A Day in the Life of Looms 2015

Here we are at the beginning of 2015.  During the first 6 months of 2014, my looms were idle but after a month long trip to England, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Russia, Finland and Sweden I was inspired to get back to my weaving.  So currently all my looms are in some state of activity.  Two are awaiting new warps to be tied on to the existing warp, one is ready for the warp to be tied to the front beam, my table looms gets an inch woven now and then and a little 8-shaft floor loom that I am borrowing from a friend needs to have a bunch of threading errors corrected.  So here they are!

 Norwood 4 shaft (above) waiting for new warp, which is already to go, to be tied on.  The 8 shaft Fireside below is waiting for another waffle weave warp to be tied on to the current warp.

 My LeClerc Fanny counterbalance has a small blanket warp ready to be tied to the front.

 The little guy below (8-shaft Baby Macomber) has massive threading errors -- not sure how I did it but I was consistent so there is the same error over and over!

 This warp has been on my table loom a couple of years...I occasionally pass by and weave and inch.

And that's it!  HAPPY NEW YEAR!

This tradition of posting the state of our looms was started a few years ago by Meg in New Zealand. Check out the state of other looms here with a visit to Meg's blog: "Unravelling".

Dish Towel Samples: Part 1

I see that is has been two years since I posted anything...I've been weaving and knitting during that time but doing a whole lot of other stuff too!

My weaving guild has a study group this year that is doing a dish towel exchange.  I joined mainly because I wanted to get a cool dish towel  and because I already had a finger tip towel warp threaded through the reed (but not the heddles) on my big loom – it’s been sitting there for about a year.  Sometimes life’s events just get in the way of threading heddles.

The warp is 8/2 cotton in a mix of green shades.  I had to add more warp threads to each side to get it to a dish towel width but that was easy to do. But I used up about all the greens that I had.

Undecided about what colors to use in the weft, I asked on Ravelry’s Warped Weavers Marketplace forum for small samples of greens and purples…7 weavers were kind enough to send me more than 20 different shades of 8/2 with just one duplicate.  They also sent some other colors in different weights.  I really appreciated this as it will let me decide what color combinations work best before investing in spools of cotton.

Today I transferred all the samples to bobbins, closed my eyes and picked 7 bobbins for my first sample, numbering the bobbins as I pulled them from the basket.  To get the weft color order, I used a permutation generator for 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 which gave me thousands of permutations.  I picked 15 permutations  at random from the list.  Then using an Excel spreadsheet I matched the permutations to part of the Fibonacci sequence of 1,2,3,5,8,13,21,13,8,5,3,2,1.

And that’s as far as I got today.  Still threading heddles!  I hope to finish and tie on this week.  My first sample will be in a waffle weave.  Below are the 8/2 cotton samples my Ravelry friends shared with me.

Finger Tip Towels

Here are some bathroom finger tip towels that I wove in a bumberet structure with a random warp.  The stripe effect is from the bumberet.  Except for the reddish/pink/blue towel in the middle, these are from the same warp with different weft colors.

The colors I used (8/2 cotton) are based on this Hawaiian watercolor -- also in my bathroom.

Warp Rep Weaving Class...

Last weekend I took a 3-day class from Rosalie Neilson on weaving warp rep on an 8-harness table loom.  Today I wove off the last little bit of the warp and my sampler is done!  Doing this type of weaving on my baby table loom was a little challenging since I can't beat the weft into place very hard.  Ralph got some steel rods to insert in the handle of the reed which did help.  Next time I do warp rep weaving, it's going to be on my big floor loom and I can really wack the weft threads into place.  And now for some photos...

  

A Day in the Life of Looms 2012

The Day in the Life of Looms is something started by Meg in New Zealand.  Each New Year's Day weavers post what is on their looms. 

LeClerc Fanny is ready for a new scarf warp to get tie-on. 

Zooey the Fireside loom has a warp using leftover knitting yarns.  About 30 inches done.

Cherry Pie, the Norwood Loom, has a small scarve on it.  About 8 inches done.

A doubleweave project on my table loom -- all the action is on the other side of the warp.  However, it isn't turning out the way I expected so I am going to do a different double weave with the rest of the warp.

The start of a project on my Navajo loom...but it has been at this level for 6 months!

 HAPPY NEW YEAR!

