A Little Lace

This is my first "real" lace scarf. I'm really pleased with it! In some ways it was very hard to do (mostly because it wasn't brainless knitting!), but once I caught on to the pattern and learned how it was supposed to look it knit just fine!

The pattern: Oak Leaf & Acorn Scarf by Fiber Trends
The Yarn: handspun by me -- batts from Abby Franquemont ("pond scum" colorway!) stores.ebay.com/Franquemont-Fibers

Hooray for accomplishing new and challenging things!

Happy Classes!

I'm so happy. The Fiber Event was this weekend and I spent two wonderful days taking spinning classes. Stefania Issacson (of Handspun by Stefania...stefania-spins.com) taught "Spinning Exotic Fibers: Alpaca, Llama, Mohair and More!" I had my hands on yak, mohair, guanaco, llama, alpaca (both suri and huacaya), great pyreenes dog, camel, and cashmere. My fingers are still on cloud nine from the cashmere!

Amy Tyler, of Stone Sock Fibers in Interlochen, Michigan taught "Creating the Yarn You Want"--a class on spinning any type of yarn and not letting yourself get stuck in a rut. It was amazing! We worked with at least 6 different types of fiber (mostly wool) and fiber preps while we went through a series of exercises designed to help improve our control over the end yarn. The best part of the class was the final challenge--we each spun a yarn (thick or thin) and passed a sample to our neighbor. Then we had to match our neighbor's yarn--size and twist! The trick was that none of the neighbor's had the same type of wool! I was using a Romney wool (mid-range) to match a Cormo (fine and springy!) wool. It was a challenge of the best sort and I loved it!

Warping Front To Back--The Begining

My warping board was a gift from a weaving friend a couple of years ago (Hi Nancy!). The pegs at the top of the left side are my favorite spot for the cross. See how the warp angles up to the pegs on the right side and zig-zags across? The angle seemed to work really well (I usually go straight across)...I got 233 ends wound in two sessions and my arms didn't fall off! :)

This warp is for shadow weave towels. One black thread and one cream thread were wound together. Here are the threads threaded through the reed:

Plied Sunshine

My sunshine fiber finally saw some spinning action today. It's cool (40's) and damp and grey out. The perfect time for some inside sun!

The yarn on the upper left is Navajo or chain-plied. The lower right yarn is a two-ply. I love seeing the yellow in the upper yarn. It's presence is sorely missed in the two-ply.

Next week is the Fiber Event in Greencastle, IN (www.thefiberevent.com) and I am signed up for some spinning classes. I can hardly wait to see what sorts of samples I bring home and what new techniques I learn. Spinning is soothing; spinning is amazing!

Decisions

The sampler is off the "Mac". The black/cream and black/white combinations at the top look good. I'm not fond of the dark, black/grey stripe. The blue/cream and blue/white combos look ok too. The washed out stripes at the bottom of the photo are the light blue combinations. They don't have enough contrast to show the patterns well.

Hmm. It may take a day or two to reach a decision on this! If you were making towels, what colors would you like?

(The warp stripes run from left to right in the photo. The weft color combinations from far left to right are: purple/pink, burgandy/pink, and then blue with grey, cream, and white...it's hard to tell what order the blue combos are in from the photo!)

Sample Warp Exploration

"Mac" (my new 8H loom) needs a project! :) Hmm, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I need a project for Mac! At any rate, my first 8H project is a series of shadow weave towels from Handwoven magazine Nov/Dec 2007. The six towels use the same warp, but six different weft combinations.

The trick is (according to the designer Vicki Tardy) to use the right warp colors....none of which I happen to have! Well, what I have is close, just not exact. So, what do you do when you are unsure? You test things!

The photo shows my nine combinations of light/dark warp threads. The lights: white, cream, grey. The darks: light blue, a blue/lightblue twist, and a black/grey twist. I have these 9 combinations plus another 9 or 10 to test as wefts!

Hooray for explorations in weaving!

Cable Socks

Hooray! My socks are finished! This pair was supposed to be a simple, mindless knitting project. Ha! Cables aren't mindless--not hard, mind you, just not mindless! And, of course, I modified the pattern to accommodate my handspun yarn. Modifications often aren't mindless!

