Tuesday (of last week): While shopping for buttons for my handwoven vest, I caved to my almost 4-year-old's desire for "ducky" buttons. There were three of them on the button card. They were cute. They were yellow with orange beaks. And, they had entertained her for the 20+ minutes while I debate over my buttons. How could I not say "yes"?
Tuesday night, trying desperately to make use of this frivolous purchase (they were purchased with the caveat that they would be used on her birthday cake, but really...what does one do with ducky buttons?), I decided to make a handwoven jacket.
It would be perfect! A use for the buttons, a use for some stash yarns, and to top it all off, the girl needs a new jacket! Woo-hoo!
Wednesday: Calculations-check. Warp measured-check. Ten inch sample woven-check. Things are going great-opps! I started to get distracted. I tossed the sample into the wash without measuring it first. I didn't like the look of the stripes, so I swapped them out for a different yarn. The new yarn was too bumpy to go through the reed. Removed new yarn. Resleyed the reed to try a tighter sett. Noticed a threading error in the newly resleyed warp. Forget it! At this point it's just a sampler. I can deal with a threading error.
The sampler is ugly. It feels like cardboard (even wet finished). The color combos don't do anything pretty. It visited my weaving guilds on both Friday and Saturday because it was so awful!
Saturday night: Inspiration (or desperation--the child's birthday is Wed!) hits! I'll weave this thing as a twill shadow weave piece. If I'm careful with my packing, I can avoid the cardboard effects of the sampler. Worst case scenario, it will end up like my sampler! Also, it's not going to be a real coat. It's going to be a play cloak. Now I don't have to worry about it playing in the sand box or in the mud. Whew!
300 ends, half pale yellow, half shiny white, measured and threaded on the loom. I wouldn't have made it without my husband who read the threading to me. It was slow going, but we only were 1/2 an hour late to bed.
Sunday: my day of rest. Really. I looked at the loom. I woke up knowing how to fix a problem from the night before, but I waited.
Monday: Let the weaving begin. I fixed the threading problem--the right hand threads were running into unused heddles. I shifted the reed to the left about 1". Problem solved! The warp got tied onto the front apron, and I wove like the wind! I probably got a solid two hours of weaving done before lunch. (Many thanks to the electronic babysitter!) After lunch, I got to weave in 30 min. bursts. Even so, the piece was off the loom and wet finished by 2pm.
The cloak was cut out and ready to sew before I went to bed that night (and I wasn't even late for bedtime! :)
Tuesday: I sewed the hood first. It turned out to be too small. I cut a new hood (in a different style than the original) and continued on. The cloak was all together and on the hanger by 2pm. I let it rest and stretch overnight.
Wednesday (the birthday-day): Took down a load of laundry. Snuck off to iron the hem. The birthday girl requested a movie. Brought the cloak with me and handsewed the hem and attached the "ducky" buttons as closure at the neck. Tried making a crocheted loop for the buttons. Didn't like it. Got out the kumihimo stand I had made. Took it with me to play group. Made my braid and the button loop while the kids played. Came home. Sewed the loop on to the cloak. Gently, but quickly, folded the cloak and put it in a gift bag. Taped it shut. Breathed a sigh of relief!
Why do I do this to myself?!?
For the record, I am pleased as all get-out with the fabric. My stiff-as-a-board sampler is only 5" wide. My fabric was 30" wide on the loom. What a difference! I knew I wouldn't be able to pack it as tightly as the sampler, and I didn't want it to be like the sampler...but who knew that it would turn out so nicely!
The shadow weave pattern I used is from Strickler's 8-Shaft Pattern book (I think it's #301) and makes me think of leaves. Even though the contrast of the yarns I used isn't great, I can still see the undulating lines that look leafy to me.
And better yet, my now 4-year-old daughter likes her "Hobbit" cloak.
This is the west side of the addition/garage. The transplants are back in place and have been mulched.
Construction has started on the addition to our home. The crawl space has been dug, the footers poured, and the block work done. The corresponding cement pad for the garage expansion has been poured. So far, we are all still alive (me from tearing out my hair and stressing over the project; my husband from doing his part of the work)! The roof trusses arrived today. Here's to projects!
He turned the prototype at the end of the spring. (It's at the left in the upper photo.) I tweaked the sketch some and took it back to him. He has since had a stroke, but he still turned out four new spindles for me to try. I've sanded them to get a point at both ends. My husband showed me how to use a brillo pad as the final round of "sandpaper" to make an almost polished piece. Each spindle has been wiped with mineral oil. They spin beautifully! My favorites are on the outer two edges of the photo--the long, yellow-ish one on the left and the rosy-er wood on the right. Both of these are denser woods and spin longer than the others.
