Book: Textile Arts from Southern Appalachia

A few weeks ago I ordered "Textile Arts from Southern Appalachia," by Kathleen Curtis Wilson from InterLibrary loan.  It's a wonderful book about women who wove overshot coverlets and lived in the Southwest Virgina, East Tennessee and North Carolina area in the 1800s. 

Today I picked the book up at the library and was flipping through it when I discovered a coverlet woven by one of any ancestors!  Plus there was a little history about the weaving tradition in my family -- news to me.   The coverlet from my family was woven by Eliza Kimball Greever, around 1830, near Tazewell, VA.  You can see a closeup photo of her coverlet here.  Each coverlet in the book has a brief history about the person who wove it and even some genealogy information. The book is a wonderful addition to any weaver's library.

Got Tree Photos...

I like trees.  I always say the two main reasons we moved to the Pacific Northwest are 1) Nordstroms and 2) trees.  I took my first tree photo when I was about 12 and won a blue ribbon for the photo at the county fair.  I've been hooked on tree photos ever since. 

I don't have any weaving photos to share even tho I have finished a few things.  Next time.  Meanwhile here are some tree photos from the Grand Canyon.  If you want to see more you can find my collection of tree photos from Northern Arizona here.

Rhodie Season In Our Yard Begins

How to decide....

that a scarf is long enough.  That's always a question I struggle with.  It has nothing to do with the actual length of the scarf, but rather with my boredom.  When I hit 60 inches I am really ready to be done.  Today I was at  65+ inches and ready to stop.  But I thought, I'll take a short break and come back and do a few more inches.  And off to check email I went...moments later I heard that all so familar sound that all cat owners know -- the hair ball coming out sound.  So I zip back to the dining room, where I park my table loom, to find Alice depositing her hair ball on the back beam of the table loom.  Okay, that scarf is done!

No damage to the loom, her deposit was held in place by the warp and I have covered the table with heavy plastic.  And no damage to Alice, who gave me "well, get busy and clean it up" look and then went on her way.  She's only yawning here but I thought it was an appropriate photo of the little devil.

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.