Well, the good news is that these socks are soft and comfy and pleasantly stretchy. I think they will wear well for years to come!

The pattern: 3x3 cable with moss stitch, pg. 68 of "Sensational Knitted Socks" by Charlene Schurch. The yarn: hand-dyed, handspun cotswold wool. 2-ply. (~lace weight)
The modifications: increase two of the moss stitch sections from 5 to 7 stitches. (In retrospect I'm not sure this was necessary. It seemed important at the time--especially since my last pair of handspun socks are tight on me.)

Look What Followed Me Home!

This 40" 8H Macomber loom followed me home yesterday. Much like the story of my husband and his first cat (his mother watched him lug the cat up the front walk and carry it into the house before he said,"Mom, it followed me home. Can I keep it?") I have been watching various loom sale sites for weeks. I even looked at a new 8H loom a week or two ago to see if I was ready to invest in it! When this loom was offered for sale, I called the very same day!

What do I plan to weave first? Well, eventually I want to weave some huck lace pillowcases from an old issue of Handwoven magazine. In the mean time, my first project will probably be "thank you" towels for all the people who helped me get this loom home. There is a draft for shadow weave towels (6 very different towels on the same warp!) in one of my Handwoven magazines. It will be a fun place to start weaving!

Pleasing Purple

After staring at the loom for twenty minutes and sleeping on the question of what to do to improve my shed, I finally un-threaded the heddles (making a cross as I went) and re-threaded the loom.

Look at that shed!!!

The key point in putting in the work to re-thread the loom was my need to learn how to work with fuzzy threads. Now I know that fuzzy threads need to be in separate dents --especially if they are going through different heddles.

The new threading is straight twill (1,2,3,4) with doubled threads (two threads together in a dent, going together through a heddle). I chose to use a basket weave structure (raise shafts 1,2 followed by 3,4) is ease of treadling. This loom has direct tie-up (4 shafts, 4 treadles)...so by putting each foot on two treadles I can easily treadle "left, right, left, right" without thinking about the treadling--perfect for a demonstration situation!
Here's the finished scarf. The decorative "dots" are hand-dyed, hand-spun wool in shades of purple, blue, and yellow. The dots are like little windows of color that liven up the piece!

Odd Personality Quiz

Your Personality is Very Rare (INTP)

Your personality type is goofy, imaginative, relaxed, and brilliant. Only about 4% of all people have your personality, including 2% of all women and 6% of all men You are Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Perceiving.

How Rare Is Your Personality?

One of my good friends took this quiz...I liked how it described her, so I took it too! I like the fact that it picked up on the goofy side of my personality. Hooray for being goofy!

Here's the latest bit of weaving. It's an purple sparkly warp with a few threads of a boucle added for visual interest. There are two different weft threads in the test bit I've woven. I like the look of the loose warp.














Unfortunately, this warp is likely to be cut off. I wove all of three inches yesterday due to terrible sticky warp issues. --Look at this picture! The boucle threads separate easily from the purple...but the purple sticks to itself terribly!

There are a couple of fixes I could try, but right now I'm not sure it's worth the time and effort. The boucle isn't as pretty as I had hoped. I could just cut it out, but then I'd have a plain purple warp.... The decision make process is more complex since this warp was going to be used for demonstration weaving.... Deep sigh.








On other fronts, I bought some Bambu7 from Tabby Tree Weaver last week. I dyed half the yarn cherry red and am looking to warp up a scarf. The yarn is soft and silky (even after dyeing!). This stuff feels nice!

It's Only Yarn

No photo of this minor disaster. My scissors were sitting on the loom where I was sleying the reed. I got up to take a break and play with the kids. I returned to the loom, sleyed the last bit of warp...and noticed some breaks in the first set of warp threads. Then I noticed more "breaks". A significant number of clean-cut scissor type breaks. There is a reason why I didn't want to leave my scissors out on the loom.

I took the culprit away from her toys and sat her on my lap (she was howling at this point...I think she knew she was in trouble) and told her there was a problem and asked her to help me fix it. She stopped crying long enough to look up when I asked her to be my helper. We took the cut section of warp off the loom, and I took her back upstairs to her toys.