P2P2: The Big Reveal

Here are my P2P2 photos from Esmae, who lives in Australia. 

I did 2 P2P2 projects...the first one I was naturally drawn to by the colors and the blue and white transferware in the photo (I love blue and white china).  I used some hand dyed red boucle from Just Our Yarns and boucle from Weaving Works in Seattle.  I really love how it turned out.

Here's a close up:

But this project was pretty "safe" colorwise.  So I decided to do one more P2P2 project that would move me out of my comfort color zone (and use up some stash cottons that had been gifted to me).  Orange is not a color I like.  Back in my marketing manager days, my team knew if they showed me any creative with orange in it, it was likely not to get approved.  :-)

I divided the photo selected into three components -- using waffle weave on the two ends to imitate the little circles and bumberette in the center, 'cause I just love to weave it.  These are kitchen towels.

Here are the componets:

Here's the close up:



Thanks to Meg for taking the time to organize this challenge and to keep us moving toward our big reveals!  And thanks to Esmae for the wonderful photos.

And now the sewing...

Finished with section 2 and 3 of the P2P2 project this morning.  Left is the middle part (section 2) of the art work.  I used nearly all the orange I had left for the weft and the pattern was Bumberet.   This kitchen towel has odd dimensions because it followed waffle weave towels with have a lot of take up to created the little waffles.  Off the loom it is nearly square.

For the top part of the art work, I used waffle weave again, with lots of orange, yellows and a little blue for the weft.  (Shown on the right).

So here they are before washing -- and remember, as Laura Fry says "the magic is in the water."

This is all I'm going to show of these towels before the "reveal" in Sept.  I'm thinking of doing one more P2P2 color study, if time allows -- or maybe even later in the fall.

Another P2P2 Weaving Project...

After I finished my first P2P2 project I realized that it was very much like a scarf I wove a few years ago...so I hadn't stepped out of my comfort zone.  Now I'm working on second project, based on the photo on the left.  Note it has a lot of orange.  I'm not a fan of orange...no orange clothing, no orange in my home.  Not an orange person.  Actually I must be an orange purist -- I think orange should be left in nature (flowers, fruit and sunsets).  And I only have one cone of a muted orange cotton that was given to me with a whole much of other cones.

First I looked at the texture of the fabric at the photo.  All the little circles remind me of waffle weave.  So I warped my loom for 3 dish towels  and divided the photo into thirds and rotated the bottom third. Now the dots rather line up as warp threads and the reds, blues and other colors can be weft threads.  I didn't include an orange in the warp.  When I do the middle towel I want to use what orange cotton that I do have.  And I haven't decided if the middle towel will be a waffle weave or something else.  Here you will find photos of the warp and what I have woven so far.  More to come. 

P2P2 on the Loom...

The warp and the weft are both rayon boucle...maybe the red/pink/orange weft was too much?  50 inches done, 20 to go.

Finished...Glacier Bay Scarf (5/2 and 8/2 tencel) and Cashmere lap blanket. (Cashmere 8-ply Lhasa from Lisa Souza, colorway Mother-of-Pearl.)



Flowers and Glaciers

The Pics to Picks photo that I have selected for my inspiration has blue and white china (which I love) and flowers much like those in DH's garden...so here is the photo.

I played with it just a little in Photoshop and really like the tiled effect.  Then I used an online web design color tool to help me see all the colors.  The tiling seem to lighten the colors a little.  So I used the same color tool with the original photo.  You can see the differences below.

Meanwhile, back in the studio, I finished weaving a laprug using a cashmere weft (hand dyed yarn from Lisa Souza) and started a tencel scarf using the colors in the glaciers at Mendendall Glacier and at Glacier Bay. Here are a couple of photos from our Alaska cruise that I used in my color selection for the scarf:

You can see more photos from our cruise here.

Pics 2 Picks -- Second Pic

Esame’s second pic has opened a whole new area for me -- Aboriginal artists from South Australia. Take a look at the photo I have linked here on the right. The large orangey-blue painting between the two women is the one that started me down this path. Esmae sent me an exhibit sheet from the Desert Mob 2006 guide that shows the center portion of the painting. (Desert Mob is an annual art event held in Alice Springs.) From there I followed a Google path leading to paintings with really fabulous use of color. 


