Messing With Worms

I'm back at my Pics to Picks project -- messing with my Pendleton Wool worms and millend pieces of their fabric. The turquoise wool is the Pendleton worms you saw in my last post. I had some lovely cotton hand dyed by Lisa Souza, back in the day when she dyed cotton that has some of the same colors so I am using that as an anchor between each pick of worms and fabric.

It's actually going slowly because the worms are uneven and I'm not about to try to trim them, so I've been using a Navajo beating fork after each beat to get every pick in as tight as I can. The fabric strips are about 20 inches long so I just lay them into the shed by taping them to a stick. The worms are about 66 inches long and I have discovered that I can roll them around a bobbin and send them through the shed with a boat shuttle. 

The selvedges are a total mess, but I'm not worrying about it because going to use the resulting fabric for some type of handbag.

Here's my inspiration from the Pics to Picks photo and a close-up of the fabric I'm weaving.  I'm focusing on the little bit of turquoise in the middle -- that must be the lining of the jacket. I plan to finish this project in the next few days.  I'm all recovered from my drive-by day surgery (with no negative news!) so I'll be back at the loom.

Wide Awake! Ready for a Challenge

Woke at 4am and couldn't go back to sleep. What better time to blog about Meg's Pics to Picks challenge. With this challenge, photos are exchanged and we use them as inspiration.

Mine came from Desiree, a wonderful weaver in Sweden, -- a photo, postcard and article about Marta Maas-Fjetterstrom, a master Swedish weaver. The article was in Swedish, however, there was a recent article about her in VAV and lots of information on the web. The photo Desiree sent, shown here, is an amazing coat by a Swedish designer. The coat really popped out at me because, Swedish design or not, it says to me "American Southwest" and reminds me of two recent springtime trips we have taken to Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.

That sent me right down to the stash and I burrowed into my box of worms from the Pantaloon Woolen Mills. Last spring we made a trip down to their outlet store in Portland and I, with help from my friend Susan, spent some time sorting through a giant box of their worms while our husbands napped in their comfy chairs. (Worms are long felted strips cut from the edges of their blankets.) We sorted out lots of long strips of turquoise and then some small pieces of fabric. Take a look at the photo on the left and see what you think. I've already got a small warp on my counterbalance loom, picking up on the turquoise and rust colors. Just enough to experiment with. Most people use worms for rugs but I'm not really wanting to do that. Maybe some type of accessory?

Also in my stash is a huge skein of yarn from Lisa Souza in her Bird of Paradise colorway that also picks up some of the colors in the coat. There is more than enough in the skein for the weft of a laprug or shawl. Here's what the skein looks like.

So tomorrow morning we are off at the crack of dawn for a little drive by day surgery and I won't be able to weave for a few days following the procedure. But I will be able to knit and have lots of knitting projects going on, especially baby sweaters for a little boy that arrived yesterday in Ohio.

Thanks Meg for the great challenge and thanks Desiree for the photos (and the stamps on your envelope were awesome too!).

More Leafpile Scarf and March Plum Blossoms

Blogging two days running! What am I thinking!

Here's how the warp looks and how the first 7-8 inches look. You can't really see the pattern right now unless you stand off at the side. I've included the draft so that you can see where I'm heading. The red wine colors aren't coming out as much as I had hoped but the texture of the handspun is adding lots of dimension to it. Its looking more like the trees along the VA/NC border than the ones in our yard.

I also photographed the most recent scarf I finished on my table loom. The warp is left over knitting yarns as is the weft...a cashmere merino blend from one of the big name yarn distributors. It is lovely and soft. The photo looks more blue than purple but the weft is a deep purple. I still have quite lot of the purple weft yarn left so I may knit a hat to go along with it.

And finally for everyone who wants to see a little springtime...a photo of our plum tree in bloom and a close up. The temperatures did get into the upper 20s last night so who knows what kind of crop we will have. But if the blossoms weren't harmed lasted night and the Mason bees did their job, we will be having a bumper crop of plums this year. All the neighbors will be happy! I've never seen trees so loaded with blossoms.