It's only yarn. It was at the edge (not the center) of the warp. It's only yarn. It's only yarn. It's only yarn.

Double Weave Introductions

My 5 year old son was very excited when he saw that I was going to be weaving a fish, and he promptly gave it a name--Harry. When he realized that Harry had a brother, we had to come up with a second name! My great uncle was named Harry, and he had three brothers. I was glad when my grandfather's name, Fred, was chosen.

So, without further ado, here are the double weave fish brothers--Harry & Fred! (And yes, the white of the fish on the left should be the same color as the background of the fish on the right...I am still learning to work with photoshop to improve my pictures!)

Selvage Lessons

I wove a little scarf to test a new-to-me loom (on loan from my weaving guild).



The scarf turned out to be a lesson in selvages. Sometimes the selvage would be beautifully straight and even. Sometimes the selvage would be terribly loose and uneven!














Here is an example of the uneven section. I discovered that I was making my weft angle too big, and the extra yarn was ending up at the selvage.















Here is a section with a nice, even selvage. The weft was only about an inch above the edge of the fabric.














And this is where the lesson learned with my scarf became useful! This is a very narrow piece of double weave fabric (a learning sample, of course!). It's made by passing the shuttle through the warp in a "c" shape.

The open ends do well with a low weft angle...it keeps the selvages looking nice. But the center needs the extra yarn so it doesn't draw in and create a pucker in the fabric.

Look at the top center of this piece. See how close the dark blue lines are to each other? I was using the same weft angle for all shots.

Look at the middle of the piece. The blue lines are further apart...and no pucker in the fabric. The weft angles were different...small on the open edges, large on the closed edge. When the fabric came off the loom the closed edge was loose in the area where I used different angles, but after wet finishing the looseness tightened perfectly!

Double Weave Happiness!

At the last weaving guild meeting, one of the members showed a beautiful piece of double weave/pickup work. Dark brown geometric patterns on a tan background. I was impressed! I was in awe! I wanted to do that!

A few days later as I thumbed through old weaving I came across a tutorial on ....Double Weave PickUp! I read it. I read it again. I back-pedaled and read Deb Chandler's section on double weave in "Learning to Weave". Then I re-read the article of interest.

And then I warped and started to weave. I love this sort of work! It's terribly slow...but oh, so satisfying to see the patterns emerge!!!

Thanks, Joan for showing your beautiful piece and sparking my interest in learning this technique!

A few finished objects

My son turned 5 this week. Two of his gifts were "remade" clothes...my favorite sweater cut down to a vest, his dad's old pants cut down to size...and while he opened them and just set them aside, the next day he asked to wear his new clothes! Hooray!

Remaking clothes has been one of my favorite types of sewing since my eldest was little. It's probably just as time consuming (if not more) than regular sewing, but it's so fun to see new life come to a old and well loved item. And I'm thrilled that my son liked the clothes too!









My other finished object is the purple hat to go with the zig-zag scarf. Is it perfect? Hmm. Nope. Am I going to redo it? Nope! It fits on my head, but isn't as long as I like a hat to be (too much ear poking out and getting cold!). Maybe it will be a new hat/scarf set for one of my little ones!

The "Almost's" and the "Are's"

This purple hat has had a hard time deciding what it it going to be in life. A hat? Yes, definitely! A big enough for my head hat? Well, that required ripping out 2-4" of hat and casting on more stitches. A cool, zig-zag patterned hat to go with my new zig-zag scarf? Well, that required ripping out 1-2" of hat...and now I'm working in plain stockinette. A hat. Yes, I am knitting a hat!





Pretty yarn.

See pretty yarn. Think dark blue warp with light blue stripe. Wind warp. Dark blue yarn (both are singles) is not spun evenly enough to withstand simple tension of the warping board. Yarn pulls apart after three passes.

Pretty yarn.

See pretty yarn back in the yarn box awaiting either plying or a project that needs a pretty weft!








Finished project. After the pretty blue yarns failed the warping board test I pulled out an old yarn that was intended (how many Christmases ago?) to be spun and knit into a new hat and scarf for me. Hmm. The two ply on the cone said "~412 yds". Quick calculations: 60 ends at 10 ends per inch. A scarf needs about 2yds, add in one yard waste...3yds x 60 ends = 180 yds. That leaves more than half the yardage for weft. Should work!

