February Funk!

I’ve been in a February funk for various reasons and when I’m in a funk I mostly whine, knit and rearrange my yarn! So I’ve been knitting hats and slippers. But I have done some weaving.

The laprug on my Fireside is going nowhere fast. I started with ulta alpaca yarn for the warp and when I was tying it on, it stretched and stretched. With some encouragement from DH and my weaving mentor, I opted to switch to cotton. So I tied on 480 threads and in the process I got my warp ends in a tangle. I'm using multiple colors of cotton and as I was tying on to the old warp, I decided to change the order that I had the thread in -- in retrospect -- not a smart idea. I’m slowly getting the mess under control -- one thread at a time.

I did completely re-arrange my weaving studio, complete with moving nearly all the furniture, giving away furniture and consolidating my yarn and roving. Now I have more room in front and back of my looms and can get to the back of my Fireside without trying to break a leg. DH finished the cleanup/refurbishing of my Fanny loom and I have started to sley the reed. All the rust is gone. She had quite a severe addiction to rust and various parts of her had to spend considerable time in rehab.

I finished this scarf on my table loom. I created another word draft. The warp is Cascade 220 from my stash and the weft is a multi-color(orange, yellow and pink) mystery single also from the stash. Not at all my colors but I needed to do something in these colors for a guild project. I like how it turned out and as DH said “did you ever expect it to turn out this good?” He's not an orange person either. I have another skein of the multi-single so I'm going to get some yellow/color Cascade 220 and make another one. Eventually these scarves will end up at a local hospital, so the word draft I created was "heal".

I got involved in a knitting bet with a 10-year-old -- we were both knitting hats at our weekly knitting group get-together. The bet was that the first one to complete their hat had to bake cookies for the other person. I thought this was a sure thing because she was averaging a row a week and had been working on it for months with little progress. I had visions of oatmeal cookies in my future! The cookie bet fired that girl up and within a week the hat was complete. (Mine still had inches to go on No. 2 needles.) She had definite ideas about the cookies -- decorated cut out cookies and did I have any bear cookie cutters and oh, by the way, could she come over and bake them. So that's what we did. I felt a little like Tom Sawyer and his fence as she did all the work! However, she did get to wear my brand new (got it for xmas -- thanks Sandy) apron from Paris.

This past weekend was the Madrona Fiber event in Tacoma, lots of classes and a great market. My buddy JoAn came down and we made it a day at the market. I was thrilled that Just Our Yarns was there and I added to my stash :-). I'll post stash enrichment photos when this funk passes! My other favorite vendors were: Toots LeBlanc -- their angora blend is awesome -- and Sheila Ernst buttons.

I have a bright, bright red scarf on my table loom now -- hoping the bright colors help pop me out of my February funk (but I think a trip to someplace sunny would work better!).

Happy Weaving!