The cherry picker squeezed in between the house and the tree that needed to come down.
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.
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!
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.
My weaving guild (Wabash Weavers) is having a towel exchange on Friday. I got them on and off the loom this week --and they are marvelous! But it was an interesting challenge to limit my project to a manageable size.
I had a hard time making decisions about these towels. The only thing I knew I wanted was "decent sized towels". I ran my calculations to give my 20"x 30" towels, and I was really pleased to see how close they ended up to those dimensions!
Here's a photo of the two towels. They have been wet finished and ironed (don't tell anyone that I ironed!). I had enough warp left to make two sample pieces--one in plain weave and one in waffle weave. The waffle weave piece is now a washcloth and the plain weave is an eyeglass case. :)
This is my first attempt at weaving Huck Lace. The sampler pictured here is from "The best of Weaver's Huck Lace". I'm using that book along with Handwoven Laces by Donna Muller as my references. With things like this, I wish I could weave faster! I really want to see what these weaves will look like off the loom!
I made a pair of slippers for my four year old. The red/blue fabric is a handspun wool that I wove into a sample. The blue/grey striped fabric is another sample piece. Now instead of little bits of fabric I have a finished object! Hooray for finished objects! (FYI, the heel is a piece of suede. I'm not sure why the pattern suggests just that small piece of suede. It was hard to sew the binding on it!)
My four year old pulled this book off the library shelf and said we needed to take it home. Who was I to argue--it looked interesting! The polymer clay caricatures in the book are amazing--so detailed, so life-like. 
My last dye-day produced some gorgeous rovings. Most of them were on a light grey wool and done in families of color. This purple one has some blue in it. I started spinning it last night... I like it!
Lest I forget...This is my new bobbin winder. One of my weaving guild members suggested this to me. It's a $7 hand mixer from WalMart. I used the tin snips and removed the cross bars from the beater, then wrapped tape around it so the bobbins would be snug on the post. It works pretty well--the speed control could be improved (it goes really fast on the slowest setting), but I'm not ready to take it apart to play with the gear ratios yet!
This is the longest warp I've ever put on my loom. It is also the widest. And I'm learning lots! The mess of warp chains hanging off the front of the loom has been cleaned up some since I took this picture. Part of the mess is that I started warping from the center of the piece and the number of threads needed did not match the number of threads in a single chain, so the threads from a single chain are split over different stripes. (That seems awkward to describe--one warp chain split into two different groups in the reed.) 
My great-aunt is here visiting. Last night we needed a project. I asked a few questions, we dug around in my stash of yarn, did a few calculations, and lo and behold: a scarf to take home with her! 
Just for fun, here are my calculations for the scarf. I have a white board in my workroom which gets used for all sorts of lists. It's a good place to write when I want to be able to see it while I weave.
The latest issue of Handwoven Magazine is dedicated to weaving with "overshot" structure. It is done using a fat weft for the pattern and another thinner weft for plain weaving to help hold the pattern in place.
Here is the same threading as the overshot woven as a straight twill. It looks a bit like an ekg trace! More importantly, this weft is something that has been in my stash for YEARS! And now it's gone! Hooray! It worked well here--it was a mercerized cotton (I assume--no ball band & I didn't do a burn test) slightly smaller in diameter than the 4/2 cotton warp. I liked the sheen of the mercerized cotton against the duller untreated cotton.
The threading for the overshot pattern was a 24 thread repeat. That's huge compared to my regular 4 or 5 thread repeats! This is the same threading tromped as a twill (1234321,4321234). I like how this came out. The warp is 4/2 cotton. The weft is "Aunt Lydia's Denim Cotton". The denim cotton is a 75/25 cotton/acrylic blend.
Here are my two sample "towels" which were made to test the 5/2 cotton for my curtains. The one on the right is a plain weave that I did just for fun. The one on the left with the diamonds is the real test. The good news is that we like the way it looks, feels, drapes, etc. Now it's off to measure, remeasure and calculate to determine how many tons of fabric I need to make these curtains. Am I crazy? Oh, yea. Probably! :)
After what seems like a long break in posting, I'm back with more weaving. This piece is in 3/2 mercerized cotton. It's designed to be both a towel (two of them, actually) and a sample for the curtains I'd like to weave.