I found a really great PDF about an exhibit entitled, Desert Country and from there explored the work of various artists. I’ve listed some of the links I followed below. Tunbridge Gallery
Marshall Arts -- this link is really good because it lists the geographic areas and the artists -- describing what the area is know for.

I could look at these paintings all day -- but I had better save it for later and go wind a warp!

Pics 2 Picks...First Pic

Esmae's packet of photos arrive (from Australia)...a very diverse and thought provoking group of photos.  The first one, linked here, is from an exhibit of the works of Shumei Kobayashi, entitled  "Weaving The Future".  From the other photos on the Facebook page of the Lesley Kehoe Galleries, Melbourne, his work is really amazing.  If you are on Facebook, take a look at the gallery's page -- they have 28 photos from the current exhibit.  Then Google "Shumei Kobayashi" and look at his other work.  You will be blown away by how fabulous it is.  Thanks to Esmae for introducing me to the work of his awesome artist!

Stay tuned for more pics and for details of the weaving conference I just returned home from.

To the Glaciers and Back...

Just finished a 7 day cruise to Alaska…lots of amazing colors, especially the blues in the glaciers. We travel north with friends, eating way too much the whole time. DH has a theory that the cruise ships feed us extra carbs to keep us in calm while we cruise between each excursion location. We left Seattle about 4 pm, cruised north all night, all the next day (a little bumpy) and the next morning, arriving in Juneau about noon. Our excursion there was to the Mendenhall Glacier. What Amazing Colors! Lots of blues in the ice and rich greens in the landscape. It was a gray day, but not cold. I think the gray sky helped make the blues pop out. After the glacier, we toured around Juneau and back to the ship.

The next day was Skagway. We went on the (very) narrow gauge train to the top of White Pass. And since we were the first train of the day, we went on to Fraser, BC to turn around. We spend the afternoon with our friends, shopping.

The next day was Glacier Bay National Park…really an amazing place…worth the calorie intake on the ship to get there. We saw several ice calvings (big chunks of ice breaking off the glaciers). I’m still working through my photos. But here’s a peek -- if you look closely you will see a calving.

We spent a lot of time cruising around looking at the different glaciers with Park Service naturalists on board giving us lots of info. Early afternoon the naturalists left and we headed for Ketchikan, arriving there early the next morning. We left the ship at 7am and took a cruise (on a much, much smaller boat) to the Misty Fjords – which were really misty (think rain). This was the only day we had rain…just lots of gray days. Once again, amazing scenery.

We left Ketchikan at noon, cruising toward Victoria, BC and arriving there about 6 pm the following day. The next morning we were back in Seattle, waddling off the ship about 9am.

Now why am I writing about a cruise to Alaska in a weaving blog – because the colors were so inspiring! I’m really looking forward to see where all the color combination ideas take me. Stay tuned!

It's Back! The P2P2 Challenge

Thanks to Meg at Unravelling we are doing another Pics to Picks Challenge.  A total of 19 weavers signed up this year.  We are each randomly assigned to send pictures that inspire us to another weaver.  This year mine are going to a weaver in California and last year they went to a weaver down under.  So I'm looking forward to getting my pics from a weaver in Australia.

It's been months since I blogged about my weaving but, yes I have been weaving.  When I last posted I promised to post a photo of the satin scarf using the leftover weft from Daisey's snacking.  So here it is:

I've been on a laprug weaving binge.  I've woven 4-5 (lost count) since Christmas, using a Lisa Souza's BFL yarn in the warp and her Silky boucle in the weft.  Take a look at three of them.  The one on the left hasn't been washed yet.

And now for a couple of scarves, woven on my table loom using Lisa Souza's Big Wool.

And finally a scarf made with some of Lisa Souza's yarn in the warp and Just Our Yarn 5/2 tencel in the weft. I'm really excited about how this scarf turned out.  When I was winding the warp, I listened in my headto the words of Randy Darwall - "why use 5 colors when you can use 50 colors."

I have several other completed projects, but they will have to wait until next time.  However, I would like to share that our beloved Crazey Dasiey (see my avatar photo) went on to the Rainbow Bridge in December.  We know she is in doggie heaven, chasing bugs and butterflies and dreaming of cashmere yarn to snack on!  We miss her everyday.