And with that, I wound the warp, sleyed the reed, threaded the heddles, tied on and began to weave! This scarf is part of my handspun exploration series. This one is plain weave (and I like how it looks!). I spent my free time this morning sorting beads for the fringe, only to decide that I liked the plain and simple look better.

The fiber is a Cotswold, mohair, and ?silk? blend. I may try brushing it after it dries and see if I can get a halo effect on the scarf.

A little bit Backwards

Typically when I put a warp on the loom I include extra yardage for sampling. With this dark purple handspun (Look, Dorothy! I'm using that handspun as a 2-ply! It's holding up great!) I did my sampling on day one. I didn't like the color choice (it was a bright white yarn), so on day two I un-wove the sampler and began weaving with this purple yarn left over from my daughter's sweater vest. The variegated purple weft looked so nice with the dark purple warp! I was thrilled! I was excited! I wove a 50" scarf in plain weave.

And then I sampled some other weave structures.

How backwards was that!?!

The plainweave was nice, but this 2/2 twill zigzag is so much better that on day three I un-wove the entire plainweave scarf and started over. This time I sampled the 2/2 twill, a block weave pattern and a few two shuttle color options, before deciding that I liked the twill best. Whew.

But the backwards saga doesn't end there. I am running out of yarn. I debated just weaving a short scarf, but that didn't fly. So, I ended up dyeing a new batch of roving in a similar colorway, spinning like a mad woman yesterday, so some of the yarn will be dry for use tomorrow!

The extra yarn gets to be used in a coordinating hat and mittens.

Roving to be spun.



















The already spun and drying yarn.

Fearless Knitting

I have been reading the "Handweaver's Pattern Directory" by Anne Dixon. The first time through I was amazed. The second time through (ok. I'm not reading all the text each time, but I'm looking through it for inspiration and instruction) I was inspired. By the third time through, fear had gripped me. --I don't know how to use color. I am the colorless queen. I'm the girl who sends pink and variegated pink yarn to her grandmother to make a baby blanket...and the grandmother comments under her breath about the lack of color sense and then proceeds to add two more yarns(blue and turquoise) and make a blanket that is gorgeous!

I read the "Knitting Daily" site hosted by Interweave press and they recently talked about "fearless knitting". One of the comments was something to the effect of "it's just yarn and sticks, knit stitches and purl stitches. What is so scary about that!?"

That's when I decided it was time to conquer my fear. I know nothing about color. And I am still a bit intimidated by the color work in the pattern directory, but I now know how my eight colors of 10/2 cotton work together.

I warped an 8" x 2 yard sampler. Each color was one inch in the reed with a sett of 30 epi. I played around with the color order on a little card before I warped the loom, so I knew I liked this color order better than others I had tried.

The first thing I learned was that a twill sett (30 epi) and tabby weaving produce a warp faced fabric. Actually, I "knew" that. But maybe this time I will remember it! The twill weaving 1/3 and then 2/2 worked just great at the twill sett.

I tried some of the weft color changes suggested in the pattern directory. They worked just fine. I'm not sure that I'm in love with any of the patterns yet, but it was good to try them and do some work with two shuttles.

Near the end of my warp I cut the sample off and re-sleyed the reed at 23 epi and did a second section of tabby. What a difference! I actually wove a balanced tabby!

The pictures from top to bottom in the post are 1)twill sett tabby, 2) tabby sett tabby, 3)twill sett stripes, and 4) a bobbin wound with four different bits of yarn. The bobbin worked just fine when I tucked the tail from each color in under the last wrap to keep it from unwinding while I wove with a different color.

A Little Knitting

I've started two new knitting projects: a 3x3 cable sock from "Sensational Knitted Socks" and the "Oak Leaf & Acorn" scarf from Fiber Trends.

But, check out the weaving text behind my cabled sock. It's new to my weaving guild's library...and it's a wonderful book!

There are photos of both front and back of the pieces, photos with various color combinations of weft, photos with various warp color threadings!