Leafpile Scarf

Seems a rather odd time of year to be working on a project with fall colors but that’s what I’m doing. I got this most fabulous skein of handspun hand dyed yarn from Lisa Souza last fall. She calls it “Leafpile” and it’s perfect for a couple of fall color studies I have been thinking about. The first fall color study is a photo from our front yard…our Japanese Maple tree and a white snowball type shrub with it’s dried flowers. The second color study is a photo I took in November of 2008 – we were driving across the North Carolina border into Southwest Virginia when I made DH pull over so I could take photos.

I've been slowly collecting yarns over the winter to use as the warp and two are in the photo with the Leafpile skein. I've also added a dark brown and a gold. Over these I have added a random threading of a deep wine red kid silk/mohair yarn -- to give it a Japanese Maple tree cast...we will see how it turns out. The handspun skein is also part of my "secret stash" so I'll be working on that stash reduction with this project (never mind how much yarn I bought to create the warp).






I'll be doing these color studies on my little table loom. I finished the scarf that's been on my table loom for most of the winter...photos to follow as it is currently drying.

I feel I must apologize to our Mason bees. I've been going out to their little houses and telling them to wake up and get busy in our plum trees. So this weekend they came out in force...but today the weather turned on them. So far today we have had rain, sleet, snow, sun, and sun with snow at the same time. So where ever you little bees are - I'm sorry that you woke up too soon! And I hope you are somewhere warm (just not under our house).

Thank you Donatella! She awarded me a Kreative Blogger Award, and you find her lovely blog here. If you don't follow her blog, you should. She has the most wonderful photos on her blog and her weaving is truely as inspiration.

Here are the rules of the Kreative Blogger Award -- but don't as if you have to comply:
1. Thank the person who gave this to you.
2. Copy the logo and place it in your blog.
3. Link the person who nominated you.
4. Name 7 things about yourself that no one would really know.
5. Nominate seven 'Kreativ Bloggers'
6. Post links to the seven blogs you nominate
7. Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know you nominated them.

There are only about 20 people that read my blog. Most of them know me well and know just about everything there is to know about me...so I won't bore you with more details about me.

Here are my nominees -- they were selected mostly because I love the photos on their blogs so some of them are weavers and some aren't.

Twist of Fate
Fensismensi
Victoria Souza
Buy A Thread
Shinning Egg
Hemvävt
David Lebovitz

Busy Here…

I've been silent on the blog but busy all the same. I've used up all the boucle yarn in my stash and I'm trying to resist buying more. Right now I'm putting a warp for a crib blanket on my Fireside loom and facing some challenges with the tension on the front beam. I tried lashing the warp to the front beam but that just didn't work out. I had about 4-5 smiley faces across the warp even after repeatedly making adjustments. So I unwove and went back to my regular shoe string method. The warp is about 36 inches wide, and for some reason I have more problems with the tension on a wide warp than say 25 inches. So not much weaving has been getting done here.

Here are the boucle scarves…already gone out the door and a better photo of the boucle laprug.

Boucle Shawls - Done

I'm making progress working through my secret and not so secret stash. Using lots of different odds and ends of knitting yarns for the warps, I finished two shawls/laprugs this month. The wefts were handpainted Kid Mohair boucle yarns from Claudia Hand Painted Yarns. I wanted to get rid of the various small balls of knitting yarns and use the boucle as it was taking up a lot of space. Each shawl took exactly one skein of boucle for the weft (I wove until it was gone). After I did the first shawl (red), I just tied a new warp on the the old. I wet finished each of them by washing (in my front loader) on the pre wash cycle, warm/cold water, for the 12 minute then I dried them on "delicate" for about 15 minutes and hung them over a heat vent to finish drying. They are very soft and fuzzy. They are about 21 inches wide and 72 inches long.

