking songs, mostly. And the year after that, I joined the band, Whirly Jig, as their former violinist had quit. We played at the Renaissance Festival, but also had one-off gigs throughout the year. We absorbed three new members, becoming a group of 7, and renamed ourselves "Seventh Root".

I left the band when I moved to Seattle for graduate school, but I immediately found more music with the Puget Sound Symphony Orchestra. I played with them for a year or two before missing singing, so I auditioned for the Seattle Symphony Chorale. It has been such a thrill getting to sing on stage with the Seattle Symphony. I have gotten to sing Ligetti's and Verdi's Requiem, Carmina Burana (3 times!), and many other challenging pieces.

And now! I have returned to my violin. I upgraded my equipment, with a carbon fiber, 5-string violin and a new bow and I'm figuring it out as I go. I've written a handful of jigs, and I have other plans up my sleeves. Stay tuned (hehe) to my Thunderbird Circle project for more about that!

Fiber

No matter what crafty skill I dabble in, I always return to fiber arts. I started with crochet, because I thought you could only make rectangles with knitting. Boy howdy did I go nuts when I discovered increases and decreases to make the fabric take different shapes! I've pretty much ditched crochet altogether because it hurts my hands and I prefer the fabric knitting creates better, but I still have all my hooks and make a thing or two a year with them.

I work primarily with wool. It is such a diverse and versatile fiber I feel like I've still only just scratched the surface of knowledge of it. If the universe hadn't wisely provided me with a rather intense allergy to hay, I would go so far as to raise my own sheep, but instead, I support the shepherds and shepherdesses of the world (mostly those around the Puget Sound) and start at the wool processing for my own projects. I have shorn a sheep once, but for the most part I either work with wool already off the sheep or farther down the process.

I've bought fleeces and washed, carded, dyed, and spun them. I have a (borrowed) drum carder, a Schacht Matchless spinning wheel and an assortment of drop spindles, an Ashford rigid heddle loom, and knitting needles coming out my ears (and constantly in need of size 4 needles). My collection of yarn is more than I could reasonably knit, I think, and I probably need to consider sharing it with others...but I'm still working on that.

I also have experience dying protein (wool, silk, alpaca) and cellulose (cotton, hemp, rayon) with naturally-occurring dyestuffs (indigo, marigolds, and other plants that have 'tinctoria' in their names). And I very, very occasionally do needle felting.

Last, I have been knitting so long I'm quite an expert. I usually either write my own patterns (or come up with them on the fly) or heavily modify existing patterns.