Coast Salish Weaving Exhibit

An exhibit of Coast Salish Weaving opened last week at our local museum. The exhibit is small but quite lovely. It traces the history of Coast Salish weaving from traditional blankets to contemporary weavings. Photos were allowed (with no flash) so I snapped some photos of the exhibit and they are posted here for you to enjoy. If you live in the Western Washington area, the exhibit will continue through Nov. 9, 2008 at the White River Museum in Auburn.

I also finished another little lap rug. This one is for a very young lady who loves PINK! The warp is cotton and the weft is Sock! yarn from Lisa Souza. The colorways are Baby Pink and Violet's Pink Ribbon. I started to do a zig-zag twill pattern, but decided the floats would be too long for the life this blanket may have. So I just did the zig-zag at the beginning and end of the blanket. The rest of it is the same twill pattern that I used for my Lake Superior lag rug.

I have a pinkish cotton/silk scarf finished also -- I did it on my new little 8-harness Louet table loom, but more about that later!

Now it's back to the loom!

Lake Superior Lap Rug Finished!

I re-tied the fringe knots this morning and declared the lap rug DONE. It is amazingly soft and will be perfect this winter. I wet finished it by washing it for 4 minutes on the pre-wash cycle (front loading machine), spun in on the hand wash cycle and then tossed it into the dyer on the knit cycle.

As I said in my last post, I used merino sock yarn from Lisa Souza for this project and I stretched it too much when I was winding the warp. I didn't measure the length when I had it on the loom (next time, maybe!). And even through it was superwash yarn I lost a little in size when the yarn fluffed up in the washer and dryer. I found some good tips for future take up calculations here.

Here are my calculations for take-up and shrinkage:
Width on the loom: 33"
Warp Length: 80" (includes 30" of loom waste and fringes from waste)
Width off the loom: 28"
Length off the loom: 37"
Width take-up: 15% (and I used a temple)
Length take-up: 26%
Width after finishing: 26"
Length after finishing: 36"
Width shrinkage: 7%
Length shrinkage: 3%

I would have liked to final lap rup to be a smidge larger, but overall I've quite happy. The person who is going to receive this as gift is not a large person so it should be just right for her. And I learned that next time I need to order more yarn and wind the warp with less tension!

For my next lap rug, I tied a new warp to the old. Instead of tying on in front of the reed, I tied on in back, following Peggy Osterkamp's instructions in her book "Warping Your Loom and Tying on New Warps". It went faster going from the back and using lease sticks so I will probably use this method again. Peggy writes the best books!

This next lap rug is from a 6 year old who likes all things pink! I'm using a pink cotton warp and some more of Lisa's sock yarn in the weft. The weft colors are Violet's Pink Ribbon and Pink. I'm a little uneasy about combining cotton and sock yarn! But I love how the colors all look together.

Back to the loom!