I think I may need to get my own copy of this book...but until then, I love my guild library!





This is 1.5 repeats of the oak leaf section of the scarf. This one may take me a while to complete. Lace takes patience and clear thinking for me...two things I don't always have when it comes time to work on projects!

Sample Collection & Scarf

Here's my latest scarf. It's an "accidental" finished object. The real project was this multi-colored X & O scarf. The front and back were so different that I decided it wouldn't make a good scarf and turned the warp into a sampler.

The finished scarf is made with an acrylic warp and a faux fur yarn as weft in plain weave.








The original scarf was a rayon slub single for the weft. I really like the colors! I may yet use this fabric for .... I'm sure something will come to mind!











Here are the other two bits of the "sampler". The red, pink and green stripes on the left are from a hand-dyed and hand-spun wool (aka. a failed warp from Dec. '07). The yarn on the right is actually a hand-dyed, hand-spun wool yarn that was knit into an I-cord. I used it in plain weave. The other yarn was woven in the MW pattern that makes the x's and o's.









More yarns...from right to left: a highly textured novelty yarn (cotton/acrylic blend), 5/2 mercerized cotton, handspun wool (sport weight), I don't remember the blue-ish stripe, but the green is a mercerized cotton...maybe 20/2. The last stripe is the knitted I-cord from above.

A little Batty

With temperatures above 40F I have been able to get the drum carder out in the mud room/porch and prepare a new blend of spinning fibers!

This is commercially processed roving (I think it was a Romney fleece) blended with hand washed and carded mohair locks. The roving was a brownish-grey and the mohair was a black and silver-grey mixture. I used about 75% wool and 25% mohair.

It spins up pretty nicely. This is about 1 ounce. I have 5 more batts to spin and then it will be time to debate about dyeing. I could leave them brown/grey and do a simple cable sock....or I could do 20 yard skeins and paint the yarn for self-striping socks. Hmm. Natural colors may win for this batch!

New Project & Angle of View

This is my latest weaving project. It is a twill pattern with a 18 thread repeat pattern. It looks so cool! The warp is "100% acrylic" 2-ply and the weft is a rayon slub yarn.

I often invite (pull, push, require) my husband to come look at my latest project. He knows how to say the right "oo's" and "aahs". With this project he noticed the O's in the weaving, but spent a lot of time discussing the color variation of the weft. I had him move from right in front of the piece off to the side where the light was. "Oh, wow!", he said. All of a sudden the weave structure was much more apparent than the color!

Here' a series of photos taken to show some of what he saw. The light by my loom comes from a fluorescent ceiling lamp and is to the left of the loom. That is "angle #1". The light bouncing off the weft highlights the weave structure and makes it look incredible! (All these photos were taken without a flash so the room light would be the biggest influence on pattern visibility.)












This is the image taken straight on--as if sitting down at the loom to weave. The pattern is still visible, but it doesn't pop-out as it did from the first angle.















And this is from the far right of the loom--the side opposite the light. --Where did the weave structure go? The pooling effects of the weft are all I can see from this angle.


Who would have guess that lighting and angle of sight would make such a difference in the appearance of a fabric!









And, just because the fabric is different on the front and the back, I laid on the treddles and took this shot looking up at the back of the fabric! --Isn't weaving incredible!?!

Finished Projects

This sweater is a toddler sized (I hope!) version of a sweater my Grandmother made for me years ago. My old one was alive with colors--blue and pink and almost any other color you can think of! This one (I don't have my grandmother's amazing color sense) makes use of the color variation in the yarn. I like how it turned out! I hope the little one I made it for will like it too!









Ahh, Curtains! As I sewed these I realized that I have sewn curtains for every house we've been in! Amazing! I have had the fabric for these for almost (or maybe more than) a year. It took the death of a mini-blind to push these from the "still to do list" to the "completed projects".

Finishing Details

Check out my new curtain ties! I made these on the inkle loom. They are the same yarns as the curtains -5/2 mercerized cotton- and are roughly twenty threads wide.

WWBBBBBBBBWW Open
WWWWBBWWWW Heddles


I like these so much better than the twisted yarn ties I had made! They are more elegant, more finished...I like my curtains even better now!