I like the interplay of the colors especially in the teal/green/brown one but you can't see much of that in the photo. The fuzzy boucle makes the photo look slightly out of focus. Plus this very gray sky day isn't the best for a photo shoot. The red boucle had a lot of purples it in (kinda of "Red Hat-ish") so I used red, blacks and purples in the warp, including some red ribbon yarn. The other boucle was teals, browns, greens and grays so I used those colors in the warp.

This morning I put on a warp of Lisa Souza's Timaru -- a merino/bamboo blend -- and am using the last two skeins of (that I remember) boucle that are in my stash for the weft. The warp is in Lisa's Pacific colorway. I really liked how this knitting yarn is working as warp. It has enough bamboo (35%) to reduce the stretching problems I usually have when I use knitting yarns as warp on my Fireside loom. The plan is for two scarves as I have about 140 yards in each of the two Colinette boucle skeins. If I can resist beating hard, I should have enough for two scarves about 60-65 inches long.

Almost every time I warp my Fireside loom using knitting yarns I tell myself I'm going to put up a big sign by the loom that says "don't use knitting yarns on this loom or you'll be sorry" -- that's why it was such a relief today to find a knitting yarn that didn't stretch and stretch when tension was applied.

Tonight I plan to wind a warp for a baby crib blanket. Lisa Souza has a new colorway called Breath of Spring and I think it will make a lovely crib blanket. I'm using that colorway in her washable merino sock yarn as the weft and cotton as warp. I've got to get busy and get it on my other loom as I want to finish it before my friend's baby arrives. Here's a color swatch of Breath of Spring.

How's everyone else coming along on using their secret stash instead of saving it for the estate sale?

Use it Now! Project and Weaving

Here's my "Use it Now" for the day...a very old hand woven dish towel as a small cloth for the tool table beside my Fireside loom. This towel is one of several given to me by a dear, but now departed to join the great majority, friend who grew up and lived her life in a small German village. She was born in 1914, just at the beginning of the First World War. The date with initials on the towel is 1912. I'm guessing this was made by her mother. I believe it was handwoven as the edges are a little uneven in places. When she gave me the towels, she also gave me a scrap of her Mother's wedding dressing. We have it in a frame with photos of our friend and her family. Our friend truly enjoyed life. Her favorite phase was "make it empty" -- the plate of potato pancakes, the bottle of wine -- she was always wanting us to "make it empty." Our visits to her home were always quite an adventure and usually resulted in me gaining a pound a day for everyday we spent with them.

In my efforts to reduce the stash (ie - make it empty), I wove 80 inches of yardage over the past two days...not sure if it will be a lap rug/shaw or if it will turn into yardage for some future sewing project. I have a little warp left so I will probably weave something with a different weft as I completely ran out of the weft yarn. Meg at Unravelling did a New Year's Day "Day in the Life of a Loom" and asked for photos of our looms. I couldn't send her a photo of a half naked loom so I finally finish warping my Fireside and the weaving was quick. The warp is a just a mix of left over knitting yarns and the weft is Claudia Hand Painted Yarn Baby Boucle in shades of red and purple. It's in plain weave. Everytime I use knitting yarn as warp on the Fireside I am reminded that knitting yarn as warp on this loom is not a good idea. I need to post a note about it by my warping board so that I don't forget.

The little pink and yellow stripe scarf is something I finished weaving last week on my LeClerc Fanny loom. I've spent more time trying to determine the best fringe than weaving the thing. A twisted the fringe was too skinny and other versions of a twisted fringe weren't right either. So now I've decided just to knot the fringe and that means I have to un-tie all the tiny knots from the earlier fringe versions. This scarf is short as I had originally planned a mobius, but decided after weaving a few inches that the self striping effect would be better in a scarf than a mobius. Since I had tied on to an old warp I was able to eek out about 55 inches and hopefully when washed it won't shrink a bunch. The warp is tencel and silk and the weft is baby alpaca and silk.

I'm trying to decide what to weave next on my Fireside. I could tie on to the existing warp and weave another yarbage/laprug/shaw piece or I could start with a fresh warp and weave a baby blanket that needs to be done soon. And I need to find something else to use that I have been saving!

Remember -- Use It Now! Don't save it for your estate sale!